Chapter Eleven
Anna
It’s getting worse, this addiction. I need Drew with greater frequency and with more urgency. At least there are rules. Rules to keep myself under control, safe. Rules that are somehow agreed upon and understood without having to say a word. We always meet at my place, never so late as to warrant a sleepover, never stay together more than an hour—or three if we are particularly...needy. And still no kissing on the mouth, though I’m starting to see more and more shadows of discontent from Drew regarding this rule. But he’s yet to vocalize it. And I do an admirable job of telling myself that it’s for the best. I need to protect myself. Because I’m never getting left behind again.
Now we’re naked and on my bed, my favorite fleece throw covering our bodies. I draw the line at getting under the covers with him. That’s too personal, too much like making love versus hooking up. Not that getting under the sheets is an issue when, from the instant we close the door to my room, we think of nothing else but being skin to skin.
Even more concerning is that now that we’ve finished, he isn’t leaving. Nor am I hurrying him out. Sweat gives his golden skin a fine sheen, and he’s panting lightly as if he’s run miles.
The light is fading outside, the rays of the setting sun stealing through my blinds and spilling into my room until we are painted in glowing stripes of deep orange.
One of his hands rests lightly on the rippled wall of his abdomen. I focus on that as I sprawl half on my side, one hand caught beneath his shoulder, the other hand still gripping the bedpost. I’d held on so tight to that post when he pounded into me that I wonder if he’ll have to help pry my fingers free from the wood.
A luscious, little shiver runs over me. The things he does to me. The thoroughness in which he takes his pleasure and gives me mine.
Drew turns away to take long gulps of water from the bottle sitting on the bedside table. And that’s when I see it. The room is shadowed but not enough to hide some things.
“You have a tattoo.” There’s a singsong quality about my observation that I can’t hide and don’t want to. Because I’m grinning. An evil grin.
He turns back to glare at me properly. “Yeah.”
“It’s a battle axe,” I add with glee. A cute little cartoon-style battle axe about the size of my thumb on the crest of his left butt cheek. Like something Papa Smurf might wield. How could I not have seen this before? Right, because normally he’d have hauled his pants up and would be headed out the door about now.
Drew’s high-cut cheeks go pink. “Fucking Cancún. Spring break, my sophomore year, I got so wasted one night. I vaguely remember a burning sensation on my butt cheek while my teammates chanted ‘Battle, Battle.’ That’s about it. I woke up naked in a bed full of....” The blush returns with force, and he runs a hand through his hair, which makes it stand up on end on the right side. It’s kind of adorable. So is his embarrassment. “Full of girls and guys.”
I laugh, a crackling mad witch laugh that earns a pillow tossed at my face.
“It’s not funny,” he insists, though there’s a hint of humor in his voice. “I was in an orgy and don’t remember a thing. Imagine the horrors.” He mocks a shudder.
This only makes me laugh harder.
“With the mother of all hangovers,” Drew adds bitterly, though now he’s fully smiling. “And this fucking tattoo.”
He cranes his neck to glare down at his ass. “Fucking, stupid battle axe.”
“Battle Butt Baylor.” I’m dying now. And give a small screech when he dives for me. There’s a bit of a tussle, mainly involving Drew cramming another pillow in my face while I howl with laughter. But then he ends up half over me, his thick thigh pushed in between mine and his chest pressed against my torso. We’re still laughing a little, though, and he smiles down at me.
“I swore off drinking to excess that very moment and got myself checked for every disease known to man the second I returned home.”
His smile dims a little, and his gaze searches mine. “I’m clear, you know. I get regular checks.” The seriousness of his tone and the way he says this makes me believe he’s suddenly worried I’ll bar him from further play due to his checkered past.
“I am too,” I say. “The day I turned sixteen, my mom put me on the pill and started me on a biannual STD check.”
Drew’s brows rise. “That’s kind of...”
“Paranoid?” Lord knows I didn’t need to be on the pill back then.
A little shiver of sensation travels along my scalp, and I realize that he’s playing with a lock of my hair, curling it around his finger.
His voice is low between us. “I was thinking more like ‘untrusting.’”
I don’t want to explain just how wrong he is, because then I’d have to tell him that not a single boy even looked in my direction for the whole of high school.
Instead, I lift a shoulder. “My mom’s an ob-gyn. For her, it’s a sign of love. You know, like how a dentist’s kid will be forced to brush and floss three times daily before she’s two.”
Drew grins, but then his expression goes quiet and intense. I feel it down in my heart, as though he reached through my ribs and gave it a squeeze. He’s looking at me as though he likes me far too much. As though he likes this intimacy.
“Let me see it again,” I say. Because I need to move out from under him. And because I truly do want to look at his little mark of shame again.
“No,” he whispers with a small smile. He leans in, the tip of his nose almost touching mine. I note the individual lashes curling thick and dark around his eyes. His irises are polished amber and alight with amusement.
“Yes,” I say, breathless.
“No.” His lips brush my jaw, my chin. He’s too close to my mouth. Too close to me.
“Yes.” I push a thumb between his ribs, and he yelps.
“Jones,” he warns, skittering away when I do it again.
“Baylor,” I intone. “Let me see.”
“Easy with the thumbs of evil, woman.”
“Then let me see.”
“Okay, okay. The things I do for you.” He huffs, as he rolls over with a mutter.
Oh, but his body is a work of art. Long, lean, muscular. Perfect in proportion. His back is narrow and straight, the valley of his spine deep between slabs of tight muscle. It dips then sweeps up to the rounded globes of his fine ass. An ass so strong that his butt cheeks indent on the sides. His long legs are covered in a down of light brown hair and are as sculpted as the rest of him, with thick thighs and well-defined calves.
I want to lick him from neck to heel. And take my time about it in between. But he’s waiting for me. His butt is twitching as if he’s feeling my stare. Chin propped on his bent arms, he turns his head to give me a sidelong glare. “Well?”
“Just enjoying the view,” I say with a leer that makes him snicker.
“Turnabout, Jones. Don’t forget it. Wait, not the light—Gah!” He squints when I flick on the bedside light. “Are you trying to blind me?”
“The room was too dark, and I want to see this sucker properly...” My breath hitches. “Jesus, Drew, your side.”
“Hmmm?” He cocks a brow and then glances over his shoulder. “Oh, right.”
“Right?” I can’t hold back from leaning down and running a hand along his lower side. He’s covered in bruises. Big ugly bruises like berry stains over his golden skin. Blackberry, blueberry, raspberry. They’re a mottled landscape of pain. And I’d been poking him there. Jesus.
“I had a game yesterday,” he reminds me. As if it’s nothing that his body has been pummeled.
“Is it always like this?” I’m curled at his side, my hand slowly running over the smooth skin of his back and along his flank. He’s paler here, and on his upper thighs where his shorts have blocked the sun. He shivers a bit, his skin prickling.
“Some games are tougher than others. This one was a bitch.”
My throat hurts. There’s a black bruise just above his hipbone. I touch it with the tip of my finger, and he shivers again.
Instantly, I draw back. “Does it hurt?” Of course it does. How can it not?
Drew turns to look down at me, his hips lifting a bit and revealing the shadow of his cock against the bed. The extent of my distress is great, because I’m not even distracted. My palm comes to rest on the warm rise of his butt when he waggles his brows.
“If I say yes,” he asks, “will you kiss it and make it better?”
He is teasing me, but he doesn’t know that kissing his battered flesh is something I ache to do. I lean forward. He looks almost vulnerable, the way his body tightens, and his eyes follow my movement.
Inches from him, I hover, waiting, my heart pounding as I look up.
“Yes,” he whispers.
My lips touch his skin, and his breath catches.
“Yes,” he says again, more urgent.
Another kiss, soft, gentle. My lips map his pain with each yes, yes, yes, my hair sliding over his skin like a bloodred river.
Everything becomes languid heat. The bed sheets rustle as he turns onto his back and I crawl over him, my lips traveling along the blooming bruises upon his rock-hard belly. I trace the grooves between his muscles with my tongue, and he makes little noises of contentment. And I do too. God, he’s beautiful, his skin taut, his body so honed it looks like it’s been cast from bronze.
The silken heat of his cock, now hard and erect, brushes my cheek, and I still. He’s watching me beneath half-closed lids, his breath light and quick.
I stare up at him as my lips graze the tender head, and he croaks a weak “Yes.”
Yes.
I’ve wanted to taste Drew’s cock since the moment I saw it. He’s glorious here, thick and long and straight. He smells of musk and warmth, and he’s trembling as if he’s trying to hold himself still.
The round, swollen head is satin smooth and hot against the roof of my mouth as I draw him in and give a soft suck.
Drew groans loud, his hips bucking, which shoves him in deeper. I wrap my hand around him and suck again.
“Yes,” he groans. His trembling fingers thread through my hair. He holds me there, making helpless little sounds as he lightly pumps in and out of my mouth. The sight of him, head thrown back, lips parted and brows furrowed as though in pain, the way his muscles stand out in sharp relief because they’re clenched so tight: all of it makes me so hot that I begin to sweat.
My thighs tremble and my sex pulses as I flick my tongue over his head, suck him hard then light, take as much of him as I can into my mouth before pulling back out in a slow glide.
I want to drive him out of his mind. The way he does me.
I love it when he fists my hair harder, drives himself into my mouth, his free hand clutching the bedspread like he might soon become unmoored.
“Anna...” My name is a plea on his lips as he writhes. “Baby... Please, I’m going to...”
I run my palm along the amor-plate of muscle that is his belly, and he releases with a sharp cry.
It’s warm and viscous and salty sweet. I’ve never done this before, staying with a guy to the very end. But with Drew, I drink him down. Until he goes soft and helpless in my mouth. And I know that I am in deep, dark waters. Because, although this feels like addiction, I’m not so sure it is anymore.