by Nikky Kaye
The only person with their eyes on us was Dylan, who was focused on me instead of the experiment.
Oh god, did I still have Freshly Fucked Face? Could he see the sexing on me? I felt hot with mortification all over, and my handwriting took a turn for the worse.
Dylan was a decent guy, actually—polite, friendly, and fairly good-looking. His eyes were green behind his glasses, and his blond hair was buzzed short. He had a nice, lanky body and looked like a geeky surfer, and I’d never had an issue with him before.
I hated to think that I’d screwed up this class enough to have a problem now, especially this late in the semester. This was by far my worst course, but I still needed to pass it. Why I needed a science requirement for a degree in art history was totally beyond me, but without it I wouldn’t have met the man growling beside me.
“I’m going to poke out his wandering eyes with a pipet,” Will said.
“They’re not wandering.”
“That’s the problem.”
Men were so stupid. Seriously, Dylan was probably just pissed that I was late, and wanted to ream me out to embarrass me.
Finally we finished, and one more food item was struck from my diet for at least the next few months. So far, I’d developed an aversion to lobster, frog’s legs—not that they were high on my menu anyhow, but someday I wanted to go to France—and now mushrooms. Joy.
We packed up our stuff, and Will held my coat open for me. He’d already put on a fleece pullover and looped his backpack over one shoulder. I stared at him. “What are you doing?”
He frowned. “Helping you with your coat?”
“What? Why?”
His mouth opened and closed as his eyebrows drew together. “To be polite? Fuck if I know.”
I aimed my hands through the sleeves. This was a little weird. Then it got weirder. “Um, Will?”
“Mmmm?”
“I’m twenty-one, not four.”
He looked up from where he was doing up the buttons of my wool pea coat. “Oh, yeah.” Biting his lower lip, he stepped back before even copping a feel. I actually hated having my coat all done up, unless it was too cold not to. I didn’t want to make him feel bad, though, so I left it.
I had the feeling that there were a lot of things that were half-finished all of a sudden—an honest conversation with Will, for one. Were we dating now? Was he my boyfriend? Or were we just friends with more benefits than a platinum card? I didn’t know how this stuff worked, and I didn’t really know how to ask either. Although, knowing him, he’d appreciate the direct approach. I took a deep breath.
“Will, what are we—”
Dylan’s voice interrupted me. “Cassie, got a sec?”
Shit. I’d forgotten about our attentive Teaching Assistant. I looped my messenger bag across my chest, the stony expression on Will’s face making me postpone what I was going to say.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. Dylan literally got in between us. I looked over his shoulder to see Will’s eyes narrow.
“It’ll just take a minute.” He touched my arm so briefly and lightly it was like I’d imagined it. But I hadn’t, if the flexing muscle in Will’s jaw was any indication.
Jealousy was hot; I could admit it. Yes, I was a terrible feminist. But there was a secret little part of me that was thrilled to have this kind of effect on not one man, but two. None of those stupid online sex surveys mentioned a secret desire to be double penetrated, though. Of course, it was hard to take anything seriously that extrapolated private sexual fantasies from my answer to the question “What is your favorite Sesame Street character?”
Dylan moved over to where his laptop sat on the first lab bench, clearly expecting me to follow. So I did, leaving Will hovering at the door. I waved him off.
“You can go, you know.”
He just raised an eyebrow at me. Yeah, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Cassie, you’ve missed a couple of labs.”
I turned my back on Will and my attention to Dylan. “I know. I’m really sorry.”
“Thanksgiving is next week.”
“I know. I’m really sorry,” I repeated. “What do I need to do to catch up?”
“Well, you’ll have to make every lab for the rest of the semester, obviously. And you’ll have to make up the embryology lab.”
Great. More reproduction. I wondered if Will would let me look at his lab report.
Dylan cleared his throat. “I’m happy to work with you to set up some extra lab hours to get it done. Anytime that’s good for you. Anytime.”
“That’s really cool of you, thanks.” I knew Will would grumble about it, but he already had an A. I needed all the help I could get.
My smile was wide and appreciative, and the tips of Dylan’s ears turned red. Experimentally, I looked down and blinked rapidly. I’d read in books where women looked up through their eyelashes flirtatiously, so I thought I’d give it a try. It was actually impossible to do it without going cross-eyed. Could I use my newfound feminine wiles, I mused.
“How’s Thursday at, um, six? For us to meet here?” he asked.
I didn’t know why, but I looked over at Will, who was frowning. “Sure, that’s fine. Six on Thursday.”
Dylan looked relieved. “It’s a date.”
Uh, okay. Clearly I didn’t know my own power with this whole flirting thing. Maybe Will could give me lessons. “Um, sure. Thanks for your help.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I should get your number, just in case the lab space gets booked before then and I need to let you know.”
“Oh, okay.” I gave him my number, and a few seconds later I heard a buzzing in my pocket.
Will held the door open for me, but waited until we were outside before grilling me. We had different classes next, both on the other side of campus, so we huffed along in the cold.
“What did he want?”
“To help me catch up.”
“I can do that,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t hurt to get in good with the TA. He’s grading me, not you.”
His mouth turned down. “He likes you.”
I knew that. I was naïve, not stupid. “So?”
“So, he wants to get into your pants.”
I halted, my exasperated sigh cloudy between us. “So do you, Will.” And he already had, so why was he acting like a jealous boyfriend? Seriously, one naked weekend and he was going to go caveman on me? We hadn’t even defined anything between us.
He touched my forehead, smoothing out a frown I didn’t realize was there. “Cass…”
He leaned over and kissed me, his lips cold against mine. The inside of his mouth was warm and his tongue soft, despite how hard he pressed against me. I melted inside while my skin chilled. Will tugged on my scarf, pulling me even closer, and we fell deeper into the kiss.
I was discovering this whole new side of my friend, and it was irresistibly hot. It was also bringing out a whole new side to me, which was totally confusing. When I tried to open my eyes, my frosty eyelashes stuck together.
“What are you doing later?” he asked, his cold nose nudging mine. Our breath mingled together like a thought bubble shared between us.
“I have to go to campus health.” It was time to get on birth control.
He tilted his head, looking confused.
“Sheesh. Aren’t you pre-med? Everyone wants to get in my pants, remember?”
“But I was th—”
Hell, no. I narrowed my eyes at him. “If you say ‘I was there first’ I’m going to junk punch you. I’m not Mount Everest.”
His gaze fell to the front of my coat, the strap of my messenger bag sharply defining the valley between my boobs.
I stomped away. Men were so stupid.
Chapter Three
Will
I’d created a monster—me. I was a lust-crazed, jealous asshole. And I couldn’t say a fucking thing to Cassie about it.
We were both swamped with assignments that every s
adistic prof wanted done before Thanksgiving. I’d barely seen Cass all week after our Monday lab, and I missed her. I missed her laugh, her wrinkled nose, her taste. I thought we’d caught a break when I called her on Thursday, but I was dead wrong.
“Dinner tonight?” I knew we’d both handed in our weekly lab brief already, and neither of us had anything due again until after the weekend.
Silence. I checked the phone to see if the call had been dropped, then I heard her voice again. “I can’t. I have a catch-up lab.”
“Okay, I’ll help you.”
“That’s okay, Dylan is going to meet me and walk me through it.”
“Ah. I see.” Fucking Dylan. He puts the “ass” in Teaching Assistant. “What about tomorrow?” Getting together Friday night would shove us right up against the border between friendship and officially dating, but I was okay with that—mostly.
“I need to go to the gym.”
What the fuck did that mean? Was that like the new “I’m washing my hair”? “The gym is open until ten o’clock,” I pointed out.
“My hot yoga class is at eight.”
I visualized Cassie in downward facing dog and nearly dropped the call myself. “Is it hard?” ‘Cause I sure was.
She laughed. “Why, you want to come?”
“Maybe.”
“Have you ever been to a yoga class before?”
“Of course I have.” That was a total lie. But I would bend over backwards for Cassie—literally, if I had to. Besides, it was just stretching. Sure, it was “power” stretching, but how hard could it be? I could consider it a supplement to my anatomy class.
“Okay, hot shot. See you there just before eight. Be prepared to sweat.”
“I’m not exactly out of shape, you know.” I swam or ran most days, and lifted a few times a week as well. Besides, sweating with her was becoming my new favorite hobby.
She said something about my shape that verged on indecent, and when we got off the phone, I walked awkwardly back to my apartment.
* * *
It wasn’t my fault her ass was right in front of me. I was just making my way down the hall to the multipurpose room in the gym.
She was the one bent over the water fountain in a pair of yoga pants. With one hand, she twisted her hair to hold it up while she operated the fountain with the other. My mouth went dry as she stretched her neck, and I moved behind her in line for the fountain.
“Watch it,” she said sharply, spinning around as I got close to her. “Oh, hi.”
Her lips were pink and wet, reminding me of other mystical places. Unable to resist, I bent down to kiss the one pair of lips that I was allowed to kiss in public. Her eyes widened and her blush bloomed.
Neither of us was used to this kind of public display of affection. It surprised me how easy it was for me, but she still startled like a deer in headlights every time I did it. So I reined it in. As difficult as it was, I was trying my hardest to keep the ball in Cassie’s court. But I still had to keep my eye on the ball.
“You ready to get your ass handed to you?” She led me toward the door of the studio and threw her bag against the wall.
“My ass is in your hands.”
Her smug gaze traveled up and down my body. “Lucky me.” Then her big brown eyes latched on to mine as she pulled down her pants.
Sweet baby sun salutations, she was wearing little booty shorts underneath. The only thing sexier might have been seeing her in my boxer briefs.
I looked around. Shouldn’t she be using a changing room or my apartment or something? A few other people were also stripping down, though. Seemingly unconcerned for her own modesty or my mental health, she peeled off her shirt to reveal a sports bra. Oh shit.
“You’re sweating already, Will. Are you sure you’re in good enough shape for this class?” she teased, taking the hair elastic off her wrist and whipping her hair up into a ponytail bun thing on top of her head.
“Afterwards we’ll go back to your room and I’ll show you my shape.”
She grinned and looked down. “Maybe sweatpants weren’t the best choice for hot yoga, Will.”
I willed the tent in my pants to go down as she grabbed mats for both of us. She snapped hers out to unroll it, but it took me two tries since I was a guy—I didn’t even know how to change a roll of toilet paper, much less a yoga mat. Cass threw a towel down beside me like a challenge.
“You better go fill up your water bottle,” she nagged.
“Seriously, Cassie, I can handle this. It’s yoga.” Sure, the room was warm, but it was a nice change from the November wind chill outside.
She rolled her eyes as she bent her body into a warm-up stretch. “It’s your funeral.”
Forty minutes later, I was mentally composing my last will and testament.
“I’m dying,” I gasped.
“Don’t be so dramatic. You’re in great shape,” she mocked me. She was bent in half at the waist, her arms laced behind her knees and her head hung upside down between her legs. Her ass was high and tight, and a band of sweat ran around her midsection below her breasts.
My hamstrings felt like they were about to snap as I tried to deepen the pose. I grimaced at the twinge at the back of my knees, but after the first touchy-feely twenty minutes of the class, I was determined to avoid the instructor’s “modifications”.
Rodney’s hands were gentle, but he was still a handsy motherfucker. “Breathe into it,” he kept droning. By half an hour in I was ready to give him an impromptu tracheotomy with my water bottle for “breathing into”.
Meanwhile, my pants and t-shirt were sticking to me like cotton candy, and my hair was drenched. I think even my ears were dripping. Cassie was clearly also hot, but somehow the perspiration darkening the crotch of her shorts and rolling down her cleavage just made her, well, hotter. Whereas I felt like I was being braised like a rack of ribs.
“When I die… say nice shit about me, ‘kay?” I wheezed. My mouth felt like I’d swallowed sand. I’d run out of water ten minutes before, but I’d be damned if I was going for a refill like a pussy.
She popped up from a plank and stretched her arms high overhead, sticking her tits out as her back arched. “Sure,” she said to the ceiling. “I’ll even carry your cremated ashes around in a little travel shampoo bottle so you’re always with me.”
“That’s… disgusting.” But kind of cute, too.
“Good job, everyone,” praised Rodney. “Now we’re ready to cool down. Lie down on your mat in corpse pose for Savasana.”
“That won’t be hard,” I muttered.
Cassie chuckled beside me. I flopped onto my back, my arms and legs akimbo. My heart rate slowed with Rodney’s low, musical recommendations to press my spine into the floor and breathe through my eyelids.
Every part of my body felt exhausted but energized at the same time, but he must have been trained in some kind of yoga hypnosis thing, because when I came back to myself, the room was empty and Cassie sat watching me, hugging her knees to her chest.
“You fell asleep.”
“Holy shit.” Really?
“Namaste.” With her palms pressed together at her sternum, she bobbed her chin down and giggled. Little tendrils of damp hair curled around her pink face, the messy dark knot flagging on top of her head. She hadn’t changed yet, her bare arms now wrapped around her bare legs like an unadorned Cassie pretzel—with salt.
“Okay, you win. Yoga is hard,” I admitted.
“Told ya.” As she unfolded herself to kneel on the mat on her hands and knees, I hardened, too.
“You were right, I was wrong.”
She grinned. “It’s just stretching, right?” She rolled her back like an inchworm, arching and curving sinuously, back and forth. I wanted nothing more than to string up a hammock in the small of her back and spend a summer there.
“Ooof!” She straddled me, catching me by surprise.
She landed right over my waist, the damp vee between her legs pressed into
the sliver of skin between where my shirt had ridden up and my sweats hung on my hips. Fucking hell, I could feel how hot and wet she was. Her sweat mixed with her unique, musky scent, and it went straight to my cock like some kind of olfactory Viagra. Damn pheromones.
“Where’d everybody go?” I asked, my hands reflexively going to her hips as she shimmied on top of me.
“Last class in here for the night.” She shivered a little as my thumbs traced along the dent of her hips. “We’re all—oh, I love your hands—alone.”
“Do you remember what happened last time we showered together?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded shyly. My dick was rock hard and aching for her. I fought the urge to pull her down on me hard and grind against her, instead forcing my hands down onto the mat.
I wanted her. I wanted to kiss her until she was breathless. I wanted to see just how strong and flexible yoga had made her. I wanted to find out if her nipples tasted salty from sweat and if her clit had plumped up from those tight little shorts. I wanted to fuck her right into corpse pose.
But I wanted her to make the first move. I knew I’d come on too strong before but as sexy as her self-discovery was, I was just the guide, not the explorer. Fuck, I was happy to be that. I would program the GPS and provide a back-up map and guidebook. I’d even hold up a fucking sign like a dorky walking tour group leader in Europe, but she had to decide which sights to see.
“Will?” She leaned over, her hands pressed against the floor on either side of my head. Heat radiated from her skin, shimmering toward me like a desert oasis.
“Yeah?”
“Wanna get naked with me again?”
I sure hope my heart and mind appreciated this sacrifice, because my dick wasn’t going to be too happy with me. My hands curled into fists, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked her.