Deep End: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (20 page)

I go back under the water for a moment, but Anchor pulls me up again. He’s somehow treading water while
completely
supporting me. His body feels hard and strong against mine. He feels tough and hard, and so strong he could never sink, no matter how strong the river
is
.

He’s pulled me
to
the edge, but the boulders on the edge are so high, he can’t get a grip to pull us up to the bank.

“Dave,” he cries out.

“
Hmpph
,” I say, trying to speak, but I’m still choking on water and merely sputtering some gibberish.

Looking up, I can just make out another figure on the edge of the water. It’s Dave, and he’s lowering one of his crutches down.

Anchor grabs onto it, and Dave starts pulling, planting his feet deep into the ground, and trying his best
to
pull us up. But he isn’t strong enough.

“Can you
hold
on to me
yourself
?”
says Anchor.

I’m not sure that I can. I feel
weak
, completely drained, as if the last bit of energy has left me, but I nod my head anyway. I grab Anchor as hard as I can around the waist, locking my hands together.

Anchor uses both hands and starts climbing up Dave’s crutch, pu
l
ling us up out of the river.

We’re
almost
all the way up when my strength leaves me, and my arms start to slip.

Anchor
releases
one of his arms from the crutch and grabs me just in time, gripping my wrist with a strength I’ve never felt before.

I start
losing
track of what’s happening. I don’t know why, but the terror is overtaking me, the terror if
being
completely swept away by the
river
. But maybe it
is actually a fear of something greater, of being alone, of being swept away by life and ending
up
all by myself in a great lonely lake, trying my best to keep afloat. But how long can I really last by myself?

The next thing I know, Anchor’s pulled me onto the grass by the side of the river. I collapse into a heap and Anchor’s beside me. Dave’s here
, standing
over us, leaning on his crutches.

“You OK,
Allison
?” says Anchor.

“I’m fine,” I manage
to say, some water bubbling up out of my mouth as I speak.

The feeling is strange—the sun is shining and I rejoice in its warmth, even though I’m still soaking wet. The grass feels cool and comforting.

“Could you give us a minute, Dave?” says Anchor, looking up at Dave.

“Sure, of course,” says Dave, who seems a little unsteady on his feet. I’ve forgotten for a moment that they’d been
drinking
heavily since the
early
morning.

Dave ambles away o
n his crutches towards a large willow tree.

“
Aren’t
you drunk?” I say.

“I was, but I have a high metabolism,” says Anchor, giving me a wink. “What the hell happened? Dave and I heard someone cr
ying out for help, and I didn’t
even realize it was you until I grabbed you.”

“You mean you
weren’t
just trying
to
save me?”

“Well, if it was someone else, would you have wanted
them
to drown?”

“I guess not,” I say. “I’m glad you saved me.” It seems like a stupid thing to say, but right now I don’t have the energy to say the
things
I want to say. It’s amazing to me how quickly the t
ension between us has dissipated
. There’s
still
a l
ittle…something, but I wouldn’t
call it tension.

“What were you two doing down by the river?”

“Well, we were pretty buzzed, and I somehow
convinced
Dave
that we should steal a bunch of
old rail road tracks and sell them for
scrap
metal. Just a stupid drunk plan.”

“Sure sounds like
it
. Are there even any
tracks
left?”

“Yeah, we got one almost
completely
up from the ground. But it’s
probably
good you interrupted us, because it had all these official warnings on it about stealing
railroad
tracks. I guess it’s a federal offense or
something
.”

“It is,” I say. “Hey, could you take me back to my dorm room?”

“What? You don’t want
to
come back to the swim
house?” Anchor obviously thinks this is one of the funniest things he’s ever said, since he can barely contain his laughter.

“You know as well as I do it’s a disgusting
filthy
place, full of animals. It’s not a place to recover in.”

“I guess it’s not,” says Anchor, feigning a
serious
air.

He helps me to my feet, and I put my arm around his shoulder. He puts his muscular arm around me, grabbing me on the side. His strength makes me feel secure and safe, even though there’s no reason to fear fall
ing into the river now. Maybe the incident
really did mean something more to me—now that I’m with Anchor, the fears of being alone are swirling away into nothingness.

“What about Dave?” I say.

“He’ll be fine on his own,” says Anchor, lifting up his
other
hand to give Dave a wave.

Dave waves back with his crutch, still somewhat unsteady on his feet.

“Poor bastard can’t
really
handle
drinking
in the morning,” says Anchor.

We get back to my dorm room, and
Anchor
strips
me naked and puts me in bed, putting my big comforter up around me.

“Do you need some tea or something?” he says.

“I just need you to come cuddle with me,” I say.

“Of course,” says Anchor, pretending that he’s tipping an imaginary hat to me. “Would the lady prefer the gentleman clothed or unclothed?”

“I think you’re still a little drunk,” I say.

“If there’s anything that could completely sober me up it’s rescuing you from a rushing river. I still can’t believe that happened. How the hell did you fall in?”

“I guess it just happened,” I say. “But to answer your question, I think you should take off
your
clothes too. You’re soaking wet.”

“I’d
completely
forgotten,” says Anchor, taking a look at his own clothes. He’s
dripping
water onto the cheap corrugated carpet.

He pulls o
f
f his shirt over his head, and
I take a pee
k at his abdominal muscles and the way they move together, supporting the rest of his massive musculature. His shoulders are broad and strong. I’ve certainly noticed his
muscles
before, but never exactly in this way. I feel even more connected to his body now that he’s used it to rescue me, even more than when we were having sex.

He undoes his belt, and pulls down some old jeans he’s wearing.

He runs towards the bed, pretending he’s diving into the water, and jumps onto the
mattress
, landing right beside me. The old campus
mattress
springs make a horrendous creaking noise with the addition of his weight.

“I’ve never understood
these old
mattresses
,” says Anchor. “
Why do they make them so fucking
long? Have you
ever noticed they’re about three
feet longer than regular
mattresses
?”

“You really know how to charm a damsel in distress after rescuing her,” I say.

“But haven’t you noticed it?” says Anchor, acting as if it’s the most important thing in the world right now.

“I think it’s because they know the students are going to be fucking like rabbits all the time, and they need the extra space for whatever extravagant positions and postures the students want to try. It’s an
experimentation
phase, you know, or at least
that’s
what the college
administration
probably thinks.”

“
Interesting
analysis
,” says Anchor, running his hand slowly and gently all along my body, from my neck all the way down to my thigh. He starts running his hand up again, towards my neck, and this time he takes a detour around my belly and my chest, just barely avoiding my naked breasts, which his wrist just happens to
briefly contact.

Now we’re kissing all of a
sudden
, and his mouth feels hot as it connects with mine. It’s
a comforting
warmth.

I can tell something’s different this time. Right now this
isn’t
about just fucking. It’s about something more. It’s about really connecting.

“Were you serious when you said you loved me?” I say, pulling my mouth away from his for a moment, and opening my eyes to look into his deep blue eyes
,
which are already open.

“Of course,” he says. “I love you. Were you serious?”

“Yes,” I say. “And I still love you.” But inside, I know this
isn’t
quite true, but I can’t bring myself to say it. What I mean to say is that I know I love Anchor right now, but I’m not so sure now that I did actually love him when I first said it to him. It’s just that right now, my
feelings
for Anchor are so much more intense than they were before, that I don’t know if I can call what I felt before real love. But how was I to know, having, at that point, never felt anything stronger?

I’ve never felt anything like this. It feels like real love, true love, whatever you want to call it.

Our bodies are pressed
together
,
completely
naked.

Normally, I’ve never been a big fan of foreplay. I
always
considered it just a chore that I (sometimes) need to do in order to get the chick hot and ready to fuck. It was just something to get her wet enough for my cock.

But this time with Allison it’s
completely
different. And I mean completely!

It’s like our souls are merging. I can’t believe I’m even thinking these words to
myself
, but that’s exactly what it feels like. There
isn’t
a better feeling in the world, and as
the foreplay continues, I don’t
feel any need to cut it short and simply stab her with my cock.

But eventually it does get to the point where we’re both feeling the aching too strongly, and we need to simply fuck.

This is a much different session, though. I’ve sure fucked a lot of women in my time, but I realize now I’ve never made love. And this is what we’re doing: making love.

Our mutual anger has long dropped away. I was starting to feel di
fferently anyway, before rescuing
Allison from the river. I was starting to realize, while fooling around
d
runk with Dave on those
railroad
tracks, that there really wasn’t anything
to
be angry about. It wasn’t Allison’s fault that I got benched. It’s my own fault. I mean, what could I have expected, behaving the way I have all
these
years? I’ve always looked at Coach as my enemy, rather than someone who I need to do my best to please, someone I need to work with, to make myself
into
the best swimmer possible.

Even though swimming has
always
been my life, I’ve never really taken it seriously. But I guess I never realized that viscerally until I saved Allison from the river.

My cock is inside her. I slipped the condom on only moments ago.

She’s moaning underneath me, and I’m rocking back and forth on top of her, thrusting slowly and meaningfully. These aren’t the vicious, powerful thrusts I usually use. Somehow, they seem imbu
ed with all the feelings I can’t
convey with words.

She bites my ear just slightly, as she arches
her back. This movement changes
the pressure around my cock and it feels wonderful.

I’m caressing
her as I’ve never caressed any
one. I’ve always been somewhat proud of my technique, but I have to admit that I’m just realizing I’ve never really done that
much
with my hands. I’ve always
thought
everything was all cock and thrusting, and, it’s true, I did get a lot of girls off like that. But now, my hands feel like they are being magnetically drawn to her body, gently touching her all over.