Snapshot

17. Reese

Stretching my arm out, I find cold, empty sheets instead of a warm body. Panic trickles through me as I sit up and look around. Winnie’s tank top and panties are still on the ground. I reach down, grab the silky material, and shove them into my bedside drawer.

It’s obvious she didn’t leave completely, so she has to be around here somewhere. My bathroom is empty, but there is water splashed on the counter, and my shorts and shirt from last night are missing, so I throw on some new ones and head out.

Schmidt is working on his laptop when I walk out of my room, rubbing my eyes. “Hey, you see Winnie?” A pit forms in my stomach thinking maybe she left. Like she woke up regretting everything.

Or maybe she fucked me and left like I did to her as payback.

“Sawyer just texted the group chat saying she was in the bathroom with Laney.”

“What?”

He shrugs without looking up from whatever he is doing on the computer. “I didn’t ask, but maybe if you hurry, you’ll catch them.”

The thought of her with anyone—even a girl when I know she’s straight—makes me wanna punch something. I storm across the hall. Sawyer stands in the middle of the room and shoots me a murderous glare when I step through the door.

“Are they still in there?”

“Yes,” he growls.

What’s got him so pissy?

“What are they doing?”

He throws his arms out to the side. “I don’t fucking know. All I know is she walked in and said she needed to talk to Laney, but she was in the shower. Next thing I know, she’s closing the door behind them.”

Ah… it’s not anger. It’s jealousy. The same thing burning a path through me. How I never saw the way Sawyer is with Laney before fucking blows my mind. It’s so obvious now.

“Well, what the fuck do you think they are talking about?”

He storms over and drops onto the couch, and I do the same.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you pissy because she’s in there with a freshly showered Laney and you aren’t?”

His eyes flick in my direction, and his jaw tenses. But he doesn’t answer, not that I thought he would. It must be really shitty not to be able to admit your feelings out loud because you are in a relationship with another girl. If he would just end that relationship, but whatever. That’s his deal.

My deal is figuring out why my girl was over here, needing to talk to someone instead of in bed with me.

“How long have they been in there?”

“Twenty-eight minutes.” He pauses. “Now twenty-nine. What the fuck happened last night?”

I spill everything but leave out the intimate details I don’t think Winnie would appreciate me sharing. Like how tight her pussy is. And it only takes me a few minutes to fill him in, not fucking thirty.

“If it was good, why is she over here?”

Exactly. It was good, right? I didn’t miss some blaring red flag or something, right? There has to be a reason she would need to speak with a girl she hardly knows, but I can’t come up with what it could be.

Another two minutes tick by before the doorknob twists. Sawyer and I have to look like lunatics sitting on the edge of the couch and staring at the wooden door.

They are laughing until they see us, but Winnie’s smile doesn’t fall, so I guess that’s good? She tilts her head and watches me for a passing minute, lost in a trance.

But then Laney nudges her, and Winnie shakes free from whatever thought she was lost in.

“Thanks, Lane.” She squeezes her hand before sauntering my way. You’d think she was in the tightest little dress for how my body is reacting to seeing her in my clothes. She’s holding the top of the shorts to keep them from falling, and the shirt is barely holding on to her shoulders, but her sleepy eyes and messy hair make her look fucking perfect.

I wrap my arms around her, and she burrows into my chest.

Sawyer looks between us, a frown deepening his brow with each passing minute. “Well, do we get to know what that was all about?”

Winnie giggles, tickling my chest with her breath. “Girl talk. Sorry.”

He rears back, shock coloring his face. “You’re being a real Peyton right now.”

I don’t fucking know what that means, but Winnie pulls back, mouth open, and is obviously offended. Sawyer looks proud of himself, though.

“Yeah, well, you’re a Lucas. Not a Nate.”

Sawyer’s eyes narrow, and I’m so fucking confused about what is happening.

“Get this traitor out of my face.”

To my surprise, Winnie grabs my hand and is the one to lead me to the door.

“Gladly.” She scowls at him. Before the door closes behind us, she yells a thank you to Laney and something else I don’t understand to Sawyer.

Wanting to get her back to my room where she should have been all morning, I don’t pin her against the wall and demand to know what the fuck is happening like I’m tempted. Instead, I let her lead me wherever she wants.

The door slams shut behind us, and Schmidt stands and follows us to the hallway, then cocks an eyebrow at me. I shrug, not knowing how to answer his unasked questions.

“You get any sleep?”

“Nope.”

I’ll never understand how he runs on basically no sleep. It’s not even because I kicked him out last night. Schmidt just doesn’t sleep.

Winnie tugs me to my bedroom, but she doesn’t stop there. Instead, she turns and walks backward, shimmying her hips in the sexiest way until we are standing in my bathroom. Then she lifts her other hand, and my shorts drop to the ground.

I swallow hard. Going years with no contact ramped up my horniness tenfold. I’ve never been so quick to catch a boner. I drop my hand and absently stroke over my shorts, attempting to calm my aching cock. Need bubbles inside me, waiting for the go-ahead.

Winnie pinches the hem of my shirt and tugs it over her head. Somehow, she looks even more beautiful in the morning light streaming through the window.

“You’re beautiful.”

A sexy pink creeps up her neck and colors her cheeks. Winnie reaches over and flicks on the shower, then grips the band of my shorts and pulls me close.

“Join me?”

“Winnie, if there is ever a time I refuse a shower with you. Call 911.”

If I showered with her every day, we would cause a drought. My skin would shrivel up from being over moistened and still, I’d regret nothing. She pads around me, touching and teasing different parts of my body, familiarizing herself and causing my skin to prick. She grabs my soap, lathers her hands together, and sniffs deeply, sucking in the scent before raising her hands to drag down my back.

I lift my hands to the wall in front of me and drop my head between my shoulders for some stability. Fuuuck, this is almost as good as sex. My tense muscles loosen automatically for her like she has some sort of code to get them to relax. Someone’s touch shouldn’t feel so good, but hers is perfect.

Her feet splash in the water that hasn’t drained yet as she tiptoes to my front, ready to give my chest the same treatment as my back. I force my eyes open and find her studying me with the cutest look on her pretty face. Her deep eyes are focused on where her hands are skimming, and the faintest of smiles graces her lips like she’s enjoying this as much as I am. It’s surreal having her here with me right now. So many times I dreamed of this exact thing, and here she is.

The steam floating around her from the hot water almost makes it feel like a dream, but her touch is very much real. She lowers herself to the ground, sitting on her knees in front of me, and fuck. Me. She reaches up and grips my dick, watching me expectantly as I shudder against her touch.

“Is this okay?”

Okay? No. Fucking fantastic? Yes. “It’s good.”

She smiles. Turning her wrists in opposite directions as she strokes me, and it’s an out-of-body experience. Trembles rack through my body, and I’m happy my hands are braced against the wall because I could collapse right now and end this godly experience.

“Winnie.” Her name is a prayer that tastes so sweet on my lips.

The moment her lips wrap around the tip of my cock, I’m a goner. She’s uncertain as she takes my dick deeper, and I fight not to come instantly with her hot tongue pressed against the underside of my dick. Wanting to reassure her, I drop a hand from the wall and place it on the back of her head, smoothing down her drenched hair as I do. Not pushing her, just resting it there. It’s mostly so I know this is really happening and I’m not so delirious I’m imagining it.

She takes me deeper yet, then gags, and my balls draw up. Fuck.

“You can do it, baby.”

Her eyes brighten, and she does it again.

“Good girl, Winnie. Gag on my cock.”

Fuck. The more I encourage her, the deeper she takes me.

Seems my girl has a praise kink.

“Look at you go.” My voice is breathless, amazed at how good this feels. My buddies talk about blow jobs often, but I could never relate.

“I’m going to come. Swallow it all for me, okay?”

Her eyes pinch and she makes a whimpering sound, but it’s muffled with my dick down her throat.

I press against the back of her head, holding me deep in her mouth as my balls draw up. She gags and chokes as my cum shoots down her throat, and she’s never looked better.

The second I release her, she falls back and gasps for air.

“Fuck, Win.”

She tilts her head, looking at me expectantly.

“Did you swallow it all? Open your mouth.”

She climbs back onto her knees and sticks out her tongue for me to see. If I didn’t just come, I’d be hard again.

“Fucking beautiful. Now get on the bench and open your legs. It’s my turn.”

Her eyes widen, and she scrambles to the seat. Hot water pelts my back as I lower myself to my knees. Fuck, how did she do this? The floor is not easy on the joints.

She’s barely opened her legs, but that’s not going to work. I grip her thighs and spread them wide, lifting them into the air as I give myself the perfect angle to her pussy.

I’ve not seen a lot of pussies, or any besides hers, but Winnie’s is the prettiest. Pink, swollen with need, and fucking beautiful.

I kiss her thighs, close to where I know she wants me, but not quite there. Teasing her. I want her so edged she’s ready to burst when I finally take her pussy in my mouth.

“Please, Reese.”

There we go.

“Please what, Win?”

She swallows hard, an unsure look pinching her eyebrows. “Please lick my pussy.”

Atta-fucking-girl.

Diving in, I’m not gentle. I eat her like a starved man. Lapping at her pussy, sucking on her clit. Her screams bounce off the shower tiles when I do that. I bring my fingers up, wanting to fill her, and she gasps when I shove two inside. But she takes them like a champ.

People always say you are what you eat, and I know my girl loves honey. And I’ll be damned if she doesn’t taste like it. Sweet, earthy, fucking perfect.

She’s close, tugging on my hair and riding my face. She chants my name, only encouraging me to fuck her harder. I curl my fingers, hitting that perfect spot, and tease her clit with my tongue.

She’s thrashing so much I worry she’s going to slip, so I bring her thighs to my shoulders for more security, then finish the job until she’s whimpering for me to stop.

Winnie slumps, and I tug her off the bench and fall back against the wall with her on my lap and her head on my shoulder. Her breathing is steadying out, but her heart is pounding and loud in my ears.

“Good?”

“Mmm.”

I chuckle and kiss the side of her head. “Good girl, Win.”

Winnie is walking around my room when I exit the bathroom toweling my wet hair. She’s found another one of my shirts, and this one might look even better than the last with my name across her back and my number, seventeen, below it. I laid it out so it would be ready for conditioning tonight, but that’s even better because at least it will smell like her—before I sweat in it, anyway.

She pauses at my bookshelf that holds my collection of movies, tilting her head to read the titles. I cross my arms and lean against the doorway, enjoying her snooping when she doesn’t know I’m here.

When she loses interest in those, she moves away, stopping at the cage holding Eeyore.

“That’s Eeyore.”

She spins with wide eyes. “Eeyore? You hate that name.”

I snort. “Yeah, I know. Drunk Reese named him. Apparently, after the party, I got it in my head that I had to get a pet frog.” It dawns on her why I would insist that, and her hand flies to her mouth, concealing the growing smile.

“No you didn’t.”

I reach for the back of my neck and grin. “Yeah, but they didn’t have any frogs. So I got a turtle instead, I guess.”

“I cannot believe you, Reese Larson. You really are a sloppy drunk.”

Her soft, warm skin presses against my body as I tug her against me and kiss her head. “Even as drunk as I was, I knew I fucked up. Apparently, I thought a frog would win you over.”

“It just might have.”

“Yeah, but turtles are cool too, right?”

She turns in my arms to eye the turtle crawling around on a bed of leaves. “You know Eeyore’s not a turtle, right?”

“What do you mean?”

She pulls away, reaches into the makeshift cage, and pulls him into her hands. “He’s a baby tortoise.”

“And the difference iiisss?”

She places him on my floor and kneels, so I do the same on the other side of him.

“Well, first. He needs a way bigger cage. An outside cage would be better, but obviously, you can’t have that here, so. Yeah, just a bigger cage and daily walks outside. I will get you a list of what they eat. And third.” She flicks her eyes up to me. “He can live to be over a hundred and be, like, a hundred and twenty pounds.”

This little turtle, who is no bigger than two of Winnie’s hands and one of mine, is going to be a hundred and twenty pounds? “What the fuck am I meant to do with a hundred-and-twenty-pound turtle?”

“Tortoise,” she so kindly reminds me. “But didn’t you know what you were getting yourself into? These guys are usually expensive. Didn’t you wonder why your turtle was, like, five hundred dollars?”

Seven, almost eight hundred, but I’m not telling her that. I feel stupid enough. I’m glad she seems to find amusement in all this because I definitely am not.

We play with my pet tortoise for a while before Winnie is anxious to continue her snooping of my room. She leaves him out, letting him wander the room the same way she does. I make sure to keep an eye on him so we don’t lose him. Not like he will be hard to find when he’s a hundred and twenty fucking pounds. Fuck.

I drop on my bed, and she stops next to my desk, looking through the stack of sports magazines.

“No porno magz?”

I tuck my hand under my head to see her better. “No, those are under my bed.”

She shakes with a giggle. “Remember when I found your stash when we were kids?”

“I told you, those weren’t mine.”

“Sure they weren’t, perv.”

I don’t have it in me to tell her those really weren’t mine. They were her brother’s. Her mom found them under his bed once while she was cleaning. She didn’t say anything to him, I guess, but they were in a different place than he left them, and he was mortified. He asked me to hold on to them, and it wasn’t like my mom was going into my room to clean. No one ever went into my room besides me. And one of the few times Winnie did, she saw them in my closet. She swore she was looking for something, but I know she was snooping exactly like she is doing right now. She’s never been shy about butting into my business.

Stopping in front of my closet, she looks over her shoulder at me. A teasing look on her face.

“So if I look in your closet, I won’t find any porn?”

Oh, she will, but not what she’s thinking. My closet probably wasn’t the best place to hide the newspapers if I didn’t want her finding them, because I know how nosey Winnie is, but it was a last-minute decision when we got back to the dorms last night. “Go ahead and check.”

The closet doors are shitty, and they complain—loudly—as she opens them. As soon as there’s a gap, the pile of newspapers tumble to the ground at her feet. She’s frozen for a moment, looking around at the three hundred or so newspapers with her ass on the front.

“Why?” She kneels, picking up a paper in each hand and eyeing them. I can’t see her face, but her voice is small.

“Why what?”

“Why do you have so many?”

I climb from the bed and settle behind her with my legs stretched outright aside her. “I didn’t want anyone else to have them. It’s an invasion of your privacy, and I’m a selfish fuck who doesn’t like to share. Now, I know I didn’t get all of them, but pretty damn close.”

“You, Reese Larson, could make anyone in the world fall in love with you.”

I wrap my arm around her waist and tug her to her ass, then drop a kiss to her slender neck. “I don’t want anyone. I just want you.”

Winnie’s back hits the door, and the moan she lets out is enough to make me demand she stays, but she has class, and I have conditioning, and it would be nice to possibly get a nap in before it. Coach is still pissed at me about the article, and if I’m slacking at all today, he will keep me late and make me run double. Which I have no interest in, so I kiss her hard, a silent way of claiming her, then pull away. But I keep her caged in my arms.

“You know I’m only letting you leave because you are forced to come back for your clothes?”

She gives me my favorite smile. “And if I didn’t, would you keep me here like a prisoner?”

“Mm-hmm. My very own sex slave.”

She gasps and slaps my chest. “You’re such a perv.”

I lean forward and nip at her ear. “I told you, I like it when you degrade me.”

Her giggle is so fucking sweet. I don’t know how I ever went without hearing it.

“I gotta go.”

“I’ll see you later?”

Without thinking about it, she nods. “But not tonight. Eli is probably already wondering where I am, and if I start spending too much time out of the house, he’s going to get suspicious.”

Fucking Elijah. “Fine. But call me tonight.”

“Deal.”

I know this is where I let her go, but it’s fucking hard. Things aren’t set between us. We don’t have any official title or commitment, as far as she knows. She could walk out this door and never speak to me again—or try, at least. I don’t want to worry about losing her when I just got her back.

“Reese,” she whispers, her voice full of unsaid words. “I really have to go unless you want me wearing this to class?”

She knows I don’t. The only reason she’s allowed to leave in nothing but my sweatshirt and a pair of my black briefs is because I know she’s going straight home.

Sighing, I back up enough to let her open the door. My heart beats hard as I watch her step out, but before she turns and leaves, she grabs my neck and pulls me down to her level to place a deep kiss on my cheek.

“I’ll talk to you later.”

I nod because I know if I were to try and speak right now, the only thing that would come out of my mouth would be I love you.