“I want you to lift your shirt. Show me those beautiful tits.”
It was the word beautiful that almost made her do it. Well, that and almost everything else. Her excitement had reached some kind of fever pitch, and it robbed her of every rational thought. Suddenly it didn’t seem like a big deal to show him her body, because really, who cared anymore? What did it matter, as long as he kept jerking that slick, gorgeous cock and her fingers kept rubbing her clit and the pleasure kept coming and coming and coming?
In truth, nothing should have mattered in the face of that.
So when she sat up instead and took hold of his cock, she told herself that it was just what she wanted to do. To lick him and suck him until his head went back and moaned words escaped him—oh god, Letty, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come in your mouth.
And if he forgot what he’d asked for, well, that was just an unintended side effect. It didn’t make any difference to the pleasure she felt as his cock swelled and jerked and spilled all over her tongue. She still gasped as her own orgasm peaked, body tensing, face pressed briefly to the exposed strip of his stomach. It wasn’t even a problem afterward—they whispered and laughed, and nothing more was said about it.
Except in her head, where all the conversations she wished she’d had played out, over and over again.
Chapter 18
She knew the sound was a bad one. But she didn’t fully understand why until Tate made it super clear for her. He moaned in his sleep like a small disgruntled child, one hand dragging her pillow over his face in a way that would have seemed adorable. If it were not for his words. “Tell your buddy to come back at a reasonable time, like noon,” he said, and then the full weight of the situation was on her.
The sound was Lydia, knocking on her door.
“Tate, you have to get up. Tate. Get up. You fell asleep.”
“I know, and I would really love to keep making that mistake for another eight hours.”
“You can’t, remember. You had to be up at six thirty and it’s already seven ten.”
He turned his bleary face her way, hair all sleep mussed, eyes half open.
Wits as sharp and annoying as ever.
“That would be a really cool way to hide me from your friend if I seemed to care even a little tiny bit about practice this morning. But as I don’t, that just leaves us with your subterfuge.”
“I wasn’t trying to be sub…ter…fuge-ious. I was just…”
“Politely asking me to hide under your bed?”
She sighed, resigned. Flopped onto her back.
“I was thinking the bathroom.”
“Or…we could just say we studied real late.”
“In our underwear. In a room that smells like come.”
“The room is gonna smell like come either way, honey.”
“I’ll just leave her guessing as to who jizzed all over the room.”
“So it only matters if it was me, specifically.”
She didn’t think he intended to sound hurt. When she turned to look at him his face was all good-natured amusement. But it had been there, she was sure of it. A tiny fragment of pain at the thought of her hiding him, buried deep beneath several layers of teasing bluster and sleepy good-naturedness.
It made her tread carefully, even if it was only her imagination.
It made her put a hand on his arm, as reassuringly as she could.
“It just might seem a little weird, that’s all. I haven’t told her anything, beyond the fact that you bullied me in high school. She finds you in here and she’s going to think I have Stockholm syndrome.”
“Hey, I have never once kidnapped you. Stolen all your good sense, yes. Kidnapped, no.”
“You haven’t stolen all my good sense. My sense is there, fully intact. I just don’t know how to prove that to her—so maybe if you could just take an extra long whiz right now…”
“I can do one better: I can leave a stench that will never leave your bathroom.”
“I will take that as the price I pay for sweeping you briefly under the carpet,” she said, intending something funny. And it worked, too. He snorted quietly as he ambled to the bathroom, as though the whole thing was just rolling off him.
But this time, he couldn’t quite cover over that hint of hurt.
She caught his wince, as slight as it was. She saw the slump of his shoulders.
The trouble was—she just didn’t know what to do about it. When she finally opened the door Lydia just gave her such a look. Eyebrows raised, eyes dancing with delight, everything about her saying okay, dish. Tell me all about whoever you had in there. And then somehow the words just wouldn’t come. They clung to the back of her throat, in a way they definitely wouldn’t have if he had simply been some guy.
So she turned him into one.
“He was handing out flyers in the library,” she said, thankful for the sheepishness in her own voice. It made it sound real, instead of like some furtive little lie. Lydia even gasped with delight to hear it.
“And yet you did not IM me the moment it finished happening.”