Or more direct. She grabs my dick through my pants and tugs, and suddenly doing my weekend job for free for a bunch of alcohol-addled fuckbois is less appealing than seeing where this is going. I let her grab my belt buckle and pull me away from the bar. Someone immediately slots in behind me and starts pouring shitty rum and dispensing it to sorority girls like a Bacchanalian priest.
Yeah, like a Bacchanalian priest. I know what those words mean.
I've had a few myself, but Little Tyler is good to go, and this girl looks like she knows how to get down. Once we're behind a door—this may actually be a closet, not a bedroom—I ask her for a name.
"I'm Kacey, and I know who you are," she says, dropping to her knees.
An exultant rush of anticipation washes over me as her practiced fingers undo my belt and yank my zipper open. I look down and—
A wave of horror washes through me as she tries to liberate the big guy from his cotton prison. I can't do this.
I push her hands away, shove myself back into my pants, and only worry about interlocking metal teeth and the bottom of my dick after I've yanked my zipper back up and roughly redone my belt. Not hard, but firmly, I shoulder her back into the closet (this is a closet), throw the door open, and push outside. Some other sorority sister sees an opportunity and wraps herself around my arm. I shake loose, storming through the house like I'm breaking a defensive line.
I can't fucking breathe. It's too hot and I've had too much to drink (lightweight, a little voice chides) and my head hurts and I feel sick, too much booze and not enough food. I storm out of the house into the open air, past Humpty and Dumpty, the official frat bouncers, and out onto the street. There I manage to keep my gorge down.
What the hell is wrong with me? She was ready to get down. What did she say her name was? Karen?
I swipe my hand down my face, find myself sweating despite the wintery chill. Brick's hand falls on my shoulder, ham-sized and so heavy my knees almost buckle supporting it.
"Ty, what the hell is the matter?"
"I don't know. I must have eaten something bad in the cafeteria," I lie. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."
"You know the drill, man," he slaps my back, rattling my teeth. "Better to just get it out."
"Get off of me," I snarl, shaking out from under his hand.
Despite his ponderous, Olympian bulk, Brick is a little afraid of me, and quails.
"I'll be fine."
"Are you sure?"
"I said I'll be fine. I've got shit to do and I'm not in the mood for this. Go have fun, tell me about your conquests tomorrow."
"Yeah, sure," he says, bewildered and still visibly nervous. "You sure you want to walk back by yourself?"
"Jesus, what the hell do you think is going to happen to me?" I snap.
"Easy, easy, I don't know. I was just offering."
I wave a hand. "I got a headache, man. Go play."
Before he can protest further, I turn and walk down the street, my expression and head-down, charging walk opening a path for me between the students milling around outside as they flout open container laws. Techno, hip hop, and house music from the different frats merge into a sick psychedelic beat and damn, I actually do feel a little nauseous.
Stopping, I scrub my hands over my face and draw a deep breath.
I'm just tired, frustrated, and yeah, a little nervous. Fuck it, this is a lot of pressure. I'm under a microscope and no matter how worried she is about what I might say, Mills has my future in her fingers, hanging by a thread over a fire.
Shit, I'm still thinking about her. Is that why I gave Katie the brush-off, because she wasn't Mills?
Or was it because she didn't want to suck my dick, she wanted to suck the quarterback's dick?
It doesn't matter. Screw both of them, I'm going home.
Twenty minutes later I'm standing outside of Cassandra Mills' apartment building like a stalkery male lead in one of those silly romance movies she watches. I bet she reads romance novels, too. Probably has a hidden stash of them so her kid won't see 'em and spends a few hours with Rosie Palms when she gets all riled up, thinking about a real man between her legs and damn it to hell I'm hard again.
I really, really should turn around now. I should absolutely not march up to her apartment and knock on the door. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I couldn't even say what I want. A cold, driving sense of guilt pinches the back of my neck, like I owe her an apology for the almost-fellatio in the frat house. Like she'd ever even know, or care, or it's even her business.
Could it be possible that her iron lady bullshit works and I actually care what she thinks of me?
Nobody talks to me like she does, not even my dad, and he spends all day screaming at the salesmen and lot boys at his car dealership.
I should go back to my room and study. I shouldn't knock on her door.
When I do, there's no answer, and I turn to leave, only to freeze when her voice comes through the door.
"What?"
I spin on my heels and knock again.
"Doc, its me."
"Stop calling me that. Also, who's me?"
"Tyler," I say. "You're my advisor?"
She swings the door open, stopped by a chain.
"What do you want?" she groans.
Oh God, she's lovely. She's ditched her matronly work outfit for leggings and an oversized AC/DC t-shirt that hangs to mid-thigh. She looks a little sweaty, maybe just went for a run. I smell cooking. Her face is slightly flushed, her lips bright pink, her eyes hard but her skin soft, everything about her slightly ethereal. Her hair must be so soft, why didn't I run my fingers through it when I had the chance?
Her eyes flick back and forth as she studies me.
"Well?"
"I wanted to talk about this morning."
"What about it?" she says, warily.
"I just want to talk."
She rolls her eyes. "We're talking. Make it quick. If someone sees you here and word gets back to the academic dean, I'm in for it."
"Why don't you let me in?"
"Why don't you leave?"
"I just want to say my piece, and I don't want to do it through your security chain like I'm Ted Bundy or something. I promise I just want to talk." I raise my hands in a gesture of surrender.
Her pretty eyes narrow, and her expression is guarded.
"I really shouldn't do this."
"You respect Ryerson. He took a risk for me."
"Yeah, and he asked me to be your advisor and help you salvage your academic career, not invite you into my apartment to eat dinner."
"Are you making dinner? It smells good."
"I'm heating up a can of beef stew. Don't patronize me."
"I'm not leaving until I get my say."
"Well, that's not pushy at all."
"Doc, you have my word."
"Doc?"
"Doctor Mills," I say, carefully enunciating each syllable.
"Fine," she snaps. "Just get in here and make it quick."
"I'm not usually asked to make it quick," I say as she closes the door behind me.
She glowers at me and very pointedly glances at the knife block on her kitchen counter.
"Point taken," I say.
"It will be if you drop any more sexual innuendos on me."
"Doctor, the only one here reading sexual innuendos into what I say is you."
She folds her arms under her breasts, unintentionally highlighting how full and round they are, and all I can think is how I'd like to get my mouth on them while I explore the rest of her with my hands. Even standing there, hip-cocked and glowering with a wooden spoon in her hand like an angry housewife, she's gorgeous. Hell, maybe it's the playing housewife part that draws me in.
"Are you going to say anything or just stare at me?"
"I came to apologize."
Her eyes widen in genuine surprise. Before she can snark at me, I continue.
"I'm sorry for my behavior this morning. I provoked you an
d belittled you in a professional setting and made you uncomfortable. It was wrong of me and I apologize."
She sighs.
"Okay, you're being the bigger man. I accept."
"Great. Your stew is about to boil over."
She whirls around and yanks the pot off the burner, jabbing her spoon into it to swirl it around.
"Fuck," she snaps. "It's burnt to the bottom."
"You had the burner on high."
"I was hungry," she says. "I have work to do and I wanted to get it hot."
I take the pot from her. Surprisingly, she lets me. I sniff the alleged gravy that is now a gluey mess and flaked with char. It smells about as good as it would taste.
"You ought to let me cook something for you," I say.
"You?"
"Yeah, me. Turns out I can cook."
"Well, I can't," she says, defeated. "Look, I accept your apology. You should just go and we can keep it professional from here."
"Yeah, there's a problem with that."
"What is it?"
"You're fucking gorgeous."
She grabs at a knife from the block on the counter.
"Jesus!" I shout, jumping back.
She glowers at me, fingers resting on the handle.
"Well, this is progress. At least you didn't pull a gun on me."
She lets go of the knife and flexes her fingers.
"Yeah. I shouldn't joke around. I wasn't going to stab you. I wouldn't have shot you, either. I just woke up, heard a strange man in my apartment, and feared the worst."
"Yeah, I get that. I'm not judging."
"Good. You'll be going, then?"
"What are you going to get to eat?"
"Something I won't be eating with you."
"Can I ask you something?"
"No," she says.
"Why do you flip out every time I call you attractive?"
Her expression clouds.
"What are you, my therapist now?"
"No, just wondering."
She folds her arms again and sticks out her chin with a defiant little jut. I'm never going to be able to talk to Doctor Mills in her wool blazer and not see her as she is now, ever again. Whether she meant to or not, she's pulled her too-big shirt to the side and it's almost exposed her creamy left shoulder.
"I really would like it if you'd go."
"I'd really like it if you'd let me stay."
"You think that'll work, don't you?" she says. "You come in here with your movie star good looks and your muscles on top of muscles and turn up the charm and think I'm going to just fall all over you because you extended the common courtesy of apologizing for trying to make me look stupid at work?"
She stares at me, fuming.
"I think I kinda did, yeah."
She sniffs. "Have you been drinking?"
"Yeah."
"Jesus, it's Monday night, Tyler."
"Well, uh, it's five o'clock somewhere?" I say, lamely. "So, uh, you think I have good looks?"
"I wasn't flirting with you."
"I'm starting to think you're trying and you just don't know how."
Flustered, she throws up her hands.
"What did I even let you in for?"
"Yeah, what did you let me in for?"
I edge closer, careful not to maneuver her back to the fridge or anything, not to make her feel trapped. If she had actual hackles, they'd rise. A pink tinge in her cheeks signals her defiance, and frustration, and at the same time, she unconsciously wets her lips with the pink tip of her tongue and I want another go at tasting her.
"If I was younger I might be making a different decision," she says, "and it scares me. I let you in because I'm not a robot, that's why. It was a mistake. I need to think about my future and my daughter's future, and—"
"Why do you just assume I'd do something to hurt you?"
Her voice betrays her shock.
"I don't actually know," she says.
"You know, I think we should have it out. Just be open with each other. If I just say it, it won't gnaw at me relentlessly."
"Say what?"
"You're fucking hot and you're driving me nuts, and for some damn reason, I actually like it."
She bites her lip, tucking it under her teeth, a snaggletooth turning her lip white. Holy hell.
"I can tell when somebody has been putting up a front," I add. "You're not a giant bitch like you want everyone to think you are. I don't know what your deal is, but the woman I saw on Friday night wanted friends, wanted to be with people, didn't want to be the Cruella Umbridge."
"If you think you know me so well—"
"Not as well as I want to."
Fuck it, sooner or later you have to go for it. I grab her hips, pull her to me, and kiss her. Her whole body goes rigid, muscles twitching like she's fighting a war with herself, and her fingers play across my shoulders like she doesn't know what to do with her hands.
Then her grip tightens, she molds the soft heat of her body against me, and kisses me back, hard. An electric shock ripples down from my mouth and I get instantly hard. Harder, really. I can't be in the same room with her without at least being halfway there. I can sense the wildcat in her kiss, the way she's rough with her tongue, gives me a little teeth on my lip as I kiss her again.
Abruptly, Mills yanks back and stares at me, wide-eyed.
"You're not thinking straight and you're going to do as much damage to your own future as it would do to mine," she says, carefully detaching from me. "You really need to go."
"Why?"
"I'll be blunt. Because we might end up in the bedroom and if we do, I'll never forgive myself."
"Fuck," I half-snarl. "Hell, woman, do you have any idea what you're doing to me? Telling me you want to fuck but you're afraid of...what?"
"Part of being an adult is learning that you can't always have what you want."
"Whoever told you that wouldn't treat you like I would."
Shit. Where did that come from?
Her mouth actually falls open, but her teeth quickly click and she swallows.
"Ned Ryerson told me that."
"Alright, I'm leaving," I say. "Because you asked me to."
"Thank you."
"If you change your mind..."
She shakes her head and says with a dull, flat voice, "I won't."
I turn to leave. "Then I guess this is it. At least now it's out."
"Wait."
I stop.
"I misjudged you. I admit it. You're not what I thought you were."
"What's that?"
"I thought you were a musclebound blockhead that substitutes your penis for brain cells and only undertook the field of study I made my life's work because you thought it would be trivial."
"Is that what you really think?"
That perfectly describes me. I almost ask her what she thinks I am now, but I'm hurting her by staying, and I can see that, so I leave. I wait until I hear the ratcheting of her locking the door behind me, out of some impulse to know she's safe before I leave.
"I think part of you is looking for an excuse to be better than you are. In another life maybe I could have been part of that, but not in this one."
I walk down the stairs like a man heading to his execution and out into an unforeseen snowstorm. A cold wind blew in while I was in her apartment and the sky has gone the patchy pink that means one hell of a blizzard is coming.
Well, fuck.
Chapter Six
Cassandra
I slump in my kitchen chair, sniffing burnt beef stew that smells like burnt hair for some reason. No longer able to stand on trembling legs, I lean back in my chair and stare straight ahead, trying to slow my pounding pulse. I can feel a vein in my neck. I'm hot all over, prickles of sweat between my shoulder blades, and my throat has gone bone dry.
Worst, I'm tearing up. I shouldn't have said that to him. It was horrible. Now I want to track him down and apologize to him. God, he must really hate me now.
It
was what I thought, though. It's what I thought before I even met him, when Ryerson begged me for a favor.
Two impulses clash against each other inside me. My head says he's a boy, that he's infatuated with me because he finds me attractive, he saw me in a vulnerable position, and he's looking for someone more mature than what he's used to. I'd be an experiment, a fling, but if the experiment goes wrong, I could lose everything.
Hell, if it goes right I could lose everything. I could never be in a relationship with him openly, even after he graduates. The code of conduct might allow it, but everything I've fought for will be gone. There will be zero respect among my colleagues. No chance of advancement.
My heart says I haven't been kissed like that since I was his age. The passion, the way he gripped me, the flaring heat in his body and muscles flexing against me as he pulled me close, tried to swallow me with his body. I could have lost myself in that. Even his kiss is confrontational, like an argument that goes on and on and on because it's too much fun to stop. The kind of argument that ends with clothes on the floor in a silent, sweaty resolution when we both forget what we were angry about.
I sense something vulnerable in him, too. Like he's asking me for something, and I don't know what it is. I don't think he does, either.
Sighing, I rise and walk to my balcony. It's small, more of a Juliet balcony than a place to sit, and I haven't even bothered to put out a chair. When I step outside, I find the wrought iron railing slick with a crust of ice and a heavy fall of fine snowflakes, already building up on the road.
I had to buy a Miata. Well, I can walk if I have to. Class might be cancelled anyway. I honestly wouldn't mind a day curled up on the couch with some cocoa and a chance to catch up on my reading. I have some journals I'm behind on, I need to refresh myself on the seminar texts, and I have a copy of Owned by the Bad Boy by Vanessa Waltz burning a hole in my bookshelf.
When I sigh, a long jet of steam erupts from my lips. Smiling to myself like I did when I was a kid, I—
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."
It's him. Tyler stands out front on the sidewalk, hands buried in his sweatshirt, grinning up at me.
"Go do your homework," I shout back.
Stuck With You Page 6