by Becker Gray
Nothing hiding how tight his muscle-curved ass looked in his school trousers.
He idly loosened his tie as his other hand dug in his bag and pulled some glossy pictures free. “Tell me what you think,” he said, pushing them across the table. The loosened tie made it so that I could see his throat—strong and male and oh-so-lickable.
I thought about how it would feel to have my lips against his neck. To suck the skin there until he moaned, until he growled.
Then I flushed.
“Iris?” he said. “Did you hear me?”
I gratefully took the excuse to think about something that wasn’t kissing him and snagged the pictures. “Yeah. Sorry, I was just thinking about the project.”
Keaton braced his palm against the back of his neck. “Yeah, so. Uh. About that.” He nodded at the pictures, and I suddenly understood that he was nervous. The fidgeting. The hesitancy in his voice.
Keaton Constantine, god of the school, was worried about showing these to me.
And with renewed interest, I looked down.
The pictures were digital illustrations, all of them. Some incorporating photography, some freehand. And all of them were bright and vibrant and interesting. Even the ones that weren’t perfect showed an understanding of color, of movement, that I never would have expected from a sportsball boy.
I stared down at one in particular; a drawing of a man standing with his back to the observer, his bare feet sinking into the earth, the wind tugging at his suit pants and the matching jacket draped over one arm. Even though he seemed to be standing in some kind of garden, he was looking out to where the sea glimmered in the distance, like a chilly blue invitation.
I raised my eyes to Keaton, who still stood there with his hand hanging from the nape of his neck. He was tense, unreadable. Waiting for me to say something dismissive or hurtful maybe.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. “This is really good, Keaton.”
He relaxed the tiniest amount.
“I’m sorry I assumed you wouldn’t be any good at this stuff, on account of the jockitude.”
“Jockitude,” he repeated, the corner of his mouth curling up ever so slightly. “What a way with words you have, headmaster’s daughter.”
“He’s someone important to you,” I decided.
His smile fell off, replaced by a careful neutrality. He started unbuttoning and rolling up his shirtsleeves—a study in forced casualness. “What makes you think he’s real and not just a figment of my imagination?”
I moved some of the pictures on the table so that they were side by side. “You see this one here? Another person, but the hair is more of an idea of hair and the environment around them is static. Same here. But him? This garden? There’s movement in it—the wind and the churn of the sea—and you can see how it makes him feel. And the hair isn’t just blond; it’s all different shades of gold, like he’s just spent the summer outside. Like you drew him from memory.”
“No,” Keaton said after a minute. “Not from memory. He let me sketch him that day. It was one of the first sketches I ever made, but it took me years to finish painting it in. I couldn’t bear to get it wrong.”
I looked over at him.
He’d come closer as we were looking at the pictures, and I could feel the heat of him burning through my thin uniform sweater and shirt. I could see his giant shadow engulfing mine.
“Tell me about him,” I whispered. It must be his father—or maybe an uncle? An older brother seemed unlikely, and the man in the picture was broad and hale and blond—so not a grandfather.
“No,” he said flatly.
“Is he your father?” I pressed. “Has he seen what you made for him?”
“I’m not talking about this with you,” he said, narrowing his eyes.
“You brought these pictures here for me to look at, Keaton, surely you expected me to—”
“I brought them here for the project,” he said. “That’s it.”
“Keaton—”
I was abruptly lifted off my feet and set on the table, my feet dangling and Keaton leaning in close to my face.
“Stop asking, Iris,” he said in a dangerous voice. “It’s none of your business.”
My entire body thrilled at having him so close. My knees kept him at a respectable distance, but his hands were braced on the edge of the table on either side of my hips, and he was close enough to kiss me.
No. Wait.
I did not want to kiss him.
I didn’t need another visit from Clara.
And he was a dick the last time we kissed.
And he looked at my work without my permission.
And now he was being a super dick. The manhandling of me, the plucking me off my feet and setting me where he liked, as if I were nothing more than a doll for him to play with.
I tried to ignore how hot that idea was.
I tipped my chin up defiantly. “And what will you do if I don’t stop asking, hmm? Tackle me like I’m on your rugby field?”
His eyes dropped back down to my braid, and he reached up to wind the soft end of it around his finger. “Tackling might be in order, Big Red.”
“You wish, asshole.” I made to push him away, but the moment my hands touched his hard body, my brain cut the signal short. I couldn’t think about anything other than how sexy his warm muscles felt through his shirt. About how good it felt to slide my hands up from his ridged torso to his wide chest.
He gave a dark laugh. “Change your mind about something, sweetheart?”
I glared at him. “Screw you.”
But I didn’t pull my hands away. Instead I ran them all the way up his shoulders to his neck, to the place where his dark hair curled ever so slightly behind his ears.
His hair was almost unbelievably soft for a boy’s, and thick enough to make a shampoo model jealous.
I raked my fingernails over his scalp. His eyes closed as a shiver moved through him.
I almost couldn’t help what happened next; I couldn’t help parting my knees. Just a little. But enough for him to notice, even with his eyes closed.
He opened his eyes and stared at the braid still clutched in his hand, and then he stared at my mouth.
“Let me kiss you,” he said urgently.
Bad idea, bad idea.
“No,” I said. “I’m not in the mood for your games right now.”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” he tempted, running a finger over the top of my knee. He didn’t go any farther up, just stayed there at the hem of my skirt, flirting with the edge of the fabric. I could feel every centimeter he traced as if he was branding me with his touch. Etching it, tattooing it.
“Wh-what does that mean?” I asked, my voice trembling a little. He placed his entire hand above my knee now, his thumb curling over my inner thigh, but he didn’t move it. He didn’t try to reach under my skirt.
“It means I’ll make you come,” he said in a low voice, letting go of my braid to put his free hand on my other knee. “Has anyone ever given you an orgasm, Iris? Ever made that pretty pussy happy?”
The word pussy from his lips was like a punch to the chest. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like everything below my navel was on fire. All the reasons why this was a bad idea fled right the hell out of my mind.
“You don’t even know if it’s pretty,” I said nonsensically.
“Oh, it would be. And it would taste even prettier.”
“Taste?” I repeated faintly. I still couldn’t breathe.
His firm lips were tipped up to one side in a smirk, but his eyes were deadly serious. “I know you’d taste amazing, Iris. Let me kiss your mouth, and then I’ll kiss between your legs too.”
The image came unbidden—Keaton’s massive shoulders tucked between my thighs while his sensual mouth explored me. While that lock of hair brushed over his forehead and he used his tongue to stroke—
“We can’t,” I said breathlessly. “We’re in the lab, anyone could see us if they were walking by—”
I was up in his arms before I even finished talking, and then we were moving back towards the darkroom door. Within seconds, we were inside, surrounded by shelves and tables and trays and sinks. Finished photographs hung from lines all around the room like paper ghosts. Some of them were mine. Most of them were mine.
We were bathed in red light. Keaton’s normally blue eyes were a deep, royal purple. I couldn’t stop staring into them.
“Iris,” he rasped. His hands cradled my ass, and my thighs were wrapped around his waist and I was burning up, I was on fire. Every part of me ached for every part of him. “Let me kiss you now. Please.”
My common sense was gone, my reason had fled.
There was only one answer.
“Yes,” I murmured, already leaning forward. “Yes.”
7
Iris
There was a moment—a long, electric moment—when our lips touched, but we didn’t move.
We stayed frozen, him holding me, my arms wrapped around his neck, his firm mouth just barely pressed against mine. It was like neither of us could believe what we were doing, like we were both paralyzed by the sudden, shocking realness of it. This was no longer a fantasy I played in my mind during a restless night, this was no longer a dirty reverie for extra-long showers. This was really happening, this was real life, this was Keaton Constantine gripping my body as he breathed against my lips.
And then the moment deepened, and the kiss became urgent. His lips slotted against mine, moving against them, all as his fingers plumped and squeezed my bottom, all as I panted and squirmed in his arms.
And then his tongue flickered at my lips, inviting me to open—and once I opened for him, it was all over. There was nothing but the hot stroke of his tongue against mine, nothing but our hands everywhere, everywhere, nothing but gasps and pants and groans.
He set me on a table, his mouth moving over my ear and down to my neck while his hands slid under my uniform sweater and started pulling the shirt underneath free of my waistband. Once he succeeded, he slid his hands up my bare back and then back down my spine, over and over again, like touching my skin was the only thing he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
His hands were rough and warm and big, and I wanted them everywhere on me. I wanted them against my breasts, I wanted them possessive and greedy on my waist. I wanted them in my panties, in places no one’s hand but mine had ever been. I wanted him to brand me with his touch and write his name onto my skin with pleasure.
I grabbed one of his wrists and pushed his hand up to cup my breast.
“You sure, Big Red?” Keaton whispered against my mouth. “Because I want it a whole lot. It might scare you how much.”
“Just—please—Keaton—”
He’d already obliged. The moment I said please, he’d palmed my breast, squeezing gently until I moaned. He teased my nipple through the silk of my bra cup while his other hand pulled at the bottom of my sweater.
“Get this thing off,” he grunted. “I need to see you.”
I was too addled with lust to disagree or to remember that my smallish breasts might not be up to scratch. Or to care that Keaton had probably seen half the school population without a shirt and that I might be found lacking. All I cared about was having more, feeling more. More, more, more.
Together, we peeled my sweater off and tossed it on the floor. Then both of us were fumbling with the buttons on my shirt, struggling to get them open, all while we were still trying to kiss and touch each other too.
“Fuck it,” Keaton growled, and he ripped the shirt open the rest of the way, sending two buttons to lonely deaths on the darkroom floor.
I shivered as he pulled back to look at me, to look at my pink silk bra and my exposed stomach.
His eyes—still that magical, eerie purple from the red light—glowed with hunger as he took me in, but when he spoke, his voice was almost soft. Almost wondering. “You have freckles even here,” he whispered.
I flushed as he traced the upper swells of my tits with his fingers, and then I moaned as he replaced his fingers with his mouth, trailing kisses all over my skin. He lowered his mouth and then sucked my hard nipple through the silk.
Jolts of heat traveled from his hot mouth straight to my pussy.
“Oh my god,” I moaned. “Oh my god, oh my god.” As I was losing brain cells by the second, it was all I could manage.
“I’m going to look at them now, Iris,” he said, and his voice was a mix of arrogance and tenderness that I didn’t think I could ever get enough of.
I nodded, but he was already working the silk cups down and freeing my breasts. The cups and underwire underneath them lifted them up and pushed them out, as if they were being presented to him, and the fact that I still had my shirt on made it feel even dirtier somehow.
And the look on his face . . . like he’d just taken a shot of vodka. Like he’d just run across a bed of hot coals.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, his eyes raking over my freckled breasts and their straining, tight little peaks. “Jesus. Iris—I—”
He wasted no more time with words, and instead bent down to take the tip of one past his lips.
I’d never felt anything like his mouth there. Never. It was hot and wet and ticklish and sucking—it was powerful, it made me arch and whimper and twist my fingers in his hair.
“You like that?” he asked. He hadn’t lifted his head, and so his words ghosted across my wet, needy flesh. “You like having your tits sucked on?”
I made a noise that was an awful lot like a whine, and he gave a dark laugh.
“Okay, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll keep going.”
He moved to my other breast, kissing around the pebbled skin, circling its peak, and then finally took it into his mouth, sucking and then fluttering his tongue over the stiffened tip. He scraped his teeth gently along it, and I jumped against him, and then moaned again.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he murmured—almost to himself. “Filthy girl.”
It was then that I noticed he was idly palming his erection as he sucked on me, as if he couldn’t help himself, and that thought was so hot, I couldn’t stand it. The idea that I inspired lust in him, that I could make him hard, that I made him need to come . . .
“Come here, dirty thing,” he said, helping me off the table. I made a noise of complaint that his mouth wasn’t on my breasts anymore, and he laughed that dark laugh again, tugging on my braid and then spinning me around so that I was facing the table and he was standing right behind me.
“You’ll like this, I promise,” he said.
“H-how do you know? I’ve never done it before—oh—” My voice broke as Keaton’s hand found the hem of my skirt and then slid up a thigh to cup me where I was covered in plain, white cotton. I wished I’d worn something sexier, something more adult, but Keaton’s growl as he palmed me sounded anything but disappointed.
His fingertips pressed in a little, finding the place where my clit hid, and I shivered against him.
“You’re right,” he purred. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever done this before, because you’ve never done it before with me. And I’m going to ruin you for any other boy who comes after.”
He pushed with his fingers again, sending frissons of pleasure skating down my thighs and up my spine. “Keaton,” I panted, pushing back against him. I could feel the clothed ridge of his erection against my bottom as I did, and he gave a grunt at the pressure. “Do it—please—just—just go—”
“Go where, Iris?” he whisper-asked, his fingers playing over the elastic edges of my panties now. “Inside these sweet panties? Right up against your skin?”
His actions echoed his words, and he slid his hand down the front of my panties now, his fingers toying with my silky curls, and then with the straining bundle of nerves at the apex of my thighs.
“I—please—” I didn’t even know what I sounded like. Not like myself. Not like Iris Briggs who only had one goal: escape to Paris. I sou
nded like a girl who’d be happy to stay in this darkroom forever, and not to work on photography.
“Ohhh,” Keaton said in mock-epiphany. “I think I know. You want me to—” His fingers went lower . . . and lower . . . “—go somewhere else, don’t you?”
A lazy fingertip pushed past my folds and circled the slick secrets inside. I gasped, slamming my hands down on the table. No one had done this to me, not ever. It had only ever been my own hand, and I never could have guessed how different another person’s touch would feel.
“You want me to go inside, Iris?” Keaton asked in a rough, seductive voice. “You want to feel my finger inside you?”
I nodded vigorously. “Yes, I want that. Please—oh holy shit.”
He’d slid a finger inside of me, giving me a moment to get used to the fullness, gently grinding his palm against my clit as he did.
“How does it feel?” he asked, a hand dropping to my hip. I realized I was grinding back against his hand, riding it and chasing the friction, and he used the hand on my hip to encourage me, guiding me until I was practically fucking his touch.
“Good.” I worked the word out on a long, juddering exhale. My nipples ached in the cool air, and when I looked down, I saw my skirt bunched up near my navel and Keaton’s muscled forearm disappearing into my panties.
I thought I might spontaneously combust.
“Now, my dirty little Iris can take more than one finger, can’t she?”
Already a single finger felt huge. “May-maybe.”
“Tell me to stop if it hurts,” he said soothingly, and then he started working the second finger in. Slowly, carefully, still using his other hand on my hip to urge me against his touch, against the heel of the hand still rubbing against my clit.
And then both fingers were wedged inside me.
I heard him curse to himself when they were both inside, and then he muttered something that sounded like tight, so fucking tight.