Chapter 19
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
WILDER
Thank fuck she decided to listen for once in her damn life and made the choice to walk into the arena.
Because Maisie may not know this about me, but I don’t make empty threats.
If I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to fucking do it.
I had every intention of tossing her heart-shaped ass over my shoulder and carrying her all the way to my office, no matter how much of a fit she threw.
She was standing out in the goddamn rain, shivering. Alone. Which is why I’m acting like a damn caveman right now. Not because her thin cotton top is plastered to her tits, showing off those tight little nipples that make my cock stir in my pants.
Nipples I never got to appreciate the night I had her.
It was over far too fucking soon for me to take the time that she needed and deserved.
No, she was too busy running out of the bathroom that night, leaving me standing there with her virgin blood and cum still wet on my cock.
It was just a hookup in a bar bathroom. We both got what we wanted out of it, but even I’m not so delusional as to not admit that there was something about her that left me thinking—no, obsessing—days after that.
There was something gravitational, the only way to even describe the pull I felt for her, something I’d never experienced before. That was why she’s been in every goddamn dream I’d had up until I saw her again in the practice arena that day.
I push open the door to my office, waiting for Maisie to walk through, and once she does, I shut it behind us.
She hasn’t said a single word since I threatened to throw her over my shoulder. The only sound filling the room is that of our breathing and the steady plink of water as it drips onto the linoleum off our clothes.
We’re both soaked from the rain, and it’s even colder in the air-conditioning than it was outside. I can see her shivering from across the room, her teeth chattering together as she wraps her arms around her front.
I walk over to the cabinet and start pulling out the Hellcats merch the department gave me when I started. They’re all fit for my size, so they’ll likely swallow her, but at least they’re clean and dry. It’ll keep her warm, unlike what she’s got on now.
“Here,” I grunt, extending the signature black sweatpants and hoodie toward her. “Put these on. They’ll be big, but they’re dry.”
She releases her lip from the cage of her teeth, something I’ve noticed she does frequently. “Does everyone jump when you bark commands at them?”
“Pretty much.”
With an exaggerated eye roll, she takes the clothes from me and sets them on the leather chair beside her.
I expect her to tell me to turn around or for her to walk to the adjoining bathroom, but instead, she reaches down to the hem of her T-shirt and pulls it over her head, tossing it onto the floor.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, trying to keep hold of the thinning threads of restraint I have left. This girl is going to be the death of me.
I don’t look away, even though I know I should. I could lose my fucking head over this, but I can’t take my eyes off her.
Her chin lifts, those blue eyes burning into mine. “Oh? Should I turn around? It’s not anything you haven’t seen before, Coach.”
The way she says Coach sounds like both an insult and a caress all in one, and fuck, it makes my dick hard.
Maisie makes me hard, just looking at her, desperate to put my hands on her and knowing that I can’t.
I clench my jaw together as I grit my teeth, my control fraying, splintering, fracturing until I feel like I’m going to snap.
How long have I been grasping at that control, hanging on for dear fucking life?
I don’t bother answering the question because she didn’t ask it expecting a response.
She’s taunting me, seeing just how far she can push me until I pass the point of no return.
I can see it in her eyes, the sparkle of defiance shining brightly, the challenge.
Even though there’s a tremor in her hand as she reaches behind her back and unhooks her bra, pulling the wet fabric down her arms and letting it fall to the floor with her shirt.
Jesus Christ, she’s fucking perfect. Her tits are the perfect handfuls, just enough to fill my palms with tiny little pink rosy nipples that are tight and peaked. Her skin is somewhere in the middle of sun-kissed and pale and silky, and even from too far away, I can tell how soft it would be.
A noise escapes from the back of my throat when she gathers her long blonde hair in her hands and wrings it out, the droplets running down her bare chest, down her exposed stomach.
I know what is at stake. I know the world of shit that will come down on both of us if we cross a line, if we blur it and do something that we can’t take back.
But the truth is, I’m not sure if I even give enough of a fuck to keep resisting her. To keep pushing her away when all I want is to touch her, kiss her, fuck her until she’s got my marks covering her skin.
I’m a selfish motherfucker, and I always have been. I want Maisie Delacroix to myself.
“You should stop staring at me like that,” she murmurs.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re going to break your own rules, Coach.”
My lip twitches.
If she had any goddamn clue just how close I am to throwing it all away for her, she’d run out that door and never look back.
She’s staring down the big, bad wolf like she isn’t a sheep waiting to be eaten the fuck alive.
When I don’t respond, my lips remaining pressed together, she laughs. But there isn’t anything remotely funny in it.
No, she’s glaring at me, her posture rigid with how tall she’s now standing, and I feel the shift before she even speaks.
“Why are you so determined to act like there isn’t anything here?
Tell me right now that you don’t feel…” Her hand moves through the air between us.
“Whatever the hell this is, Wilder. Tell me that right now, that I’m alone in that feeling, and I will walk out of here and not look back.
I won’t say another word to you that isn’t something related to the program. ”
I cross the room, each step toward her measured, deliberate, until I stop in front of her.
Her bare chest is heaving, her pupils blown as she stares up at me.
“I’m a lot of things,” I say, my gaze dropping to her lips, then down to her tight, puckered nipples, her skin decorated with goose bumps. “Selfish. An asshole. But I’m not a liar.”
“You want me as badly as I want you. I know that you do. I feel it,” she whispers, moving forward and erasing the few remaining inches between us, until she’s flush against my front, her nipples pressing through my still-wet shirt, fingers twisting into the fabric along my abs.
The contact makes me hiss, my jaw clenched so tightly it might snap.
“If you’re not the kind of man who denies himself the things that he wants, then why do you keep denying this?”
I have to physically restrain myself from reaching for her, from dragging the tip of my finger along her soft, silky skin.
A girl like her has no business being touched by someone like me.
With the dirty hands of a man who has never thought about another living fucking person besides himself in his entire life.
The hands of a man that have been drenched in blood, that have beaten the fuck out of more men than I can count.
She’s too good. Too fucking pure.
All I’ll do is sully her up, taint her in ways that I don’t want to be responsible for.
Like she can read the thoughts in my head, I feel her fingers wrap around mine as she lifts my hand and slowly brings it to her chest, both of us sucking in a sharp breath when she curves my palm around her tit.
“I want you to touch me, Wilder. I want you to stop holding back,” she rasps, her voice low and sultry. My cock twitches, and I have no doubt that she can feel it between us, hard and pressing against her. “Stop treating me like I can’t handle this. Touch me.”
“That’s not what I’m fucking doing, Maisie. Goddamnit,” I hiss, even as I slowly sweep my thumb along the peak of her nipple, feeling her shudder beneath my touch.
When she whimpers, the softest, sweetest fucking sound I have ever heard in my life, I nearly lose it.
I realize in this very moment how supremely fucked I am.
How the fuck am I supposed to be strong enough to resist the girl I’ve been so goddamn obsessed with that I can’t think straight when she’s naked in front of me, putting my hands on her and begging me to touch her?
There’s not a man on this fucking planet who could say no to this, especially not a self-serving piece of shit like me.
I’ve never had an ounce of self-restraint in my life. Clearly, or I wouldn’t be here in the first place.
And I’m so fucking done.
“Goddamn it. Fuck it,” I grunt, my palm sliding up to her throat and curving around the delicate slope tightly as I haul her flush against me. She weighs next to nothing, like a little doll in my hands, and fuck, it makes me even harder that she’s so responsive, so pliable.
My lips slam against hers, and something sweet, innocent, so goddamn forbidden explodes in my mouth as my tongue pushes past her parted lips and I taste her for the first time in weeks, taking my first drink of water after being desperately parched for so long.
She moans against my mouth, her hands traveling up the front of my shirt to slip around my shoulders. Her fingers tangle in the hair at my nape, and she pulls hard, drawing a grunt from me.
Surprising us both.
Mmm.
My sunshine girl, so bright and so fucking good, has a little bit of dark in her too, a little wild.
She kisses the same way that she did that night, tentative, slightly hesitant, as if she’s exploring a new place for the first time, but with an undercurrent of frantic need.
It’s desperate and patient at the same time, and I don’t understand how a college girl, more than a decade younger than me, a student at my damn school, has the ability to have such power over me.
I’m a grown fucking man, but when it comes to her, I feel out of control.
I’m devouring her whole, and she’s taking it in stride, kissing me back just as hard, her fingers tearing at my hair, nearly climbing me.
I release the hand circling her neck and move it to the back of her thighs, ignoring the wet, cold material of her jeans as I curve beneath her ass and lift her off her feet. Her legs slip around my waist, and she holds on tighter.
And then I feel her laughing against my lips.
Tearing my mouth away, I growl, “What the hell is funny?”
“You just lifted me with one freaking arm,” she murmurs against my lips, her eyes dancing with amusement, and I shake my head, delving back into her mouth, swallowing down her soft little moan.
Her hips are writhing, and fuck, even through the wet denim, she’s hot pressed against me, bare from the waist up.
Anyone could walk in and catch us like this, and we’d be fucked. I might have blown all the way past the line tonight with her, but that doesn’t mean that I want anyone to walk in and see her like this.
To catch us together like this.
For that reason, I pull back, breathing hard. Maisie’s brow pinches together tightly, her face confused.
“What? Why are you…” She closes her mouth mid-sentence as I carefully set her onto her feet with a heavy sigh.
I reach for my hoodie off the chair, then turn back to her and start to pull it over her head. She quickly threads her arms through the sleeves, and just like I thought, it hangs almost to her knees.
She looks too fucking good wearing my clothes. “Maisie…” I say, trailing off, reaching up to rake a hand through my hair.
Before I can say anything else, she’s shaking her head, her eyes narrowing into slits as she glares at me, completely misreading where this was going. She takes a step back, and I watch her throat move as she swallows roughly.
“Let me guess. This was a mistake, right? You should’ve never touched me. Oh, and it can never happen again, right? Just a momentary lapse in judgment.”
“I—”
“Save it. I don’t even want to hear it. I don’t need to hear you make more excuses.
” She cuts me off, not allowing me to fucking speak, but I don’t try again as she goes off, anger searing through her expression.
Seething, she grabs her clothes off the floor and stalks toward the door before turning back to look at me once more.
I can see the hurt and the fury in her eyes, and I should tell her that she’s got it all wrong.
But I don’t.
Because maybe her believing it, believing that I thought it was another mistake, maybe it’s for the best.
Maybe it’s stopping something that we both know can’t happen before it ever really starts.
“I’m done with this. I’m done with you not being able to make up your mind.
I’m just… done, Wilder.” She pauses with her hand on the doorknob, her mouth opening like she wants to say something else, but then she closes her lips and wrenches the door open, stopping one last time to look back.
“You may not lie to other people, but you sure as fuck lie to yourself.”