23. Laura
23
LAURA
O ver the next two weeks, the tutoring sessions with Jason were the highlights of my days. He never came prepared with his work, but each time we met, he was ready to fuck me until I thought I’d pass out.
I wasn’t helping his grades, but then again, he’d never acted like he gave a damn about them.
In the back of that diner again, then in that old storage closet, in the bathroom at another library, and even out on a bench outside, where I straddled him when it was dark and stormy outside.
We had sex each time, and I started to worry about what I’d do when it was over.
Because it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t when he was still so mean to me, bullying me in passing when he saw me. He was still a jerk when we were alone. But now it felt more like he did it to get my attention and get me riled up, not to make my life hell.
His friends hadn’t quit bullying me either, but I ignored them and all they said like usual.
That was how I knew it couldn’t last.
If he were serious about my being more than a tutor with benefits, then he’d take steps to tell his friends to knock it off.
And if I were serious about his being more than a man who wouldn’t be afraid to take risks sexually and be rough with me to make me come, I’d have to plan on how to introduce him to my parents and start figuring out how to get him to win my dad over.
All we did was have sex each time we were alone, wherever we could.
It was just sex.
I knew that.
But sooner or later, I’d have to give it up.
Kristin peered at me as we got lunch. She sipped her milkshake and narrowed her eyes at me as I tidied up the wrappers from my food to throw it away. “What?”
“You seem different,” she said.
Oh, God. Please don’t say I have a freaking glow or something like that. “How?”
She shrugged. “More tired.”
“Ah.” That wasn’t so bad. And truth be told, I wasn’t sleeping all that well. Now that I knew how good it felt to have Jason’s dick deep inside me, my dreams about him were even more vivid.
I imagined that if I didn’t live at home, I’d be way more sleep-deprived than this. I’d want him all the time. To go to sleep with him still in me, then to wake up to him putting his mouth on me.
Oh, sure. Okay. Yeah, no one’s getting ahead of herself and thinking of anything long-term, huh?
I sighed, paying attention to my friend so she wouldn’t get suspicious.
“Not sleeping well?” she guessed.
“No. I mean…” I shrugged. “Life can suck sometimes.”
“I bet you could say that again. Is that asshole still being a pain in the ass when you tutor him?”
You just had to go there. “Um. Yeah.”
“He’s still not even trying to get his grades up?”
It was more like he kept getting up for me…
“Maybe one day.”
She shook her head sadly. “Whatever. He won’t be your problem forever.”
I caught myself from frowning at that.
After spending a lot of time and energy trying to cover this secret relationship that Jason and I had started, I realized that I would never be able to come clean and tell her the truth. She wouldn’t believe me. While she would be the only person to ever not judge me in the end, there was no doubt that my family would react horribly. My mom still sent me messages to reconsider and to give Ethan a second chance.
Not happening.
My dad, Mai, even my grandparents. None of them would approve of my wanting to be with a guy like Jason, so it didn’t cross my mind to tell any of them.
“Are you sure that’s all?” Kristin asked. “You’ve been different lately. It’s just lousy sleep?”
Dammit. She wasn’t letting this go. “Well, I printed out that research application again,” I confided in her, eager to change the topic. I’d already told her about my dad coming to berate me about my wishes to change my major.
She grinned. “Did you fill it out?”
“I submitted it too. Just to see. You know? Just to see if they’d accept me and if the tuition could be covered. Hypothetically.”
“Sure. Sure. I mean, why wouldn’t they want a genius like you?” She rolled her eyes.
I smiled, a real one. My organic chem instructors often told me how they thought I was going places, and when they said it, it was just a measurement and critique of my hard work, not my status as Dean Chen’s daughter or the fact that Mai was my sibling. None of the teachers ever referred to me as “Mai’s sister”. In that department, they knew me as… well, me. Laura.
“I’m so excited for you to go for it. I’ll be with you every step of the way,” she encouraged.
I held my hand up. “Hold on. I just said I turned the form in. I’m nowhere near the stage of confidence that I’d need to actually stand up to my dad.”
She sighed. “Someday.”
Maybe.
Later that day, as if the universe were out to get me, he approached me in my room again. It wasn’t that late. I came home to study before the tutoring session with Jason later. I saw my dad in passing in the kitchen, so it wasn’t like we were only now seeing each other to speak at all.
He came to my room, knocked, and entered. This time, I had the foresight to cover up my papers and close my laptop.
“I wanted to check in with you about your material for the symposium.”
I nodded. “I’ve got it all. It’s coming along.”
He stared me down, quiet and too pensive.
“For the clinical studies that I suggested that you analyze.”
“Hmm-mmm.”
I wasn’t lying. He had ‘suggested’ that project and I had started on it. But then when I got more interested in the cancer drug trials, I ended up putting more work into a mock presentation about that. I was intrigued, and I felt more creative to think broader with it. Those boring clinical studies were the same old thing.
“I expect you to do a decent job presenting.” He held his hands behind his back, giving me a stern look.
“Of course.”
“You represent our family name when you are on that stage, Laura.”
Like I could forget.
“And should you fail to excel, it would drag all of us down.”
I didn’t understand how he could ever worry about that. He was successful in his own right. So was Mai. Anything I did would impact my life, not theirs.
“I know, Dad.”
He turned and left. In his wake, I was annoyed and bitter.
Just a few choice words from him and I was angry about how stuck I still was in my life.
Giving up on reading up about the cancer drug trials, I sighed and gathered my things to go to the library to meet Jason.
Once I arrived, my annoyance and bitterness had set in so deeply that I needed a distraction that would keep me from thinking at all.
“Hey,” Jason said, eyeing me up and down as I found him at our table. “I got us a study room. It’s quieter.”
Ha. I never was. “So we can focus.”
He slowly grinned. “Yeah. So we can focus.”
I know what I want to focus on.
I followed him into the room and closed the door behind me.
“What’s up—” He stopped speaking as he turned to face me, hands in his pockets. His brows shot up high as he watched me gather my hair into a ponytail.
“No. Fucking. Way. Does that mean what I think it means?” He smiled, backing up as I stalked after him.
Staring him straight in the eye, I tugged his zipper down then shoved the layers of his clothes down. Without wasting a beat, I gripped his long dick and stroked it.
Then I shoved him back another step, giving myself room to lower to my knees and suck his smooth, wide cockhead into my mouth.
“Oh, I’m focusing,” he drawled, putting his hands on my head as I started to swirl my tongue around the tip of his dick.
And just like that, I got him hard. All the more for me to concentrate on as I sucked him into my mouth until he shot ropes of his hot cum down my throat.
With him, I didn’t have to be a good girl.
Like this, I could distract myself with what made me feel good.
Gazing up at him with his cock stretching my lips, I wished that his sated, lopsided smile could mean something more than his appreciating my jumping on him like this to give him head, with no explanation.
I wanted to know I was worthy, not second-best.
Not just as his current fuck buddy, but as the one woman he’d always want.
Just me.
So much for not thinking past the present, huh?
If I wasn’t careful, he’d start to get too close to my head and trick me into falling for him.
Even though we focused so much on sex right now, when I was with him, I realized that he was the ultimate motivation to fight for what I wanted.
And I wanted him. All of him. Even when he wouldn’t own up to why he ever chose me to bully in the first place.
Someone who made me feel this good, this powerful, and this wanted like he did couldn’t have a reason to want to cause me pain.