Hot Dirty Love (Copperline #5) (7 page)

Physical relief was a weird thing, though.

As soon as it was gone, my mind went into overdrive. It had been hot—
so
hot—but there was a nagging aftermath that something was missing.

Or someone. Someone with a luscious curvy ass and brown eyes.

I left the Copperline not long after Cole did, probably just a hair from legal with the alcohol in my bloodstream. Yet I felt stone-cold sober, like the intoxication drained out of me as I shot my load all over Vivienne’s tits.

Arriving home, I stared at my big empty house. It was dark. It looked cold. Empty. Almost unlived in, although I was starting to wonder if I was even really living anymore. I’d always pushed myself, done what felt good, never turning down a temptation. No regrets.

Just like my dad who ended up living in a shithole, banging any woman who was momentarily blinded by his good looks long enough to ignore the warning signs that he was a total fucking loser. He sleezed around right up until he died alone a few years back.

It was like looking into my future.

Some might have taken that glimpse of precognition and worked to change.
But why bother?
It was in my blood. I’d known from a young age it was who I was.

So I went in my empty house. I laid down on my empty bed. I closed my eyes and willed my brain to be empty, too.

But that fucker didn’t. Instead, it swirled all night with dreams of Rain and Cole. Carrying on without me.

Just like everyone else did.

“No, of course not,” Rain argued with Brian, the class know-it-all who liked to think he was an expert on… well, everything, “because the harmonic mean will always be lower than the standard algebraic mean.”

“Not always,” Brian shot back. He looked flushed, not liking to be contradicted. I could also see the faint fear that she might know a little more than him. “Always is a very broad statement.”

“She’s right, though,” I interjected. Brian could be a dick, so I kinda wanted to resolve this before he got too fired up for an argument. “Here, this is what she means.” I started writing the complex formula on the whiteboard. “So we’re going to assume that everything but the permeability is just a constant.”

“Don’t forget that bi thing,” Rain added as she took a sip of her latte.

I froze.
Bi thing?
My first thought was that she was making some veiled reference to me and Cole.

But no, she wouldn’t.

Would she?

“Bi thing?” I croaked, glancing at her as her words echoed in my mind.

“Yeah, in the formula…”

I turned to look at the equation on the board, scanning the figures until I realized all at once what she was referring to. I exhaled with such intense relief that I felt a touch faint. “Bi thing… it’s not said like that… like bi. It’s B of the I.”

Her cheeks turned pink, and she dropped her gaze to her cup and toyed with the straw as a flush rose in her cheeks. “Shit… er, uh, shoot. That’s what I meant.”

If she hadn’t been thinking about that night with Cole, the way she suddenly started squirming in her seat told me she was thinking about it now.

Knowing that made the rest of that class period harder. It made
me
harder. I kept my back to the students, willing the hot ache to fade. I even intentionally started thinking about that time I walked in on my dad boning some nasty broad when I was nine. It had scarred me for life and likely pushed my first wet dream back a good two years.

But it didn’t work. All I could see was Rain riding me fast and hard as Cole tugged off over us. I could feel the anticipation and the triumph of his cum hitting our skin.

I had thought it might get easier as time went on. As the memory faded.

But it only got worse.

“So why don’t you just have Brannon or Cody work on your car instead of taking it all the way to Butte?” I asked Denny as we climbed into his pickup, off to collect Felicity, Ilsa, and Raven from yoga class while Felicity’s car was in the shop.

“Because the jaysus bleedin’ thing is under warranty so the dealer does maintenance for free,” he replied in his thick Dublin accent. “Plus, they fecked up some part that got recalled.” He started his pickup and slanted a sidelong glance my direction. “There’s no one twisting your feckin’ arm, ya know. You don’t have to come along.”

“Speak English, you fucker,” I shrugged. “And I had nothing better to do. Plus I kinda like the idea of a room full of women with their asses in the air.”

“Men do yoga, too, ya know.”

I grinned. “Then I can just sorta squint and imagine it’s a massive sex fest.”

With a roll of his eyes, Denny steered his truck towards Butte.

As luck would have it, I didn’t get to see any asses in the air. We showed up just as the yoga class let out with a small crowd of people emerging from the front door.

Damn
.

But yoga clothes were so fucking awesome. Tight stretchy pants and little tiny tops. You could see every curve and slope of a woman’s body, and some of these women were scorchingly hot. I watched as they chatted and laughed with a sense of camaraderie that left me feeling just a bit empty. It reminded me of what my buddies and I had been before. Like they all still were because their chicks all were, while I was on the outside looking in.

Ugh, fuck that
. There were way too many fish in the sea for me to limit myself, no matter how warm and fuzzy it all looked sometimes. The grass is always greener, after all. My buddies were probably staring wistfully at me, missing their rock and roll lifestyles as I banged one chick after another night after night.

“Here’s a couple of the guys right now,” Felicity said, stepping from the rest of the class as she flashed a bright smile at Denny. “This is my husband, Denny,” she grinned, slipped her arm around his waist, then pointed at me, “and that’s Justin.”

“Watch out for him, though,” Raven laughed. “He’s kind of a slut.”

As I looked beyond them to see who they were talking to, Rain’s eyes met mine. And just like that first day at Tech, they widened in shocked recognition.

“Oh, fuck,” she breathed, echoing that other moment.

I caught myself saying the exact same thing.

“Fuck.”

All the Mofos’ girls stopped short, looking back and forth between me and Rain, who started stepping away backwards.

“You know,” she was saying, “I just remembered I have a test I need to study for.”

Felicity arched her brow. “A test? You’re a student?” she asked, then cut a sharp glance at me before looking back to Rain who absentmindedly nodded.

Ilsa’s eyes widened. “At Tech?”

I could almost see little light bulbs popping up over the girls’ heads.

“Yeah,” Rain answered, “and I really… I’ve got… yeah, so… later.”

She gave a weak smile and turned to walk away.

“Some other time, then?” Felicity called after her, and Rain responded with a wave and some noncommittal, barely audible mumble.

“He’s not that big of a slut,” Raven offered, but Rain just walked even faster.

I watched her retreat for a moment, a bit awed by just how fucking phenomenal her ass looked in those little yoga pants. It was bad enough seeing her in class, but I was able to somehow separate myself there. I had a job to do and, while it wasn’t easy to keep my thoughts on track, it was easi
er
. But seeing her outside of class…
damn
…

Suddenly I realized that the others were all watching me. Watching
me
as I watched
her
walk away. Even Denny mirrored Felicity’s suspicious expression.

“A student,” Ilsa muttered.

“A student at Tech,” Raven nodded.

Felicity arched an eyebrow as she threw me a hard look. “She wouldn’t by any chance be in your class, would she, Justin?”

“Ya ridin’ that bitta fluff?” Denny asked, not even attempting to be vague.

“Dude! English, you fucker!” I snorted, hoping like hell that I sounded slightly normal, even though I was suddenly hard as a rock and ready to roll. “She’s a student, and yes, I have her in a class.”

“I’ll bet you’ve had her,” Denny grinned.

“I don’t fuck students,” I growled.

Felicity gave me one last hard look. “I’d bet money you fucked that one.”

“You don’t have to avoid them because of me,” I said quietly.

Rain was looking out one of the windows in Engineering Hall, studying the distant city below the hilltop campus as I headed to my first class. Winter was headed our way, and the smoke and fog had settled low in the valley with the cool morning. From this vantage point, it made the city almost disappear.

When she heard my voice, her shoulders stiffened. Quickly she turned around to face me.

At first glance, she had looked so removed. Yet, as I walked closer, I realized that she was too rigid. Her affect was forced. I noted a slight rise and fall of her breasts, shaky and unsure. The cold, pale light through the window lit the troubled thoughts in her deep brown eyes.

She was far from removed.

“It’s probably best that I do,” she whispered in a hushed tone, “what with our sordid history and all.”

Without thinking, I stepped closer, instantly recognizing my mistake. Once I was near her, I wanted to touch her. I wanted to drag her off into some closet and fuck her.

Of course, I always wanted to fuck her.

To be fair, I pretty much wanted to fuck everyone I saw.

But I couldn’t fuck her. Not again. Not now. No matter that, standing in front of her, the temptation was so much harder to resist. We hadn’t been this close since that night. Not even that one morning in my office.

“They’re a great bunch of girls,” I continued in a low voice, “loyal as the day is long. They’d be good friends to have, and you shouldn’t miss out on that because of me.”