His newest friend, a tall, handsome, full-on pussy magnet named Jack Gordon, winked at the girl behind the counter, making her blush bright red. Evan rolled his eyes. Everything in him had tried to resist befriending the guy. It brought out something in him he wanted to bury, to never face again, and he couldn’t figure out why. But the man would not give up. Finally he ran a hand down his face and looked over at him.
Everything about Jack Gordon oozed control. Evan was jealous of him, truth be told, but any man would be. Jack clapped his shoulder and pinned him with an earnest blue gaze. “Dude, we will work it out. You need this, I’m telling you. Remember what we talked about last weekend?”
It was Evan’s turn to blush. He’d made the mistake, the weak misjudgment, of getting high with Jack and his current roommate. And they’d talked, and drank, and smoked. Evan had allowed himself to spill it – to tell Jack nearly everything, stopping just short of his own fury at himself for letting Damian manipulate him. “No, I’m fine. It’s fine. I’m… Shit.” He shook his head, unwilling to admit how tempting it was to jump back into the lifestyle Mr. Gordon was proposing.
“Listen, I get it. I know you had a rough start on this, but…” Jack looked away, and Evan was startled at the realization the other man was at a loss for words. Which was a rare occurrence to be sure. “I think we could… learn, you know, from each other. And we can study together. We have nearly all the same classes next fall. And as far as the money goes, we’ll sort it out, figure out a way to make it work. Besides, I want to hear more about how you went an entire three and a half years of undergrad without getting laid, because that is like some kind of freak-show thing, brother.”
For the first time in years Evan went with his gut and not his head. “Okay. All right. I’ll… I’ll do it. Put my name on the lease. And for the record, I got laid, but never the way… I wanted. And never anything more than just to let off steam, like a long run. Or something.” He looked away.
“My man.” Gordon smacked him on the shoulder and rose, shouldering his own pack full of books. “You will not be sorry, Adams, mark my words. We will study, party, eat, chase tail… oh, and I am going to take you to a club where I go – where you can get off the way you really want. Without fear of hurting anyone, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
Evan smiled at his friend, shoving away the guilt that crowded his brain. He’d stayed in touch with Caroline for a few years. Knew she’d settled in Florida and was engaged, headed for marriage with a much older man. As for his nemesis, Damian was kicking ass and taking names at U of M and had gone right from undergrad to law school there; no big surprise. His parents kept him up to date, as if he cared. The extreme dysfunction of their blindness to the guy’s evil never ceased to amaze Evan. But he played along, going home for a few requisite holidays and pretending with them that “All Was Well and Perfect in the Adams House.” But he stayed away every summer, choosing to live on campus and work, anything to not face his sister and Damian together.
Olivia had gotten her degree in social work, danced for the University Musical Society and, as best as Evan could tell, put up with Damian pretending to be her boyfriend while he kept up his old tricks at the BDSM club. The guy sent him information in email, with veiled messages about his split life, hoping Evan would “finally understand and accept” his relationship with Olivia for what it was. That he, Damian, “needed her love” to stay sane. Well, that, and beating on women while he came.
Holy shit, what a sick fuck.
Evan was relieved to be shed of him. But the part of him his twin had inhabited for years, that Damian had stolen, ached many times late at night when he couldn’t sleep. He missed her. And he’d failed her. But it was out of his hands now.
The coming summer would be no different but for the added wrinkle of living in a house with a guy he barely knew, waiting for the fall semester to start, and dipping his toe back into a sexual fetish world he missed like a phantom limb.
When he got to his student apartment, one of his roommates was lolling on the couch, reading, and smoking. Evan tossed his stuff on the table and opened the window to dispel some of the haze. “You missed a couple of phone calls. That Karen girl again, I think. I do not get why you won’t jump into that. You gay or something?”
“Fuck you,” Evan muttered, sitting and staring at his shoes for a second. He’d met a girl in his torts class, and she’d made it clear she would welcome more than the casual flirtation he’d been offering. But his brain froze, and his body with it, at the thought of anything physical. Damn, he was fucked. He had to get past this.
He grabbed the phone and dragged it out into the hall for a small measure of privacy. After asking her out on a date, he hung up and stared at the concrete block walls for almost an hour, his mind blank.
* * * *
“So, Evan,” the girl said, her shoulder grazing his. “That was nice.”
He sighed and leaned back on the bench, draping an arm around her. The wine they’d shared over dinner had lubricated him to the point he felt, if not comfortable, at least not jittery to the point of seeming psycho. She’d been easy, breezy, doing most of the talking and making him laugh when they compared their experiences as varsity soccer players in high school.
But now, sitting on a park bench on the outskirts of campus, the realization he knew what she wanted from him made him want to leap up and run away – after warning her to stay as far from him as she could get.
When she rested a hand on his leg, he jumped. “Relax,” she said, leaning into his ear.
Standing, trying to put some distance between them, he turned and found her right in his face, her hands on his shoulders, her dark eyes intent and full of one thing – the one thing he could read like a neon sign.
“Listen, ah, Karen, I’m not what you think I am.” Lame. But he liked her. She was funny, had a rack like a centerfold. Very tempting. He shook his head. Going so long without female company had been a Very Bad Plan, he knew, but never so much as at this precise moment.
She smiled and went up on tiptoes so she could reach his lips, surprising him with her forwardness. Her mouth was soft; her tongue breached his lips and made him suck in a breath. At the same moment he gripped her so hard she gasped. “That’s more like it,” she whispered when he grabbed her hair and gave it a slight pull.
She was no sub. But he needed to get laid so bad he was nearly blind with it. He’d take vanilla, now that it was being presented to him. And he would leave it that way, forever. He would never go back to that previous life, no matter how “tame” Jack claimed they could make it.
He ran his hands down her waist, to her hips and ass, clutching her as he walked her back so she was propped against a large tree trunk. Staring into her eyes, he resisted her signals, the ones that screamed “take me, show me what you’ve really got” to his psyche. He ran a shaking hand down her face and tried very hard not to yank her hands over her head and pin them to the tree she leaned against. He bit the inside of his cheek, grunting when she sighed and put a hand on his zipper.
“Do what you want, Evan… please.”
He kissed her then, dove into her, winding his hands in her hair and tasting every nook and cranny of her lips. She squirmed, pressed up against him. But he maintained control. He would not go to the dark room that had opened up in his head and was beckoning him, whispering its evil and reminding him he had no choice. He had to be what he was meant to be when it came to sex. He ripped himself away from the girl, breathing heavily, and took a few steps backward, nearly falling over a shrub.
“Evan… are you okay?” Karen pushed herself away from the tree and closed the gap between them, but he held up a hand.
“No, Karen. I… can’t. I can’t explain it, either. You are amazing, beautiful, sexy, and I want to…” He put his hands on his hips and looked down, the internal struggle making it impossible to breathe. He glanced back up, saw the sympathy in her eyes. “No, don’t feel sorry for me. I’m no good. I’m… bad. I’m an asshole, and I will do nothing but cause trouble for you.”
But despite his warning or maybe because of it, she launched herself at him, wrapped her arms around him and bit his earlobe, forcing every nerve he had, not already at attention, to start tap-dancing with anticipation. Women. Tell them you’re no good and they were all over you. It made no sense to him.
“I know, Evan. I sensed it. I
want
bad. I want you to be bad… with me.”
“Damn it, Karen, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He disentangled from her, clamping down on the raw pain that started in his balls and made its ominous way up his spine. He could practically feel her, taste her, knew she’d grip his cock so tight he’d come in seconds, and he wanted nothing more than the simple release of a killer orgasm right this minute. “You don’t want anything to do with me.” He turned away, his hand on the tree as he called on skills he thought he’d purged, the ones that made his body soften and his brain quiet. “Trust me. I’ll only hurt you, somehow.”
“Okay, well, thanks for dinner, anyway.” The disappointment in her voice was clear. But relief stole over him, thinking she’d finally gotten the message and would leave him be. “Don’t be so hard on yourself though.” Her hand grazed his arm, made its way up his neck and around, cupping his cheek. He leaned into it, wishing he could give in, could let this potentially incredible girl be something for him that he needed. But no – never again. He had to…
“Holy shit,” he groaned when the lovely, funny, sexy girl he’d really not given much thought to other than to admire her tits during class dropped to her knees on the grass and had his jeans unzipped and his throbbing cock between her lips before he could even react. It wasn’t the public nature of the act that shocked him. They were in a small grove of trees, on a nearly deserted, dark edge campus. It was the pure ecstasy of a woman’s lips and tongue along his sex, even the slightly dangerous and forbidden sensation of her fingertips tracing the underside of his balls, that made his mind go utterly blank.
Not a shred of control remained as he fisted her hair hard and fucked her mouth, thankful for wherever she got her blow job skills as his cock slid down her throat, providing an even tighter glove.
“God, God, God,” he muttered as he spread his legs and let it go, just as her fingertip reached his ass and slid deep, triggering the sort of bone-shattering orgasm he’d been without for…
“Fuck me…” he grunted and came for what felt like an hour, shuddering and making her splutter with the force and volume of his release.
He looked down, saw his hands tangled up in her hair, his fists white-knuckled from pulling so hard. “Oh, Karen, I’m so sorry.”
Guilt flooded in to replace the lust that retreated, chuckling, mocking, and reminding him he was a weak asshole for treating her like that. She stood and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, her eyes shining.
“You have no reason to be sorry.” She just stood looking at him, color high in her cheeks. He could read her every signal, and his poor aching shaft would not soften no matter what he did. He sighed and zipped himself up, wincing in pain. “I had a feeling you needed that.”
“Oh, well, um, yeah.” He ran a hand through his sweaty hair. “I did. Thank you.” He leaned on the tree before he collapsed to the ground. “Still, though, Karen, I can’t let you do this… not with me.”
“Why don’t you let me decide what I want to do with or without you?” She stepped closer and kissed his cheek. He closed his eyes and his mind to the obvious need that suffused the air around her.
He grabbed her hand, put it to his lips. “Okay. I will. So… what’s next, blow job queen?” He smiled, and forced the evil to the corner of his brain – the one that wanted to throw the girl over his shoulder, fasten her to his bed with leather belts, and tease her pussy with ice, wax, his teeth, a flogger, until she screamed for him to finish her. No, he would not be that, do that, anymore. He could do this thing like everyone else. He had to, or he’d lose his soul forever.
“How about you do a little payback first, eh, hair-trigger boy?” She traced her hand along his still-hard cock, making him shiver.
“Yeah, I didn’t make a good first impression did I?”
She smiled up at him and suddenly he could see it as clear as day – his vanilla girlfriend, his life denying his true self – and it was fine. He kissed her for real then, tasting himself, and loving the way she molded against him. She wanted to trust him. And he wanted to be trusted.
“Allow me to reintroduce myself,” he mumbled around her lips, sliding his hand down to her skirt, yanking it up and finding the edge of… “Oh, nice. I love a girl who believes in going commando.” His finger found the sweet nub of flesh that rose to meet him. He pressed his palm along the entire warm heat of her sex, pressing the heel of his hand to her clit so she could have that contact as he slid a finger into her wet depths.
“Ah… ah… yes…” She sighed when he yanked up her shirt and got at those amazing breasts, flicking open her bra with his free hand and sucking a large nipple between his lips. She arched into him, moaning his name as he licked, sucked, stroked, and finger-fucked her to a lovely wet climax. “Oh… now that really is more like it.” She sighed as he put his hand to his lips, closing his eyes as he savored the glorious taste of her.
His head pounded and he had to move away before he flipped her around and smacked her ass while he fucked her for real, reddening her pink flesh and yanking harder on that nipple. He shook his head to dispel it.
Get a grip, Adams. This is vanilla. This is what you have to be now.
He looked up and saw her straightening her skirt, reassembling her bra. Ignoring the fog of deeper, darker need threatening to roll through his brain, he narrowed his eyes, clenched his fists, and counted to twenty.
“You okay?” she whispered, touching his face and making him flinch.
“Um, yeah. Sorry. Let’s go.” He put an arm around her, the smell of their mutual lust coming off them in waves as he walked her to her apartment.