Chapter 2 Mia
He was huge. There was no other word for it.
He was huge. Not beefy like a steroid champ, but just tall, broad, wide, and his thighs could quite easily have been my waist size.
I was familiar with his size; the strain from having my legs wrapped around him, that was a different thing.
Then, I had been quite happily enjoying the stretch of my lower body, because he was huge. Everywhere.
But now, in my apartment, eyeing the sofa like it was personally offending him, he was just so big.
“I feel so bad for Quinn,” I said to him as I watched him turn and look at my TV.
A grunt was my answer, and I watched him survey the rest of the room before he went back down the hall to my room.
Hurrying after him, I pulled on his hoodie as I grabbed him to stop him from entering.
“This is my room, you get Ava’s . . . or the couch. ”
Ash turned to look at me, and with one step, I was flat against the hall wall as he looked down at me. “How tall are you?” he asked as he ran his hand down my side and over the curve of my hip with easy familiarity. “Five-seven?”
“Five-eight.”
“I’m eight inches taller than you. Why would you want to put me in the teeny tiny bed when I will be so much comfier in your bed?” His hand was now cupping my ass, and I hated that I was responding to him. To his touch.
“I’m not sleeping with you,” I told him as I tried to push him away. Ash smiled down at me, his smirk knowing as his eyes roamed leisurely over my face.
“I wasn’t inviting you into my bed.” With a grin, he took a step back, and then he was in my room, closing the door of my bedroom in my face.
“Ash!” I pounded on my door and heard his answering chuckle as I stood fuming outside my own bedroom. “You’re going to regret this so much!” I promised as I kicked the door in frustration, but his rumbling laughter was enough to propel me to my front door and leave my apartment.
I was halfway to the football house when a large hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. Looking up, I met his dark blue eyes, which were hard, his face stern.
“Did Quinn tell you what was going on?” he asked me quietly as he looked around the campus at our fellow students.
“Yes, not all the details but enough,” I said as I shook his hand off me.
“Then don’t be stupid, Red, you can’t go gallivanting.”
“Gallivanting?” My indignation was clear.
“It won’t be for long, but for now, we’re glue.”
“I don’t want to be glue with you,” I told him crossly as I looked toward the path that would take me to the football house.
“You have absolutely no issue being stuck to me any other time,” Ash said as he tugged my arm back to his body. “C’mon, you can cook me dinner.”
“I can’t cook.”
He stopped dead and stared at me.
“And even if I could, I’m not your maid.”
“You can’t cook?”
“No. Trust me, I burn water.”
“Fuck this.” He half-carried me to the football house and then was calling to Quinn and Ava through two closed bedroom doors before flinging the door to his bedroom open. Soon, my best friend and Quinn were in the room, looking between us with concern.
“What is it?” Ava asked me as she hugged me.
“She can’t cook.”
Jett had followed Ava in, and he snorted in humor. “Dude, you’re looking after Mia, she’s not your servant.”
He turned to look at his cousin before his eyes flicked quickly to Ava and then me. What was that? Embarrassment? I stepped forward automatically to study him as he . . . floundered?
“And how do you propose I eat, cousin?” Ash asked Jett softly.
“Oh damn,” Quinn muttered before she straightened with a self-conscious look to me and Ava. “For my assignment, of course.” Her hands rubbed over her thighs, and I watched them all. Ava looked as clueless as I did, but her attention was all on Ash.
“We could all eat here?” Ava proposed. “I mean, the kitchen is massive,” she added.
Jett looked around Ash’s bedroom and narrowed his eyes in concentration. “We push your bed over to the wall, we could fit a single bed in here. At the very least an air mattress.”
Quinn and Ava both turned to look around, and I watched them start to discuss the options.
“Do I get a say?” I asked them all and didn’t care that my voice was dripping with sarcasm.
“Not really.”
I spun on my heel to look at Gray with disbelief. He looked back at me impassively. “I don’t remember asking you,” I bit out.
“I don’t care,” he answered as he walked past me and joined the others. “What’s the problem now?” he asked Quinn as he pulled her closer to him. Not into him like he was smothering her, just enough that he was touching her.
“Mia can’t cook,” Quinn explained to him, and I flinched when he looked at me with that hard, unyielding stare.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” he said as he dismissed me and turned to his cousin. “So, she’s here after all?”
“Why does no one care that the brute can’t cook?” I demanded. Okay, even if I could cook, I wouldn’t be cooking for him, but why was I getting the grief when he couldn’t cook either?
“Brute?” Ash asked me with surprise. “Why am I suddenly brute?”
“Why am I Red?”
“You have red hair,” he explained as if speaking to a child.
“Yeah, well, you have brute strength.” Lame. So very lame.
“It would be better if we were all here,” Jett murmured to Gray as he effectively cut me out of the conversation.
“Why can’t you two bunk,” I suggested to the brothers, “and Ava and I sleep in one room?” Everyone stared at me. “What? You’re twins, you were sleeping together for years.”
“It just sounds so wrong,” Quinn snickered, and Ava grinned.
“Ava sleeps with me,” Jett told me bluntly.
“Quinn stays with me,” Gray added.
“Fine.” I almost stamped my foot and looked at Ash.
“Your call. They seem to be adamant, and I’m fed up arguing.
It’s either here with a shower that you fit in and can have someone cook for you, or my apartment where the bed doesn’t fit, the shower doesn’t fit, the TV’s too small, the couch is more like an armchair for you, and I can only ever make toast.” I saw Ava’s grimace and sighed.
“Well, okay, I set fire to the toaster, but whatever.”
Ash looked me over and then at his room, but his eyes lingered on his cousin and Quinn, who had now moved closer to the ice block that was Gray, and her hand was trailing over his biceps as they waited.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised when we were walking back to my apartment in silence. Ash was in a world of his own, but my own head was jumbled with the information in it.
“It’s a terrible situation really,” I started, but he wasn’t listening.
However, I was used to not being heard. “Quinn must have been so scared, and to go through it all alone.” I looked up at him, and he was fully focused on the street ahead.
“And now for them to be bothering her, why is no one going to the police?”
That snapped his attention to mine, and he frowned down at me. “It’s complicated.”
“Is it?” I questioned as we reached my apartment, and I looked at him in consternation. “Why did you pick here?” I asked softly.
Ash shrugged as he climbed the stairs. “I like an adventure.”
I kept my thoughts about him speaking rubbish to myself. “We need ground rules,” I told him as he waited for me to open the door.
“Sure.”
He waited at the kitchen counter, and I hesitated. Completely alone with him and resigned to the fact that this was what it was, I was now acutely aware of the fact that this afternoon, I’d been having sex with him.
“You thinking about riding me?”
My face flushed red as I looked away in embarrassment. “No.”
Ash smirked but said nothing, his arms crossed over his broad chest, and I remembered the security I felt being in his arms. “Sure.”
“So, you can have my bed,” I said as I crossed to the couch and sat down. “I’m not moving my clothes out though; Jett is sure this isn’t for long.”
“Okay.” Ash nodded and made a motion with his hand to carry on.
“I shower first.”
“Why?” His head tilted as he considered me.
“Because guys are . . . guys.”
“You think I’m jacking off in the shower?”
“Eeeew!”
“Fuck, woman, you’ve swallowed it — happily, I would add — don’t pretend my cum isn’t good enough for you now.”
Turning my head away so he couldn’t see my mortification, I closed my eyes as I counted to ten. “That wasn’t what I meant,” I said through clenched teeth. “I meant the hot water is limited. I want it first.”
“That is so not what you were saying.” Ash looked amused as he moved to the fridge and opened it. “No wonder no one can cook, there’s nothing to eat.”
“Ava cooks. She hasn’t been to the store, since she’s been tied up with Jett and things.”
“You can’t make anything?”
“Can you?” I countered.
“Not much. Salad, sandwiches. If it’s made, I can reheat it.” Ash shrugged. “Gray cooks.”
“Gray?” Why did that surprise me so much?
“Yeah, him or Jamie, you know the DE?”
“Um . . . sure.”
“Defensive end. Big guy. Looks like he would kill you if he sat on you.” Ash waited. “Wears ninety-nine.”
“Oh yeah, got him.”
His head shook slightly as he looked away. “So yeah, they have me covered.”
“Okay, so soups, salads, and sandwiches. We’ll be fine.” He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded.
“What else?” Ash asked.
“I’m a music major. I sing.”
“Okay.”
“I sing in my room, every night.”
“Okay.”
“You can’t complain about the noise.”
“You bad?”
“No, I’m very good.” Why I felt I needed to justify myself was beyond me.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You may complain about the noise.” I felt self-conscious.
“Sing your heart out, I don’t care.” He looked me over, and I felt my pulse flutter. “What else?”
“No sex.”
“With you?”
“With anyone.”
His eyes were as round as saucers. “You want me to be celibate?”
My face flushed. “No, I mean have sex, just don’t have sex here, with me. Or anyone else. Especially in my bed.”
“What?”
“Don’t bring your hookups here.”
“Are you bringing your hookups here?” he countered.
“No, I don’t sleep around.” When I saw his raised eyebrow, I stuck my tongue out at him. “Shut up, I’m picky, okay?” His wide, smug grin made me want to hit him. “Enough, shut up, you can’t have sex in my bed. Okay?”
“Can I have sex in Ava’s bed?”
He was laughing at me. I knew he was. “No.”
“Fine. I’ll dine out.” His tongue flicked out quickly to wet his bottom lip as he winked at me, and I laughed at his impudence.
“You’re such a player,” I told him as I stood.
“You got a problem?” Ash asked me hesitantly.
“No, I know who you are, what you’re like,” I told him honestly. “We had fun, now we have to get to know each other, live with each other, fun’s over.”
“Yay us,” he deadpanned, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his snark.
“You okay with the rules?” I asked as I headed to the hall past him.
“Absolutely. No fun, no food, no fucking.”
I laughed out loud as I turned back to him. “It’s not that bad! Seriously, you okay with the rules?” I asked.
“Crystal clear, Red.”
“Good.” I hurried to my room, away from the heat in his gaze as he looked me over. He had only been in the apartment for less than an hour, and already he was making me want to forget my own rules.
Living with him? It was going to be a nightmare.