Lover: A Student Teacher Romance (Court University Book 4)

by Eden O'Neill

  She blinked beneath the shower’s current, running her hands down my thighs until she found and squeezed my ass. She still liked ass, in and out over me. It was enough to make me spill down her throat.

  But as stated, she’d created a very greedy man.

  I needed inside her, and I eased her off me until she stood. Flushed, ready, she panted with her wet hair coiled tight in my fist.

  I forced her mouth on me, fused and tasted her lips under warm jets. The multiple shower heads had her drenched, both of us.

  “Ramses…” Her taste and mine exploded in my mouth, my arm hooking around her as I fisted her breast. Growling, I arched her body before dropping my mouth to her tits.

  A sigh as her nails scraped the back of my head, scratching raw, aggressive in her agony as I tongued my way between her breasts.

  I showed no mercy, her tight little body quivering in my arms. I hungered for her, ached for her. A roar and my hips thrust for her to let me in.

  “Condom,” she cried, and I got one, ready for that. We kept a fucking box in the shower, and we already had it down to half in less than a week.

  “Let me in,” I gritted, the condom ripped open with my teeth. I rolled it on and encircled her thighs.

  Golden and honeyed flesh spilled between the spaces of my fingers as I parted her legs to hit the walls.

  I gave no follow-up.

  No warning before I angled in and drove my hips forward. Her ass slammed to hit wet granite, her eyes wide and body trembling in pleasure. I used to think I’d rip her apart, and the first few times, I had noticed moisture in her eyes. It was a lot, painful, but now, second nature.

  For us both.

  I lost myself in that heaven, the ease and warmth of the abyss. It’d been scary in the beginning. How easy it was to get lost in her.

  How easy it was to succumb to her.

  Somewhere along the way our fucking wasn’t just fucking anymore. It wasn’t sex. It was passion and filled with so much intense shit I think it’d surprised us both.

  I’d even caught her crying once, the last time. There’d been actual tears in her eyes, but not because I was hurting her. I just had a feeling.

  Like these same tears now.

  Her eyes shined as she looked at me, her chin tilted up, her skin moist and flushed with red. I saw her crying through heated jets, and I framed her face to keep her here, keep her with me. She gazed away the last time.

  She wouldn’t now.

  I picked up, making her feel it. This thing we had… it was fucking awesome, and she should feel it. Feel what I felt every time I was with her, how deep it was. Some days, I thought it’d bring me down to my damn knees.

  “Look at me,” I coached, and she did. I caught a tear. “Stay with me.”

  My hips slapped her inner thighs, so deep inside her. I almost couldn’t keep focused on her, the urge to get lost in the influx of this definitely there.

  But if I wasn’t leaving, she wouldn’t either, her hands cuffing my wrists. She used her thighs to stay here with me, rock with me.

  I kissed her, bleeding into her like an open wound. I didn’t know where she ended or I began, the torrential impulse to come physically ripping me apart.

  I roared as I picked up, my balls tightening, my thighs and body charged like a fucking freight train. I exploded into her without warning, railed tight inside her, and nails bit into my wrists so hard she easily drew blood.

  That was when I caught her arms, knotted and locking around my neck. Whimpers soft and muted panted in my ear, and I cupped the back of her head.

  “Baby…” I peppered kisses into her neck, soothing her. I angled my mouth into hers, allowing the shower to go lukewarm on us.

  Something told me that didn’t matter. Something told me she didn’t care and that she needed this, to come down from the high with me.

  She really was crying.

  Like actual tears when I guided her to look at me. I ghosted a knuckle down the trail. “Hey.”

  I slid those tears away from red eyes, all this some really emotional shit. She’d cried before, but she’d tried to hide it from me the first time. I never actually made her look at me, okay with that.

  Now, I kissed the trail, making her stay with me. The tears let me see she was breaking down her walls, and I loved that.

  I loved.

  My smile was faint as I held her face back. The tears away now. I turned off the shower, then tugged our towels in. The first I wrapped round her, the second to her eyes.

  I dabbed under one and two before she took the towel away, doing the job herself.

  “Thanks,” she said, then moved that towel to dry her hair. The third towel I had I cinched around my waist, then followed her out.

  I looped arms around her, her skin heated and perfect. She dried her hair in the mirror with a smile but didn’t stay with me long before she maneuvered out of my arms.

  “Everything all right?” I asked, the second time in one evening. She’d seemed a little down before we’d gotten into the shower. I figured that may have been just because she’d been out of her element tonight with December and the others. I believed the night had gone well, though. She’d even been talking to Greer and December at one point.

  “Fine.” Shifting on her bare feet, she pecked a kiss to my lips. “Just tired. Bed?”

  Bed.

  I nodded, following behind her. Normally, I’d pinch at her, tease her but her body language felt off.

  Maybe she is just tired.

  We got under my sheets after we both toweled off and got dressed. My bedroom was a loft style on my duplex’s second level. I preferred my bed in Maywood Heights, but the duplex on campus made do.

  It helped having my girl in my bed with me, and no sooner had the lights flicked off than I pulled my arms around her, easing her perfect ass back into me.

  I settled my cock between the curve from behind, completely ready to take her from the back. This was the song and dance with us. Shower. Sex, then more sex and sometimes even before the shower. It really just depended how we’re both feeling that day, but ten times to one, that was our routine.

  “Not tonight, Ramses.”

  Not tonight, Ramses.

  I suppose there was that one.

  I turned her over in the dark, her cheek beneath my fingers. My eyes adjusted enough to see her frown.

  “I’m just tired,” she said, answering a question before I even asked. She was good. She sparred with me before I could even press her. Before I could possibly ask her a question she didn’t want to answer. I really was starting to get to know this girl.

  At this point, something felt real damn off, besides the obvious. Of course, she didn’t have to have sex with me. I wasn’t a prick.

  Her cheek left before more words could be exchanged, and when she took my hand, wrapping it around my front she eased back into me. She nestled herself away from me in the dark.

  Like I said, she was real good.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ramses

  I didn’t know what time I woke up that night. I just knew I was alone.

  My bed empty.

  I angled up to find my phone and maybe the time, but I found Bri before I could. She sat at the edge of the bed, back hunched and head lowered.

  “Bri?” I eased over until I sat beside her. She had her arms cuffed, and I reached behind her for the lamp light. My loft illuminated, and I braced her hip. “What’s up?”

  She wet her lips, her fingers embedded into her flesh.

  It sent my back up like nothing else.

  “Do you want children?” she asked, seemly haunted as she stared down. She swallowed. “Will you want kids?”

  The ache in her voice immediately made my heart race.

  As well as the need for the question.

  “Why are you asking me this?” I squeezed her shoulder, and she sat up.

  Eyes red rimmed, nose flushed and sniffling. She brushed fingers beneath it. “That’s not wh
at I asked you.”

  I’d heard what she’d asked me. That shit radiated me down to my toes, but not because I didn’t want kids.

  Why is she asking me this?

  My tongue drew across my lips before my answer, my hand folding over her arm. “Yes. Eventually, yes.”

  This was the wrong answer.

  Her body locked, and she eased out of my hands, standing from the bed.

  I followed her across the room with my gaze before joining. “Do you not want kids?”

  If she didn’t, that was okay. Having children wasn’t some grandiose dream of mine. I figured it’d just be part of the plan eventually.

  Mom would fucking kill me for even considering the possibility of something else, of course. She was a mother and always wanted her baby to have babies. Naturally.

  Bri said nothing, and I hugged my arms around her. “What’s going on? Kids aren’t your thing?”

  Her lips pinched tight. Like she was doing everything she could not to cry, and I made her look at me.

  “I don’t want kids.” That first tear blinked down, and it was like someone took a dagger to my insides. Her crying in the shower had been different.

  Or had it been?

  I framed her face. “Okay—”

  “It’s not okay, Ramses.” She backed out of my hands. “That’s not okay, so quit pacifying me. Quit being so goddamn good all the time.”

  My brow twitched, eyes wide.

  She pressed palms to her face before folding her arms. “If you want kids, you should be able to have them. That’s not in the cards for me, and I don’t want you to get your hopes up about something that’ll never be there. Not with me.”

  Not with her.

  Not in the cards for me…

  I wasn’t an idiot. I could read between the lines.

  Shit.

  In an attempt to put her back to me, she braced my bed frame. But when I snagged hands around her waist, she drew back to me.

  She hit my chest, so warm, soft. She had all these hard edges. Played them up to hell.

  But she forgot how delicate she was, how fragile.

  I breathed her in, folding her arms in until we were locked. Until she couldn’t get out.

  Until she couldn’t run.

  “I don’t want to have kids with you, Ramses,” she said, a tortured ache in her voice. It twisted my gut, what she’d said only making the sick sensation worse.

  Even still, I didn’t let her go. I wouldn’t. I closed my eyes. “Why?”

  Was I not enough? Was all this too much? Our relationship too unconventional for her? I really hadn’t considered the age thing that big of a deal, but she always had and suddenly insecurities ran as rampant as my theories. I’d always considered myself a pretty secure guy.

  But in her silence…

  It radiated through the room.

  Her sob accompanied it.

  She physically broke down, tears gunning down her cheeks. It threw me for such a loop.

  “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to have kids with me? Are we not…” My throat constricted. “Is this not working for you? Us?”

  My worst fear, but that shouldn’t have her like this. Crying.

  Her body shaking, she gripped her arms. “I don’t want to have kids with anyone.” She gasped, faced drenched. “I can’t. I can’t go through that again.”

  What?

  “It hurts too much.” She blinked tears down to my arms. “It destroyed me the first time.”

  Whoa.

  The unease of before transformed into something different, and when she keeled forward, body racked with emotion, I turned her around.

  I buried her into me, swaying with her.

  “Talk to me.” This wasn’t a request, not this time.

  It was a goddamn need.

  She needed to talk to someone for once, to get things off her chest and not bottle this shit up. She needed to vent, and I wanted her to do that with me. I wanted her to trust me.

  I wanted her to let me in.

  Bending, I scooped her up, bringing her with me onto the bed. I sat with her in my lap for a long time, as long as we needed to work this shit out.

  She sobbed into my chest so long it felt like it’d been hours, hell days.

  “There was an accident,” she whispered, face wet, cheeks red. “I told you my ex-husband was an athlete.”

  I didn’t move, not a goddamn inch, and I wouldn’t. Couldn’t risk it.

  Come on, Jersey girl.

  I needed her to keep talking, didn’t want to move so I didn’t.

  She winced. “He was pretty popular. Even being retired. Still had a following and fans. They even still followed him everywhere. Us everywhere.”

  Fire shook my limbs, no world in which I wanted to envision her with someone else, period. Let alone the man who’d struck her. She hadn’t gone into details, but she had said he’d placed hands on her.

  “There were always paparazzi,” she continued. “Always noise. Always chaos. That was that life.”

  Haunted again, her voice completely hollow.

  In her silence, I curled a hand over her shoulder. “What happened, Jersey girl?”

  I felt the words before she said them, physically felt them in her quivering limbs. I drew her chin up, and she looked at me.

  “It was an accident. I was driving, an accident.” Her swallow hit her throat. “I was three months pregnant. They just wanted a picture…”

  What. The. Fuck.

  I shifted her, framing her face, and she blinked down more tears. I forced my breaths even. “They hurt you.”

  “Not on purpose.” Her head dropped. “I saw them following me, and I tried to get away. I was by myself, and they were aggressive. They always were. They just wanted a photo.”

  Lungs in an ice bath, stomach in a vise.

  Her shoulders quaked. “It was a head-on collision. I lost the baby.”

  I closed my eyes, folding back her hair.

  “And it changed things, Ramses,” she retched. “Changed my ex-husband. Changed me. He dealt in his own ways. Drinking. Gambling.”

  “Hurting you.” I tipped her chin in my direction. “He hurt you. Hurt you because of this, didn’t he?”

  In the silence she forced me to wait for the answer, I could have shot my fist through a wall. It actually had me to the point where I was physically shaking.

  She nodded without words, acknowledging my fear. I’d thought this guy was a coward before, but that hadn’t been the word.

  To physically put your hands on someone, a woman, after something so tragic had happened to her? There weren’t any fucking words for that. None in the goddamn dictionary. The man belonged in a cell right next to my father, two assholes with too much power.

  This guy had a faux power. Because what did it take to hit a woman? Someone, no doubt, a fraction of his size.

  A grieving woman.

  I braced Bri, rocking instead of doing something else.

  “It was only the one time,” she said, like that meant something. “He turned into someone completely different. His grief made him a monster, a shell of himself.”

  I folded a hand on her cheek. “Don’t justify anything he did. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  And she didn’t either. What about her own grief?

  I saw it right here in my arms: someone so guarded, hurting all the time.

  I mean, a wedding had made her sad.

  Happiness had made her upset that night of December and Royal’s union, in misery, and that was when I’d found her.

  We had found each other in misery. Different reasons backed it, but we’d been in a similar place. I held heartbreak and the piss-poor decisions that resulted. She had a failed marriage, but the results the same. Different experiences, different events had broken us, and I now knew why she’d been in group therapy.

  I now knew why she’d found me too.

  It was like the universe knew we’d needed to be together that night, our wo
rlds of chaos united.

  My attention shifted when Brielle sat up, easing off my lap. She took a seat beside me, and I hated the distance.

  “I left him because of it.” She faced me then, frowning. “But you need to know what you’re dealing with. You need to know I have no desire to have children. Something like that, what happened changes people, and I’m not going through that again.”

  I understood, nodding. “I get it.” I did, but she might not always feel that way. I shook my head. “But with time, you never know how you may feel in the future or even years down the line.”

  Whatever she wanted to do, I’d wait. If that was where we were headed… of course, I would.

  It blew my mind I was even having this conversation. Especially after the last year I’d had. Back at Brown, I’d unloaded a lot of crap into my life. Enough to make me leave. Enough to make me come here, but now, meeting her, it felt like a Godsend.

  Like it’d all been worth it.

  To go through that so I could come here, run into her and this thing we had. A relationship and one I could put my hands on and feel the realness of it.

  And not the deceit beneath.

  I hoped she felt that too, and I knew she did. I’d seen it in the shower. I’d seen it every day and every time we were together. She had feelings for me as real and tangible as I felt. She had love for me.

  Like I had for her.

  Her smile held no joy, no happiness. In fact, it shifted into nothing but sadness when she placed it in my direction.

  “Because I have so long to try.” She laughed, but again, no humor. She faced me. “I’m thirty-five years old, Ramses, and even if I did change my mind—which I won’t—I don’t have the time. I don’t have those years.”

  “There are other ways to have children, Brielle,” I said, this topic delicate, sensitive. I nodded. “Adoption. Surrogacy—”

  “I said I won’t change my mind!”

  My head lifted, my mouth closing. I saw what she was doing here completely.

  And I think she saw it too.

  She was running without actually running from me, but the difference was, I knew how she operated now.

  I knew her.

  She pushed, and I pushed back. I’d always push back.