All Played Out (Rusk University #3) (17 page)

“No, sweetheart. You’re not. You’re clenching your teeth and your thighs and your hands. You’re locked up tight. Is it where we are? Does that bother you?”

I shake my head and answer, “I’m concentrating.”

The corner of his mouth twitches.

“On? You know it’s guys who try to distract themselves so they won’t come, not girls . . . right?”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” And now I’m blushing. Furiously. Though I’m not sure my last blush ever went away, so more likely I’m just purpling a little more.

“Then what are you concentrating so hard on?”

God, how can I possibly answer that?

“I’m concentrating on . . . on the opposite of what you said.”

His brows furrow, and he studies me for several long moments. He sighs and shifts away from me. This time the kiss he places on my lips is short, quick. All that raw, overwhelming feeling? Gone. He pulls his hand out from my clothes, and the loss makes my knees nearly collapse. It’s not easy for me to orgasm. I don’t even do it to myself that often because it takes too long. It’s too difficult. But he had me close in a record amount of time. His voice gruff, he says, “Come on.”

Something in my gut unravels.

“But . . . we . . . what?”

He wraps an arm around my waist, tucking me close to his side. “This isn’t going to work.”

He pulls me out of the stacks, into the aisle. “Where are we going?”

“We’re leaving. The cop has to be gone by now.”

I frown, but let him pull me along, and the entire time we’re in the elevator and during the walk back to his pickup, I can feel something turning and turning in my stomach. Like when you watch people make cotton candy, and the spun sugar just gets bigger and bigger. Each step is another spin, each step builds up the cobwebs of dread inside me.

I knew this was a mistake. I knew it. I just . . . he and I are from different worlds. How could I possibly think that we would be compatible, that me, a naive virgin, would be able to keep up with someone like him?

I should have stuck to my original sense of him. He’s dangerous. In ways bigger than I ever realized. I’m smart when it comes to everything else, but not with this, not with him. I feel so incredibly stupid, and it’s not something I know how to deal with.

I hate it
.

He keeps his arm around me as we walk, but I wish he would just let me go. I’m weird and inexperienced, and I guess we’re not as compatible as I thought we were. The only good thing about all of this is that it happened before we actually tried to have sex. I can only imagine how awful that would have been. And now I just want to acknowledge the mistake and move on. I want him to stop touching me because . . .

Because even though I feel humiliated and stupid, I still want him. And with his arm around me, I’m struggling to cut him and all of this off like I should.

We parked in an open lot behind the student union building. It’s as empty now as it was when we arrived. He parked his truck in a corner space, away from the streetlights. It’s dark, so I stick close to his side, but he doesn’t walk me around to the passenger door. He opens the driver’s side, leans over the seat to fold up the middle console, and then helps me climb up and sit in the middle.

Confused, I try to scoot over the rest of the way, but he slides in beside me and stops me with a hand on my thigh. He points to my bag in the floorboard and says, “Get your list.”

I hesitate, and the hand on my thigh squeezes. “Get the list, Nell.” I reach down for my bag while he turns on the overhead light. I pull out the spiral like he said, but don’t open it.

He reaches across me to the glove compartment and pulls out a pen. He hands it to me, and I realize he wants me to mark the tasks off my list. Uneasy, I open the spiral, trying to keep it angled away from him so he can’t see, and I search for the items I’ve completed.

4. Do something Wild.

Yeah. I’d say that one is gone after tonight.

15. Flash someone

Oh God, I’d
flashed
him. Who am I and how do I get normal Nell back?

I skip to the end of the list, to the new items I’d added after talking to Torres.

20. Take a picture with the Thomas Jefferson Rusk “Big Daddy Rusk” statue.

I cross the items one by one, wishing it were that easy to just strike through this night and my mortification. I go to close the spiral, but he stops me, settling his hand over the page. I look up, stiffening automatically, but he’s looking at me, not the list.

“I need you to add something else to your list.”

I raise my eyebrows and ask, “What?”

What was this about? Surely this isn’t about the Sweet Six thing again, not after how poorly things went in the stacks.

“I want you to add ‘Have the best orgasm of my life.’ ”

I drop his pen. I very nearly drop my spiral.

“You want . . .
what
?”

“You heard me, Nell. Now add it.”

He’s back to the dominant Mateo that comes out when he’s kissing me, and the ache he’d started back in the library flares to life between one breath and the next. I reach for the pen, but I’m too distracted by what this could mean.

So we’re not over? He still wants me? How could he still want me? My heartbeat speeds up as I mentally dissect our evening up until this point, and when it takes me too long to find the pen, he growls, “Oh, fuck it. Add it to the damn list later.”

He grabs the spiral and tosses it into the passenger seat. I sit up, and he pulls at the stretchy fabric on the thigh of my yoga pants, letting it snap back against my skin.

“Take those off.”

I blanch. “What?”

“This will be easier without them. You can leave your underwear on if you want. Though I might point out you’ve already been naked in my arms.”

“We were underwater. And it was dark.”

He turns off the overhead light, dousing the entire cab in black.

“Better?”

I blink a few times, and my eyes slowly adjust. I can see the shape of him in the dark, but no details. I sigh, considering.

He reaches out, finding my shoulder first and sliding his hand up until he can cup my face. “You’ve got to trust me,” he says. “Trust me to take care of you, to make this good for you.”

His thumb catches at my bottom lip, and I close my eyes, almost trembling in the dark.

“Okay.”

He leans over to kiss me, catching just the corner of my mouth. “That’s my girl.”

My heart throbs, and I remember my drunken dream. Or what I thought had been a dream. He said the same thing then a few minutes before he said that he wanted my firsts. I’m tempted to ask if him if the memory is real, if he actually said that, but there’s a chance he’ll say no, and I’m not sure I can take any more self-doubt tonight.

With a steadying breath, I hook my fingers into the waistband of my pants and begin wiggling them off. Beside me, Torres hunches over and adjusts his seat, sliding it back as far as it will go.

When I’ve deposited my yoga pants on top of my spiral in the passenger seat, I ask, “Now what?”

“Now you straddle me.”

I let out a heavy exhale.

“You said you trusted me.”

“I do. I just . . .”

Straddle him?
That’s a lot of trust.

“Think too much. I’m well aware. Now come here.”

Tentatively, I rise up on my knees, bending my head to keep from hitting the ceiling. I steady myself with a hand on his shoulder, and impatiently he takes hold of my thigh, tugging until I’ve got one leg on either side of him.

His shorts are cool and silky against my bare thighs, and goose bumps dance up my spine. His hands start at my knees, gliding up until his long fingers curl around the curve of my ass. This close, I can see the glint of his eyes and the shape of his mouth. Even sober, I still think it’s a really good mouth.

“Now listen to me. We’re alone. It’s dark. No one is going to stumble upon us, so you don’t need to think about any of that. No one can hear us, so you don’t need to keep your mouth closed or censor your reactions.” He tugs me forward until I feel his erection press insistently against my center. “And I want you so bad, it’s a miracle I was able to walk all the way here without taking you against the side of some building. Nothing you do or say is going to change
this
.” He pushes down on my hips, lifting himself up at the same time, and I catch my breath at the contact. “So you don’t have to be nervous about me either. You have absolutely nothing to think about. Nothing to worry over. And you don’t need to think about whether or not you’re going to come. I’m going to get you there. Trust me. Your job is just to feel. React in whatever way feels right to you. That’s it.”

I nod, but I’m not sure that’s a promise I can keep.

He kisses me, languid and hot, chasing away the gnawing panic that had overtaken me when he stopped in the library. His hands guide my hips, rocking me against his erection in time with our kiss. Under his guidance my hips roll, slow and steady, as if we have all the time in the world, and at the top of each roll, my clit grinds against him, and my limbs practically go numb. It feels like a dance, I realize. This isn’t something that follows a set pattern, there’s not list of correct things to do. It’s more like art, and with his hands teaching me, I realize I have to listen to my body, not my head.

“Put your arms around my neck,” he says. “I want to feel like you’re all the way around me.” I do, and it makes my chest drag over his with every pump of our hips. Even through all the layers, the grazing touch draws the tips of my breasts to a hard point.

He kisses me for a long time, tasting and sucking at my lips and my tongue. And just when I start to wonder when he’s going to
really
touch me, just when I start to
long
for it, his hand sneaks under the back of my shirt, and with one quick twist, he unhooks my bra. Then both his hands are gone from my hips, cradling my breasts instead. He kneads and squeezes, pausing every few seconds to roll my nipples between his fingers, and there’s a line of lightning directly between his hands and my sex. He continues kissing me the whole time, and I continue rubbing my center against his length. Desperation builds high enough that I have trouble maintaining a rhythm because I want to move faster and slower both at the same time.

When the buzzing between my legs is so strong that I’m panting and my hearing sounds like I’m underwater, he says, “Lean back. Keep holding on to my neck and lean back.”

I whimper, unwilling to stop the rhythm of our hips, but he grips my waist, moving me how he wants me. My bottom slides closer to him, until I feel the hard ridge of him nestled flat against me. If my arms weren’t around his neck and we weren’t in a vehicle, I could probably lie all the way back on his knees. When my arms are stretched taut, and my body is how he wants it, he reaches between us and passes two fingers over the damp fabric of my underwear. He does it again, this time pressing down against the sensitive nub at the top. I close my eyes and bite my lip, and his other hand tightens on my waist in response.

“Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t withdraw. Look at me. Focus on me.”

I try, but looking him in the eyes makes my heart race unbearably fast. So fast it scares me, and I have to close my eyes. Have to.

“If you can’t look at me, then listen. Tune out everything else except for my voice. Concentrate on that.”

I close my eyes, deciding this is the much safer route. That is . . . until he starts talking.

“You’re so fucking wet for me, Nell. I wish I could describe what that does to me. It’s the best kind of misery, knowing I did that to you.” He pushes the fabric aside and eases two fingers inside me. “And God, you’re so tight. So unbelievably tight. Someday you’re going to take me here.” He pushes deeper inside to emphasize his words, and I gasp. “Are you listening to me, Nell? Are you with me?”

“I—I’m listening.” And dying because of it. Each time he touches me, each time he says something, it feels like I’m whispering against dynamite, like I’m a hairsbreadth away from utter destruction.

With his fingers still inside me, he circles his thumb against me, and I squeeze my legs against his hips.

“Don’t fight it. I know you want to tense, you feel like you have to prepare, but you don’t. Let it come to you. Let me bring it.”

I try to relax, try to loosen my legs and my arms and everything. I lean my head so far back that it touches the steering wheel. I just breathe. I don’t try to describe what I’m feeling, don’t try to catalog it. I don’t analyze what makes his touch so different from my own. I just let it wash over me.

“That’s my girl. Christ, you’re beautiful. And you feel so good. Do you know how many times I’ve thought about you like this the last few weeks? Do you know how often I’ve stroked myself raw thinking about your mouth, your nipples, this pussy? That’s it. You’re close, aren’t you? You’re shaking.”

I am, I realize. I’m trembling so hard, I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold myself up, that any second my fingers are going to slip from around his neck and I’ll fall into the floorboard.

“I’m going to fall,” I say. “I can’t hold on.”

“So don’t. Come, sweetheart.”

I smile. “No, I’m actually going to fall. My hands are slipping.”

He tugs me up and against him, and I bury my face in his neck. The movement changes the angle of his fingers inside me, and all it takes is one more stroke, and I’m gasping out his name, squeezing him with my hands and my arms and my legs and all of me. And the explosion I’ve been flirting with goes off in my brain, somehow silent and loud all at once, and the aftermath tears through my limbs.

My body jerks and arches, and I have absolutely no control over it. I’m all reflexes, all reactions, and through it all Mateo is whispering in my ear, calling me
beautiful
,
perfect
,
hot
. And somehow just the sound of him prolongs it. The knowledge that it’s his lips against my ear, his fingers inside me . . . it keeps my body clenching and clenching until it hurts so beautifully.

Then slowly, the maelstrom recedes like the tide, drawing me with it until I collapse exhausted and unable to move against Mateo’s chest. His mouth stays pressed to my temple as I try to catch my breath, but I’m not sure I’ll ever breathe the same way again.