Getting Dirty

by Mia Storm

  “About a block past Tino’s and around the corner to the left, on Fifth.”

  “It’s cold. My car’s right there,” I say, pointing at my black Charger. “Let me give you a lift back.”

  “Okay,” she says, stepping into the deserted street.

  I click the doors as we cross and she slides into my passenger seat without any hesitation. I might not be an ax murderer, but I’m no less dangerous.

  I crank the engine and my latest obsession song pours from the speakers.

  “Arctic Monkeys,” she says, nodding along to the heavy percussion. “Nice.”

  I turn down the volume. “Sorry.”

  She tosses me a wicked smile and cranks the stereo back up.

  I adjust the heat and swallow when the song betrays me by telling her I’ve dreamt about her nearly every night this week, and asks how many secrets she can keep. I pull onto the road and head back toward the bar. “Just tell me when.”

  She points out the windshield. “At that stop sign, take a left. I’m just a few cars up.” I do as I’m told and she points to a silver Mini. “That’s me.”

  “Sweet ride,” I say with a nod.

  “My dad bought it but he didn’t like it, so he gave it to me so he wouldn’t have to drive me back and forth to school. Saves him having to pretend we know each other.”

  I pull into a spot across the street from her car and cut the engine. “You’re not close?” I ask, turning in my seat to face her.

  She shrugs. “I’ve never really met him, even though we’ve lived in the same house all my life.”

  I try to read her expression, but all I’m finding there is indifference. Either she’s great at stuffing down her emotions or she truly doesn’t care. Either way, she’s better at dealing with family shit than I am. “That’s tough.”

  “Not really. Growing up is a hell of a lot easier when you’ve got parents that are just phoning it in. I never had to deal with any of the shit my friends did. No groundings. No curfew. I can order a pizza and eat in my room because no one’s at the dinner table anyway. I can fuck in my own bed without anyone caring. I do what I want, when I want.”

  My heart’s suddenly pounding in my chest with the image of her fucking. But she must have her head on pretty straight to have made it twenty years in the world on her own compass without landing in jail. “So, I take it you still live at home?”

  She nods.

  It’s not unusual. Sierra State, like most of the California State schools, is predominantly a commuter campus.

  “Where is that?”

  “Up in the foothills. On county land near Ashby.”

  “How long does it take you to get home from here?” I ask, suddenly concerned she’s driving on her own, even though she didn’t drink much.

  “It’s only a half hour, as long as there’s no fog.”

  “Coffee might have helped,” I say with a flick of my wrist in the general direction of The Bean. “Sorry that didn’t work out.”

  “Next time,” she says with a smile.

  Without realizing I’m doing it, I find I’m leaning toward her. I catch myself and stop. But before I can pull back, she closes the rest of the distance and presses her lips hard against mine.

  Any thought that I shouldn’t be doing this evaporates like fog in a stiff breeze at the taste of her mouth, moving hungrily on mine. She’s scotch and fire on my tongue as she devours me. Right or wrong, I’m powerless to stop her.

  Her fingers run down my face to my chest as she opens her mouth wider, inviting me deeper inside. I take the invitation, tasting as much of her as she’ll give me. Her hands tug at the hem of my shirt and my breath catches when cold fingers meet my warm abs.

  I press harder against her, drawing her closer, and fire rips through my veins as our tongues and hands explore the new landscapes of each other’s mouths and bodies.

  But a shard of coherent thought finally manages to pierce the bubble I’ve constructed to justify what I’m doing. “You’re a student,” I say against her mouth.

  Her lips skim to my ear. “I like you, Caiden,” she whispers, and her saying my name with that hot breath, that wet mouth, is nearly enough to break my resolve. “I like you a lot.”

  I take her by the shoulders and gently peel her away, my heart hammering out African drumbeats against my ribcage. “You’re so damn incredible, but I can’t do this. It’s totally against university rules. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not my professor,” she says, her expression wounded. “If we like each other, I don’t see why it should matter.”

  “I’m Dr. Duncan’s graduate assistant. My boss is your professor. It’s a conflict of interest, since I do most of his grading.”

  “So you are conflicted.” It’s clear from the predatory shift her expression takes that she hears that I’m trying to convince myself as much as her.

  I drop my head against the headrest. “I am.”

  She leans closer again, her breast pressing against my arm through the thin cotton of her top. “I’ll never say anything. No one needs to know,” she whispers, her breath feathering over my neck and stiffening my cock.

  My breaths are shallow pants, and I force my lungs to expand with my next inhalation. If I stay in this car with her, so close, I’m going to give in.

  “Tonight was really amazing, but I need to get home,” I say, cranking the ignition and gluing my palm to the stick shift.

  There’s a long minute that she doesn’t move. Finally, she leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek, then opens her door.

  I watch her cross to her car, and when she pulls out, I crank a U-turn and head home. Where I jerk off to Arctic Monkeys with the vivid image of getting dirty with Blaire playing on a loop behind my eyelids.

  Chapter 3

  Blaire

  “We finally did it yesterday,” my best friend Zoey tells me when she slips into the passenger seat of the Mini.

  Her mom waves from the front door as we pull away from the curb.

  “Who did what?” I ask and really try to pay attention to the answer.

  I was off in space all weekend, putting the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the fridge. My mind won’t turn off, reliving kissing Caiden, planning all the other things I want to do to him.

  Once I realized he’s as nervous about me as I am about him, the nerves melted away and things somehow became easy between us. We’ve got so much in common, from our love of literature, to our taste in music, to how he gets my poetry, to things I can’t even put my finger on, but feel enormous. Things having to do with how his touch makes my very DNA hum, and the way his glance causes poetry to leak from my soul.

  But he’s got rules.

  Zoey’s gaze blazes exasperation into mine as I turn the corner at the end of her block. I feel it like a deathbeam, breaking through my deflector shields. “We had sex, Blaire! I finally let Kevin fuck me.”

  “About damn time. That boy’s had blue balls for months.”

  She shoves my shoulder hard, causing me to jerk the steering wheel and veer us across the oncoming lane, which is thankfully empty, sideswiping the trashcans on the opposite curb. “You are such a bitch!”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I say, righting the ship.

  She shoves her short yellow bob behind her ear and glares out the windshield. “You’re supposed to be all, like, ‘Oh my God, Zoey! Give me all the deets!’”

  “Oh my God, Zoey! Give me all the deets!” I cut her a glare as I take the right out to the main road. “You spend way the hell too much time on social media. You know I’d never actually say ‘deets,’ right? That’s not even a word.”

  “You should at least have a Snapchat,” she grumbles.

  “Why? So I can be brainwashed along with the rest of you?”

  I boycotted social media in junior high when I discovered it was just hive mentality—a crash course in unoriginal thinking.

  She rolls her eyes and drops back into her seat. “Whatever. J
ust forget it. I’ll tell Jessica when we get to school.”

  “It’s not like you cashed in your V-card or anything, Zoe,” I say, starting to feel a little guilty. This is what friends are supposed to do, right? Tell each other this shit? “Sorry. I just don’t get what the big deal is.”

  She throws a hand at me. “Your mystery boy must have fucked you wrong, because otherwise you’d know what the big deal is.”

  And…there goes any guilt I might have been feeling. “Bitch.”

  Zoey’s pretty much the only friend I have outside Marcus and Nate, though she’s cultivated a wider circle than me. I honestly have never related well to people my age. I can’t do the standard fashion critiquing and boy watching that goes on in lunch circles and end up drifting into my own mind, so the rest of Zoey’s friends think I’m socially stunted.

  Maybe I am. Maybe it’s in my genes to not be quite right socially. Or maybe it’s what Mrs. Erikson said. Whenever she read anything I wrote last year in English she would say I have an old soul. But Zoey tolerates my social ineptitude. Usually.

  I’d been at Marie’s since I was a few weeks old, but Zoey started there for preschool and she sort of latched onto me. She cried the second day of public kindergarten when they advanced me to first grade and told her she couldn’t come with me. I tell her more than I tell anyone else, but there are some things—okay, a lot of things—that I keep to myself. She knows I lost my virginity last summer. She just doesn’t know to who. I told her it was a guy from our rival high school and made up some random name.

  I wouldn’t have told her anything, except she’s been on my case to “just do it” since she fucked Jon Fitzmeyer last spring after prom. I think she just wanted someone who’d been through it to share the gory details with, because after I told her, I heard every detail about Jon. Such as, his penis curves out when he’s hard, he doesn’t kiss while he’s fucking, and he looks like he’s having a seizure when he comes. She thinks it’s because he’s concentrating so hard.

  She’s been dating Kevin since the beginning of the school year. They’ve traded oral, but that’s it.

  “He’s bigger than Jon, in case you care,” she says huffily, her arms crossed over her chest. “Not longer, but thicker. I felt it stretch more.”

  “I’ll remember that for when I’m fucking him,” I say, turning up the radio. It’s Caiden’s Arctic Monkey’s song from last night. Zoey pissed me off when she said Nate fucked me wrong, so she doesn’t get to dump all her shit on me now.

  She glares at me. “I just thought you might find it interesting. You never really know what a guy is packing.”

  I turn onto the street that leads up the hill to school. “You’ve sucked Kevin’s dick, and you’re just now discovering it’s different than Jon’s?”

  “Jesus, B! What the fuck is with you today?”

  Fucking Caiden, that’s what. He’s got me so hot and bothered that I can’t think straight. And talking to Zoey about having sex isn’t helping. I appreciate what Nate and I have even more now, because he’s never left me feeling this sexually frustrated.

  “Sorry. I’m just in a shitty mood,” I admit, hoping she won’t ask why.

  “Well, you don’t need to bring me down with you.” There’s my Zoey. Always the narcissist.

  “Sorry,” I say again. “So, tell me everything.”

  She does, and by the time we climb out of my car in the school lot, I know more about Kevin’s junk than I ever wanted to. But as I walk to first period calculus, I can’t help wondering what Caiden might be packing.

  ∞

  I’m particularly vicious in water polo practice this afternoon. Near the end, I take a shot that leaves our goalie with a bloody nose.

  Coach Jackson gives me a pat on the back on the way to the locker room. “Great work out there, Leon.” He likes a little blood in the water, so his comment doesn’t surprise me. “You sure you don’t want me reaching out to college coaches? It’s late for Division One schools, but there are some great D2’s that would piss themselves to sign you.”

  “Thanks coach, but my plans are Stanford or Berkeley.”

  “Hell,” he says, rubbing his bald head. “They’d take you walk-on, sure as shit. Let me see what I can do.”

  “I really want to focus on academics,” I say, toweling off my hair. “But thanks.”

  I slip through the locker room door before he can press his argument and head for the shower to get ready for my night class.

  And Caiden.

  On my way to Sierra State, I pull into the McDonald’s next to campus and take in my duffel. I order a Coke and a chicken caesar salad, and when I’m done eating, I take my duffel to the bathroom. I tug off my jeans and sweater and slip on a short black cotton skirt and snug white long-sleeved top. I’d never wear this at school—mostly because I’m invisible there and like it that way—but Caiden kissed me. We were so close to doing more. I pull my sweater on over my shirt, reapply my mascara, brush my teeth, then head to the car.

  I tough it out for as long as I can, but knowing Caiden is just two buildings over, in the library, is enough to drive me to distraction. Professor Duncan’s an okay guy, so I feel guilty about cutting out of his class early, but as I stare at my blank notebook, I know there’s no point being here anyway. Before I reach the doors of the library, I unhook my bra and pull it out through my sleeve, then tug off my sweater and shove them both in my messenger bag. I take a deep breath for nerves, then climb the stairs to the fifth floor resource center.

  Caiden is at the desk, and a blond girl is leaning on the counter, pushing her cleavage all up in his face. When I see him smile at her, flirting back, jealousy chokes up my throat. I swallow it along with the acid rising and berate myself. Jealousy is not my thing. And besides, he’s not mine.

  Yet.

  I watch from the corner of my eye as he notices me and watches as I cross to the back of the reference section. I drop my bag on the table and pull out Don Juan, then sit and cross my legs slowly.

  With all my swimming, I’ve got great legs. They’d always been my best asset, until the rest of my body finally caught up this summer. I run a hand over my thigh, lifting the hem of my skirt just a little higher, as I open my book.

  “Hey,” Caiden’s smooth timbre comes from just behind me.

  I look up and catch his eyes on my legs before they lift to my face. The blonde at the desk is gone. “Hey.”

  He gives a quick glance around the library, then slides into the seat next to me. “I wanted to apologize for what happened on Friday.” His eyes drop to the tabletop, where his finger is tracing nervous circles. “It won’t happen again, but if you feel the need to report me to Dr. Duncan or the university, I’d totally understand.”

  A laugh escapes on a breath before I can contain it. “For what? I kissed you.”

  He tips his head and his eyes pour heat into mine. “I was a very willing participant, Blaire,” he says, low. Secret.

  His tone and the hungry look in his eyes cause my insides to ache.

  There’s a long minute that we just sit here staring at each other, the charge in the air between us building to critical mass and prickling goose bumps all over my body. The storm in his eyes intensifies, darkening the steely blue to nearly black and tightening my groin. He watches as I stand and move toward the stacks behind our table. I turn the corner and lean against the shelves in the first row, out of his line of sight—and anyone else’s for that matter. I wait for a century, it feels like, breathing my erratic heartbeat back into rhythm. When he doesn’t follow, disappointment pools inside me. I was sure I saw something in his gaze.

  I’m just deciding my seduction tactic failed when he turns the corner of the shelves and stares at me from the end. “What are we playing here, Blaire? Hide and seek?”

  I spin and pretend to be looking over the books on the shelf in front of me, suddenly feeling like a stupid little girl. “I’m using the reference section of the library. Not sure what you’re do
ing.”

  I don’t look as he moves behind me, but I feel him there in the crackle of the air and the way it makes all the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  “Hmm…” He stands close and looks over my shoulder. “What other classes are you taking this semester?” he asks, running a finger along the spines. “Because I’ve seen Dr. Duncan’s syllabus and I know for certain he didn’t assign anything on Aristotle or Socrates.”

  I shift a little and my backside brushes against the front of his pants. “Maybe I’m reading on my own—expanding my horizons and trying someone new.”

  A rush shudders through me when he doesn’t pull away. I press my ass tighter against him and feel a bulge behind his zipper.

  Knowing that he wants me as much as I want him is exhilarating. It makes me bolder. He stands rock steady, coiled tight and not even breathing, as I start to move my ass against him. After a minute, he lays his hands on my hips and presses his whole front against my whole back.

  “This is so wrong,” he whispers into my hair.

  I lay my hands over his so he won’t take them off me as I turn slowly in his arms. “Why?”

  He tips his head back and stares at the ceiling for several beats of my racing heart. I take the opportunity to study the V of his collarbones and the curve of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. Finally, he lowers his gaze to mine. “I’m not even going to tell you all the ass I’ve had to kiss and the mountain of debt I’ve buried myself under to get this far, but I’ve been at this university for seven years.” His fingers dig into my hips. “If we do this…” He trails off and bites his lips into a line with a sharp shake of his head, then blows out a shaky breath and lets me go. “There’s a reason for University policies,” he says, backing away a step. “I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry, Blaire.” He backs away another step and the storm in his eyes ravages me as hurricane Caiden sweeps over my body. “You have no idea how sorry.”

  He spins and the next second, he’s gone.

  I lean against the shelves and tip my head back, catching the breath that he just stole from me. The empty ache in my chest rivals the hot aching need low in my belly. My mind is spinning, grasping desperately for anything that might change his mind. I could drop poetry class…add a literature class that Professor Duncan doesn’t teach.