Chapter 18
Eighteen
Colin
18 Years Old
“My hypothesis was correct,” Colin groaned. “I love this.” Every single nerve in his body was in his groin now, he was sure of it, just as he was sure that Scarlett’s hand moving up and down over his cock was going to kill him. His body was wholly tuned in to her touch, like reaching orgasm was the sole purpose of his existence. He wouldn’t mind so much if this was all he ever did. If Scarlett was the only person he touched ever again, then he would be satisfied.
“Am I even doing this right? Is this okay?” Scarlett’s voice asked. He had been completely unaware that his eyes were closed, so he pried them back open to look at her hand working him over. And it was then that he decided he should have opened his eyes a hell of a lot sooner. Her hand looked small against his full length, but her long, slender fingers wrapped around him sure enough. The sight of it made him that much more turned on, a note he would have to write down later if he remembered.
“Yes, you’re doing it right.” He gritted his teeth, trying to hold on to the wave of pleasure climbing up his spine.
“Should I maybe do a better technique? Or…” She gripped him tighter—a little too tight—and he winced.
“Don’t strangle it,” Colin gasped.
“Sorry!” Scarlett let go of him entirely in a panicked flurry, and he regretted saying anything at all. He could have dealt with her suffocating the blood flow to his cock as long as she was still touching him.
“ Red .” He almost whined the word. His body felt so useless without her. “Why’d you stop?”
“I was doing it wrong.” She looked down at her hand in disappointment.
“Here.” Colin reached out and folded her fingers into a curled position, bringing them back to his cock. His hand as the guide, he helped her pull up and down slowly. He held back a small moan at the returned contact. “I normally take most of the weight in two or three fingers and my thumb. You go slow until everything builds, and you move with the build—that’s perfect. Just like that.”
“You’ll tell me when to go faster?” A stroke of her hand pulled up the edge of his head before falling over the ledge to the tip. The indecent sound he let out was followed by another edged glide of her hand.
“Go faster,” he ordered. She did exactly as he directed, making his balls ache for release. Her pace quickened even more, the lube doing its job as his hips started to rock forward.
“Will you put your mouth on it?” The question practically flew through his mouth, and he again wanted to retract his statement because her hand stopped moving. “You don’t have to,” he added quickly.
“I want to learn,” Scarlett said, leaning forward. “Do I just suck the head? Or I’ve heard women gag themselves a lot. Am I supposed to do that?”
“I can’t tell what feels best until you’re doing it,” Colin said simply. “I’ve never done this before.”
Scarlett gave a slow nod of her head and bent forward. “Here goes nothing?”
“Here goes something ,” he replied with a huff as he could feel the heat of her breath hit his head. Warmth surrounded him a second later as he watched her lips wrap around him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Her mouth popped off, and she looked up with wide eyes. “Bad?”
“No! Keep going.” Something primal took over, and his hand whipped out from his side to push her head back down. The surprised sound Scarlett let out made him immediately release his grip on the back of her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”
“Actually… could you?”
“Push your head down?” Colin clarified, scared to make the wrong move again.
A pretty blush was spreading across her cheeks again. “Not so hard, but I like your hand there. It’s comforting because then I at least know you want me to be down here still.” The color in her cheeks had come and gone as they moved through foreplay earlier, and it never failed to surprise him what exactly made her blush spread. It wasn’t the filthy things so much as the ones that felt more intimate. Having his tongue licking between her legs didn’t flush her until the end when she was near the breaking point, but she blushed furiously when he carefully lifted her legs to plant a pillow under her backside—a trick he had unfortunately learned from one of Walker’s ghostwritten romance novels. It worked well enough to get the perfect angle, so Colin opted to pretend that whoever co-wrote the novel with his uncle had written in the pillow idea.
Again Scarlett had blushed when Colin’s attention caught on a strip of naked skin that glowed in a ray down her body from the crack in the curtains behind her headboard. It had hit the peak of one of her breasts and slashed down to her stomach before continuing across her thigh and disappearing over the side of her bed. He knew because he had traced the path with his lips, unable to stop himself from tasting something that beautiful that had already been kissed by the sunshine. Scarlett’s body was mostly uncharted territory, and yet it felt familiar now as he started to learn what she liked, his hand moving up to cup the back of her head as she had requested.
Hand laced in her hair, Colin watched as Scarlett dropped her red lips down to his cock again and sucked him into her mouth. “Just like that,” he praised. “Now bob your head up and down while sucking if you c—yes, that’s perfect.” So perfect that he was going to come down her throat a bit too quickly for his liking. He gripped her head a bit tighter, holding on to a bit of hair before, as slowly as he could muster, he pulled her back from his cock. “It’s too good, Scarlett. I want to keep going, but I was getting there too fast. I want to draw it out a bit.”
“Okay. How do I do that?” She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. Besides her actual mouth on him, it was the most erotic thing he had ever seen.
“Seems like everything you do is going to immediately make me come.” Scarlett’s shy smile hit him square in the chest. “I’m probably not supposed to admit that.”
“I think you should always admit that. It makes me feel good.” Her teeth grazed her bottom lip and let go.
“If you want me to, I will. But I also got something that might help.” Excitement had him quickly untangling himself from her to hop off the bed. Scarlett startled away from him, and he tossed an apologetic look over his shoulder once he was trudging toward his backpack in the corner of her room. As he rummaged through it, he called back, “I got a few things, actually. One of them is for you, and the other one is to keep me from coming too quickly. The best option would be for me to masturbate before we do this, but I can’t do that when we come straight from school to here.” His hands finally found one small box and an even smaller tube and pulled them both out. He held up the small bullet vibrator and tossed it toward her. Scarlett looked down at it with wide eyes. “I think that it’ll be easier for you to get yourself off with that when I’m not around.” He held up the topical lidocaine cream he had gotten at the sex shop when he went to go buy her the vibrator. “This is for me. If I put this on, the sensation should be a bit dulled, and then you can continue on without me coming too early to learn any skill from it.”
“So, we just put it on you?” Scarlett asked.
“Yes. Do you want to do it?” Colin held up the small tube.
“Sure.” The shy smile she offered made him relinquish control as he climbed back on the bed and passed the tube of cream off to her. The distracting desire still pulsing between his legs was why he didn’t immediately notice how much Scarlett had put in her hand before it was too late and she was lathering his cock with it like it was lube instead of a numbing agent.
“Wait—fuck.” Colin’s eyes went wide in alarm as she immediately went to put her mouth on him. He sucked a breath in through his teeth and tried to form a single coherent thought. He had been worried about the directions for a moment before her mouth started to work and all he could think to do was buck into her mouth. Scarlett gagged and ripped away from him.
“That tastes awful!” she coughed.
A bolt of awareness struck Colin like lightning. There were several things wrong with Scarlett’s method, and he was finally lucid enough to think about anything other than her mouth on him. The more immediate problem was the amount she had used. He couldn’t imagine a world where anyone would need that much to extend sexual activity. “I thought you’d use the directions. It’s not sunscreen, Scarlett! You used, like, half the tube!” Frantically, he patted around the bed and found the discarded cream.
“Oh shit.” Scarlett’s voice went all squeaky already halfway across the room to scrub at her tongue with the baby wipes she knew he kept readily available in his backpack. Speaking with her tongue still out and raking a wipe down it repeatedly, she yelled back, “I don’t know what I’m doing! You should have told me!”
“Shit, I don’t think it’s meant for human consumption. I think you were supposed to put it on and wait for it to set in before oral.” He flipped the tube to the backside and searched for directions, reading them aloud. “Use a pea-sized amount to—fuck. My dick is going to be comatose in ten minutes.”
“What do we do?” Scarlett ran back to the bed and flung the baby wipes at him, hitting him in the face with the pouch.
“Ow!” Colin fixed the glasses she’d just knocked against his face and looked up to find Scarlett with her hand slapped over her mouth.
“S-sorry. Oh God,” she said behind her palm. With an expression of disgust, Scarlett ripped her hand from her lips and looked down at it. “Fuck, it’s all over my hands.” She wiped her mouth on her arm while Colin sat wide-eyed and staring down at his lidocaine-slathered cock. “What do we do?”
“I… it’s not good for you in large quantities.” He blinked, trying to fight off his rising panic and failing miserably. “It’s too much.”
“Colin, tell me what to do!” Scarlett shouted.
“I don’t know, just—just get it off of me!” Colin finally recalled the baby wipes she had so carefully delivered right between his eyes and yanked several from the pouch, dragging them over his cock like the worst masturbation session ever. The wipes were mostly just smearing the cream around. “It’s not coming off.” His breathing was erratic, and not in the exciting way Scarlett had gotten him earlier. The numbing cream was just starting to set it, dulling the sensation to his cock and making his brain go haywire with panic. “It’s falling asleep!” he shouted. Not only was it entering into its slumber, but it was shrinking at a rapid pace, his arousal thrown into the pits of hell.
Scarlett gripped his wrist forcefully, enough to pull him out of his battle with his own body. “Shower,” she said, then yanked him in a sprint through her bedroom door and down the hallway to the bathroom. Her warm hands pressed into his chest as she kicked the bathroom door shut behind her, pushing him toward the shower.
When Colin’s brain finally kicked on, he lumbered in after Scarlett, and she closed the glass door behind him. The cold spray of water that pelted him should have woken up his dick a little bit, but every second he wasted, his body was absorbing more cream, and if he waited any longer, his irrational brain said that it might just be numb forever. Scarlett carefully pulled his glasses off his face and set them on the edge of the shower before pumping an extreme amount of body wash into her hands and scrubbing at them furiously. The scent of the soap hit his nose, and he was thankful she used something natural instead of the perfumey stuff his sister Pearl used. It always made his head foggy and gave him a headache.
“Colin,” Scarlett choked on his name and grabbed the bottle, holding it out to him. He looked down at it, still feeling a little outside his own body before he finally pumped some soap into his palm and started scrubbing off of the cream.
“It’s coming off,” Colin said. The panic finally seemed to be subsiding now, and he could think coherent thoughts again. Some of the numbing, he now realized, had been his own brain playing tricks on him. The numbness was there, but an over-the-counter cream didn’t have the same strength as surgical-grade lidocaine.
“That’s good,” Scarlett’s voice wavered, and he looked up to see water falling down her face. She wasn’t in the direct stream of water, and her hair was still mostly dry. He thought it might be his poor perception of things without his glasses until Scarlett swiped under her eyes with a finger.
“You’re crying?” he asked. She looked up at the ceiling. Guilt clawed up his chest. It had to be something he said. It was always something he said. Usually, it was because he was too harsh or blunt, but at this point he couldn’t remember what he had said while he was trying to shove down his anxiety before it became something akin to a full-blown breakdown. “Did I say something wrong? I’m not mad, I promise. I was freaking out for a second, but I’m okay.”
Scarlett’s head shook back and forth several times. “No.”
“Then…” He stepped toward her. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” She let out an unhappy laugh. “Everything is wrong, Colin. Am I ever going to be good at this? Because right now it seems like I’m just going to repeatedly embarrass myself till I have to change my name and move to a new country.”
“I’d be really sad if you moved. And I like your name,” he said sincerely.
“I’m a human disaster,” she whispered.
“I should have told you how to use it. I wasn’t expecting you to know.”
“But you did expect me to read the directions, which I should have done. When I get too nervous, all logic flies out the window.” Scarlett lifted her shoulders in a sad shrug.
Colin reached out and took her hand, pulling her toward him. “Come here.” She did, and he adjusted the stream of water so it hit them both and wrapped his arms around her. “The problem was that we ignored what we already knew. You don’t like to be the one directing us. I do. I should have done it myself and not suggested you do it.”
“Please don’t ever let me do anything like that again,” she groaned against his chest.
“I won’t. Promise. But you’re good at handling things when I can’t. Your brain shuts off when you’re nervous. Mine shuts off when I panic or when everything is noisy.”
“So, I’ll handle the life-or-death situations, and you handle the day-to-day?”
“Perfect,” he mumbled against her hair.
“How’s your dick?” Scarlett looked downward.
“You could sit on it and it would still be in hibernation. I can still feel it, and I think we got most of the cream off before it soaked in, but the outside is a bit?—”
“Numb?”
“Not too bad,” Colin assured her. “But I guess the experiment is over for the day. And I think we should toss out the numbing cream.”
Her face turned up toward him with a giggle. “I think that’s for the best.”
“You did really well before then. Really, really, well.” His eyes wanted to roll back into his head just thinking about it.
“Really?” Her voice was upturned and hopeful, so he squeezed her tighter.
“Really.” He was getting a little tired of not being able to see her fully, so he bent down to pick up his glasses, ready to swipe at the steam. Unbeknownst to him, Scarlett had reached to kiss him at the same time, and his head connected with her nose.
“Ow!” she screeched and jerked backward. He couldn’t quite see her in vivid detail without his glasses, but he could tell she was holding on to the bridge of her nose.
This entire day was a bumbling hot mess, and he imagined he might be feeling a hint of what Scarlett had felt earlier. Their limbs didn’t line up, and they were fumbling through sex like newborn deer trying to walk. He should have realized that sex and everything in between would be this ungraceful with him. Everything he did felt awkward. “I’m so sorry,” he winced.
In all the commotion between them, Colin didn’t immediately notice when the bathroom door swung open.
“What the fuck ?” A voice shrieked from the doorway. A blurry-faced girl stood gawking at them in the bathroom doorway for only a second before she slammed the door shut.
“H, it’s not what it looks like!” Scarlett yelled, still clutching her nose. “Shit, shit, shit.” She reached back to turn off the water, and Colin frantically covered himself with his hands, cupping his freshly washed crotch. It must be one of Scarlett’s family members, back home earlier than they had planned.
The shower door was ripped open a second later as Scarlett threw herself out and frantically started to dry off. The cold air hit Colin like a freight train as he whipped his head around in search of his glasses. He was pretty sure when he hit Scarlett in the face that they had fallen to the ground.
“Colin, get dressed,” Scarlett said, her voice pure panic.
“I need my glasses. I can’t see anything,” he said, crouching down and patting around the shower floor.
“Here.” His glasses were placed on his face a moment later, cockeyed and not properly hooked over his ears. Colin reached up to fix them, the lingering steam still obscuring his vision. Grabbing blindly for a towel on the wall rack, he pulled it down and quickly swiped it over his glasses so he could see clearly. The image of Scarlett pulling her underwear up over her ass with a series of hops made him pause.
“ Get dressed ,” Scarlett hissed.
Colin blinked, coming back into himself before he sprung into motion. “Shit.”
The barista from Colin’s favorite coffee shop in town was sitting across from him at Scarlett’s dining table, and she was glaring at him. He had dry-swallowed to uncomfortably clear the air about a thousand times since sitting down. Scarlett sat beside him with her hands covering her face, so he was left to look around the room to avoid making eye contact with whom he now realized was probably Scarlett’s sister. It made sense, now that he was thinking about it. Harper had copper hair that was less vibrant than Scarlett’s, but she also had the same face shape, eyes, and chin, making the resemblance obvious.
“One of you want to explain what the fuck I just walked into?” Harper demanded.
Scarlett groaned and dropped her hands away from her beet-red face. “We were… cleaning ourselves.”
Harper scoffed. “Is that what they call that now?”
“Technically, in that exact moment, Scarlett is correct. We were just cleaning ourselves,” Colin confirmed.
“Thank you.” Scarlett reached out and grabbed his hand, and they tightened their fingers around each other.
“You both are kidding yourselves if you think I believe you,” Harper said and then directed her attention only to him. “Colin Hartrick, right? Does your uncle know you’re here right now?”
“No.” The dread seeped into Colin’s chest as he prepared to defend himself. He shouldn’t be shocked in the least that Harper knew who he was beyond a coffeehouse regular. “I’m eighteen, and Walker has too much on his plate. He has to deal with Piper drinking, Carter skipping school, Cooper getting bullied, and Pearl going through puberty. I’m the one person he doesn’t have to worry about, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“You didn’t tell me any of that,” Scarlett murmured, her voice soft as she rubbed her thumb into his hand.
“I feel bad that I keep taking Wednesdays as a break from my family because I should be helping more. Being in that house is sometimes suffocating. And I thought that once everything settled and I came of age that I’d have custody of my siblings or at least have to step in in some way, but Walker refuses to let me help, so the least I can do is make sure he’s not getting calls about me doing things normal teenagers do.” He looked down at his hands and mumbled, “I don’t drink. I don’t party. Scarlett’s the first girl I’ve even seen naked. And being with her like that is not inherently wrong, so I don’t see why we’d have to bother Walker with this.”
Harper was staring down at their entwined hands with an unreadable expression before she looked up. “I won’t mention it. I see how haggard he looks when he comes to get coffee in the morning. Even more than usual. He hasn’t been coming in with Talia.”
“They got into a fight the other day and are taking a break from each other, which is stupid considering they’re both happier when they’re together. I don’t get why two people who clearly love each other wouldn’t just say that,” Colin huffed. Scarlett’s hand twitched in his, and he adjusted his grip in case it was too tight.
“Where do they think you are right now?” Harper asked.
“Mathletes,” he said simply.
“H,” Scarlett whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I promise we’re being safe. Plus, Colin’s helping me with Chemistry. I got a B on my retake of the exam.”
A prideful smile lifted the corners of Colin’s mouth, and he squeezed her hand again. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I was going to when we were…” She nervously looked at her sister. “Done.”
They still had two hours until he had to be home because Walker wasn’t aware that even when Colin had been in Mathletes, practice didn’t last three hours. “Are you hungry? Do you want to go out and eat somewhere? I’ll buy you ice cream as a congratulations.”
“Right now?” Scarlett’s face lit up, her chair screeching against the linoleum floor when she slid it out from under the table.
“You’re just going to leave?” Harper balked from the other end of the table.
“I mean, do you want to interrogate me more? I can barely look you in the eye right now.” Scarlett gave a nervous laugh.
“I don’t get to do the big sister ‘don’t hurt her, or I’ll hurt you ’ speech?” Harper said.
Colin rose from his seat, still holding on to Scarlett’s hand. “You don’t have to worry about that. If I ended up hurting her, then the pain of knowing that would be enough to keep me away.”
“Hmm,” Harper looked him up and down until he felt sufficiently scrutinized. “All right, fine.” She looked at Scarlett. “I will simply burn my retinas and forget this ever happened. Only because you two are kinda cute, and I need you to bring me back food.”
“Done,” Scarlett singsonged, pulling Colin toward the door and calling out “love you” back over her shoulder as they made their great escape.