by Marie James
I back out of the parking spot, finding Havoc with his head tilted as if he’s confused as to why I’m talking to myself.
“You could get a job, you lazy bum,” I mutter as I face forward again and drive off.
Things. They’re just things, I think to myself when I walk through the front door of my condo fifteen minutes later.
“I don’t need any of this shit.”
I toss the key fob in the ridiculously expensive glass bowl on the entry table. Why I spent five hundred dollars on a glittery piece of glass, I have no idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time. If I were back in South Carolina, my therapist would tell me that my excessive spending and penchant for pretty things is a coping mechanism for the love I’m not getting at home from my parents. She would tell me that the bitterness I feel toward my younger brother is another cause for wasting money on things I’ll never need.
Many of the things in my condo traveled across the country with me when I moved away from my parents’ controlling clutches a year and a half ago. I’m more frugal these days, but that didn’t stop me from making sure all the pretty things I had no use for were packed up back home and displayed around me here in Texas.
“Focus,” I whisper to myself as I walk toward my bedroom. While thinking, I head into my closet and try to pick something to wear that is sexy, but not slutty, casual but not frumpy. Sighing with irritation, I grab a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a tank top. It’s August in Texas. People better be glad I’m not walking around naked. I mean, I don’t think people at the frat house will have a problem, but getting arrested for indecent exposure on the way there won’t get me paid.
I hit the shower, refusing to leave my place until I’m clean. I didn’t run as hard today as I normally do due to the soreness in my legs, but sweat began to cover my skin the second I stepped outside this morning.
Wash, shave, rinse, and repeat. The routine is so common, I don’t even have to focus on the task. He asked me to come up to his room last night. I should’ve known then he wasn’t the right guy.
“Idiot,” I chastise myself as I slap the water off. My eyes widen when I realize he’s not a porn star. “Oh, God.”
I’m trembling by the time I reach out of the shower and my hand meets my towel. Its normal fluffiness abrades my skin when I remember that I had him rip the condom off. I swallowed his cum like a thirsty bitch.
“He’s not a porn star.”
I shake my head, trying to ward off the horrible thoughts. Not being a porn star means he’s not, or at least he hasn’t been officially tested by SCP.
“He seemed very clean,” I tell Havoc who watches me from the doorway. “He smelled amazing.”
The dog yips.
“But he’s covered in tattoos.”
Looking down at the ink on my own arm, I frown as I wipe the steam away from the bathroom mirror. “That’s your mother speaking.”
“Don’t look at them when you walk by,” she warned me even as a child when I saw my first homeless person in New York.
“You can’t be friends with her, Randi. Her mother has her eyebrow pierced.”
“That boy has tattoos. You can’t trust anyone who marks their skin up like that. Your body is a temple, and you have to cherish it.”
My whole life was filled with warnings and snide comments about the people she considered beneath our family as if having money made us any better.
She and my father grounded me once for helping a friend deliver jackets to the homeless. After my mother died, my father only got worse. At nearly twenty, I was tired of his shit, so I left and never looked back.
After blow drying my hair, I walk past Havoc into my bedroom. I already know something is wrong when he doesn’t bound in front of me with playful expectancy in his eyes.
“Havoc,” I hiss when I see the tattered black lace tucked just under the corner of the bed’s dust ruffle.
I pick up the destroyed panties and wring the fabric to keep from wringing his neck.
“I’ve had enough of this.” I shake the ruined panties in his face. At first, he has the wherewithal to look chastened, but then excitement takes over, and he’s drooling to get the material from my hands.
“Bad doggie school,” I warn again and toss the now crotch-less panties into the trash and get dressed.
Mascara, lip gloss, and hair in a messy bun are all I can manage even though I’m going to a fucking frat house to barter with a man I fucked by mistake. I walk Havoc, an attempt to keep him from peeing in the kennel while I’m gone. I have to leave the condo quickly. I know he’ll only be in there for thirty minutes, an hour tops, but he howls at my back like he’s been imprisoned and sentenced to die. It breaks my damn heart, but I had to replace my couch the last time I left him alone. It’s too fucking hot to leave him outside, so the kennel is a necessary evil.
Surprisingly, my fuck boy’s lawn is neat and tidy. There’s no evidence of the chaos that ensued on this property last night. I bet the quick clean up was aided by the semester’s new pledges and helps keep the dean off of their backs.
“Party doesn’t start for a few hours, baby, but I got ten inches that’ll keep you busy until it does.” I don’t even look at the asshole who thinks saying such a thing, in broad daylight no less, is appropriate. I do, however, clutch my purse tighter. This is Texas after all, and leaving home without a handgun on or near my person is almost unheard of. My concealed handgun license was something I got almost immediately after turning twenty-one.
“You nasty-mouthed bitch,” a guy says making me smile.
I look over to where the voice came from, and my smile grows even wider. Sandy blond hair, long on one side and shaved on the other, seems out of place. Right along with his eyeliner and shorts shorter than mine.
“Ms. Cici,” he purrs. “What is your gorgeous ass doing on the front lawn of the Lambda Phi Gamma during the daytime? You’re ruining my fantasy of being one of those sexy as fuck vampires from True Blood.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” I crinkle my nose and hate that I won’t have the opportunity to get to know him better. Jas and Ellis would die seeing how this man can wing eyeliner like a professional. I do costume makeup and even I’m impressed.
“I’m here to see—”
He raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow.
“Fuck,” I mutter, looking toward the front door, hoping that thinking of that gorgeous man from last night will conjure him from the air.
“Jake,” he says nodding his head as if he’s trying to convince me to agree with him.
“Yes.” My head bobs, matching his. “I’m here to see Jake.”
I must smile too wide because my new friend’s face falls and his happy-go-lucky smile turns into a sneer.
“He’s not here, and after the shit you stirred up last night, I suggest you get your too-skinny ass gone before he comes home.”
Chapter 4
Jake
Climbing out of my truck, I frown as I look down at my phone. It died over an hour ago, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to look at the screen over and over as if the next time I look, it’s going to have magically charged. My dad, or someone from his office, has tried to call at least a dozen times today, and I’ve ignored every single call. It’s what helped contribute to the now dead battery. Just another way my dad is fucking up my life.
My frown fades away as I walk down the narrow sidewalk and see a pair of sexy legs standing at the top of our front porch.
“He’s not here, and after the shit you stirred up last night, I suggest you get your too-skinny ass gone before he comes home.” I hear Hunter say as I round the corner and my boot hits the first step.
Cici.
I should hate her, if anything, for causing so much trouble that it made my cell die.
Hunter smirks, the knowing smile so familiar. He’s entertained by her, by this entire situation. I find myself indifferent to it for the most part until I’m close enough to smell the honey on her skin. My tongue
skirts out, swiping at my bottom lip.
I clear my throat, both to get her attention and to remind myself that fucking her on the front steps of the frat house would be frowned upon. In the daylight at least.
“I need to talk to you,” she says after turning around and finding me behind her.
I ignore her, walking past both of them and into the house. If I speak, it will be to tell her to take her clothes off, and fuck if I’m going to play that hand right now. It’s bad enough that my fingers tingle against the banister on the way up to my room.
“Hey,” she hisses. “I’m talking to you.”
Once again, I don’t respond, but the soft fall of her shoes on the stairs tells me she’s right behind me.
“Hey there,” Carlos says with a wide smile when he sees Cici trailing behind me up the stairs. “Can I have next?”
He only chuckles when I growl at him. Where the fuck that came from I have no idea.
“Sorry, babe,” Cici says. “I have a no douchebag rule.”
I should turn and knock his ass out when he mumbles ‘bitch’ under his breath, but I get the feeling that this chick knows how to take care of herself, and any attempt of mine to play hero for her wouldn’t be welcome.
“Excuse me? Jake!” She turns and glares as I close us into my room, eyebrow-raising quickly when I flip the lock.
Letting the strap of my backpack slide off of my shoulder, I plug my cell into the charger and busy myself pulling my boots off. That perfectly manicured eyebrow pops up again when I turn back to face her as my fingers work open the button on my jeans.
“The fuck are you doing?” she snaps when the denim slides down my legs.
To her credit, she only glances down at my growing cock once. Make that twice.
“My eyes are up here, babe.” It’s her turn to growl when her eyes disengage from the erection now standing proudly and pointed in her direction. “You’re over-dressed.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, one tattooed and the other pale, perfect skin, she juts her hip out and taps the tip of her red Chucks on the floor.
“I need to talk to you.” The words come out angry, pissed, and full of venom, but she must remember herself because she clears her throat and says. “I’m here to ask you a favor.”
I close the distance between us, not bothering to grab the basketball shorts I was planning to dress in after I pulled my jeans off.
“A favor, huh?”
My mouth waters when her throat bounces with a swallow. She uncrosses her arms, but rather than reach them behind my neck like I’m hoping, she holds them behind her back. It only serves to jut her tits out further.
“I’ve got a favor to ask myself.” My smile matches hers. “Seeing as you got me in a ton of trouble last night, I imagine you owe me anyway.”
I love the way her breath catches when I trail my nose down the column of her neck.
“I’m in a little trouble myself,” she confesses, her arms falling from her back, but not reaching for me the way my body demands that she does.
“In about two minutes, you won’t be worrying about a thing,” I assure her. “Except if I’ll let you come more than once.”
She laughs, a soft, sexy rush of air from her lips, and I question my control when her hands reach up and warm fingers trace the ridges and dips on my shoulders and arms.
“You didn’t get enough last night?”
“Fuck no,” I confess without a second thought.
“You could’ve told me last night that you weren’t the right guy.”
It takes everything in me to not stiffen under her fingers because fuck if last night wasn’t the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced. Her words do, however, remind me of exactly why she was at the frat house and why I couldn’t find her after she blew the top of my head off.
I lick at her neck and catch the lobe of her ear between my teeth.
“I was the right guy.” My fingers push against her stomach, gliding between the skin and the thin denim of her cut-off shorts. The hot slickness along her seam is enough to let me know she’s as interested in my cock as he is in her. “Jesus.”
She whimpers, rolling her head to the side so I have better access to her neck.
“I want to fuck you,” I pant in her ear as if she isn’t aware. I’m standing in nothing but a fucking t-shirt in the middle of my bedroom.
“I know,” she breathes in a rush, but her hands stop mine when I try to work open the fly of her shorts. “But I can’t.”
When she steps back, I step closer. This happens several times until she’s caged by my hands against the door.
“You came to me,” I observe. “In this.”
I push the thin spaghetti strap of her tank top off of her shoulder and let my finger run down the length of her arm. I repeat the action on the other side until the thin, flimsy fabric reveals the perfect curve at the top of her breasts. I blink, a few seconds longer than needed to picture them bare from last night.
“No bra,” I say not taking my eyes off of the hand slowly lowering the top hem of her shirt until the tight, rose-colored nipple on her left breast is exposed.
“We can’t,” she repeats but doesn’t ask me to stop. Hell, she doesn’t even flinch or ask me to step away when I pinch the puckered tip.
“We can,” I insist.
“Jake.”
My hips jerk toward her, my body closing the last couple of inches between us without conscious thought. I pull my fingers away long enough to reach behind my neck and pull my shirt over my head.
“I’ll make you come as many times as you need to,” I bargain, hands back to working open the zipper of her shorts.
“I don’t do this,” she says and finally puts her hands against my chest.
I’m surprised when the strength in her arms is used to push me away rather than pull me closer to her body.
“This?” I question, anger at her rejection growing like acid in my stomach. “Do I need to get some friends in here to watch? You only fuck while others are present?”
I want to take back the awful words the second they rush past my lips, but even more, I want to kick my own ass when her face falls for the split second before she puts her mask back in place.
She clears her throat, taking a couple of long seconds before she regains her composure. Her lips form a flat line, and her head shakes slightly as if the brush of the hairs that have fallen down on her neck is the only thing keeping her grounded.
“I didn’t come here to sleep with you.” Her smile is beautiful, but it doesn’t spark any emotion in her eyes. I recognize the effort. I became very familiar with it at an early age back in Kansas. I immediately hate that she feels like she has to be fake with me, that she has to put on a brave face and hide her true emotions.
I turn from her and grab my basketball shorts from the chair in the corner. I tug them over my hips before I turn back in her direction.
“I wasn’t supposed to sleep with you last night,” she continues when I turn back and give her my attention.
Ouch.
“No buyer’s remorse,” I tease. “I personally enjoyed all of it. Well, except the fact that you’re a porn star, and videos of us fucking are all over campus.”
Her face falls, but she pulls her eyes away from mine. I’m a grown man, but I want to cry actual tears when she tugs up her tank top, and her breasts are once again covered. Once done taking away the most perfect pair of tits I want to see longer than a single night, she busies herself pulling her phone from the back pocket of her denim shorts.
“I need you to sign this waiver, so we can use the professional video from last night.” She turns her phone around after clicking some buttons. “You can just sign with your finger.”
I sit in the corner and cross my arms over my chest, but she steps even closer and continues to hold the phone out.
“No.”
Chapter 5
Randi
All I can do is stare at his gorgeous face.
“What do you mean no?” Confusion draws my brows in, but my mother’s voice in my ear reminding me that frowning causes wrinkles has me once again attempting passivity.
“The video is already out there.” He runs the tip of his finger over his bottom lip and like a needy hussy, I shift my weight from foot to foot, wishing those hands were on my body. “I knew I ran the risk of something like that happening last night, but I’m not going to sign anything saying more videos can be put up.”
“Please?”
Begging? Really, Randi?
His lips part when a smile spreads across his face revealing perfect white teeth. I want them on my skin, marking me and leaving behind indentions and bruises I can admire tomorrow.
“These are bad enough.” He holds his arms out, the ink of his tattoos are sharp and crisp, telling of the money he paid on them. “My dad is already pissed. More video isn’t an option.”
I smile, my lashes already fluttering softly against my cheeks, before rolling my pouty lip between my teeth. “Please?”
His gaze stays on my mouth long enough that when I feel them burn into my blood, I have to wonder who’s manipulating whom here.
“Sorry.” The simple word and the cocky shrug of his shoulders are enough to make me want to stab him with the pencil sitting on his small desk. “My dad has probably spent the better part of the day throwing out cease and desist orders.”
Deep breath in. Slow breath out.
“What does your dad have to do with this?” My frustration level is through the roof. I understand him being hesitant. I also understood before I got here that I might have to persuade him. I am asking for permission for his cock to be all over the internet, but he’s not even willing to negotiate.
“Everything,” he mutters. “As much as I love pissing him off, this would be taking it a little too far. Unless…”
Jesus, I hate the ominous tone of his voice and that mischievous glint in his pretty blue eyes.