Beautiful Player

by Christina Lauren

  “I like when you’re hungry like this,” I murmured into her skin. “I feel like I can’t get my fill of you. Just like this, against me, under me.”

  “Will . . .” She pushed into me, sliding her hands over my shoulders.

  I could hear the rustle of the sheets as we moved, the slick sounds of our lovemaking, and nothing else. The rest of the world seemed to have fallen away, been put on mute.

  She was quiet, too, staring, fascinated, down at where I moved in and out of her.

  I slid a hand between us, played with her body, loving the way her back arched off the bed, her hands reached above her head, seeking anchor on the headboard.

  Fuck.

  With my free hand, I reached up, pinning her wrists and letting myself dissolve into her, mindless and warm, the rhythm of our bodies working together, rolling and wet with sweat. I sucked and bit at her chest, pressing down on her wrists and feeling the familiar build of my orgasm grip me somewhere between my hips, low in my spine. I jerked over her, going faster and hard, relishing the sounds of my hips slapping her thighs.

  “Aw fuck, Plum.”

  Her eyes opened, burning with understanding and the wild thrill of seeing my pleasure unfolding.

  “Almost,” she whispered. “I’m right there.”

  I circled her clit faster, three fingers flat and rubbing, her little hoarse cries growing louder and tighter, the telltale flush spreading up her neck. She struggled, pulling her wrists apart from my grip in abandon, and then she went off with a sharp cry, hips bucking wild and body coiling and sucking all around me.

  I held on by a fucking thread, moving hard and fast until she went limp and soft, and then let go, rasping, “Coming . . .”

  I pulled out, jerking the condom off and tossing it away before gripping my cock, squeezing as I stroked up my length.

  Hanna’s eyes flamed with anticipation, and she propped herself on her elbows, staring intently down at where my hand flew over my length between us. Her attention, how much she clearly enjoyed watching . . . it overwhelmed me.

  Heat burned up my legs and down my spine and my back arched in a sharp jerk. My orgasm pulsed through me unbelievably strong, tearing a loud groan from my throat as I came. Stuck in my head were images of Hanna, thighs spread under me, skin slick, her eyes open and telling me without words how good it felt. How good I made her feel.

  Pulsing, pulsing, pulsing heat . . . and my entire body let go.

  My hand slowed, and I opened my eyes, dizzy and breathless.

  Her eyes burned, dark gray and fascinated as she ran her fingers over her stomach and stared at my orgasm on her skin.

  “Will.” My name came out of her mouth in a purr. No way were we done here.

  I propped one hand on the pillow beside her head, staring down at her. “Did you like that?”

  She nodded, her bottom lip trapped viciously between her teeth.

  “Show me. Touch yourself for me.”

  She initially looked uncertain, but then it transformed into determination. I watched as she ran her hand down her torso, reaching briefly for my still-erect cock, her fingers first on me and then herself. She slid two fingers down over her clit, arching into her touch.

  I ghosted my hand up her side and over her breast, bending to suck at the tight peak, before telling her, “Make yourself come.”

  “Help me,” she said, eyes heavy.

  “I’m not there when you do this alone. Show me what you do. Maybe I like to watch, too.”

  “I want you to watch while you help.”

  She was still so warm from the friction of our sex; flesh soft and so fucking wet. With my fingers inside and hers out, we found a rhythm—she stroked up as I pushed in—and fuck if it wasn’t the most amazing thing to see her so unchained and intense, alternating between staring down at where I’d come on her and where I was growing hard again between us.

  It didn’t take long to get here there, and soon she was pushing into my hand, her legs pulled up tight to her sides and lips parted as she grew tense, and then fucking exploded with a scream.

  She was beautiful when she went off, skin flushing and nipples tight; I couldn’t help but taste her skin, nibbling the underside of her breast and slowing my hand in her as she came down.

  She took stock of our appearance: covered in sweat and, on her stomach, my orgasm.

  “I think we need a shower.”

  I laughed. “I think you may be right.”

  * * *

  But we didn’t. We started to get up, but then I would kiss her shoulder, or she would bite mine, and each time we would just slide back onto the mattress, until eventually it was nearly eleven in the morning, and we’d both long since given up on the idea of going in to work.

  After the kissing escalated again, and I took her while she was bent over the edge of the bed, collapsing over her, she rolled onto her back and stared up at me, playing with my sweaty hair. “Are you hungry?”

  “A little.”

  She started to get up but I pushed her back down, kissing her stomach. “Not hungry enough to get up yet.” I spotted a pen on her bedside table and reached for it without thinking, murmuring, “Stay still,” as I pulled the cap off with my teeth and pressed the tip to her skin.

  She’d left the window near her bed open a crack, and we listened to the sounds of the city outside as I drew on the smooth skin just beside her hip. She didn’t ask what I was doing, didn’t even really seem to care. Her hands slid through my hair, down over my shoulders, along my jaw. She carefully traced my lips, my eyebrows, down the bridge of my nose. It was the way she might touch me if she were blind, trying to learn how I fit together.

  When I finished, I pulled back, admiring my handiwork. I’d written a fragment of my favorite quote in tiny script, from her hipbone to just above her bare pubic bone.

  All that is rare for the rare.

  I loved the dark ink on her. Loved seeing it in my handwriting even more. “I want to tattoo this on your skin.”

  “Nietzsche,” she whispered. “Overall a good quote, actually.”

  “ ‘Actually’?” I repeated, rubbing my thumb over the unmarked skin below, considering all the things I could put there.

  “He was a bit of a misogynist, but came out of it with a few decent aphorisms.”

  Holy fuck, the brain on this woman.

  “Like what?” I asked, blowing across the drying ink.

  “ ‘Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up,’ ” she quoted.

  Well. I looked up in time to catch her teeth release her lip, her eyes shining with amusement. That was interesting. “What else?”

  She ran a fingertip across the scar on my chin, and studied my face carefully. “ ‘All that glitters is not gold. A soft sheen characterizes the most precious metal.’ ”

  I felt my smile falter a little.

  “ ‘In the end one loves one’s desire and not what is desired.’ ” She tilted her head, running her hand through my hair. “Do you think that one is true?”

  I swallowed thickly, feeling trapped. I was too wrapped up in my own tangled thoughts to figure out whether she was selecting meaningful quotes about my past or just quoting some classic philosophy. “I think it’s sometimes true.”

  “But all that is rare for the rare . . .” she said quietly, looking down at her hip. “I like it.”

  “Good.” I bent to even out one letter, darken another, humming.

  “You’ve been singing that same song the entire time you wrote on me,” she whispered.

  “I have?” I hadn’t realized I’d even made a noise. I hummed a few more bars of it, trying to remember what it was I’d been singing: She Talks to Angels.

  “Mmmm, an oldie but a goodie,” I said, blowing a stream of air on her navel to dry the ink.

  “I remember hearing your band cover it.”

  I looked up at her, searching for her meaning. “A recording? I don’t ev
en think I have that.”

  “No,” she whispered. “Live. I was visiting Jensen in Baltimore the weekend your band covered it. He said you guys always covered a different song at every show so you’d never play it again. I was there for that one.” There was something restrained behind her eyes when she said this.

  “I didn’t even know you were there.”

  “We said hi before the show. You were onstage, adjusting your amp.” She smiled, licking her lips. “I was seventeen, and it was right after you came to work for Dad, over fall break.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering what seventeen-year-old Hanna had thought of that show. It was one I still thought about, even just over seven years later. We had played tight that night, and the crowd had been amazing. It was probably one of our best shows ever.

  “You were playing bass,” she said, drawing small circles with her fingers on my shoulders. “But you sang that one. Jensen said you didn’t often sing.”

  “No,” I agreed. I wasn’t much of a singer, but with that one I didn’t care. It was more about emotion anyway.

  “I saw you flirting with this Goth girl up front. It was funny, how I felt jealous then when I never had before. I think it was because you’d lived in our house, I felt a little like you belonged to us.” She smiled down at me. “God, that night I wanted to be her so bad.”

  I watched her face as she walked through the memory, waiting to hear how this night ended for her. And me. I couldn’t remember seeing Hanna when I lived in Baltimore, but there were a million nights like this, at a bar with the band, some Goth girl or preppy girl or hippie chick up front and, later in the night, under or over me.

  She licked her lips. “I asked if we were meeting up with you later, and Jensen just laughed.”

  I hummed, shaking my head and trailing my hand up her thigh. “I don’t remember what happened after that show.” Too late, I realized how awful it sounded, but the reality was, if I wanted to be with Hanna, she would eventually know the truth of just how wild I’d been.

  “Was that the kind of girl you liked? ‘She paints her eyes as black as night now’?”

  I sighed, climbing up her body so we were face-to-face. “I liked all kinds of girls. I think you know that.”

  I’d tried to emphasize the past tense, but realized I’d failed when she whispered, “You’re such a player.”

  She said it with a smile but I hated it. I hated the tight edge to her voice and knowing that was exactly how she saw me: fucking anything that moved, and now her, in this conglomeration of limbs and lips and pleasure.

  In the end one loves one’s desire and not what is desired.

  And I had no defense; it had been mostly true for so long.

  Rolling closer, she wrapped her hand around my semi-erect cock, stroking up, squeezing. “What’s your type now?”

  She was giving me an out. She didn’t want it to be true anymore, either. I leaned in, kissed her jaw. “My type is more along the lines of a Scandinavian sex bomb named Plum.”

  “Why did it bother you when I called you a player?”

  I groaned, rolling away from her touch.

  “I’m serious.”

  I threw my arm over my eyes, trying to collect my thoughts. Finally, I said, “What if I’m not that guy anymore? What if it’s been twelve years since I was that guy? I’m open with my lovers about what I want. I don’t play anyone.”

  She pulled back a little and looked at me, wearing an amused smile. “That doesn’t make you receptive and deep, Will. No one says a player has to be an asshole.”

  I rubbed my face. “I just think the word ‘player’ has a connotation that doesn’t fit me. I feel like I try harder than that to be good to the women I’m with, to talk about what we’re doing together.”

  “Well,” she said. “you haven’t talked to me about what you want.”

  I hesitated, my heart exploding in a wild gallop. I hadn’t, and it was because it felt so different with her from every other time I’d been with a woman. Being with Hanna wasn’t just about intense physical pleasure; it also made me feel calm, and thrilled, and known. I hadn’t wanted to discuss this because I hadn’t wanted either of us to have the chance to limit it.

  Taking a deep breath, I murmured, “That’s because with you, I’m not really sure if what I want is sex.”

  She pulled away, sat up slowly. The sheets slid off her body and she reached for a shirt at the end of the bed.

  “Okay. This is . . . awkward.”

  Oh, shit. That hadn’t come out right. “No, no,” I said, sitting up behind her and kissing her shoulder. I pulled her shirt from her hands, dropping it on the floor. I licked down her spine, slipping my hand around her waist and sliding up, resting my palm over her heart.

  “I’m trying to find a way to say I want it to be more than sex. I have feelings for you that go way past sexual.”

  She stilled, growing completely frozen. “You don’t.”

  “I don’t?” I stared at her rigid back, my pulse picking up from anger rather than anxiety. “What do you mean I don’t?”

  She stood, wrapping the sheet around her body. Ice slid into my veins, cooling every part of me. I sat up, watching her. “Are you—what are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry. I just—I have some stuff to do.” She walked over to the dresser, began pulling things from a drawer. “I need to get to work.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So I tell you I have feelings and you’re kicking me out?”

  She spun around to face me. “I need to go right now, okay?”

  “I can see that,” I said, and she limped into the bathroom.

  I was humiliated and furious. And I was terrified this was it. Who would have thought I’d fuck it up with a girl by falling for her? I wanted to get the hell out of there, and I wanted to climb out of the bed, pull her back. Maybe we both needed to think about a few things.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I closed the door behind me and took a few deep breaths. I needed some space. I needed a minute to wrap my head around what the hell was going on. This morning I thought I’d been discarded like one of Will’s many conquests, and now he was saying he wanted more?

  What the fuck?

  Why was he complicating this? One of things I loved about Will was that people always knew where they stood with him. Good or bad, you always knew the score. Nothing about him had ever been complicated: sex, no complications. End of story. It was easier when I didn’t have the option to consider more.

  He’d been the bad boy, the hot guy my sister fooled around with in a shed in the backyard. He’d been the object of my earliest fantasies. And it wasn’t that I’d spent my youth pining over him—the opposite, in fact—because knowing I could lust for him, but never actually stood a chance, made it easier somehow.

  But now? Being able to touch him and have him touch me, hearing him say that he wanted more when there was no way he could actually mean it . . . complicated things.

  Will Sumner didn’t know the meaning of more. Hadn’t he admitted to never having even a single long-term monogamous relationship? Having never found anyone who kept him interested long enough? Didn’t he get a text from one of his nongirlfriends the morning after we first had sex? No thanks.

  Because as much as I loved spending time with him, and as fun as it was to pretend I could learn from him, I knew that I would never be a player. If I let him into more than my pants—if I let him into my heart and fell for him—I would submerge.

  Deciding I actually did need to get to work, I started the shower, watching as steam filled the bathroom. I moaned as I stepped under the spray, letting my chin drop to my chest and the sound of water drown out the chaos in my thoughts. I opened my eyes and looked down at my body, at the smeared black ink on my skin.

  All that is rare for the rare.

  The words he’d drawn so carefully across my hip were now bleeding into each other. There were marks where the ink had rubbed off o
nto his hands, and touches that alternated between pressing bruises and feather-light caresses had left a necklace of smudged fingerprints between my breasts, over my ribs, lower.

  For a moment I let myself admire the gentle curve of his handwriting, remembering the determined expression on his face while he’d worked. His brows had knitted together, his hair fell forward to cover one eye. I was surprised when he didn’t reach up to push it back—a habit I’d come to find increasingly endearing—but he was so focused, so intent on what he’d been doing he’d ignored it and continued meticulously inking the words across my skin. And then he’d ruined it by losing his mind. And I’d freaked out.

  I reached for the loofah and covered it in way too much body wash. I began scrubbing at the marks, half of them gone already from the heat and pressure of the spray, the rest dissolving into a sudsy mess that slipped down my body and into the drain.

  With the last traces of Will and his ink washed from my skin and the water growing cold, I stepped out, dressing quickly and shivering in the cool air.

  I opened the door to find him pacing the length of the room, running clothes back in place and a beanie on his head. He looked like he’d been debating leaving.

  He whipped off his hat and spun to face me. “Fucking finally,” he muttered.

  “Excuse me?” I said, temper flaring again.

  “You’re not the one who gets to be mad here,” he said.

  My jaw dropped. “I . . . you . . . what?”

  “You left,” he spit out.

  “To the next room,” I clarified.

  “It was still fucked-up, Hanna.”

  “I needed space, Will,” I said, and, as if to further illustrate my point, walked out of the bedroom and down the hall. He followed.

  “You’re doing it again,” he said. “Important rule: don’t freak out and walk away from someone in your own house. Do you know how hard that was for me?”

  I stopped in the kitchen. “You? Do you have any idea what kind of a bomb that was to drop? I needed to think!”

  “You couldn’t think there?”