“Keep going, Austin. I want you to keep going… Feel me… Show me how it feels…”
Austin’s forehead dropped to my shoulder, and his head began to shake. “I’m not so sure this is a good idea, Pix. I don’t wanna lose control and scare you off.”
Water filled my eyes, and I turned my head until my lips were brushing his cheek, breathing the same small space of air. “I know I’m difficult to be with. But I want you to make love to me… Please don’t make me beg.”
Austin fixed his gaze on mine and he rolled above me, his arms boxing in my head on the pillow. “Pix, what I feel for you is fuckin’ scary. I thought you were gorgeous from the first time I saw you standing in the empty stadium like some dark pixie lost in a weird dream. But then what I felt for you quickly went to shit. I worried for weeks that you would destroy me, my family, the way my brothers made money.”
He took a deep breath, and the flames from the fire mirrored in his eyes. “And you have destroyed me, Pix, but never how I thought. You destroyed the fence I’d built up to keep people out. You destroyed the hard-ass persona I wore like a shield. But even more than that, you destroyed any reluctance I had to find comfort in someone else. You fuckin’ bulldozed me, Pix. You, my tiny dark pixie, made all my defenses crumble to dust.”
Austin’s lips crashed against mine, and I held him tightly to my mouth, our need almost bruising in its fever. But Austin pulled back, face completely serious, and finished. “I got something I wanna tell you, Pix. Two words that are almost busting from my chest. Two words I’ve never told no one before. But until I know I have you completely, and you have me, no secrets, no barriers in our way, I won’t be saying them out loud. But I want you to know they’re in my heart all the same.”
My chest was full, so full of uncoiled emotion at his honestly, and I tried hard to think of the two words he wanted to say. Is it love? Does he love me? Do I love him? Could I love him? Or are we both too destroyed to ever be good for one another?
Austin’s hand began stroking along my inner thigh, shooting shivers to my core, and all the air whooshed out of my lungs the closer he got to the apex of my thighs.
Austin took a shuddering breath and said, “So you tell me how far you wanna go right now. Because I want you, all of you. It’s your call, Pix. It’s all on you.”
I watched Austin glance down to stare at his hand on my pale thigh, and I could see the passion in his eyes, see the subtle parting of his lips as he viewed my bare legs. Shock pulsed through me when I realized he didn’t seem repulsed. In fact, it was the opposite. He was flushed, turned on, and… he wanted me.
It was almost impossible for me to comprehend.
“Austin,” I whispered, and he tore his gaze from my lower body to look me in the eyes. “Take me. Take it all.”
A slow, relieved smile spread on Austin’s face, and he immediately rose above me, pressing a kiss to my lips. Hooking his fingers in the side of my panties, he began lowering them down my legs until I was completely exposed to his eyes.
Throwing my panties to the ground behind him, Austin kissed my mouth in soft, sweet kisses, and I suddenly felt his fingers slip gently along my folds.
“Austin… ah…” I whispered and began rolling my hips at his touch. I’d never been touched there before, but I was craving what Austin was giving me. Falling hopelessly under his spell.
“You’re so ready, Pix,” Austin said as one of finger slipped within me, my eyes snapping open in shock.
“Hush, Pix. I’m just preparing you. It’s gonna hurt at first, but I promise I’ll make you feel good. I promise you’ll come.”
“What… what about you?” I asked. Then, suddenly, I cried out, Austin’s hand touching on something sensitive within me… something that felt… too good to describe.
“I’ll be good, Pix. This is all about you tonight.”
Reaching up, I gripped onto Austin’s hair. “I need you. I need you right now. I almost can’t take it.”
Austin’s chest rose and fell and, removing his fingers from inside me, he stood and walked to a set of drawers across the room. I watched his back from my place on the pillows as he opened the top drawer and removed a condom.
Austin turned to me, embarrassed, and shrugged. “Rome used to use this place a lot before Molls.”
Trying to breathe through the nerves, excitement, and the sight of the absolute living art that was about to take my virginity, I smiled. Austin was perfection—pure, artistic perfection. All he saw when he looked at himself as an ex-gang member, someone with nothing to offer. But someone with nothing to offer wouldn’t have brought someone like me to this unfamiliar place of acceptance. Someone with nothing else to offer wouldn’t be playing in one of the best football programs in the country, and they certainly wouldn’t be so creative to display such a beautiful collage of art, of things that were clearly important to his soul.