Shane lowered his body down onto mine, his hard flesh meeting my naked skin, warming me. He slid a hand down my body and parted my legs, trailing a finger up to the center of my need and sliding inside. I pushed against him, wanting to go fast. I needed him hard inside of me.
I tried to urge him closer, but Shane was too strong. “Please,” I begged.
“Soon,” he promised. “I need to make sure you’re ready for me first.”
He kissed me deep and long as he thrust a second finger into me and stretched me. But it still wasn’t enough.
“Shane,” I whimpered against his lips.
“Shhhh, I’ve got you,” he replied as he trailed his mouth down my neck, licking the sensitive flesh at my throat while his fingers kept stroking me.
I arched toward him as the desire continued to build inside me, wrapping my legs around his hips and urging him towards my core.
“Now,” I pleaded with him.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Now.”
Shane positioned his body and drove deep into me, his dark eyes locked on mine. I stared into them as he thrust over and over again, moving harder each time. I lost track of time. I couldn’t hold a single thought in my head. I could only feel his body meeting mine, us moving together thrust for thrust.
Sweat glistened on his body, and I could feel the breeze against my slickened skin. But I couldn’t look away from him. There was something so different about this time. A bigger connection between the two of us. One that I didn’t want to break by looking away.
Shane locked his hands around my hips and lifted me up to meet his thrusts. He held me so easily, and I felt safe in his arms. Loved and cherished. Desired and ravished.
I felt my muscles start to tighten as I drew closer and closer to release. “So close,” I whispered to him.
“God, me too, Charlotte. I don’t know if I can hold on much longer,” Shane growled.
Pleasure exploded at his words and rocked my body. I shuddered in his arms as my climax hit me, setting Shane off as he stiffened against me. I could feel the heat of his release filling me inside. He still kept pumping in and out as I shivered beneath him, aftershocks bursting over me and taking my breath away.
“So good,” I murmured.
Shane leaned down and captured my lips with his before slowly withdrawing from my body. “Perfect,” he replied.
We just laid there, tangled together for quite a while, enjoying the sense of closeness.
“You said yes,” he whispered into my ear, rubbing the ring that circled my finger.
“I did,” I replied.
“And pretty soon you’ll say I do,” he continued.
“Yes, I will.”
“Mine,” he whispered as he held my body close to his. And I was relieved that I no longer had any doubts about our future together.
Epilogue
Shane
The day had finally come when I get to make Charlotte my wife. The sun was beaming down on me as I waited for the wedding march to begin. I tugged at my collar, not entirely comfortable wearing a tux even if it was my wedding day. It didn’t help that I was feeling a little jittery since I’d hardly seen Charlotte all weekend. Her girlfriends came into town for the wedding and Kaylie had insisted that they had to do a bachelorette party even though Charlotte swore she didn’t want or need one. Kaylie pretty much kidnapped her to make it happen, and then they all slept in late on Saturday. I didn’t get to see her again until the rehearsal dinner, where afterwards her mom had taken the whole no seeing the bride thing way too seriously and swept Charlotte away for the rest of the night.
Glancing around, I was happy to see so many of our family and friends had joined us today. When Charlotte had said she wanted the wedding to be here in the field where I had proposed - where we were going to build our home and raise our family - I had to admit that I was a little skeptical that she’d be able to pull it off. Boy did she enjoy proving me wrong.
I was standing under a gazebo decorated with a wild array of flowers. Charlotte had always wanted one, so her dad surprised us by having it built for the wedding. Our guests were seated in rows of white chairs with a deep green runner down the center aisle just waiting for Charlotte to march towards me. A huge white tent stood off to the side for the reception that would follow the ceremony, with a giant dance floor in the middle of all the tables.
As the music changed, my attention swung towards the end of the aisle. I watched as Charlotte’s youngest sister tossed flower petals on the ground and as each of her bridesmaids walked towards me, arm in arm with one of my groomsmen. And finally the moment came when Charlotte and her dad moved slowly towards me. She was drop dead gorgeous in her wedding dress, her tits looked like they might pop out at any minute, and each step revealed feet wrapped in fuck-me heels with straps criss-crossed around her ankles. Her pretty red curls were pulled away from her face and her lips begged to be kissed with red lipstick marking them.
“Shane,” she whispered, smiling up at me as her father placed her hand in mine. Everything else faded into the background as I gazed into her green eyes and gripped her hand in mine.
“You ready to become my wife, sugar?” I asked in a teasing tone, hoping to get a little smile out of her as I watched tears well in her eyes. Her emotions have been all over the place lately with all the stress from planning the wedding.
“Absolutely!” she sighed as she flashed a smile at me and we turned so the ceremony tying us together for life could begin.
“You’ve got to eat something,” I whispered to Charlotte as I watched her sliding food across her plate during the reception. So far, she’d barely touched anything except for a few nibbles of bread and a couple sips of champagne and they were already clearing the plates.
“I will. I promise,” she replied with a tilt to her lips as though she found my concern funny.
“Don’t think for a second that I haven’t noticed you’ve lost weight. I let it slide because I knew how focused you were on making today special, but that ends here and now. You’re my wife, and it’s my job to take care of you,” I reminded her, lifting a bite to her mouth.
“Just you wait,” she muttered under her breath before closing her lips over the fork.
“Wait for what?” I asked, confused when she just pointed at her mouth like she couldn’t answer me since she was eating. And then she gestured at the stage where the band was trying to get everyone’s attention so we could kick off the dancing with our first dance as a married couple.
“I’ll let it drop for now, but you will eat something tonight even if I have to shove cake down your throat instead of mashing it into your face later,” I warned her while I led her to the dance floor as they began to play “I Cross My Heart” by George Strait.
It was the song Charlotte’s parents had danced to at their wedding and she’d insisted that it had to be ours too. I didn’t have the heart to tell her no since it meant so much, but I did have a little surprise in store for her as well. When the song died down and she stepped away from me, there were tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I pulled her close again as the band announced that the groom had a special request before they began to play “I Could Not Ask for More” by Sara Evans. The song meant everything to me because while we were dancing to it at our senior prom Charlotte had finally told me she loved me. I couldn’t let tonight pass by without dancing with her again while this song played knowing she was now my wife.
I whispered along in her ear, and as I told her that I couldn’t ask for more, Charlotte took my hand from her waist and placed it over her stomach. “You might not have to ask for more, but I’m going to give it to you anyway. You’re going to be a daddy in about seven months, Shane.”
I stopped abruptly as her words sunk in. “A daddy?” I asked in a whisper, almost afraid to hear her response and find out that I imagined it.
“I wanted to wait and tell you later tonight when we were alone
, but I just couldn’t hold out any longer. I know you had no idea when you planned this dance, but you gave me the perfect moment to share my news with you.”
Everything suddenly clicked into place. The mood swings and weight loss weren’t from planning our wedding. She wasn’t drinking anymore because she was carrying my baby. “And you’re okay with this?” I asked, worried that it was too soon for her.
“I’m better than okay, Shane,” she said, squeezing my hand.
“Shit, I better get moving on our house then,” I realized. As she giggled in response, I picked Charlotte up and twirled her around as I shouted at the top of my lungs, “We’re having a baby!”
IV
Outside the Box
Prologue
Luka
As I rolled over in bed, I reached out for Kat and came up empty. The room was dark, but something had woken me up from a deep sleep. I was exhausted from the trip to her school straight on the heels of packing up my dorm room and heading home for the summer. We’d gotten out a week before she did, so I’d decided to surprise my girl by coming down to help her pack her things. I felt like it was the least I could do because the strain in our relationship was entirely my fault.
Kat and I started dating our junior year of high school. It shocked the shit out of everyone at first since we’d known each other all our lives because our parents were close friends. She was the girl next door for me, so we’d grown up together and never really thought of each other that way until one day when she’d run into me in the hallway at school. Her body slammed into mine and my dick finally took notice of her. She’d grown up from the little girl I’d played with as a child.
Things were great between us in part because we knew each other so well. I didn’t put up with any of her bullshit like her other boyfriends had done, and eventually everyone realized that we were solid. We applied to the same schools, and then all our plans flew out the window when I was offered a full ride to Blythe College. I’d lucked out when their hockey coach caught one of my games at a local tournament and was impressed with my skills. He’d come to see one of my teammates who wasn’t interested because he had plans to play in the juniors first since he really wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps and make it to the NHL. As long as he was there, Blythe’s coach talked to my coach, who arranged a sit-down with him and my parents. I liked what he had to say, so we took a trip to the school to check it out. The guys on the team had good things to say about Coach, which impressed me. He’d earned their respect, and that wasn’t an easy thing to do with hockey players.
The campus was cool. The school was smaller than the ones Kat and I had already applied to. She was looking forward to the big university experience, but it just kinda seemed like an extension of high school to me because so many of our classmates would be there too. When they offered me the scholarship, it was impossible to say no.
My parents had immigrated to Chicago from Russia before I was born because they wanted their children to have the American dream. I was the first to attend college in my family, and if I could do it for free and leave the money my parents had scrimped and saved for me to attend for my brothers to use, then hell yes I would do it. Unfortunately, that meant that Kat and I had been doing the long-distance relationship thing for the last three years since she refused to even consider coming to Blythe with me.
So here I was, in her sorority house, in her bed, with no idea where she’d wandered off to. I pulled my phone off the bedside table and realized that it was barely past three o’clock in the morning. Where the hell is Kat?
I rolled out of her bed and yanked my jeans up. No way was I going to leave her room in my boxers with her friends around. As I walked to the door, I noticed that the window was open. Maybe she got warm since she isn’t used to sleeping with me?
I walked over and was about to pull it down because it wasn’t safe for her to keep it open when her room was on the ground floor of the house when I noticed that her screen was popped out. And then I heard her giggle coming from outside followed by a moan that I was intimately familiar with. One that should be reserved for me and only me because it meant that she was turned on. What the fuck is going on here?
I leaned closer so I could peek outside. Her room faced the small parking lot where I had parked my car. There was a red Mustang parked next to it now with the engine running. The windows were fogged and cracked open. I heard a grunt and Kat’s low moans again as the car began to rock. And then it dawned on me—my girlfriend was in that car, having sex with another guy, knowing that I was right inside her room, asleep in her bed. How fucked up is our relationship that she would pull something like this?
I grabbed my shirt from the floor and shoved my phone into my pocket. I glanced around the room to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything behind before heading to the door—which I found locked. My head swiveled to the window as I realized that the screen was popped out because Kat had climbed out the fucking window for her hook-up. I guess my impromptu visit had put a crimp in her plans for the evening and the surprise was on me instead.
I walked over and put the screen back in, pulled the window closed, and locked it. I made sure the front door to the house was locked too before I walked to the parking lot. Kat’s cell phone was still in the room, so she was going to have to wake the house up in order to get back inside. Let her explain what the fuck she was doing outside in the middle of the night with no way to get back in.
As I stalked over to the Mustang, I could hear the change in Kat’s breathy moans that signaled she was close to coming. I figured I might as well put a stop to that too, so I banged on the car door to interrupt them.
“Oh, God!” she gasped as her eyes locked with mine through the cracked window.
The guy who was fucking her must not have heard me because he thought that meant she was even closer. “That’s right, my naughty kitty Kat. Come for me,” he groaned.
She pushed on his shoulders, trying to get his attention. “Luka,” she whispered, her eyes welling with tears. “No. No. No, it’s not what you think.”
I chuckled darkly because it was pretty damn difficult for this to be anything else but what I thought it was. “Really, Kat? So you didn’t climb out the fucking window to meet up with this guy for sex in a car in the goddamn parking lot?”
She was still pulling her clothes back on as she climbed out of the car. The dude she was just banging didn’t even need to bother since he still had his jeans on and had only bothered to unzip so he could pull his cock out to fuck my girlfriend.
“Who the fuck is this, Kat?” he asked, looking confused.
“If you’d asked me last night, I would have said her boyfriend from back home. Now? Well now I think it’s safe to say I’m her ex-boyfriend,” I answered for her seeing that Kat was just standing there with a blank look on her face.
“How long have you had a boyfriend?” the guy asked. “I thought you didn’t do boyfriends—only friends with benefits and one-night stands?”
And my heart plummeted even further. Because, apparently, my faithful girlfriend, who was completely devoted to me whenever we were together, was the campus slut when we were apart.
"Four years," I growled out. "She's been my girlfriend for four fucking years."
"Shit, man," the guy said, holding his hands up. "I swear to God I didn't know she had a boyfriend."
"Yeah, that's pretty damn clear," I muttered, clenching my fists.
I wanted to beat the shit out of this guy for fucking my girlfriend, but it wasn't his fault. It was hers. And I couldn't hit her, so there wasn't really anything I could do except leave.
As I peeled out of the parking lot, the only thought in my head was that I was lucky as shit that we hadn’t had sex last night because I probably would’ve been puking my guts out right about now. This situation was totally fucked up, but I felt some relief knowing that we hadn’t been together since we’d seen each other at spring break.
Chapter 1
; Aubrey
Moving into the dorm for my senior year didn’t hold the same excitement as it had twelve short months ago. Things had changed incredibly over the last year. Lexi wasn’t going to be my roommate because she was moving into an off-campus apartment with Drake. Somehow, he’d convinced both her and her dad that it was the best idea since sliced bread. I had no idea how he’d managed that feat except that he loved my best friend something fierce and wasn’t afraid to show it. Once he’d put his ring on her finger this summer after all that craziness with her ex, he’d told her that there was no way in hell they were going to live apart from each other during the school year. So here I was, moving into a single so that I didn’t have to worry about who I’d get paired up with at the last minute because I’d found myself without a roommate.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t throwing myself a big pity party, and I was really happy for my bestie. Drake and Lexi had even offered to let me stay in their spare bedroom instead of in the dorm by myself, but I would rather be on my own than listen to them screw like bunnies all year when I was well into a very long dry spell myself. It was a self-imposed one, but I still didn’t need that in my face day in and day out. It was super weird to find myself firmly single when Lexi was all loved up and Jackson was so committed to Kaylie that he’d moved to New York so she could chase her dreams. My whole college life before last year had been spent with me having boyfriends, Lexi completely oblivious to guys, and Jackson banging his way through campus with one-night stands. It’s amazing how quickly things can change, especially when your heart is involved.
I couldn’t help but wonder if my own heart would ever get involved. I’d had my fair share of relationships in high school and here at college—and then some. But if I was honest with myself, I’d admit that I don’t think I’d ever truly engaged my heart in a single one of them. Which is a little odd when you think about it since I had the very best example of what a loving relationship looked like in my parents. They were undoubtedly head over heels in love with each other even after all these years. So why hadn’t I ever gotten further than a schoolgirl crush or some serious lust with the guys I’d dated?
The Blythe College Complete Series Box Set Page 43