Which meant he could probably see almost all of her.
In fact, she knew he could. His eyes stayed so tightly on her face they could have been superglued there. Every word he said about the lights was spoken carefully, haltingly, as though he feared jolting his gaze down. And when she moved in his direction, he seemed to look somewhere just above her head—like walking increased the danger of seeing something he shouldn’t.
Certainly it increased the danger for her. She saw a lot of things she didn’t mean to when he turned and started back toward the locker rooms. His shorts, for example, which were very small and very tight over the high, well-rounded shape of his perfect ass. She could practically see every shift and flex of them, even in this meager light. And if he turned back around—
“Letty, I was just talking to you. Are you cool with that?”
Pringles can, she thought, then wanted to kick herself.
“Yeah, totally. I’m totally cool with it. Totally fine.”
“Really? Because if you want I can go back and look for the switch.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m okay…with this.”
She smiled and nodded.
But probably wouldn’t have done if she’d paid the least bit of attention to what he had just said. He had told her what she then discovered: the women’s locker room was still in darkness. The men’s was the only one lit up, and that meant she’d just agreed to go in there with him. To shower with him and dry herself off with him and get dressed with him—or at least to do those things with him extremely close by.
Too close by, if the locker room was anything to go by. Everything was completely open plan and brighter than the surface of the sun. No banks of lockers partitioned off the place. They just lined the walls and left shy people to fend for themselves.
And the showers…
“I can probably go without a shower.”
He turned as soon as she spoke, brow crumpled in a cross between incredulity and confusion.
She had no idea why, however. He couldn’t even look at her below the chin, never mind anything as intimate as getting under the spray and soaping himself up right next to her.
“Seriously? You don’t want to get all the chlorine out?”
“No, I’m good. You go ahead. I’ll just wait here.”
“I’m not going to look if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, god no, of course not. I mean, why would you?”
“Right. Exactly,” he said, then seemed to pause, considering. Like he knew he’d just done something wrong. And after a second, he got it. He got an implication even she hadn’t really thought about. “Unless you think that I…it’s not that I don’t want to look. Anyone would want to look at those…well you know. No, I just meant I would be a gentleman about it, obviously.”
Those, she thought.
Then had to fight not to panic.
“Oh yeah, yeah I know that. I know that you would be.”
“Cool, okay. I guess…I should just get you a spare towel here and some clothes you can put on…they’re not ideal, but they have to be better than putting on your wet things.”
Or being half naked in front of you for a second longer, she thought.
But of course she didn’t say. He was being so good about not looking at her. There really wasn’t anything to worry about—not even when she slipped her panties off behind the makeshift shield of his draped sweatpants. He was still pretty close by, but he never once gave the impression that he was sneaking a peek at her thighs whenever they edged around the corner of the material.
Oh no, no, no.
No, it was her who wound up doing the peeking.
Though she had no idea how. She thought she was completely occupied with tying knots in the material in order to make the waistband fit her apparently not-so-huge middle. Her eyes weren’t anywhere near him. In fact, she even turned her back to him once the sweatpants were on.
Though maybe that was the problem. She didn’t know where he was when she glanced up again.
She imagined him behind her, with his shorts still firmly on his body.
Instead of completely naked, under the spray of a shower she was now facing.
Of course, she immediately whipped back around. But it was just too late. She had seen Tate Sullivan without any clothes on, no matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise. It was just an elbow and a foot, she told herself, while the image of his bare ass flashed up at the forefront of her mind a thousand times. In fact, it was still flashing up by the time she’d pulled the T-shirt on.
She closed her eyes and it was all she could see—the soap suds slowly trailing over those taut curves, making everything glossy and golden. The glimpse of the dark shape between his legs when he turned a little, heavy looking and as shocking as he had suggested, and most important, fucking private. She was intruding on his privacy in the grossest possible way—a realization that made her cheeks heat. Somehow she was the one who hadn’t behaved like a decent person, both in the swimming pool and here. She had touched him in inappropriate places and ogled his naked body when he assumed she wasn’t looking, and man, that hit her hard in the humiliation center.
Doing all of this was bad enough.
But doing it to Tate, of all people.
She didn’t find him gross at all, but she also didn’t find him attractive. So what was going on here? Was it just curiosity? Surely anyone would wonder about that thick, dark shape between his legs. And his butt was pretty spectacular. It was probably just natural to find yourself hypnotized by it.
Everything was fine here.
Apart from how high she jumped when he suddenly spoke too close to her ear.
“You sure you don’t want to go in?”
“Oh. Yeah. No. Cool. No. No.”
She let out a little laugh.
A really, really unconvincing little laugh.
“Water’s super warm. My shower gel is moisturizing.”
“No, honestly, I just…I think I…just want to go,” she said, thinking mostly of the safe, fully clothed haven of her dorm. Or at the very least, her mind was on avoiding the sight of him tugging on his clothes.
It didn’t even occur to her how she would get there, until he offered to carry her.
Then she remembered her shoes at the bottom of the pool, and briefly flailed out of control.
“No, god, no,” she barked out, so loud he jerked back. He stopped straightening the T-shirt he’d put on, a million explanations for something he hadn’t done on his lips.
She had to cut in quick, before the whole thing turned into a disaster.
“I just meant that we probably don’t want everyone seeing you swoop me out of here in your clothes, after we took a swim together. You know? People will definitely talk then.”
“Oh, I got you, right. That makes sense.” He laughed, but it was an awkward one. And he was blushing, too; god, why was he blushing? “Because for a second there I thought you were afraid, or like creeped out.”
“No, no, not creeped out. Just thinking of your reputation.”
“Hey, I care more about your bare feet than my reputation. Just let me help you out here, okay? If it makes more sense I can just give you a piggyback. What do you think?”
“I guess a piggyback might be better.”
“It totally will. No one can say anything about that.”
He knelt down in front of her, back turned for her to climb up.
Completely innocently, she knew, but being innocent didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Things had gotten weird, and they were only getting weirder.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked, but she had no answer for him.
Saying the image of your cock to fade seemed like a real mistake, in light of of the touching she had done. And lying was out of the question—at that moment, she could barely remember her own name.
Her only real option was just climbing aboard, but when she did everything got so much more intense.
/> He lifted her like she was made of paper, so high and so fast it stole her breath. It made her dizzy—as did everything else about this innocent, friendly piggyback ride. His back seemed super tight to her chest, those big shoulder blades shifting and sliding right where she least wanted them to. And the grip he had on her thighs…it was way too firm. She would probably have bruises tomorrow.
Beautiful bruises, her mind supplied.
Before she quickly changed the subject in her head. It was a little easier to do that now, after all. There were at least ten other things to pay attention to once they were outside. The grounds were so dark and quiet, as though they’d been in there for hours and hours. And when she asked, it turned out they had. It was nearly one in the morning, on a Wednesday night. Everyone was in bed, and it gave an eerie feeling to their journey.
As did his silence.
He was always talking—she realized that then. Sometimes he practically kept up a running commentary on everything and anything, yet here he was as quiet as stone. And it wasn’t because he was exerting himself. He didn’t breathe hard once the whole time. He could have been carrying a backpack full of air for all the physical trouble she seemed to cause him.
But the idea of mental trouble lingered. When she tilted her head a little, she could practically hear his mind going over and over things, in a way that just wasn’t like him. He was easygoing. Happy-go-lucky. He never worried about things the way she did.
Until now.
“Tate, are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You just seem a little…”
Like an ominous statue of yourself.
“I was just thinking what movie we should watch.”
“Oh. Oh. You mean…right now?”
“Well, that’s what you came to get me for.”
“That’s true, I did come and get you for that.”
“Unless you don’t want me in your room so late.”
“No, no why would I…no, that’s cool.”
“You’re in the Haverford Building, right?”
She had the strongest urge to ask him how he knew. But that seemed just as weird as objecting to him being in her room.
Instead she pointed, then wished she hadn’t. Her bare arm brushed his face.
His stubble-bristled, firm-jawed, weirdly tense-seeming face.
“Yeah. You just go past the science block and then—”
“Right, right, right I got it, I got it. The statue of MLK is outside it, yeah?”
“That’s the one. Then it’s the third floor. Don’t worry though, there’s an elevator.”
“Ah, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Feel like I could carry you around forever.”
Her whole body seemed to flush at that, though she had no idea why. It wasn’t an insult. In fact it veered very close to a compliment—one that rang true, too. He was no more tired when he got to her door than he had been when they started out. He didn’t even put her down right away, which gave her a moment of panic.
Someone was going to see eventually, if they were just standing out here with her on his back.
It seemed like a miracle no one had already, despite the time. His footsteps were pretty heavy, and Lydia in particular was a very light sleeper…
“Do you wanna let me unlock the door?”
“Oh shit, yeah. Yeah, go ahead,” he said, and she slid off his back gratefully. Those big hands stopped squeezing high up on her thighs; her front no longer had to endure the heat of his broad back. Everything had returned to the way it should be now between them.
Except for the sexy movie they were now going to watch.
Alone. Together. On her bed. In the middle of the night.
Chapter 13
She let him pick the movie, thinking that would make things easier somehow. Nothing could be misconstrued, at least, that way. He wouldn’t think she meant anything by her choice, whatever it might be. But she forgot that he might mean something with his choice. She watched the heroine trying to clumsily pick up the hero at the start of White Palace, and cringed so hard it felt more like a cramp in her gut. Her cheeks grew hot, in a way that made her grateful for the dim light of her feeble bedside lamp.
Otherwise he would see her face go red and know she understood his point—despite the fact that his point was fucking nonsense. She hadn’t tried to seduce him with all that pool touching. She would never, ever try to seduce him. It was just all a big misunderstanding.
But how to explain that?
“This is even less realistic than Dirty Dancing.”
“Really? You think so? Like, in what way?”
“It just seems like she keeps pushing and pushing. No woman would push a guy that good-looking if he didn’t seem into it. I can’t think of anything more embarrassing.”
She didn’t look at him, but knew he shrugged.
His arm rubbed against hers as he did it.
“Maybe she doesn’t care.”
“I guess not.”
“Maybe she knows he’s actually into it.”
“That could be one explanation.”
“Plus she obviously gets exactly what she was looking for.”
Onscreen, Susan Sarandon was going down on James Spader.
Which to her didn’t seem to back up his point at all.
“Oh yeah, I’m sure she’s having a great time getting absolutely nothing out of this.”
“That’s what this looks like to you? Like she’s getting nothing out of this?”
“Well, in movies they make it look like she is. But I doubt she really would be.”
“You doubt that giving a guy a blow job could be enjoyable for a woman.”
She glanced at him then, just to see if his expression was as incredulous as his voice.
Then had to look back at the screen quickly. If anything, his expression was worse. He had one eyebrow raised, and there was almost no humor in his eyes. This was serious somehow.
Much too serious.
“I don’t know. I mean it’s not really something you do for your own enjoyment. You do it for his.”
“So to you there’s nothing pleasurable about it. Nothing sexy about having a guy at your mercy. Begging you, moaning for you, trying not to push too deep when it gets too good.”
“You do those things?”
The words came out too fast. Too disbelieving, too.
But she just couldn’t stop them. They ripped out of her before she had time to talk it over with her mind, all ragged around the edges and maybe a little breathless. Just enough that he likely heard it, and wondered why. She couldn’t tell him, however. She didn’t know herself.
She only knew that when he started talking again she had the urge to put her fingers in her ears.
“Of course I do those things. Having your cock sucked is fucking amazing,” he said, which was absolutely fine. But then he kept going. He kept going. “The heat and the slickness and her looking up at you as she works it with her hands and lips and tongue. Especially the tongue. The tongue is the best part. Watching it curl right around the—”
“Well, okay, it sounds cool when you put it that way.”
God her voice sounded loud. And too fast again, too.
All her words practically jumbled together.
“I don’t know what other way it could possibly be.”
“How about hold still while I fuck your face? Some guy coming right in your eye? Losing a chunk of hair because he pulled too hard?”
“You’re not serious. Tell me honestly. None of that happened.”
Now his voice was bright with amusement.
But it didn’t make her feel any better.
“All of that happened. To me. More than once.”
“Yeah but after…”
“After what?”
“After he came then he…”
He made a circle with his hand, as though she should know that one thing logically followed on from the other. It was all
completely easy and obvious.
Instead of the hardest quiz she had ever had to get through.
“Then he what? Gave me cab fare?”
“No. No. After that then this happens.”
She glanced at the thing he was pointing at.
Then had to look away again, quick. At her hands, at the bedspread.
At him, as he oh-so-slowly realized what her sudden awkwardness meant.
“This has never happened to you. Holy shit. You’ve never had a guy go down on you.”
“I have had a guy go down on me. I totally have.”
“Are you sure about that? You don’t look sure.”
“Well, maybe not like this.”
“There’s no other way to do it. This is actually the most basic, ordinary way to go about eating pussy.”
“Yeah, but this seems really exciting and sexy and hot.”
“Going down on a girl is really exciting and sexy and hot. Like I said about giving a guy head? Exactly the same principle. You get to see her writhe and shake and push herself against your mouth. Just like that, just like Sarandon is doing. Look at her. Look at her.”
“I am. I am looking,” she said, but she wasn’t, not really.
She was thinking of the shiver that had gone through her when he said look, soft as butter and so oddly tender. And the way that he was looking himself, eyes almost far away.
Like he was seeing Sarandon, but putting someone else in her place.
“Think about how it must feel.”
“Yeah I can…I get that…”
“Think about his tongue slowly easing over her soft folds.”
“Is that…how…is that what you…”
“Uh-huh.”
“And it works?”
Her voice was a whisper now.
But that was okay. His was, too.
It was so low he had to lean close to ask her questions.
He had to meet her gaze, and she had to meet his.
“What works?”
“It makes her…you know. Come.”
“Oh yeah. But you gotta take your time.”
Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1) Page 11