College Girl (5 page)

Alex

I want you to come
.

I slipped the T-shirt back over my
head and shivered as I remembered the sound of Ryan’s voice, the feel of his
fingers sliding against the cotton of my underwear, the tension in his muscles
as he held himself above me. Not to mention how enormous and rock hard he had
been. I shook my head, trying to clear the fog of lust. I still couldn’t
believe what had just happened.

I had never felt anything like
that. My muscles clenched. I was aching, and it didn’t help thinking of
how
close I had gotten. I mean, I had,
hadn’t I? It felt pretty fucking close to me—but what did I know? That
was the whole point. I had never gone all the way. Hell, I had never gone an
eighth of the way. It wasn’t like I was wearing a purity ring or anything, but
my plan had always been to wait until I was epically in love. So, then how had
I almost done it with a guy I had known for … hours?

I had never even gone out with
anyone. Not even close. I just hadn’t been one of those girls that guys thought
about in that way. I was too quiet. Mom called me
aloof
. She said it like it was a dirty word. “
Alex, honey. You’re just too aloof for boys to notice you.
”

Then, in one night, I had gone
from zero to sixty. … In one night, I had gone from never having kissed a guy
to being naked beneath my incredibly hot Calculus TA.

In one night, I had nearly gone
all the way.

I heard the shower in his room
running—again—and shivered as I imagined what Ryan was doing.
Remembering the sight of his very erect, very large penis made me blush. It was
shocking, like a bolt of electricity, even more so when I thought about what he
had said before walking out.

You want me to carry you into my bedroom and …

He hadn’t finished what he was
saying, but I had an idea.
The thought of him in the shower
naked … not good.
Because instead of getting the best night of sleep
since I started sleeping on that lumpy dorm bed, I was going to get the worst
night of sleep ever as I tried to imagine what would have happened if Ryan
hadn’t stopped. A few minutes later, I heard the water stop running, and I held
my breath, half expecting him to come back down the hall, lift me into his
arms, and carry me into his bedroom.

He didn’t, though. I waited,
half-hopeful, half-afraid, until my eyelids were too heavy to keep open.

When I woke up, there was light
pouring through the blinds. I looked over and saw a coffee mug sitting on the
nightstand. The clock read a little past eleven, and Ryan
Matthews—Bennett—was sitting in the chair in the corner, fully
dressed and watching me with a serious expression on his face.

I sat up with a start and realized
my hair must have been all over the place—but at least I had had the
sense to put the T-shirt back on last night. The thought of sitting here
completely naked in the cold, harsh light of day was a little more than my
nerves could take. Ryan nodded toward the coffee, and I reached over and picked
it up. Taking a sip, I felt my face pucker.

“Jesus! You drink this rocket
fuel?”

He laughed, and a wave of relief
washed over me.

“Every morning. I do what I need
to in order to survive grad school. Sorry. I don’t have any cream.”

I smiled.

“That’s okay. This cup will
probably keep me awake through finals.”

He frowned again, like he had just
remembered how fucking young I was.

“Do you regret last night?” I
asked, trying to keep the accusation in my tone to a minimum.

“Do you?”

“No,” I said flatly. “Do
you
?”

He looked conflicted for a second
before clearing his throat.

“No. But Alex, you’re very
young—and I was in the wrong.
Way in the wrong.
I’m your TA. I’m older than you—”

“
Much
older,” I grinned. “Ancient. Putrefying.”

“Damn, I like you.”

He sounded disappointed by this
fact.

“Uh, thanks?”

“That’s not the way I meant it.”

My eyes began to sting as I
realized where this speech was going. So I opted for my best defense
mechanism—feigning complete and utter indifference.

“Come on, Professor Bennett. If
you’re trying to break up with me, I’ve got a news flash for you. We’re not
going out. I barely fucking know you. And you didn’t even sully my innocence
that much. Whatever!”

Setting down the coffee with a
thump, I threw back the blankets and jumped up, searching around for my jeans,
sweater, and bra. I couldn’t be that far from a bus line back to campus. Hell,
at this point, I’d fucking walk. I swung around and finally saw where my
clothes were—in a neat stack on top of the reading table, which was
only inches
away from the guy I was trying to escape before
I started crying and exposed myself for the emotional wreck I was.

The problem was that I
liked
him, too. Maybe even something
more than that. I had known him less than twenty-four hours, but …
But
nothing, Alex
, I snapped in my head. It
was fucking over. It was one night. That was it. Working up my nerve, I stalked
over to the table and reached for my clothes. If he didn’t leave, I’d go change
in the bathroom and then take off. But before I could jump away, his hand shot
out and grabbed my wrist. In the next instant, he was on his feet, pulling me
toward him. His other hand moved behind my head, holding me still as he leaned
toward me. When his lips parted mine, his touch wasn’t gentle. I felt his
tongue thrust into my mouth, instantly summoning images and sensations from
last night. I moaned against his lips, and his hands dropped to my hips,
hauling my body against his. A second later his lips left mine. Then I felt his
warm breath at my ear.

“I want you, Alex. More than you
can possibly imagine. And that’s why I’m letting you go right now. You deserve
more than this. If I hadn’t stopped last night, then I would have ruined any
chance we might have.”

He stepped back, his breathing
just as uneven as mine.

“Now, get dressed, and I’ll take
you back to the dorm.”

###

When Ryan dropped me off in front
of Mercer, I handed him the helmet and refused to let him walk me up to my
room. In fact, I practically sprinted to the door and let it close behind me,
relieved for once that the dorm required an ID card to get in.

Last night was over, and it was
for the best. After all, if it hadn’t been for that creeper from my Creative
Writing class following me into the library and grabbing me, was there any
chance in hell that Ryan Matthews—Bennett—whatever the fuck he
wanted to call himself—would have noticed me for more than half a second?

No. There wasn’t. I was barely a
blip on his fucking radar. For all I knew, he had a girlfriend who was out of
town or something. Okay, that was crap, and I knew it. He seemed like a decent
guy. Way out of my league? Yeah.
But not a dick.
I had
totally pegged him wrong the night before. Who else would have bothered
noticing some super-stalker trailing me to the library on a freezing cold
night?

When I got to the third floor, I
jammed the key into the lock and swung open the door. The room reeked of weed,
and Brit was, not surprisingly, passed out cold on her bed with my mini
TV—the one Aunt Karen had given me three Christmases ago—pulled
over to her side of the room and covered in Cheetos-dust. Picking up the TV, I
wrenched it back to my side of the room and turned it off. Brit had no fucking
boundaries. She would throw her dirty laundry in with mine, steal food I was
storing in the closet … screw some gross guy in my bed. Yep. One of the girls
down the hall had come over last quarter to tell me she had walked in on Brit
screwing some jackass from the second floor—in
my
bed. I had almost thrown up. Then I had bleached my sheets. And
after that, I had spent the next week trying to get a room change.
Unfortunately, anyone living alone in a double room had turned out to be as
crazy as Brit.

Lifting myself onto the bed, I
opened up the window to let in fresh air. The university had a zero-tolerance
policy for smoking in the dorms, and one of these days, Brit was going to end
up getting me kicked out, because she was the type of bitch who would stash her
weed in my stuff if she thought she was about to get caught.

I sat down at the desk and took
out my laptop to work on the short story that was due on Monday. I was tempted
to write one about a girl who murders her bitch of a roommate, but there wasn’t
much creativity there. Without thinking about it, I started writing about last
night. My cheeks flushed, and my breathing sped up as I remembered every last
detail. Fuck, I wanted to die thinking about the possibility of never feeling
those things again.

“
Nice
!”

I jumped out of my chair and
bumped into the desk to escape the cocky jerk from downstairs. He was still
staring at my computer screen. Dammit! I had fucking forgotten to lock the door
again. Even worse, I hadn’t even heard him walk in. Reaching over, I tried to
close the computer screen, but the dickhead caught my hand.

“Wow. I didn’t know you could
read,” I snapped.

I was not in the mood for this
asshole’s intimidation bullshit. I didn’t know what they were pumping into the
air supply on the second floor, but most of the guys down there had a massive
“who’s dick is bigger?” contest going on, which involved a lot of loud music,
yelling, chest-thumping, and badgering any girl who wouldn’t spread her legs on
command. I didn’t get it as bad as some girls. Well, at least most of the time
they didn’t bark when I passed by. I had seen plenty of girls from the
single-sex floor pass in tears from
all the
barking
and general dickhead behavior one floor down. This guy thought he was hot shit,
but compared to Ryan, he was lumpy dough.

“You’d better be nice, Alicia,” he
drawled, looking over at me.

I smirked. Of course he didn’t
know my name.

“Screw you.”

He smiled.

“Just remember, your roommate
leaves the door open for me at night.”

My face went pale as he sauntered
out of the room, turning back once to look at me. What the fuck? What was with
the psycho assholes lately? Of course, this psycho asshole just happened to be
Brit’s fault. How she chose her hookups was beyond me. It was almost like she
went out of her way to pick the psychopaths.

Sitting down at the computer
again, I thought about deleting my vivid account of last night, but I was
afraid to. I didn’t want to forget one second of it. Because if the selection
of guys I was dealing with included the jackass who had just walked out, I’d
rather die a virgin. After password protecting my file—
1nightwithryan
—I closed the
document and tried working on a story that I could actually share with my
classmates. Then I laughed, imagining their faces if I were to read off my
account of last night.

Suddenly a shiver ran through me.
If that guy from the library showed up in class next week, I was screwed. But
even worse than that, I realized that I was going to have to show up in Professor
Robertson’s Calculus class and see Ryan Bennett again. On the other hand, there
was no way I was going to sit in the front row, and with more than five hundred
students in that lecture hall, I could find a way to avoid him for the rest of
the quarter.

When I finished up most of my
reading for Monday’s classes, I went down the hall to see if Julie was in her
room. Julie had the same problem as I did. She and her roommate did
not
get along. And coincidentally both
our roommates happened to be rushing the same sorority. Birds of a feather, I
guess. I poked my head in her room, and Julie looked up from her record
collection.

“Where the fuck were you last
night?” she laughed. “I went by the room and your roomie had the infamous sock
on the door again. I figured fuck it. I knocked really loud and rattled the
door handle.”

I gasped and started laughing.

“Oh shit. You did not.”

“Totally did. Then I went down to
the lounge and waited for her to open up, which she totally did. She was drunk
as shit and half naked, and she had one of those animals from downstairs in
there with her.”

I frowned.

“Yeah? Well, one of those animals
just wandered into my room and started reading my Creative Writing assignment
over my shoulder.”

Julie snorted in disgust.

“Dicks. All of them.”

Julie hated the guys from the
second floor. She had a loud mouth, a nose piercing, and she didn’t put up with
their shit—so they were constantly barking and screwing with her every
time she walked by. Unlike her, I just tried to stay off their radar.

“So? Where were you last night?”
she asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told
you.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Now you have to tell me.”

I sat down on the floor and told
her about Brit salivating over our new TA. By the time I got to the part about
the stalker in the library, Julie was silent, which was rare for her. When I
told her a highly sanitized version of my night with Ryan Matthews, aka Ryan
Bennett, she erupted.

“What the fucking shit! You spent
the
night
at this guy’s place?”

“Julie, shut up! Are you trying to
broadcast my night to the entire dorm?”

“Sorry!
But Jesus.
That is
insane
.”

Julie and I also shared the
ignominy of having very little experience in the guy department.

“You have no idea, Jules. I almost
dropped dead of a heart attack when he walked up and kissed me.”