Moore to Lose (7 page)

“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this to me stoned.”

“Trust me, whatever the outcome, it will be an improvement.” And she whacked his shoulder before making the first cut.

Twenty minutes later, Rob’s perfectly layered hair made him look like a different person. She then began on his beard, kneeling before him. When she was done, Mia looked at her best friend and was struck by a myriad of emotions. Under all that unkempt scruff, the guy with the denim blue eyes was surprisingly and incredibly handsome. A thought Mia never would have equated to Rob. Not only was he handsome, he was attractive. Attractive to Mia. Rob Ryan had been transformed into a head turning cutie.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mia’s look was making him uncomfortable.

“You’re gorgeous. How did I not know you were gorgeous? You are like a totally hot guy. Holy fucking shit.”

Joni came around and gasped. Scruffy teddy bear Rob Ryan, who had dropped weight when he was sick with the flu, cleaned up beyond real nice. Rob Ryan now fell into the “I’d fuck him” hot boy category.

Rob got up from the chair and headed to the bathroom to see what all the fuss was about. Mia and Joni stood in the suite room, mouths hanging open, muttering a steady string of, “Oh my God.”

Rob emerged smiling, “I should’ve let you do this a long time ago.”

“No shit.” Mia smiled, but was feeling a tragic sense of loss. Her attraction to Rob had been to his personality, his intelligence, the way their wits meshed. But it had never been physical, which was why they were able to work together without conflict. And now, now she wanted to pull him into her room and fuck his brains out. But that window of opportunity was long gone. His interest was clearly in Joni, and all of the sudden Mia felt all alone again and like a third wheel. She felt like she was losing her best friend. Again. “You are so fucking handsome. Who knew?”

Tom was waiting at a table in the study area of the Student Center when Mia and Rob entered. A bemused and approving look on his handsome face acknowledged Rob’s new appearance.

“Ryan, you look like a totally different person.”

“Silver’s good with a pair of scissors.” He looked pleased.

“And it’s best that you remember that.” Mia smiled at Tom.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he was giving nothing away.

At the end of their two hour session, Tom gave Mia and Rob their final assignment of the semester, which they would have two weeks to work on before turning in what would be a simultaneous first and last draft.

He packed his papers into his leather Danish schoolbag and checked his watch. “So, you’ve got a break from me to work on this assignment, no class next week. I’ll see you both in two weeks.” And he was off.

Mia was breathless. What the fuck? Was this the same man who had her pinned up against a building, grinding his hard cock into her, nicknaming her “Jailbait,” laughing with her over cold Indian beer as she ate from his plate? She could feel his tongue in her mouth, so greedy and possessive and she felt bereft. And foolish. And alone.

She and Rob walked together back to her dorm. And she felt alone. Joni was hanging out in her room with the door open when they arrived at the suite. Rob went in to go hang out with her and Mia went into her own room and closed the door.

Tom was fucking with her.

Her ambivalent feelings about Rob (and some level of jealousy over his growing relationship with Joni) were fucking with her. He was graduating and she was losing her best friend. Again. She was really starting to hate spring. It wasn’t a rebirth for her. It was a season of loss. A season of goodbyes. Betrayals of the heart. Pain. Loneliness. Spring was overrated.

She tried hard to keep him out of her consciousness because she knew it did her no good. He was 3,000 miles away with a life of his own. She wondered if she would ever recognize something good again, or if she would let it slip away because it didn’t feel like what they had. Would she recognize the real thing? And she silently prayed that one day she would feel again what she had felt with him. And if she didn’t, she knew she would rather be alone.

Mia curled up in bed with her pillow next to her. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to remember what his chest felt like under her cheek. What his lips felt like in her hair when he would kiss the top of her head. Why am I looking for that, she wondered. It wasn’t real. So why is it what I want to feel? And as she fell asleep, she still had no answers a year later, just memories that were quickly fading like photos that had not been properly put into a chemical bath of fixative.

It took a few minutes to realize the shrill ring of the phone was not part of her dream.

“Hello,” her alarm clock read 2:20 A.M.

“Jailbait.”

“Hey.” Mia took the phone in bed with her and curled up under the covers.

“I woke you.” She could hear him moving around on his end.

“Well, yeah — it’s like 2:30 in the morning. Are you drunk dialing me?” She was smiling.

He laughed, “No. I wish I was. I was grading assignments and I wanted to hear your voice.”

Mia smiled and remained silent.

“You know you’re fucking with my head, Jailbait.”

“Ha. Didn’t quite appear that way to me.” He was so aloof earlier in the evening that she thought kissing him had been a huge, huge mistake. But now hearing his voice in the middle of the night from the warmth of her bed made her ache to be pressed against a brick wall with his hard cock grinding into her.

“Well, appearances can be deceiving. What did you want me to do? Pull you into my lap with Ryan sitting right there?”

“For starters.” Mia whispered.

Tom groaned, “Jailbait, you are so dangerous. You know I can’t touch you.”

“But you already did.”

“That, my little friend, was a huge lapse in judgment.” Mia could hear ice in a glass on the other end of the phone.

“You’re just a big fucking tease.” There was now annoyance in her voice. He gave her a taste of what it was like to feel good again and now he was telling her, sorry not happening. So, why the fuck was he calling her? Mia was tired, cranky, frustrated and starting to get pissed off.

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” There was surprise in Tom’s tone.

“I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing.” He had called her a lapse in judgment and she was starting to obsess and focus on that one statement.

Tom let out a long sigh. “I don’t either. I shouldn’t have called. I’m sorry.”

Mia remained silent. She didn’t want to say goodbye and she certainly didn’t want the conversation to take the turn it had taken.

After a few moments, he asked, “Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” her voice was soft.

“I’m sorry, Mia. I didn’t mean to upset you. Honestly, I’d been thinking about you all night and I just wanted to hear your voice,” he actually sounded contrite.

“I’m glad you called.” She could hear his smile on the other end of the phone.

“I wish you were here,” his voice was like silk in her ear.

“I want to kiss you again.”

He let out an “mmm” at her words. “Stopping at a kiss is the problem, Mia.”

“I know,” she giggled. “Do you know how wet I am right now?”

Tom let out a deep, sexy groan. “Who’s the tease now, Jailbait. Oh man. You. Are. Killing. Me.”

“Good,” she smiled. “You need to kiss me again.” She pictured him on the other end of the phone touching himself.

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“You’re right. I do.”

“Think about me as you fall asleep.” Mia smiled into the phone.

“That’s a guarantee.”

“Night, Teach.” Mia whispered.

“Night, Jailbait,” his voice equally as soft.

Mia hugged her pillow next to her wondering what Tom’s chest would feel like under her cheek and hoping it wasn’t two weeks before she saw him again.

“Still awake, Jailbait?”

It was two nights later at 12:30 A.M. when she finally heard his voice again. Three little words made her melt into the phone. Forty-eight hours of his invasion into every conscious thought was killing her. Studying had been a joke, and if she masturbated one more time thinking about him she was going to end up with a raging infection. Damn you, Tom Sheehan. You’re. Killing.
Me.

“Yeah, just studying. What are you up to?” Mia invoked cool girl to come to her aid.

“Thinking about kissing you.”

“Mmmm,” the emphatic sound emerged before Mia could suppress it. Cool girl, you suck!

“That is exactly what I needed to hear.”

She could picture his pure sex smile and his dark unruly locks cascading down his forehead. “Where are you?”

“I’m on campus. At my office,” he paused. “I don’t want you coming here. I don’t want you walking across campus alone at night.”

“Then come to me.”
Is that my voice?
Mia wondered, who was this whispering seductress?

“That’s probably not safe, Mia.”

She hated listening to a voice of reason when all she wanted was to feel him, taste him, devour him. “Do you happen to have a baseball cap in your office?

Laughing, “As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Put it on and come here. I’ll wait in the hall so that you don’t have to knock on my suite door. I’m 121 — it’s a right turn through the front doors.” She hung up before he could say no and quickly changed out of sweats into jeans, put on fresh underwear, brushed her teeth and fluffed out her curls.

Ten minutes later he was walking down the hall toward her. In jeans, a Cornell t-shirt (where he had earned his MFA in creative writing) and baseball cap, Tom looked like any other student on campus.

Mia couldn’t help the smile on her face as he neared. He was so damn good looking in a bad boy, break your heart kind of way. There was only one way a relationship with this man would end … and happily ever after were not three of the words in the sentence.

His smile grew as he walked down the hall.

He’s happy to see me, thought Mia. With a devil smile, she put her finger to her lips and said, “shhh,” as he approached. Silently, they entered her suite and he followed her into her room, where she quietly closed the door.

Tom took her face in both of his hands, “Is this what you wanted?” His eyes were smoldering as his lips softly grazed Mia’s.

Smiling, she nodded yes, as he softly kissed her lips.

Pulling her head back by her hair, the look in his eyes was incendiary. He kissed her a little harder, “Is this want you wanted?”

Locked in on his dark eyes, she asked, “Is it what you wanted?”

“More than you can imagine, Jailbait,” and his lips were on hers again, his tongue exploring, slowly, sensually, spontaneously. He pulled away and looked at her, “It is torture staying away from you and you don’t make it easier — saying things to me like you’re wet.”

Mia smiled, “Your kiss does that to me. Thinking about your kiss does that to me. Right now, if you put your hand down my jeans … ”

“No, no, no, Jailbait,” he shook his head no, but his handsome bad boy smile looked like it was still a consideration.

Mia took Tom’s hand and placed it between her legs on the outside of her jeans.

Without breaking eye contact, he started caressing her softly through her jeans. “I can feel the heat,” he whispered.

Mia laid her head down on his shoulder, letting her lips gently graze his neck. She was so excited and she knew with a few more strokes she would explode. It had been so long (well, that someone else was actually in the room with her) and as much as she wanted to let go, that would be giving him too much control, too soon. And he was already ten leagues ahead of her in knowing how to play the game.

Taking his hand from between her legs, Mia led Tom over to her bed.

“You know we can’t.”

Mia nodded, “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.” How odd that I’m the one saying that, she mused.

Her words brought a bad boy smile to Tom’s face and he tenderly ran a hand softly down her cheek. “Jailbait, that’s the crux of the problem, there isn’t anything I don’t want to do to you. I want to fuck you in ways you never dreamed existed. I want to watch your face as you explode and lose control, knowing I’m doing that to you. I want to sit between your legs and watch you make yourself come for me. I want to push you up against that building where I kissed you and have you wear a dress,” he paused and smiled remembering their first conversation about the California girls in dresses, “no underwear and fuck you up against that brick wall, pulling out of you just as campus security drives up. I want to fuck you in my office right before class and have you sitting in my class with my come dripping out of you and only you and I know that.”

Mia couldn’t breathe just listening to his words. How fucking hot is that, she thought. She was speechless. He was on a totally different level than she and Schooner had been. He was a sexy man. A twenty-seven year old man. Worldly. Urbane. Sexy. And he was a player. Heartbreak on a stick, just waiting to happen. But right now he wanted her. She was his obscure object of desire. His distraction. And for as long as it lasted, she was going to let him be her distraction. Being desired by this hot, sexy, smart man was a fucking godsend after the last year of her life. Schooner was fucking CJ, so why shouldn’t she be happy? Why shouldn’t she be fucking her writing professor?
Go away, Schooner,
she silently screamed.
Get the fuck out of my head. Get the fuck out of this room.

Tom softly caressed her cheek, “Hey, where’d you go?”

Mia could feel her eyes fill with tears, “No place good.”

“I upset you.” Genuine concern clouded his handsome face, “I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

Mia leaned her face into Tom’s hand and shook her head no. “I loved what you just said to me. Every fucking last word of it.”

And then he did something she did not expect. Tom Sheehan enveloped Mia in his arms and pulled her in for a tight hug. “Someday maybe you’ll tell me about it. And I know I don’t act like it sometimes, but I’m glad you have Ryan to confide in. I’m glad he’s there for you. I just want it to be me that you tell.”