Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
DREW
I held her through it, one hand stroking her hair, the other resting over her racing heart while she trembled and came down.
That tan-toned skin of hers was flushed dark against my white sheets, glowing like she’d stolen every bit of California sun and kept it for herself. It was driving me out of my damn mind.
I wanted to kiss every inch of it. Every broken piece.
Her leg — the one she tried to pretend didn’t hurt, the one that made her limp when she thought no one was watching.
Her heart — the one she kept wrapped in barbed wire and sarcasm because someone (or a lot of someones) had taught her that wanting things out loud got you hurt.
I wanted to press my mouth to all of it.
The scars she didn’t talk about. The places she still flinched.
The parts of her that looked at me like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’d been half in love with her since the first night I saw her.
That smart mouth. Those eyes that saw straight through the bullshit.
The way she carried herself like the world had already tried to knock her down a few times and she’d decided to knock it back harder.
But she’d been looking at him. Tristan. Every time I showed up— carrying her bag, feeding her, noticing when she was in pain— her eyes kept drifting.
And it had pissed me off more than I wanted to admit.
Made me meaner. Louder. More of an asshole than I needed to be, because if I was loud enough maybe she’d finally see me.
Now she was here. In my bed. Still slick and trembling from my fingers. And I still wouldn’t fuck her.
That was how I knew it was real.
Because my cock was so hard it hurt, leaking against my stomach, and all I could think about was how tight and hot she’d felt around my fingers.
How good it would be to sink into her, to feel her come on my dick instead of my hand.
But I couldn’t. Not when she was still a question mark.
Not when I was already all the way gone and she was still figuring out if she even wanted to stay.
I loved her enough to wait.
She was pissed. I could feel it in the way her breathing changed, the little tension that crept back into her shoulders. She hated that I’d stopped us. Hated that I’d drawn a line she couldn’t cross yet. But she didn’t pull away.
Instead, after a long minute, she started moving.
Dragged that perfect body down mine. Tan skin sliding over my abs, my hip, slow and deliberate. Her hand wrapped around my cock—thick and heavy and aching—and I hissed through my teeth.
“Isa—”
She didn’t answer. Just looked up at me with those eyes, then lowered her head.
The first touch of her mouth almost ended me.
Hot. Wet. Perfect. She took the head between her lips, tongue flicking over the slit where I was leaking, and I had to lock every muscle in my body to keep from thrusting up into her throat.
She looked obscene like this—the woman I’d wanted for months, the one who’d been living rent-free in my head since the night we met — lips stretched around my cock, cheeks hollowing as she took more of me.
I threaded my fingers into her hair, gentle even though every instinct screamed to hold her down and fuck her mouth. “Easy, baby. You don’t have to—”
She took me deeper on purpose, like she was punishing me for saying no earlier. Or rewarding me. I couldn’t tell anymore. The sight of her— that tan skin against my thighs, hair falling forward, eyes flicking up to watch what she was doing to me— burned itself into my brain.
I was not going to last.
Every bob of her head, every swirl of her tongue, every little sound she made in the back of her throat when I hit the back of her mouth— it was too much.
I’d been edged for weeks by this girl. By the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t watching.
By the way she let me carry her and feed her and touch her like she was already mine even while she kept insisting she wasn’t.
My orgasm built fast and brutal at the base of my spine.
I tried to warn her. Tried to pull her off. But she just hummed around me and took me deeper, one hand stroking what her mouth couldn’t reach, the other braced on my thigh like she owned me.
And she did.
“Isa— fuck— I’m gonna—”
The words were right there. I love you, baby. Right on the tip of my tongue as the pleasure crested and shattered through me. I almost said it. Almost let it rip out of me while I came hard.
But I swallowed it.
Choked it back.
Because if I said it now— while she had my cock in her mouth and I was coming so hard I saw stars— it would scare the shit out of her. She wasn’t ready. She had to get there on her own. I could love her enough to keep my mouth shut until she caught up.
So what came out instead was rough and filthy and safe.
“Take it, Texas. Fuck— just like that. Take every drop.”
I came harder than I had in years, pulse after pulse, her name a broken groan in my throat. She didn’t pull away. Just kept working me through it, swallowing, eyes closed like she was savoring it. Like she wanted this as badly as I did.
When it was over, when I was shaking and oversensitive and trying to remember how to breathe, she finally let me slip from her mouth and rested her cheek against my thigh. Her breathing was ragged. Mine was worse.
I reached down, brushed her hair back from her face with fingers that still trembled, and looked at her.
Tan skin, swollen lips, the faint flush still on her chest. The woman of my dreams. The one I’d been half in love with since the first night I saw her.
The one who was still pissed at me for not fucking her when every cell in my body had wanted to.
I loved her enough to wait.
Even if it killed me.
“Come here,” I said, voice wrecked.
She crawled back up my body and I pulled her against my chest, tucking her head under my chin, one hand stroking slow down the curve of her back. My cock was still half-hard between us, but I ignored it. This wasn’t about that. Not yet.
Not until she was all the way in it with me.
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head and closed my eyes.
“Still mad at me?” I asked quietly.
She didn’t answer right away. Just pressed her face into my neck and breathed me in.
“Yeah,” she finally said, but her voice was soft. Not sharp. “A little.”
I smiled against her hair. “Good. Means you’re still here.”
She made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh or a sigh. I held her tighter.
I could wait.
For her, I could wait forever if I had to.
But heaven help me, I hoped she didn’t make me wait too long.
The weeks blurred.
Takeout containers stacked on my coffee table. Her leg propped on pillows while I worked the knots out of her hamstring with oil-slick hands. Her pretending she didn’t like being taken care of. Me pretending taking care of her wasn’t becoming the best part of my day.
We kept toeing the line.
Hell, we danced on it.
Hands under shirts. Mouths that forgot how to be careful. Her breath breaking against my throat. My name coming out of her mouth like she was mad at me for making her want it. Almosts that stopped just short of becoming something we couldn’t label fake anymore.
I told myself stopping made me honorable.
Maybe it did.
Or maybe I liked stopping because every time I did, we got to pretend we hadn’t already crossed a dozen lines before we ever made it to the obvious one.
We held hands in the back row of our shared lecture like it was normal.
Like we’d been doing it for years. She started stealing the coffee I brought her before I could put it on her desk.
She learned which hoodie I grabbed when my head was loud and which one meant I was just cold.
She left a lip gloss on the counter in my bathroom and then acted like I committed a felony when I put it in the same little tray every time she came over.
“You alphabetize women’s lip products now?” she asked one night.
“It was rolling around loose.”
“It’s lip gloss, Drew. Not a live grenade.”
“Clutter spreads.”
She’d rolled her eyes, but she smiled when she said it.
That smile got me through a Wednesday practice that should’ve killed me.
I saw her guard dropping in real time.
The way she stopped checking her phone every five minutes when we were together. The way she leaned into me instead of away when I touched the small of her back. The way she started laughing for real when I stole noodles off her plate and called her a menace with soft tissue damage.
She was healing.
And every day she let me in a little more, I felt like I was winning something I hadn’t even known I was fighting for.
Then she got the all-clear.
Not full contact. Not game minutes. Not yet.
But light footwork. Controlled drills. Indoor scrimmages on the horizon.
She tried to play it cool when Tiffany told her, but Isa Calloway’s face betrayed her before pride could catch up. Her whole expression lit from the inside. Shoulders loose. Eyes bright. Mouth trembling around a smile she didn’t want anyone to see.
I stood beside the treatment table with my arms crossed and smiled so hard my face hurt.
“That’s good,” I said.
She looked up at me.
“Good?” she repeated. “That’s all?”
I shrugged. “Trying not to be dramatic.”
“You shoved Tristan Vale at a beach party.”
“Exactly. Growth.”
She laughed, and I almost kissed her right there in front of the training staff.
Almost.
Underneath the happiness, though, something low and ugly twisted in my gut.
Her season was starting back up.
Mine was already deep. Conference championship on the line. Scouts circling harder every week. Cameras finding me after games. Reporters asking questions like they already knew the answer they wanted.
Holidays were coming fast.
New Year’s Eve would follow quickly.
And I could feel the pace of us shifting even while we were still standing in the same spot.
She was healing.
She was getting stronger.
And some selfish part of me was terrified that when she got her real life back, she’d realize she didn’t need mine anymore.