My breath hitches as he drops his mouth to one breast, sucking and pulling as the tender nerves fire throughout my body. His big hand covers my other breast, kneading and gently rubbing until he switches sides. When both nipples are drawn long from his mouth, he pops off and the cool, wet air makes my nipples pucker even more.
Bax leans on his elbows, his weight settled in between my legs, and stares down at me like I’m a work of art. “So beautiful,” he says, and his wandering hands trace along my sides, brushing the tops of my thighs and then spreading me open.
“Oh,” I gasp as he slides a hand inside me, rubbing along my slit. I’m wet, and not from the shower, but from the things he’s doing to my body.
“You like that, baby?” Baxter looks up at me to make sure I’m comfortable, but his fingers are making me feel so good I have no words.
I nod my head and, with that permission, he drops a kiss right onto my clit. I feel the warm heat of his breath and then his tongue slides inside me. My hands fist into his hair as he begins to lick along my seam, thrusting his tongue and groaning. My hips begin to roll against him involuntarily, lifting off the bed to meet his mouth until Baxter adds a finger along with his tongue.
He bites my clit gently between his teeth as his finger slides inside and I detonate. “Baxter! Yes! I’m coming now, now, NOW,” I scream. I thrash on the damp sheets, moaning in pleasure until he starts to crawl back up my body, peppering kisses all along my stomach.
“That was amazing, Livvy,” he says, his voice low and reverent. “I’ve dreamed about what you’d look like when you come.”
“Mmmm.” I can’t get it together to answer him, to ask if I met his expectations, but he grins and says, “The real thing is better.”
Climbing fully on top of me, he nestles against my body and I love the weight of him, the feel of my nipples against his warm skin, the slight tickle of his chest hair. I wrap my legs around his waist and I feel the huge length of his cock, hot and throbbing between us. “I want you inside me,” I say to him. “SO much, Bax.”
He kisses me again and starts to reach for the night stand, but I catch his arm. “Wait,” I say. I can taste myself on his mouth and I find it so arousing I almost forget what I was planning to tell him.
“What is is, baby?”
“I’m on the pill,” I tell him between kisses. “I’ve been on it awhile for other stuff…and I trust you.”
Rising up onto his forearms, Baxter cocks his head to the side and studies me. “What are you saying?”
I reach up to stroke his curls, my curls now, and run my fingers along his jaw. “I’m saying I want you to make love to me with nothing in between us. Just us.”
“Oh fuck, Olive,” Baxter moans and I see a bead of pre-cum glisten at the tip of his cock. I reach out to explore this most unfamiliar part of him, tracing my fingers along the ridges and veins, wondering how it will feel to have this hot length stretching me open.
I can feel his heart rate increase as I continue and I start rocking my hips again, grinding against his hard body, desperate for another release. “You make me so hot, Bax. Please!”
“Oh, Livvy. You don’t need to beg me,” he says, adjusting his position. He puts a hand to his cock and lines the head up against my body. I feel tight with anticipation, but he kisses me so softly. “Are you sure? Are you sure you want it to be me?”
“Bax,” I gasp. “It’s always been you. Please.”
When he slides in, so slowly, I feel a sting at first and our eyes meet. He stills as my body adjusts and before he moves again, I see his eyes well up. “Livy,” he whispers. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, Bax. I’ve always loved you.” My hands press into his back, drawing his chest against mine, and I wrap my legs further around his hips as he sinks a bit deeper inside me. “Feels so good,” I whisper, echoing his words from the other night.
When Baxter begins to move, my ability to concentrate evaporates. This connection I feel with him is so powerful, so huge, and through it all, my body sings with desire as he strums up every nerve ending I’ve got. Each thrust of his hips catches my clit just right so the tingling sensation builds as he gains momentum.
His eyes close and he presses his forehead against mine, rocking gently and then picking up the pace to thrust hard. Our bodies are in synch and my hips rise to meet his. “Oh, fuck, Livvy, this feels so fucking good,” he grunts out.
I feel the delicious, slippery glide of his skin moving inside my wet heat, and I bear down until I’m gripping his cock with everything that I’ve got. His eyes shoot wide open and he holds my gaze as he reaches in between us. His big thumb works tight circles on my clit until I’m moaning his name again. “Bax! Yes!”
I come again, and my body contracts, squeezing his cock impossibly tight until his body tenses, too. I feel the hot spurts of his release deep inside me again and again as he moans, my name on his lips. I can hardly believe I have him in my arms this way, naked and beside himself, spilling inside me. “Livvy,” he whispers as he comes. “Oh, fuck, baby, I love you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Olive
I wake up naked, curled around Baxter in bed, and so unbelievably happy. Every muscle in my body aches when I inhale after a night spent making love repeatedly. I feel like I have so much ground to cover with Baxter, so much time to make up after so many years of wanting him.
Every time I told him I was exhausted and needed to sleep last night, he bit my ear lobe and told me he needed to try just one more thing. Then he made me come so hard I saw spots.
His alarm goes off around 9 for his PT before Sunday workouts. He opens his eyes, long ashes curling at the ends, and his face is so close to mine.
I love that I feel this nearness with him, this electrifying new honesty where I can just kiss him when I feel like it. Which is all the time. As his phone vibrates and dances across his night stand, I pull him in and moan into his mouth.
“Mmmm, morning, Olive,” he says. “Baby, you’re going to make me miss my session.” He juts his hips forward and I gasp, feeling him hard against my belly again.
“How can it just jump right back up into action so fast?” I reach down to grab my new favorite body part, but Baxter pushes my hand away.
“He knows what he wants,” he says. “But I’ll have to catch you a little later, ok? I have to keep my shoulder loose.”
Bax climbs out of bed and I admire the shape of his ass, his thick, powerful thighs. He rummages around in his drawers and tosses me some clothes to put on since mine are presumably still crumpled in his hall, covered in puke or wet from the shower. “Here, babe, you can wear these til you get home and changed.”
He watches while I slip into his t-shirt, snorting out a laugh when the short sleeves reach nearly to my wrists. “What am I going to do about shoes,” I muse, trying to imagine myself walking home in my heels from last night.
“If you hurry your ass up, I’ll drop you off outside your dorm and you can just run in barefoot.” He crawls back across the bed and kisses me as I wriggle into his sweats.
I can’t stop thinking about the sound of his voice when he tells me he loves me, which he does at least ten times during the ride to McPherson Hall. In a dreamy haze, I unlock my door and change for my own shift at the training room.
It doesn’t even occur to me to check on Tim as I walk to work, humming and remembering the feel of Bax’s fingers along my body. Remembering the slick, smooth sensation of him filling me. The way his cock feels gliding in and out of my body…I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this for so long.
I don’t notice the awkward silence in the training room until I’ve hung up my bag and turn around to see Emily staring at me, biting her lip. “What?” I whisper to her, looking around. There’s a few swimmers scattered around, but mostly the room seems quiet. And then I see Justin glowering in the door of his office.
“Olive, get in here,” he says, his voice cold. “Now.” He turns aro
und and I hear the groan of his desk chair as he sinks into it.
My eyes go wide and Emily reaches out to squeeze my hand. “It’ll be ok,” she tells me. “I promise. I’m going to stay right here and keep my eyes on the office, ok?”
My heart pounds as I walk toward his office, and I’m barely inside before he starts screaming at me. “Do you have any idea what the hell you’ve done?”
Justin shouts about practicing medicine without a license and unsupervised, reckless behavior. “You could have permanently injured Tim,” he screams. “In a room full of doctors. There was absolutely NO REASON for you to do what you did.”
I know it’s not worth interrupting him to explain the chaos of that hallway. I don’t need to tell him that Tim was in agony and that I had Bax call 911 immediately. I believe eventually, Bax could have procured one of the doctors from in at the banquet, but pandemonium would have ensued in that hall. I stand patiently, biting my lip and listening as Justin yells at me until I hear him utter the unthinkable.
“Get your things and get out,” he says at last. “You’re fired.”
“What?” The word falls out of my mouth unintentionally, and I see a vein tick in Justin’s neck.
“I said you’re fucking fired, Olive. Get. Out.”
I’m proud of myself for not crying in front of him, or even when Emily hugs me in the hall as she hands me my bag and a note card with her cell number on it. I don’t start crying and shaking until I get out of the building. Losing my position was not even something I considered when I jumped into action while Tim was hurting. But now, faced with the reality of losing my work study job, I realize that I’m a third of the way into my senior year and have no way to cover costs. My scholarship depends on keeping this job.
Three years and change are about to have been wasted if I can’t figure out what the hell to do. Ok, I tell myself as I cry while I’m walking. We need to figure out a plan.
When I get back to my dorm, I see that Tia and Elyse are in their room with their door open, and I practically fall into their room, relieved to see people who care about me. “Oh,” I sob, as they spring up to hug me.
“Olive!” Tia shouts, rubbing my back. “What happened? Come here!” They pull me in and wrap me up tight and I tell them everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bax
Thwack. I feel a sting on my leg as someone flicks me, and I crack open one eye as I’m lying on the table getting my deep tissue massage. “Kev, dude, if we’re going to be friends you have to stop fucking flicking me.” He interrupted me daydreaming about my night with Olive.
He stands next to the table looking exhausted, like he sat up all night. The hospital, I realize. “Oh shit,” I say, sitting up. “Hey, can we end a few minutes early.” I raise my eyebrows to the trainer who smiles and pats my leg.
“Sure,” she says. “Everything looks great, Bax.”
“Thank you,” I say, walking to the hall with Kevan, who proceeds to slump against the wall. “How’s Tim?”
“He’s home,” Kevan says. “Looped up on oxy. His family knows everything, by the way. It went about as well as he feared…”
I run my hands across my chin. “That fucking sucks, dude.” I think about how my family treats me like shit, too, and my mom in fact drove right out of my life forever. “Does he know this is on them, and not about anything he did?” I always try to remember Olive’s words to me about my parents making their own choices, about them not dealing with their own shit. It feels like the right thing to say.
Kevan shakes his head. “I don’t know. But listen, that’s not why I got you out of your massage.” He looks around the hall and lifts up on tip toes to see something in the training room office. “Olive got fired this morning,” he whispers. “Word is she’s pretty upset.”
I run directly to Olive’s dorm. This is such bullshit. I can’t even believe this is happening after the best night of my life. I have to sign in as a damn guest and wait for someone to escort me to Olive’s room since she’s evidently not in there to open the window and she locked it before the banquet last night.
“Are you Baxter?” A girl I’ve seen around Olive’s dorm stands in the hall. “I’m Tia,” she says. She nods her head at the doorman. “He’s with me.” I walk over to her and she takes my arm. “Olive’s pretty torn up,” she says. “But she keeps pausing to apologize about my clothes getting ruined. Seriously, tell her to stop worrying about the clothes, ok?”
I smile. I like this girl already. When we get down the hall I see Olive curled up on a bed in their room across the hall from her own. “Hey,” I say, crouching down beside her. “It’s going to be ok, baby. We’re going to fix this, ok?”
“Oh, Bax,” she sobs. I haven’t seen her this upset in years. Not since her huge fight with her parents when they tried to prevent her from coming to school in the first place.
“Hey,” I tell her, scooping her off the bed and into my lap. I just keep repeating the only truth I know. “We’re going to fix this. You’re going to be ok, because I love you and I’m not going to let anything happen to you, all right?”
I feel her nodding and I let her cry for a bit. Tia and Elyse are staring at us with wide eyes, like this is some breaking news. Whatever. I know they knew I loved Olive this whole time. Her breathing slows after awhile and I look down. “I think she fell asleep,” I whisper to the girls. “I’m just going to take her across the hall.”
They nod and help me get the door open. I carry Olive to the couch and sink into it with her on top of me. I run my fingers through Olive’s hair as she sleeps. I should be exhausted after everything that’s happened, but I feel a sense of calm.
It felt like the biggest risk of my life and simultaneously the easiest thing I ever did when I kissed Olive in that shower, when I told her I love her.
I spent so many years feeling scared of letting her know how I felt. So long worried that making this leap would mean the beginning of the end of having someone I can rely on. I guess it might be too early to know that things are going to be all right, but her getting fired? This is just going to be a blip.
I wish I knew what I could do to fix it, though, because I know Olive being here at college is tied to that job—she got her tuition paid for partly from a federal work study program. I never had to learn anything about that shit because me and all the guys are here on a full ride.
She’s really out, which makes sense because I fucked the hell out of her last night after we had a huge ordeal. I smile, happy I wore her out enough that she can get some sleep.
I lean my head back on the couch and shift Olive so I can reach my phone in my pants pocket. Keeping her tucked in one arm, I scroll through my contacts until I get an idea.
“Finnegan,” I whisper into my the phone when he picks up. “Weren’t you banging some chick who worked in the financial aid office?”
“Shouldn’t you be here in the weight room?” He grunts and I can tell he’s trying to lift while he talks to me.
“Something came up. But listen. I need you to help me out. We gotta find Olive another work study job.”
I hear the sound of weights hitting the floor. “Doesn’t she already stretch out the fencing team?”
“Swimmers, dude. But she got fired today.”
Olive stirs and I rub my hand along her jaw. God, this feels so right. I can’t believe I haven’t just been doing this all the years I felt the urge. I convince Finnegan to send me his girl’s number and, working my other hand out from beneath Olive, I start to put together the most important text introduction of my entire life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bax
Olive sleeps on my lap for a few hours and when she finally stirs, I reach down and greet her with a kiss. It just feels so right to press my lips against hers and let her know she’s my everything. “I love you,” I tell her.
“Even though I’m penniless and will probably have to drop out?”
“Hey, Livvy, you can’t
talk that way. We’re going to figure out something, ok?”
She shakes her head and stretches. “I’m sorry. I love you, but I just need, like, a few days to wallow about this.”
Olive never wallows. To an outsider, it might seem like hiding in the forsythia bush in the backyard was her burying her head in the proverbial sand, but I think it’s amazing that Olive found that escape, a way to get away from her parents screaming. She definitely used her time in there to create solutions for me. Helping her find a new job is the least I can do.
I open my mouth to tell her about the text I was sending with Finnegan’s girl Leslie, but I’m interrupted by a rap on Olive’s window. “What the hell?”
I look over my shoulder and see Kevan and Tim standing outside smiling and waving. Olive raises an eyebrow and gets up to open the window. “Hey? Tim, should you be up and around?”
Kevan drops an arm around Tim’s shoulder. “He’s great. Got him on the good pain meds. Let us in?”
I open the window and lean out to give Kevan a hand, but he swats my arm away. “Dude. Tim had a dislocated shoulder. He can’t climb through the fucking window. I meant meet us at the front door.”
Kev shakes his head at me and starts walking around the building. Olive giggles and heads down the hall to get them. I guess it’s at least good to see her mood lighten. I fiddle around with her remote while I wait for them all to get back. It’s a tight squeeze with 2 football players and a lanky swimmer in Olive’s dorm room.
I sit back and wait for Kev to tell us what the hell he’s doing here, which he proceeds to do, but not until he drops a kiss on Tim’s cheek. The intimacy of the kiss makes me blush, I’m not going to lie. Kev’s love for Tim is so palpable. I can just feel it, and I reach for Olive as if by reflex, needing to be in contact with her.
Kevan says, “We wanted to thank you again, Olive. The doctor said moving fast like that, you prevented Tim from having to have surgery.”
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