The orgasm that hit me was like lightning and too quick to catch as I frantically attempted to meet his pumping hips move for move. My heart was beating so fast it was like the wheels on my bike in spin class had flown off and I was a runaway. We collapsed on the ground and his body crushed me for a moment before he rolled off and the cold bit my damp skin. I lay there, my eyes shut, more at peace and complete than ever before and in so much danger of losing my reckless heart.
Whit was everything a man should be…rough and gentle, honest and funny…and yet I didn’t think I was fully able to appreciate that. I could barely get my life to stay on course long enough to pick a college major, part of the reason I left Brooklyn to come upstate. The peace and quiet was supposed to temper me until I met him. I was sad because I knew deep down this beautiful time together was a borrowed dream.
I wasn’t the girl who got the guy and I was delusional to think otherwise. After all, I did say this was a one-time deal no matter how much I might have wanted more.
Chapter 10
Whit
“Hey, make sure you guys put the fire out properly.” Conner and Mateo dumped water and what I presumed was beer over the fire, letting it fizzle out. Great, illegal camping and underage drinking…I avoided looking at Lia as Ryder handed her the jacket she forgot yesterday. It was cold as her arms pushed through the sleeves and I wished it were my arms instead coming around to hold her one last time. Do I ask for her number? Do I even want her number? I wondered how thorough Jeff’s report was from yesterday.
“Come on, Amelia. We’ve got to get back to campus for football practice this afternoon and Dinah has work.” Football dude sounded annoyed, but I didn’t give a shit as long as he kept his hands on the roommate only.
“Right, we should be going.” She walked away with her head down, following her friends, avoiding eye contact with me. “Um…you’re sweatshirt?” she plucked the red cotton and I shrugged.
“You keep it,” rubbing a hand behind my neck, I thought how awkward this all was the morning after. Her cheeks tinged red to match the top of her hair while the dark purple strands stuck out of her braid. Walking backward she nodded one last time brushing the mess of multicolored hair off her face.
“Thanks.” That was the last thing she said to me smiling as she got inside the idiot’s car, leaving me standing there with nothing but the smoldering campfire for company.
“Yeah. Thanks.” I waved them off and walked over to my own parked vehicle, feeling darkness settle over me with each bit of distance that increased between us. It felt like I was waiting for her to say something, but we’d agreed that this was just a passing thing, hadn’t we? So why did I suddenly feel like our agreement was meant to be broken?
I watched her wave shyly from the backseat window of the kid’s shiny new oversized SUV. Smoke from the fire still plumed in the air, dissipating into nothing like the night before we spent together. She was strangely quiet this morning, but I didn’t think much of it beyond the marathon sex we had and the high I was riding walking out of the woods with a slight swagger up to her friends’ campsite. Blowing out a breath, I didn’t need this shit.
I didn’t want a brash girl who couldn’t make up her mind and drop me like a hot potato for a younger dipshit jock who was just going to use her anyway. Feeling miffed that she brushed me off, I gave the dirt near the fire a good kick, sending a rock into the center and ashes billowing upward. It wasn’t fair. It sucked, but she was right, what hold did I possibly have on her? She had a life completely separate from mine and she was still in school. She’d probably graduate and move back to the hustle of the city I hated and marry some boring ass banker with a small dick. Part of me hoped she would because then I knew she’d always think of me fondly and the one night we spent in the cabin appreciating each other’s bodies like we didn’t give a damn come what may. Only now I knew she did care, she cared more about what her friends thought and I didn’t fit into her life beyond today. To her, I was just some itch to scratch and I didn’t like feeling used.
I wasn’t someone’s brush off and I had a standing agreement with a hippie chick back in town if I wanted to fuck around. It had been a good four months despite Calisto’s constant invitations to come over. Trouble was that I didn’t think that was going to work as well as it used to Especially since a brat wearing purple plaid twisted me up and made me rethink my stance on relationships in general.
Chapter 11
Lia
There was incessant knocking at my door and I wondered if Dinah forgot her key…again. I got up from the couch where I was studying to fling the door open. Shock covered my surprising when I realized it was my beardless Boy Scout standing in front of me. “Whit? What are you doing here?” Opening up the door to my apartment, he barreled his way inside. Several weeks later, and I realized how much I’d missed him as soon as the pine and musk trail permeated my apartment, making my lower belly clench.
I’d missed him.
Like…really missed him the way one misses the other half of a stolen candy bar.
“I don’t like how we left things.” His eyes darted, slightly panicked as he looked around like he was hunting for something and started stalking back and forth, ready to wear out my living room carpet before going into my sad little kitchen.
“There’s no one here but me, Whittaker. Dinah is at work right now.” He nodded and his shoulders rolled as if that maybe answered about half the questions he had for me in that moment.
“You still live with her?” he asked.
“Yeah, I forgave her. It’s kind of hard to find a new roommate mid-semester.” Closing the door, I eyed him waiting.
“We have some unfinished business.” I wondered what he was talking about. I didn’t even know how he found me here.
I followed him as he fidgeted before putting his hands deep in the pockets of his work pants. “What are you talking about?” He had this slightly feral look about him of a man on a mission. He circled back into my living room and instinctively I reached for a throw pillow off my couch. I felt like I needed something physical between us wearing a tank top and matching boy shorts. The poof of down filled feathers was my only protection paltry and worthless as it was between a fit and furious male.
“Back at the cabin. You said this was a one-time deal. Right?” He was standing before me, pulling some kind of alpha shit on me and if he weren’t so vulnerable and serious looking I might have giggled watching him struggle to work this all out in his mind.
“Yeah, because isn’t that what you wanted?” My heart skipped a beat, I had said it then at the cabin thinking that’s what he wanted…but maybe I was wrong.
“Lia, if that’s what I wanted, then why do I keep thinking about you? Being inside you bare and craving the soft feel of your hair in my hands. You drive me crazy.” He was pacing again squeezing his hands into fists, and I felt dizzy thinking he might grab me and shake me a little to make his point.
“Um, sorry? Maybe you could just sit down?” He looked back and I decided to let him run circles in the apartment if that made him happy. He went back to pacing and I waited for him to say something more.
“You. Drive. Me. Crazy.” He stalked around the apartment to stand in front of me again finally grabbing me by my shoulders. His hands felt warm against my barely clothed body and the pillow dropped between us to the floor.