by Laura Avery
The anticipation was killing me, my body wanted him to crush his lips against mine, to kiss me in a way that no man ever had. I opened my mouth to tell him that he had to stop, to let him know I wasn’t here for that, but I found myself saying something else entirely. “I don’t normally look like this so if you’re thinking…”
He traced his large hand down my back and brought it to the front of my body, slowing pushing back and forth over my stomach. “You don’t normally look like what?” He asked softly, not bothering to move his lips before he sunk his hand into my jacket and pushed it open roughly.
I gasped and clung to his body tighter. “I-I- I don’t normally look this… sexed up.” I cringed at the stuttered words that came out of my mouth. God, I was so pathetic. Why couldn’t I just form a normal sentence for once in my life? For once when it actually mattered.
Nathan let out a soft laugh and then glanced downward, taking in my tight black dress and ample curves. It immediately made me self-conscious. I knew I wasn’t as skinny or pretty as the girls he was used to having his way with. I started to shake under his gaze in spite of myself.
He pushed a piece of hair behind my ear. “Do I make you nervous, Hannah?”
“Yes,” I whispered without thinking.
I could feel the satisfaction playing across his lips, he was enjoying the fact that he had an effect on me, getting off on the fact that he was able to do things to my body no one else could. “Do you want me to kiss you, Hannah?”
No.
Yes.
Fuck.
I nodded.
“You have to say it.”
“Yes.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice, Nathan plastered his lips on top of mine hungrily, devouring every inch of me, and fireworks took off between my lips. If I thought I had been turned on before the feeling of Nathan’s tongue making its way into my mouth was enough to set me over the edge and I felt the wetness between my legs start to flow freely.
I moaned softly against his mouth and the sound only aided him more, his tongue pushing all the way back into my mouth as I clung to his shirt so tight my knuckles must have been white.
He moved his mouth off mine too soon, moving his way down my neck as he started to suck and nibble there. His hand was between my legs suddenly, tracing small circles around the inner part of my thighs. “I want your panties,” he rasped in my neck in between more sucking.
He wanted my what? Was he crazy? I opened my mouth to tell him there was no way in hell he was getting my…. My neck snapped to the side, causing my eyes to close and roll back into my head as he continued to kiss me.
“Hannah,” he sounded so husky and out of breath. “Give them to me,” he declared. It wasn’t a question; he wasn’t asking me if he could have them, he was telling me he wanted them.
“Now,” he said firmly when I didn’t answer.
I found myself pushing my legs further apart and sliding my hand up my dress as I slid my simple white panties down my thighs. Under any other circumstance, I might have been humiliated by how simple they were but I was too turned on to care. Nathan pushed them the rest of the way down slowly, sliding them over my knees and running his hand over the back of my leg as he pulled them over my ankle and toward the front of his mouth.
He inhaled swiftly and then lunged his mouth on top of mine again. And then his hand was running up the back of my dress, squeezing my ass hard and rough. He took my hand and pressed it toward his crotch, showing me how hard he was. “You see what you did to me, Hannah,” he whispered into my ear.
I ran my hand back and forth over his pants a few times, taking in how large his cock felt. I had done that? I had made him that hard? The thought thrilled me for a second and I couldn’t help but think about how bad I wanted to touch it, how bad I wanted to feel it between my fingers.
But then she popped into my head.
The girl who had been inside, the girl who had been stroking Nathan through his jeans less than twenty minutes ago. What the hell was I doing? Is this who I had become? So desperate for some attention that I was willing to degrade myself to one of Nathan Cummings fangirls?
I shook my head and pushed him away from me. “I can’t.” My eyes were wide and I could feel myself gasping, struggling to regain my composure from the roller coaster of a ride my body had just been on. “That’s not what I want.”
"Really?" He glanced down at his hardness. "That's a first."
I flushed.
Nathan kept his distance, his breathing heavy as he ran his hand back and forth across his neck. It satisfied me that he looked just as turned on as I felt. “I know what a girl like you wants, Hannah, and I can’t give it to you.”
Excuse me? I crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighed and moved closer again. “It means you want the same thing all the other girls on this campus want. You want me to tell you that you’re going to be different than everyone else, that I’m going to make you mine tonight and every other night for the rest of your damn life but that’s not going to happen.”
My mouth hung open. Was he joking right now? “You’re a pig!”
He shook his head. “And if I told you a bunch of lies I would be an asshole who never called you again, at least this way I’m being honest.” He ran his hand up and down my shoulder. “I can’t be that guy for you, I’m never going to be that guy for anyone, I’m not made that way.” He pushed his lips into my hair. “But if you want to forget all that, if you want to live right here and right now,” he whispered into me heavily, “then, Hannah, I can take your body to places you’ve never been before. I can make you scream in ways you never have.”
Ugh! Did that line actually work for him?
Suddenly, all the overwhelming feelings of flattery and hotness were gone from my body and the only thing I had left was an overwhelming need to slap the smug look away from his face. “You’re the biggest jerk on the planet, Nathan Cummings!” I pushed my hands into his chest roughly, trying to send him flying backward. “Do you think every girl on this campus wants to have sex with you?”
“Well, duh.” He smirked, unaffected by my outburst. “Can you not throw a tantrum in the middle of the street, Hannah? I mean, really, it’s unbecoming.” He stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and rocked back and forth on the back of his heels.
I laughed sharply. “I hate to break it to you, superstar, but I have no interest in being another notch on your belt.” He was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe I had allowed myself to get caught up in his seduction for more than five seconds.
“Really?” He raised his eyebrows. “Because you sure seemed like it a second ago.”
I lunged forward and pushed the piece of paper I had been clutching into his chest roughly. “Here! Sign this!” I moved away from him and narrowed my eyes. “And then I’ll be on my way! Never having to see your smug face again!”
“What’s this?” Nathan looked amused as he unfolded the paper. “If you want an autograph I can get you something better, a nice headshot of me in my uniform, perhaps.” He frowned as he read the words typed in little black letters across the paper. “A print release?”
“That’s right, superstar,” I spat out at him. “I came here so you could sign that. A research paper on you is 40 percent of my English grade and I can’t get started without your permission.” I crossed my hands over my chest. “So, why don’t you go ahead and sign it so I can get the hell out of here!”
“A release?” Nathan sounded completely thrown. “So, let me get this straight. You didn’t come here to try and hook up with me?” He glanced down at the paper again, scanning the contents. “You came here so that I could sign off on me being the subject of your class project?”
“That’s right,” I told him happily.
The realization sent anger into his eyes for reasons I couldn’t fully understand. Was the idea that a girl didn’t approach him with the intent of stripping her clothes for him reall
y that earth-shattering to a guy like him?
“Forget it,” he said, annoyance laced his tone. “I’m not signing shit!”
“You have to!”
“Actually, I don’t have to do anything.” He shook his head. “Why the fuck would I? Are you crazy? It says here the Westfield Times might pick it up; like I trust you to write anything half decent about my life.”
“It says right there you have to approve the final piece before anything is published!”
He smirked. “Sorry, babe, but the only thing I plan on signing tonight is your virgin pussy with my tongue.” He pushed forward and stuck the paper back at me. “If that’s something you’re interested in then you let me know, otherwise, you’re dismissed.”
My mouth hung open. My virgin pussy? I was dismissed? Who the heck did he think he was? “Fuck off!” The words were out of my mouth before I could fully grasp what it was I had said. And then, for the second time that night, I took off on Nathan Cummings, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the street.
And later that night, when I’m back at my dorm, tucked into my bed safely and just about to drift off to sleep, it finally crept into my mind that Nathan Cummings still had my panties.
Chapter Three
NATHAN
Fuck off.
Fuck off, that was what the dark haired girl with the pale skin had spat at me last night before she ran off into the darkness, leaving me alone in the middle of the street. It was the second time she had taken off on me without any kind of warning and it was starting to piss me off.
I was used to women running toward me. But running away from me? That was a first.
I mean, who the fuck did she think she was? Talking to me like that? There were thousands of girls at Michigan State and I could fuck every one of them seven ways to Texas if I wanted to. Hannah should have been the last thing on my mind, especially a full morning later.
Still, there was something about her.
It was more than just her body, even though she clearly didn’t know what she had. She moved like she had something to be ashamed of; as if she had nothing to feel sexy about. She was thicker than the girls I was used to, thick thighs and an ass so full the tight dress she was wearing last night could barely cover it.
It was a real body.
A body only a real man would know what to do with.
And me? Well, fuck. I was definitely all man.
It was more the look on her face when I was touching her, though. Her brown eyes had barely been able to stay open they were so shocked. Her body shook under me it was so fucking turned on. Almost like no one else had ever touched her before. The thought alone thrilled me.
It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a while.
She was pure.
She was a challenge.
And I loved to fucking play.
“Nathan, are you even listening to me?”
I pushed the thoughts of Hannah out of my head and turned to my father. The last thing I needed to be doing was thinking about some chick that had gotten my dick hard for twenty seconds last night. Even if I had enjoyed the feeling of making her feel something for once in her boring life, Hannah wasn’t my problem. The idea of getting caught up in anything resembling a relationship was horrifying to me. Especially, with a girl like Hannah, who I’d met once and was already a total pain in my ass.
I pushed my fingers tighter into the football in my hands and pulled my arm back, arching it perfectly and sending it flying over my shoulder into the end zone with little effort. The feeling wasn’t the same at 6 AM with my father breathing over my neck as it was when I did it with thousands of fans screaming my name under bright lights but it was still pretty fucking cool.
“Not really,” I admitted, grabbing another football off the standing shelf next to me.
“I said,” my father seethed, trying not to show me how frustrated he was with my lack of focus. “I think you’re losing speed. I was watching the game tape back from last weeks game and you looked like a snail going across the field.”
“Losing speed? That’s impossible.” I scoffed.
“Still,” my dad said sternly. “You should pick your training schedule up again. The NFL isn’t going to take you seriously if you don’t give them a reason to.” He let his dark eyes land on the football in my hands again. “How long were you in the weight room before I got here this morning?”
I sighed and tossed the ball onto the ground. “Not that it’s not always a pleasure, dad,” I said sarcastically. “But is there a reason you showed up at my morning work out at the crack of dawn?”
“Can’t a father just visit his son? I was in the neighborhood.”
“In the neighborhood 500 miles from home? Right.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you want, dad? The sooner you tell me, the sooner you can get out of here and I can work on my… speed.” I smirked.
His tone was clipped for half a second but he recovered quickly, putting his hand on my shoulder and pushing me off the field toward the sideline. “Well, now that you mention it, I did need to talk to you about something.”
“Shocker.”
“Richard had a shareholder meeting last night.”
Richard, my grandfather. He was the majority owner of the sports drink and energy bar franchise his father had started from the ground up when he was just a college kid. Probably never imagining it would go on to be worth more than 500 million dollars. I winced at the mention of my grandfather’s name, my families business was the last thing I wanted to talk about, especially when every time it came up all it did was cause fucking drama.
“So? He has shareholder meetings all the time,” I told him, already bored.
“This one was about you,” my father announced eagerly.
I froze, already dreading where he was going with this. “How do you know?”
“I know,” he told me, waving off the question. “Apparently, your grandfather is finally ready to move forward with his retirement, he’s finally ready to draw up the papers and put a time frame on this whole mess.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest and chuckled, eyes identical to mine trained on my face. “About time, the old bag can barely get around anymore.”
I looked away from him and glanced out at the empty bleachers that seemed to stretch out in front of me for miles. “How long?” I found myself asking the question even though I knew the answer wasn’t going to satisfy me no matter what it was. I felt like it was a death sentence rather than the chance of a lifetime.
“Four years.”
I snapped my head around. “I’ll still be in the NFL.”
My father frowned like that wasn’t an issue. “Um, so what?”
Of course, it wasn’t an issue to my father. What the fuck did he care what I was doing when my grandfather decided it was time for me to take over his company? As far as he was concerned I wouldn’t own it for more than a month anyway. The plan had been in place since I was 13, play the part of the perfect grandson, get the company in my grips and then completely blindside my grandfather by signing it right over to my father once it was mine, leaving him in control.
My grandfather had always hated my father, or at least that was what he told me. It was easy to believe when I was younger but now that I was older the stories were becoming more and more confusing. After my mom passed my dad had blown through the money she left behind quickly and we had both been living on the trust my grandfather gave me since. But it wasn’t enough, my father wanted more, he wanted the power and satisfaction of taking what he thought belonged to him.
It was easy to get on board when I was just a kid but now that it was getting closer disgust had been starting to creep into my bones about it. The truth was that I could care less about the money, and it was probably easy for me to say that since I had it, but lately the only thing that made me happy was throwing that ball down the field every Saturday night. That was what I wanted my life to me; that was who I wanted to be.
Sometimes I just
wished I had a normal family along for the ride.
“This is what we have been waiting for your whole life.” My father grinned.
No, it’s what you’ve been waiting for.
“Dad, can we talk about this later?” Like never. “Four years is a long time.”
My father’s teeth chattered slightly. “That’s the thing. Um, the meeting was a little more than just a formality. Apparently, some of the shareholders are worried about your image.”
I rolled my eyes. “What fucking image?”
“That image,” my father growled at my dirty mouth. “There’s a new picture of you in the newspaper every week, Nathan, each time with a different skinny blonde plastered to your lips.”
“You do realize I’m a football player, right? And that I’m in college.” I gestured toward the sideline to where a group of girls were giggling and waving at me. “There are groupies everywhere, I can’t exactly help it.” I shot the girls a wink and they erupted into another fit of laughter.
It was almost too easy.
“I know, I get it, Nate, trust me.” He followed my gaze and sighed. “I just think it would be a good idea for you to tone it down a little bit, just until the end of the season when your grandfather signs the papers. Once we have it in writing and it’s legalized we won't have anything to worry about.”
He said it like shaking off sports groupies was a walk in the park.
“Anything else? Want me to cure world hunger while I’m at it?”
His jaw tensed. “It’s a month or so, Nate, I hardly think it’s a lot to ask of you considering everything I’ve done.” He moved closer to me, putting his hand on my shoulder and getting a look of control in his eyes.
My body stilled immediately and I traced my eyes on his. Was he really bringing it up? Really going there? We never brought it up, never talked about it. It was a skeleton buried deep in my closet that we had silently agreed a long time ago to leave there without acknowledgment.