Sweet Ache

Chapter 18

QUINLAN

I’ve been running in slow motion all day—it’s ridiculous. I feel like I’m ten steps behind from my first class of the day and I’m completely okay with it because I’m traveling through time on cloud nine.

And all because of Hawkin.

He kept me on the phone all morning, talking about everything and nothing until I looked at the clock and screeched at the time. He makes me feel like a damn teenager with a first-time crush. It’s rather ridiculous. I know how this story is going to end but hell if this girl, who doesn’t believe in fairy-tale endings, isn’t going to wear the glass slipper for the short while it fits.

And this glass slipper is more the stiletto with red sole variety.

I trudge across campus, actually getting a breather for the first time all day but I’m still moving at a clipped pace. I’m eager to get to the seminar early so that I can see Hawkin before the masses claim him.

I’m a greedy bitch because as far as I’m concerned the lazy Sunday afternoon we spent playing Guitar Hero after I rewarded him for letting me make him into an eighties band lead singer wasn’t enough. Neither was falling to the sofa in laughter after I beat him at the game where we then tested the couch springs, or the no shirt, no shoes dinner of Chinese takeout we had on the back porch before he left to go home.

I’ve prided myself on being a woman who is never needy, rather I’ve always been the one glancing at the clock to see how long my date-for-the-night has been at the house because he’s way overstayed his welcome, and yet the other night I didn’t want Hawkin to go. But after our fifth or sixth good night turned into lustful groping kisses, he finally left to go back to what he deemed to be his “fucked-up reality.”

I nod to an acquaintance as I wonder just what that reality is for him. I know there’s bad blood between him and Hunter causing a rift between the guys in the band but every time I’ve tried bringing it up to him, he conveniently changes the subject. Just as he does when it comes to the rest of his family: his mother, if he has other siblings, extended family. He’s closed off but hides it well, always shifting into stories about the band or a show or a snooty celebrity he has inside dirt on.

I sense he doesn’t trust easily—and that’s understandable with the public position that he’s in—but I get the hint that there’s more to it than that. How much more, I’m unsure.

The stupid smile remains on my face even when my thoughts veer to Luke and how he proved himself to be the gentleman I knew him to be. How when I called him Sunday evening to see how he was feeling and to apologize again, he actually picked up and we talked for a short while. I explained I wasn’t trying to lead him on, give him false hope by calling, but rather if he was comfortable with it, I’d love to keep him as a friend because he really is a good guy.

Axe stands at the door as I approach the theater and that causes my smile to spread even wider because that means Hawke is inside. I feel a slight relief that maybe, just maybe, Hawkin feels this euphoric giddiness that I do and that’s why he arrived early when he never has before. And just maybe he’s done that because he can’t wait to see me.

Axe greets me warmly as he opens the door for me, and once inside I walk quickly across the atrium. I pull open the doors housing the interior with high expectations and nerves running rampant but for the first time, they’re from anticipation and not from loathing the guest lecturer.

The straight punch of lust I feel the minute I see him is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. A ball of bound energy radiates through me, causing a slow burn of desire and a definite bang of lust between my thighs. I falter momentarily in my movements, wanting to appreciate the sight of him but at the same time wanting to run down the steps and taste his kiss again.

Hawkin sits with his Verbz on, head down, hand beating to a rhythm I can’t hear, eyes closed as he becomes a part of the music. I know he’s stuck on some lyrics for a song he and the guys started writing the night he left my house so I assume he’s still working through his creative roadblock. Regardless of what he’s doing, the man is a visual orgasm in his worn jeans with a hole in one knee and his shirt of choice today has a Van Halen logo on it.

How many old-school rock shirts does he have?

And then the memory hits me and I chuckle as I walk down the stairs unbeknownst to him. The dark eyeliner I put on him in addition to his hair I tried to tease as best I could. What the press would have paid to have pictures of him like that as we battled on Guitar Hero. As we laughed so hard until we ended up moaning together.

I hit the lowest step, my eyes trained on him, and the desire coiling tighter in my core with each step. I’m suddenly worried that maybe I’m making more of this than he is, that I’m going to be caught off guard when he sees me and then where will I be? I shake off the thought that is so unlike me, hating the insecurity it brings. And I clear my head in perfect time because Hawkin glances up and sees me.

Surprise passes over his face but the wide grin and warmth that softens his eyes the minute he sees me clears away all worry and is an aphrodisiac all in itself.

“Hey,” he says, pulling the earphones from his ears and straightening up as I close the distance between us.

I step in front of him, nerves humming, hands twisting together, and his eyes locked on mine. “Hi,” I say tentatively when all I want to do is step into him and press my lips to his. But I refrain, not wanting to take whatever this is somewhere he doesn’t want it to be. “Sorry to interrupt …” My voice trails off, while his eyes darken with lust as he flicks them over the low V neckline of my shirt and down the length of my legs and back up.

“You’re not interrupting,” he says. Does he still want me? Was it a one-time thing? Why aren’t you kissing me? “Do you think you could go check the PA connections? They don’t seem to be working properly.”

I glance over to the podium where nothing is turned on and back to him, ego and hopes confused and slowly deflating, the rendezvous I was hoping for nonexistent despite my initial surge of optimism. “It’s not on. You need to—”

“No.” He cuts me off in a stern voice as he reaches out to grab my bicep. My eyes flash up to meet his, catching that half-cocked smile that lifts up a corner of his mouth when he speaks. “You need to check in the room over there, Trixie. Now.”

Oh. OH! Took me long enough to get what he’s trying to say and his eyebrows rise in amusement the minute he knows I understand what his intentions are.

And hell if I don’t love bad intentions when they’re of the sexual nature.

Looking up at him from the veil of my eyelashes, a diminutive smile plays over my lips. “Yes, Professor Play,” I respond in the most innocent voice possible—which is harder than hell considering I passed over being innocent a long time ago. Besides, breaking the rules is so much more fun sometimes. I make sure my hips are swinging up the goods I have to offer him as I saunter to the small alcove where we shared our first kiss—and my senses are already so heightened chills race over my skin when I hear him behind me.

When I step into the shadowed alcove, my stomach flutters with excitement, my sex already moist from the thoughts of what is going to happen next. I stand still in that silent state of suspended desire as I wait for his touch to ignite my skin. The sound of his breathing fills the space around me, and I’m not waiting any longer.

Desperation has me turning to face him, and his mouth is on mine instantly. His lips bruise and brand, tongue claims and owns the moan his hands already gripping my ass from beneath my skirt coaxes from me. His kiss shows me how hungry he is for me, the groan he emits reflects a raw carnality that says he’s going to take without asking and hell if I’m going to stop him.

Because nice and slow is sometimes good but a no-holds-barred, fist in my hair, back up against the wall quickie is most definitely a good thing. And that sure as hell appears to be where we’re headed.

Yes, professor…. Please, school me. Here. Now. Hard. Fast.

The words flicker through my mind, incomplete thoughts as we are drawn toward each other’s flames, knowing damn well we’re going to get burned.

“God, I want you,” he growls into my mouth as my hands match his, pulling our bodies together, nails digging into heated skin, mouths meeting again with a volatile passion.

He presses me back against the wall as our fingers fumble with clothing. My hands undo his button and zipper to push down his jeans and grab his rock-hard cock as he uses his feet to knock my feet apart so that he can pull my panties aside. He dips his fingers between my folds and tightens the one hand in my hair, another groan falling from his lips as he finds me wet and ready for him from just his kiss alone.

His fingers touch me where I want them the most, the place that has ached the past few nights when I’ve gone to bed thinking about him while his melodic timbre speaks to me on the other end of the phone line. The pads of his fingers rub gently over my clit, adding a slight friction to the already sensitized nub there. The pleasure of his hand and his mouth on me causes my legs to slightly buckle from the sensations he’s evoking in me.

“That good, huh?” He murmurs against my lips as he releases my hair to slip his arm around my waist to help support me as I succumb to his dexterous fingers. He laughs as I arch my hips out toward him in a begging motion when he removes his touch. “Gotta make sure it counts,” he murmurs seductively, my lips showing the ghost of a smile.

He slips his other hand off my back and I stand there, shoulders against the wall, pelvis thrust forward, skirt askew, and body humming. My eyes flash open to catch his, their gray color burning black, lids heavy with desire. “I told myself I could wait until after class”—I hear the telltale rip of foil, my eyes widening with the sound because that means I’m getting more than just fingers … I’m getting all of him—“but I can’t.” He says the last words with a pained restraint before glancing down to jacket himself. “I just can’t.”

His mouth is on mine again as his fingers grip my hips and direct me to the side until my ass hits a small console behind me. I cry out, having forgotten it was there in the darkness, and then acquiesce to his physical commands as he helps lift me up on the shallow top of it. The cabinet is so narrow that my backside sits halfway off it, so I lean my back against the wall, thighs framing his muscular torso and hands gripping the edge as he lines his dick up to my entrance.

He teases me with his head, slowly pushing into me and then withdrawing several times. I groan out in frustration, my body amped up on the thought of him fucking me senseless. He kisses me again, demanding and possessive. “Quin … I have to have you,” he moans as his hands grip my thighs, pulling them apart at the same time he thrusts all the way into me.

My cry of ecstasy drowns out his groan of pleasure as my body welcomes the girth of his dick slamming into me, nerves singing, body stretching, endorphins surging. I’m writhing against him in jerking movements, my backside half off the console adding to the depth he can reach with my weight bearing down some on where our bodies meet.

“Easy, Q,” he says, his voice gravelly as it scrapes over my eardrums, his obvious pleasure a turn-on. I glance down to where his dick is slowly pulling out of me. My arousal glistens against the faint light at his back and it’s sexy as hell to see the evidence of what he does to me, what he makes me want more and more.

I look back up to the salacious look in his eyes and know he’s turned on by the fact that I like to watch him slide in and out of me. We hold each other’s gaze as he moves slowly back in and it’s like one big chain reaction of electricity from my core out to my fingers and toes with every movement of his.

Fixated on the eroticism of the moment, I glance back down to watch us. I’m so turned on by everything—the man before me, the idea of being here and doing this when we shouldn’t be, the pleasure he’s most definitely bringing me—that I purposefully squeeze my muscles around his dick when he begins to withdraw so that the wide crest of his head has trouble pulling all the way out.

I love the groan he emits and the way his head falls back at the sensation, giving me a glimpse of his strong jaw and Adam’s apple before looking back up and straight into my eyes. “Keep doing that sweetness and I’m going to come quick and hard.”

Wanting to watch him, I fight the urge to close my own eyes as I’m swamped with the sensation of him bottoming out inside me and holding there in a silent dare. “Quick and hard?” I whisper, leaning forward, muscles contracting again with the movement. “Yes, please.”

His eyebrows arch and a libidinous smirk curls up one corner of his mouth. “Fuck …” He moans the word out as desire and my comment snap the restraint he was barely holding on to. “Hold tight, Q.”

And the minute the words are out of his mouth he begins to move at a demanding pace, the cabinet hitting smartly into the wall behind me with each thrust. The small space fills with the hushed sounds of our desire, the slap of skin on skin, and the console rattling from the force. My hands grip the edge for support as I open my eyes to see his face pulled tight with pleasure, eyes closed, shoulders tense.

He obliterates everything else so that I can focus only on him, on this, and the way he’s manipulating my body. All three pull me under the frenzied state of bliss so that I’m almost drugged when my orgasm hits me in an earthquake of sensation that reverberates through me and then comes back to slam into its epicenter once more.

I manage a broken cry of pleasure before suppressing it when I realize where we are. And it’s almost as if the minute my sex starts contracting around him, when he knows I’ve had mine, Hawkin sets a punishing pace for himself to chase his own climax.

He’s sexy as hell when he comes, head thrown back, fingers unknowingly bruising the tender flesh of my thighs to match the marks he left there this weekend, and he releases a feral groan that resonates in my ears and scores my memory.

He rests his head on my shoulder as we both catch our breath. “Class,” he murmurs as a reminder to himself where we are before lifting his head and pressing a chaste kiss to my lips as he slips out of me. “Holy shit, you’re incredible.”

He shakes his head before glancing down to remove the condom and clean himself up, while my ego and emotions soar from his compliment. I slowly dismount the console, testing the stability of my legs since he’s just rocked my world.

He zips up and looks at me watching him. “That was right up there with cookies ’n cream,” he says with a raise of his eyebrows and a flash of a grin. I laugh that this was as good to him as his beloved ice cream. “Take your time; I’ve got to act like we weren’t just in here doing …” He just shakes his head, his sudden shyness adorable in so many ways.

“Oh, I brought you something,” I tell him when suddenly the irony of it hits me and causes me to smile. “It’s in the front part of my backpack.”

He looks at me, eyebrows knitted in curiosity. “What is it?”

“A box of Good and Plenty,” I deadpan, trying to fight the smirk but failing miserably, thinking of the suggestive nature of the candy’s title.

He throws his head back and laughs heartily, the sound reverberating deep within me. “Oh I’ll give you good and plenty, all right,” he says crossing the short distance to me before grabbing me and placing another kiss on my lips. “I believe I just did.” He steps back, smug smile on his lips, and just shakes his head before he walks away.

I sag against the cabinet, a replay of the explosive and incredible sex we just had running through my mind over and over already.

Because it was that good.

Incredible really. I swear my heart skips a beat at even the thought, and I try to tell myself it has to be the newness of him, plus our inherent physicality together, that makes our sex so goddamn incredible. I rationalize that there is no way I could have feelings for him beyond the earthmoving sex we’ve had that makes it just seem that much more.

It’s a futile attempt. I know I’m lying to myself. I’ve had good sex before—nothing like this, but still good—and I know my insides didn’t twist and flutter from it like they are right now.

I’m falling for Hawkin, the epitome of everything I told myself I’d never fall for.

Shit.