Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (27 page)

I can’t tell if I’m still unnecessarily pissed or just trying to push every last button she has, acting out the role of every bully who ever pushed me around. Dessie has suddenly embodied all of them.

She comes to my side, right by the sink, and her words are soft and soothing. “Maybe this is all because … because I’m a singer and I have a boyfriend who will never hear a note of my music.” She chuckles dryly. “Maybe that fact makes me … sort of …
sensitive
to the notion that you might—perhaps—have a boyfriend who will never
see
your artistry.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say to the scalding water, speaking into the warm, thick mist that wafts over my face. “I think he sees a lot more than anyone gives him credit for.”

Dessie nods slowly. “I can see that.”

The steam burns my eyes. I don’t care. “And maybe I’m wrong, too,” I add thoughtfully. “Maybe I’m … not really seeing
you
. Or any one of Brant’s other friends. Maybe I don’t see anyone at all. Maybe
I’m
the one who’s blind to what people are … really like.”

Dessie reaches across me and shuts off the faucet. The last of the steam floats lazily past my face, the mirror foggy and my view vanished from sight.

“Brant must be doing somersaults in his pants when he’s around you,” she says to me teasingly. “You are gorgeous. I would kill for your cheekbones.”

I snort, unable to take the compliment. It’s the same sort of dumb shit my dad would tell me when he wasn’t drinking. I couldn’t believe any of his kind words then, and I can’t believe any of
anyone’s
kind words now.

Still, I say, “Thank you.”

“I think if we gave it a little chance, we could really get along well.”

“I’m sorry I was a bitch.”

Dessie studies me for a short moment, then takes me by my arms and turns me to face her. I meet her eyes reluctantly.

“I don’t take it you’re the type of person who apologizes often,” she tells me. “So that apology really means a lot to me.”

“Careful,” I warn her. “I’m not sure yet if I meant it.”

That earns a laugh from her. “You’re perfect.”

“Perfect?”

“I really don’t think you’re a bitch,” she tells me. “I actually think you’re exactly what a guy like Brant needs. You have twice the strength I’ll ever have, and considering the things they say about me behind my back in New York, that’s saying something.”

I wrinkle my face. “I’m what a guy like Brant needs? What’s that supposed to mean? What kind of guy is Brant?”

Dessie smiles knowingly. “A guy who … sees so much.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, considering her for a while. She gives me a quick rub on my arm, a soft and appreciative chuckle, then guides me out of the restroom with her.

The table is remarkably just how I left it, all its occupants standing around it cracking jokes and laughing every few seconds, the bottoms of bottles and glasses being more prevalent than their tops. I don’t seem to draw any attention, which eerily makes me feel like my little scene never happened. Dessie slips right back into Clayton’s hold, and though I was just minutes ago hating every talented, loveable cell in that girl’s very existence, I suddenly find myself drawn to her magnetic demeanor and the way that her and Clayton seem to share some kind of unseen gravitational force that keeps them in orbit. Clayton pours into her eyes, and she lets him, smiling brightly and clinging to him like a cliff—like a big, solid cliff made of flesh and muscle.

When Brant looks my way after hearing the end of a story from Dmitri, his crystalline blues shimmer. A smile breaks across his face, a smile that seems almost automatic, like he can’t help but smile when he sees I’ve returned.

My heart catches in my throat. My chest feels like a cavern of bones and nerves, little electric currents swimming around inside with nowhere to go and nothing to focus upon.

Except him.

Brant lifts his eyebrows at me. “You alright?”

I slide up next to him at the table, my shoulder rubbing against his. I let that and a tiny smile be my answer. Then Eric howls when Clayton jokingly tosses an ice cube down the back of his shirt, and even the stoic, monotone-driven Sam cracks an uncharacteristic smile.

When Dessie announces her need to sleep for a rehearsal and Sam talks about “a thing her and Tomas need to do”, Eric slaps Dmitri on the back and demonstratively suggests to him that they get some late night pancakes. It isn’t my clue to get, but I get it nonetheless, and when Brant turns his face to ask me something, I cut him off with, “You wanna get out of here?”

After I ask that question, his eyes burn blue. I never knew that color could burn. I’ve moved really close to him somehow, so close that our hips nearly touch. My right hand betrays me, coming up to meet the waist of his jeans, a finger hooking in one of the belt loops.

His breathing has quickened. “Sure,” he finally says. “W-Where?”

“Your place,” I answer, tugging on his belt loop. Our hips push into one another.

He’s hard as a rock in his jeans.

I’m wet as fuck.

“Who are you?” he breathes.

“In,” I answer. “I’m all in.”

BRANT

The doors to my apartment burst open.

I have her lifted by her thighs, held to my body with our hips pressed together and our lips locked.

I kick the door shut behind me.
I can’t believe this is happening.

She moans as I carry her down the little hall and drop her onto my bed, making that sound of bedsprings creaking I’ve so longed to hear.

She breathes heavily as I push my face into her, pinning her to the bed with my hands and my weight. She moans into the kiss, the vibrations sending tremors between our bodies.

I’m a fucking animal. I want to get myself inside her so bad, my cock aches, flexing incessantly from inside the confines of my tight boxer briefs.

In answer, my hands fly to the button and zipper of my jeans, sending them on a journey to the floor. Nell seems to get the same idea, grabbing her own and undoing them in a feverish fluster.

Already freed from my own clothes and growing impatient, I pick her up off the bed, set her feet on the floor, then grab her jeans—
and panties
—and pull them down her hips as I drop to my knees.

She says something between her breaths, but I don’t hear her as I plunge face-first between her thighs, drawing my tongue lightly up her lower lips and reaching her clit, which I proceed to gently lick. She bucks, so I reach around and grip her perfect, curvy ass, pulling her deeper into me and not letting her go anywhere except exactly where I want her.

Her breaths quickly turn vocal, sending moans soaring overhead. Encouraged, I let go of her ass and slide a finger into her pussy with ease. Drawing the finger in and out of her slowly, teasingly, tortuously, I continue to lick and lap at her on the outside with my dancing tongue.

She’s so wet, a second finger glides right in, stretching her.

Her muscles tighten hungrily in response and she moans, loud and desperately.

I run my free hand up her body, slipping it under her top and into her bra. My fingers graze over her nipple, finding it hard and pebbled under my touch. I feel her body respond, tightening, pushing into me and pulling against me at the same time.

She tenses up.
She’s about to come all over my face.
My fingers hook into her pussy and hit that spot that sends her flying over the edge.

I’m used to driving women crazy, but it’s so different with Nell. I want to worship every inch of her. I want to own her, yet acknowledge how wholly and irrevocably she owns me.

I want to be inside her so badly. I can’t wait any longer. The ferocity of the boner between my legs is paramount. It fucking
hurts
it’s so hard, bobbing desperately with my every frantic heartbeat.

“I want,” I moan, tracing her pussy with my tongue, “to be,” I push my face into her, bathing in her wetness, “inside you.”

“Get up here,” she hisses, out of breath, her clit still throbbing on my tongue as she slowly comes down from her orgasm.

I lift myself up only to be gripped by her and thrust onto my own bed like a fucking piece of meat. She pulls off her top in one sensuous, swift maneuver, then unhooks her bra with finesse. When her beautiful breasts are released, I sigh as I bring my mouth to her left nipple. She moans as I lick and suck on it, drawing my tongue over the sensitive tip and feeling it harden at once. Then I bite, earning myself a startled, tormented gasp.

I could live here forever, my tongue discovering every part of her body like a gorgeous new land to stake a claim on.

I slide my tongue to her other breast, sucking the nipple into my mouth greedily. Her hand finds the back of my head this time, her fingers tangling in my hair. I groan, consumed in the act of kneading her nipple with my mouth as I massage the other, desperate to get inside her.

And apparently, she’s desperate too. “Brant. Condom.”

I detach from her nipple to answer: “Dresser drawer.”

My drawer is yanked open in the next moment, and then a condom wrapper falls to the floor, the condom pinched between her fingers.

She pushes me back onto the bed, grips my cock, then bends down and rolls the rubber on with her lips, turning the maneuver into a blowjob. I groan heartily as her mouth encloses around the end of my cock, the warmth enveloping me and sending a wave of unadulterated pleasure coursing up my body and giving every muscle along the way reason to flex and clench.

When her fingers cling to my torso and rake down the length of it, I find all my patience for foreplay spent to the max.

“Sit on my cock,” I beg her. “Please. Fuck. Do it.”

She wastes no time.

Sitting up, she straddles over me with her pussy hovering right at the tip. At first, she only teases an inch of it into her, which is warm and excruciating. I moan, desperate for the rest of me to enter her. She lets in another inch, gripping my arms and glaring down at me as if I’m a bad boy and this is my cruel punishment.

But I’m not in the mood for punishment tonight.

I take charge, grabbing her hips and thrusting myself up. My cock slips in the rest of the way, her pussy so slick that I slide in with ease.

“FUCK!” she cries out, that one word seeming to shake the walls around us.

I pump her, using her hips to push and pull her body with my every thrust. Her hands rush up to her breasts, kneading them as she rides me, her hair flinging in all directions, her eyes feral with lust.

We’ve finally united. I’m so lost in the moment of sensation, of gut-churning longing and hunger, of roof-shattering pleasure that I can’t even process the significance of Nell finally letting go and allowing me the trust to let me inside her.

“I’m close,” she breathes.

“So am I,” I assure her, pumping harder. “Come for me, baby.”

“So, so, so close.”

“Come for me.”

“Deeper.”

I thrust with even more fervor, feeling like a machine of muscle and force and sweat. “Nell …”

“
Deeper!
” she moans, commanding me with her desperation.

Deeper? Fuck this.

I grab her, pick her up, and flip her onto her back. She shrieks as I lift her legs, all her breath kicked out of her as I sheathe my cock right back inside her, pumping away with my hands pinning her to the bed, her legs dangling over my shoulders.

She screams a word of pleasure, then moans a word of agony. It’s so curious, how they almost sound the same.

“I’m coming!” she shrieks.

And then so am I, my moans pouring into hers as I dump into her, wave after wave after relentless wave. I can’t stop thrusting into her, the pair of us riding our orgasms so far beyond the edge, the sensation of endless plummeting rockets down my body.

We collapse next to each other, a pile of limbs and sweat and deeply heaving breaths. I pull off the condom, tie it off, then drop it to the floor as Nell snuggles up to my side, sighing with exhaustion. Every muscle in my body is spent from the endeavor, and I lay my chin tenderly in her hair. My breaths drift out of my flaring nostrils, disturbing her hair with every urgent exhale.