The words I love you almost fell out of my mouth. To stop them I kissed her. I filled my mouth with her. My head. She became, in that moment, the only thing that mattered.
“Tell me,” she breathed, her body slick and shaking beneath mine. “Tell me you bought condoms.”
I laughed against her skin. “I bought condoms,” I said.
“Hurry,” she said. “Just…hurry.”
“In a second,” I told her. This. The sex. This was how I’d won her. How I’d showed her what we could be like. What I could give her. When we were in bed, there was no part of me that remembered being scared or alone. When we were in bed, I was Clayton fucking Rorick and I made her come better than anyone ever had.
I parted her legs, looking down at her, looking over every inch of the body I’d already memorized.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Staking my claim.”
“Don’t—”
“Shhhh,” I said. “I’m very busy.”
I cupped her full breasts, licked her pink nipples until they were hard in my mouth, and I sucked on them until she moaned and whimpered beneath me. Her belly was soft and her skin was perfection and I kissed my way down her body to the beautiful curls between her legs. I spread her wide and I…owned her. I owned her the only way she’d ever let me.
I tongued her and ate her and I made her wet and messy. I made her scream and cry and sweat into my sheets.
But it still wasn’t enough.
“Tell me,” I said, rolling the condom over my dick so hard it hurt.
“More, Clayton. More.”
“Beg me.”
“Please! Oh, my God, please.”
I wish I could say that I kept my shit together. That I made her come a thousand more times. But I was so far gone for her. I eased my cock into the sweetest pussy I’ve ever known and I was done. It was clumsy and wild and far removed from the way it had ever been between us before. I felt naked and sure that she could tell I was a mess. A fumbling boy.
But she had her arms and legs wrapped around me so tight. So strong. In that bliss, that pure physical moment, there was no her. And no me.
There was us.
And it was how I wanted it to be. Forever.
VERONICA
His breath was a damp plume against my shoulder, his hand pressed wide and flat against my hip. I could feel his heartbeat in his palm. Or maybe it was mine.
The edges right now were really, really blurry.
And I felt no need to clarify them.
Maybe, if this was going to work, I needed to get used to this.
And so did he.
“You okay?” he asked, and I almost laughed. Never had the answer been quite so much yes as it was right now.
“I am. You?”
“I…don’t know.”
I propped my head up on his chest, my hands under my chin. I didn’t say anything. I just gave him time, and after a while the words started coming.
“Your dad gave me a summer job when I was sixteen. Working at the office in the city. I took the bus at 5 a.m. to get there. I had one tie. One shirt. One pair of pants. At lunch I told people I was going to go for a walk, because I never brought a lunch with me and didn’t have money to eat out.”
It was odd how I could imagine that. A proud young version of Clayton, telling minor lies to protect himself.
“When people asked about my dad I told them he was a high school football coach.”
“Really?”
“Like on that Friday Night Lights show.”
“You wanted your dad to be Coach Taylor?”
Bea and Sabrina had been all about Tim Riggins, which I got, but I’d wanted to do bad, bad things to Coach Taylor.
It occurred to me suddenly that my daddy issues might just have manifested in a different way.
But now didn’t seem like the time to talk about that.
“He was just the opposite of my dad. And then…I just kind of kept telling these stories about who I was and where I came from. I was an A student and wrestled Varsity. My mom worked at a nursing home. I had a baby brother. They were easier things to say than the truth. When people asked about my family, they didn’t want to hear about my dad passing out in the bathroom. Shooting my dog because he was barking at night. My sister that left and never came back.” He shook his head. “There were so many lies.“
“They weren’t lies,” I said. “Not…really. They were wishes.”
He looked at me so long, so carefully. “That’s exactly what they were,” he finally said. “But then I got promoted at King Industries. And promoted again. And again. And your dad was an asshole, I can’t deny that, but he took an interest in me and he saw something in me that my dad never could.”