by Rebel Hart
Monica recoiled so far that she was nearly back out in the hallway. “That’s a little too much information.”
I crossed my arms at her hypocrisy and decided to retort, even if some of my nerves poked through. “H-he asked if you wanted to know the real truth.”
“I did ask you that,” Devon tacked on, using his arms to squeeze me tighter and pull me even closer to him.
Monica rolled her eyes. “You could have just said it was personal.” A scoff escaped my lips before I could stop it. “Something you want to say, Nina?”
“Yeah.” The rage Monica filled me with was slowly pushing out the lust-filled haze that had captured my mind moments before. “You act as if you would have backed off if he’d said it was personal. You’ve clearly made it your mission to poke your nose way too far into our business.”
Monica’s brow turned down. “I’m just doing my job, Nina.”
“No. Your job is to make sure that no one sets their room on fire or starts doing cocaine or something,” Devon replied. “We’re allowed to date, and we’re allowed to be in the room together.”
I nodded, letting Devon’s partnering frustration give me additional confidence to take Monica on. “Every time Devon is down here, you find a reason to turn up.” I glanced sideways at his face next to mine, mustered up my inner Sydney the Dramatic, and turned to look back at Monica. “Are you trying to steal my boyfriend or something?”
Devon’s arms clenched a little tighter at the question. “As if she could. With a girl like you, I don’t see anything else.”
“N-no,” Monica replied. “I’m supposed to make sure…” She swallowed hard. “He needs to leave.”
“Count isn’t for an hour,” I barked back. “You can leave. You’ve wasted enough of our time.”
Monica stared at us in awe for a moment before dropping her head and turning to leave. Just before she started off down the hallway, she looked back in at us. “I’ll be watching for him to go.”
If it was in me to hit someone, I would have marched forward and punched her right in the face. Instead, I settled for finally leaving the comforting yet confusing warmth of Devon’s embrace to slam the dorm door closed. I took a deep breath, trying to diminish the anger in me. This dorm would be far better off when Monica graduated out. Devon and Henry’s RA wasn’t nearly as strict and complicated as she was. It wasn’t like I agreed with Sydney’s mischief, but a guy should be able to visit his girlfriend if he wants to without getting the fifth degree from someone who’s the exact same age as him.
Not that I was Devon’s girlfriend. “Back to you,” I said, turning around to face Devon again. “You can’t…”
I faced Devon again, but he was back to staring at me like I was a five-star, full-course meal. Any words I’d planned to say dropped out of my brain. Devon’s eyes were like burning lasers across my skin. I could feel them as they traveled down me, taking in everything, before slowly crawling back up again. It burned like someone was holding a hot iron against me, but I would have taken that ten times over compared to the way I felt when his eyes finally locked on mine. There was no humor, no snark. Devon was staring at me with a pure, uncut longing that I never imagined I’d experience from another person. He’d gotten so close to breaking the bough before Monica intruded, and though I’d managed to build up a little bit of resistance from my anger, it wasn’t enough to hold me aloft for too long.
Finally, he took a few short strides across the room, bringing him right in front of me again. It took everything not to close my eyes and just give in. I was frozen by my own growing desire. I was all too aware of the lingering moisture between my legs that wasn’t leftover shower water, and I didn’t dare look down to see if the bulge I’d felt earlier was visible or not. I held my ground and Devon’s gaze, waiting for him to make a move and knowing that if he did, I wouldn’t resist.
He reached forward, and I loosened my grip on my towel. My body willed me to give into him, to bear my entire self to him, and to let him take from me what none had before. Devon wasn’t just gorgeous, but he was a good guy, too. There were certainly worse people to lose my virginity to. His hand reached past me, and I braced myself to be pulled into his web.
“Nina?” he said quietly.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah?”
“Can you step aside?”
I blinked once, confused. I wasn’t a sex-aficionado or anything, but I had little to no idea what that meant. “Huh?”
“Can you move over so that I can open the door?” I peeked over my shoulder, and Devon’s hand that had slid past me was gripped around the doorknob. I looked back up at him and his still stone-serious expression. “I’ll go break the news to Sydney and Henry that we’ve gotta sleep in our own rooms tonight.”
“Oh.” What was the disappointment I felt? “Yeah.”
I stepped aside, out of Devon’s way, and he opened the door. He took one step into the hallway and looked back over his shoulder at me. He considered me carefully for another few seconds before heading off, pulling the door shut as he left. I grabbed my chest and crumpled to a heap on the floor. If Devon had tried to take me, there was no doubt in my mind that I would have let him. I’d never been that close to losing myself around someone before. My racing heart and the sweat across my forehead let me know that it was an experience my body would not soon forget.
14
Devon
I awoke with a start to the sound of my alarm blaring and glanced down at my begging erection. I sighed and glanced over toward Nina’s bed, but fortunately, she had left for her class already, so it wouldn’t be awkward when I climbed out of bed with a third leg. It wasn’t unusual to wake up with a hard-on, but ever since I walked in on Nina with a towel, a minx-like, significantly less innocent version of her had been sneaking into my dreams to taunt me. Throw in the fact that the woman herself slept six feet away from me, and I spent all weekend hiding boners from Henry during the day and Nina at night.
I was hopeful that work would help distract me, but it had the opposite effect because janitorial work didn’t require a fully-functioning mind. The brain tends to wander when one is sweeping for hours, and when you’ve recently seen a good-looking woman nearly naked and been presented with an opportunity to hold that woman close if only for a ruse, your brain wanders back to that place at every available instance.
I’d always thought Nina was pretty. She hid her appearance behind her ponytail and glasses and hefty hoodies, but there was no denying her appearance. That said, I was more than praying that when I saw Nina the next day at breakfast, my ever-present arousal would fade. She was back to her pinned-up state, yet I was just as turned on by the sight of her. It wasn’t as if I started imagining her half-naked again. I just found her sexy now. Her curves were present even in her baggy clothes, and when she peered up at me through her glasses and smiled, I wanted to jump right out of my skin—or clothes.
Not good.
Saturday night, I convinced Henry to go out with me after I was done with work. Henry wasn’t a big partier, and neither was I, for that matter, but it was an emergency. I felt like if I got laid or something, I could get Nina out of my system. I truly believed that was what it was. It was sexual frustration brought on by the fact that it’s been a while and that Nina is attractive. Then we got to the bar, and I really started to panic. I was supposed to be looking for someone I could get in and get out with. I wasn’t trying to find my soulmate, just a quick lay. I’d done it plenty of times before. It’d basically become my romantic life after I realized my girlfriends would never live up to Dante’s.
I found a good enough looking woman, tried to ignore my brain when it immediately started to compare her looks to Nina’s, and approached her. She introduced herself and immediately seemed interested in accompanying me home, but I decided to at least engage her in a little bit of conversation.
That had been a mistake.
She was as boring as drying paint. She didn’t understand any of the jokes I’
d tried to make, kept making comments about me being smart because I was a college student, and whenever I tried to learn more about her, I got one-word answers if I got anything at all. My successful attempt at not comparing her to Nina in looks went to shit when I realized that Nina was the most pleasurable company I’d enjoyed in a long time. We had witty banter, we had chemistry, and we truly enjoyed being around one another. Somewhere along the way, I’d started looking forward to the room swap and breakfast on the weekends. Somewhere along the way, she became the benchmark against which all women were being measured, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. It just was.
I spent Saturday evening trying to find a woman that excited me even a little bit. All I needed was someone who could give me just an ounce of entertainment, enough to distract me from Nina, but there wasn’t a woman in that club or two others who gave me the same level of happiness that spending time with Nina did. I went home empty-handed, and I was grateful that Henry didn’t poke the sleeping bear he’d found. He could read me like a wide-open, large-print book and had to know what was going on, but he didn’t say anything about it, for which I was grateful.
We met Nina and Sydney for breakfast the next morning. Seeing my unexpected roommate made my stomach do somersaults. I went with Nina back to her dorm after breakfast so that Sydney and Henry could study and decided to do some actual studying of my own. I was struggling like usual when Nina offered to help. We hadn’t really made up after our disagreement over Kai. I guess we both just figured it was better to let it go. She sat on the edge of the bed and talked me through some studying strategies, and I heard none of it. I was staring and losing myself again. I went to bed Sunday night, knowing that Nina would visit me again in my dreams, but that time, it wasn’t the sex-bomb that had been there two nights in a row. It was just Nina as she was, fuming about Sydney’s drama, tossing back clever responses to my jokes, just…Nina.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
I released myself, finally having climaxed, and turned off the shower. My weekend had been restless and exhausting, and now that it was time to head out for my Monday courses once again, I decided to risk using the bathroom connected to Nina’s room because I was simply too exhausted to drag myself all the way upstairs. I dried myself off, got dressed, unlocked the door so that the other room’s inhabitants could get in if they needed to, and then slipped back into Nina’s room. I grabbed my backpack and phone and slipped out of the dorm room door, making sure to check for Monica, just in case. The door shut and auto-locked behind me, and I carefully navigated my way through the hallways of the fourth floor until I could duck into the stairwell and make my way out of the East Tower.
I yawned about a hundred times on my way to my psych class and was more than a little annoyed when I saw an entire crowd of students huddled outside the room. My professor, along with being as boring as the woman from the bar, also had a tendency to run late. At least half of the classes so far started with all of the course’s students standing outside, waiting for him to arrive. It was particularly infuriating, considering the fact that the teacher staunchly enforced the “doors lock after class starts” rule. Students couldn’t be late, but he was allowed to take his time.
Everyone was muttering and murmuring to themselves quietly, and I kept myself at a distance from the crowd. I had no energy to engage anyone in a discussion. I leaned against the wall, far enough away that I wouldn’t be bothered but close enough that I could see when the doors finally opened. I started to pull out my headphones when I got a light tap on my arm.
I looked over, and there was a tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed bombshell looking back at me. She had on a tight-fitting pair of light blue jeans and a simple white t-shirt that she tucked in at the waist, allowing it to pull down and reveal more of her impressive cleavage than it would otherwise.
I smiled. “Hello.”
“Hi,” she grinned back and then held out her hand for me to shake. “I’m Taylor.”
“Taylor.” I shook her hand. “I’m—”
“Devon, I know.” She chuckled. “Sorry, that sounded creepy, I’m sure. I’m an aspiring psych student myself, and I’ve seen you hanging around. I asked a few people about you, but I’m only just now mustering up the courage to introduce myself.”
She was interesting. She was pretty. She could be the break I’d been searching for. “Well, I’m glad you did.”
Her smile widened. “I know that this is kind of out of the blue, but is it true that you’re dating a woman named Nina Garrison?”
My heart thudded a little harder in my chest. “Uh, why do you ask?”
“Oh, no reason. We went to school together, and some people said that they’ve seen you together a couple of times.”
She went to school with Nina? Maybe she heard the rumor from Kai. If I corrected her, there was a risk that she’d tell Kai we weren’t involved, unlike what I suggested last week. I wanted to protect Nina from Kai, but if she wasn’t going to listen to me about him, then what was the point?
“No, we’re not dating,” I said finally, and Taylor’s smile grew. “She’s just got this real nosy RA, so we’re letting her think we are so that her roommate can sneak out.”
“Oh, scandalous,” Taylor said flatly.
“Yeah, I know, but this RA is nuts. Like, does a headcount every night nuts.”
Taylor winced. “Yikes. Thank god she’s not my RA.”
“No kidding.”
“Well, if you’re not dating Nina…” She batted those blue eyes at me a couple of times for good measure. “How about taking me out?”
My gut reaction was to refuse. I’d been looking for someone to take my mind off of Nina, and this woman was it on a silver platter, but for a second, I imagined Nina learning that I was dating someone. Regardless of what had transpired up to the moment that she finally kicked Monica out of her room, when Nina looked at me, I could see in her eyes that she was considering me, too. I wished I at least knew if she was struggling the same way I was.
Then I thought about her and Kai. I thought about how angry she got when I suggested he was just playing with her and about the way she talked about him in her journal. She was crazy about the guy. If it was a choice between him or me, she’d definitely pick him. I looked at Taylor. She was everything I’d been looking for, at least as far as a distraction went. Whatever weird emotions I was mustering up toward Nina, I needed them gone, preferably quickly.
“Sure,” I said. “Actually…” I looked over at the group of students still huddled in front of my psych course. It was fifteen minutes into class time, and the professor still wasn’t there. “My professor is a no-show. What are you doing right now?”
Taylor smiled. “I’m letting a hot guy take me out for brunch.”
I nodded and motioned back down the hallway toward the door out. “Let’s go, then.”
There was a small diner near campus that was known for cheap, greasy, delicious food. My psych class typically started at ten o’clock, so by the time we finally got to the diner, it was nearly eleven. I ordered an omelet with chicken and spices, and Taylor ordered a traditional breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns.
Once our food had been served and we’d each taken a few bites, Taylor started the conversation. “So, what year are you?”
“I’m a junior,” I replied. “Psych major. Are you a freshman like Nina?”
Taylor nodded. “Yep. Truth be told, I didn’t want to come to Presper, but certain things convinced me to come. Nina was one of them.”
“Nina, really?” I’d been sharing a room with Nina for just over three weeks. I’d heard all about Sydney and Kai, but I hadn’t heard Nina mention anyone named Taylor. “You guys are close?”
Taylor shrugged. “Something like that. How’s she doing? Is she still crushing over Kai?”
I recoiled a little more. She seemed to know a lot about Nina, too. “Uh, I’m not sure,” I lied. “Were you guys good friends?”
“We ran in a si
milar circle. I guess you could say that we’ve got some issues we need to patch up,” Taylor said.
“Oh, that makes sense.” It did make sense. If Taylor was an old friend of Nina’s that she’d had a falling out with, that would explain why Taylor knew so much even though Nina had never mentioned her before.
“Actually, maybe you could help?” Taylor said. “Do you know what room she’s in? I’d love to say hi.”
I thought about Nina and the stress she went through with Sydney. If she and Taylor could make amends, then Nina would have another friend who she could rely on when things got sticky with Sydney. That would be good, wouldn’t it? “Yeah. Actually, she has a break after her first class. She’s usually back by one o’clock or so. I can bring you by if you think it’d be helpful.”
A wide smile slowly worked its way across Taylor’s face. “That would be so helpful.”
I felt good. Things may have been a little weird with Nina as of late, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care about her. Who knows, it might even be good for me, too. Nina could hang out more with Taylor, I could date her a little bit, and we could just evacuate one another out of our systems. Being cooped up together was bound to take its toll sometime.
Taylor and I finished brunch and returned to campus right around the time I knew Nina would be getting back to the dorm. She had a break after her first class, usually got lunch with Sydney, and then headed back to her dorm room to relax and study before her two-thirty course. I led Taylor to the East Tower and up to the fourth floor. I intentionally steered clear of Monica since I had another girl with me and made my way down to Nina’s room. The door was open, something she often did to not seem like a shut-in, so I rounded the corner and walked in.
“Hey.”
Nina looked up, and a bright smile rose to her face. “Hey. Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“Uh, yeah. I skipped. I—”
Taylor shoved past me and dipped into the room. “Hi!”