Page 48

FORTY-ONE

lorenzo

“Did you get taller?” I joke when Ruby walks in a little past eight. The sun has lightened the top layer of her hair to a pale blond, like it always does by the end of summer. It’s been almost a week since I last saw her. Even when we were just friends, that was too long.

She hugs me, holding on an extra-long time.

She smells like sun and fresh grass, and I wonder what she spent her afternoon doing.

“I’ve missed you too. And I think you’re the one who’s grown,” she says, easing her hands up my back and gripping my shoulders.

“How are your traps bigger already? You’ve been exercising for like a day. ”

“They aren’t. You just haven’t touched me in too long.”

Her gaze turns warm and feline. “Let’s fix that,” she says softly against my ear.

My cock roars to life and I wrap my hands around her waist, waiting to feel her lips against my ear.

Instead, I feel her pause. “Is that ... ?” She quickly escapes my grip and heads for the counter, her eyes glittering.

“Chocolate pie? Oh my god, I haven’t had one of these in forever!

” Just like that, my traps are forgotten.

I give in and follow her to the kitchen. “That’s dessert. Dinner comes first.” I pop open the freezer, where I’ve stood up four frozen dinners for her to choose from.

“Ooh!” she says, which makes me smile because her delight is totally genuine. “Choices.”

“Yeah, they were four meals for ten bucks, so I really went all out.”

“The fact that you allowed this garbage freezer space next to your green smoothie mixes is truly proof of your devotion.”

“Wait until you see what’s in the snack cabinet.”

Her eyes go wide, and she rushes to open the cabinet next to the fridge. “Hot fries!” she squeals. “What did I do to deserve all this?”

“Just hoped I could bait you into spending some time with me if I threw a junk food party.”

Her face softens. “I know I’ve been busy lately.”

I nod, but something about her acknowledging the distance between us makes me uneasy. I wanted to believe it was all in my head.

She grabs the bag of hot fries and grins. “But I’m all yours tonight. Let’s eat.”

“That was the best meal I’ve had in weeks,” Ruby says later, surveying the empty plastic containers littering my small kitchen table.

When I make a face, she adds, “I mean it! I’m either not eating lately or I’m stress-cooking these intricate meals that I’m too tired to enjoy by the time I plate them. ”

“So where’s your mind at? You’re stressed about career stuff?”

I regret the question as soon as I see the way her face changes. “Mostly.”

“What’s tripping you up?”

“I don’t know. We don’t need to talk about it tonight.”

“Why not? It’s on your mind.”

She shrugs. “Not anymore. Now I have other things on my mind.” Her gaze narrows on me, an unmistakable promise in it.

In an instant, my brain clouds over and I’m lit from head to toe.

Ruby’s perfect lips form a tiny smile—she sees the second I become a walking hard-on—and I rake my gaze down her delicate throat to her tits.

Her nipples have hardened under her pale-blue tank top.

Fuck. It’s been days since I’ve been inside her.

Too long. My hands squeeze into fists, hungry to feel her soft tits and finger the stiff buds of her nipples.

“Come here and tell me about it then.” My voice is gruff.

She gets up slowly and makes a show of brushing nonexistent crumbs off her shorts and smoothing nonexistent wrinkles out of her shirt. It has the intended effect, and I spread my knees to make room in my shorts for my thickening cock. Her smile deepens at the sight, and I sit up to grab her.

“Quit fucking around,” I tell her, only half joking. Once her body is on my mind, I can’t think about anything else until I come. I close my fingers around the waistband of her shorts and drag her closer. “Now tell me about all those things on your mind.” I lift her shirt and kiss her tan stomach.

“Things like getting down on my knees in your kitchen.”

My teeth close around the skin of her stomach, and she flinches.

“Things like watching from below while your whole face crumples in that way it does when you come.”

My cock jerks, but I don’t want to be in her mouth right now.

I want to sink myself deep between her thighs and watch her tits bounce in my face and get lost in the scent of her hair all around me.

My fingers find the buttons on her shorts, then tug the baggy denim over her hips.

Her panties are nothing more than a barely there scrap of sheer fabric the same color as her shirt, and the thought of them hiding all day under her loose shorts fuels the burn inside me.

Only I get to see those panties. Only I get to slide them down her legs and see the drop of wetness inside them that only I put there.

“No,” I say, running my hands up her warm thighs and squeezing her beautiful ass. “I want you to straddle me right here.”

She lets out a hard little breath that tells me she’s too turned on to tease me anymore and does exactly as told, stepping on either side of my chair to straddle my knees while I quickly shove my shorts and boxers down to my ankles.

She curls her nails into the skin on my shoulder as she lowers herself over me, the shard of pain cutting hot against the incredible relief of entering her tight wetness.

Her head drops back and her eyes close lazily.

Maybe she likes hurting me or maybe she can’t help it, too lost in the intoxicating feeling of our bodies coming together.

I don’t care as long as she doesn’t stop.

I love what she can do to my body, fucking love every sensation she inflicts on me.

“Look at you getting down on my cock,” I growl, watching her ride me like she owns me. Which she does.

A hot, liquid smile crosses her lips. Her eyes open a hair to gaze down at me, and she draws her thumb over my mouth. “Don’t talk, Lorenzo,” she pants. “Just fuck me.”

I smile. I don’t know what this means, but who cares.

It’s all good. I’m inside the only girl I’ve ever loved, and she’s grinding on my dick like it’s her whole world.

She wraps her arms around my neck and thrusts her tits into my face.

My teeth latch onto her damp, flushed skin.

I stroke her nipple with the stiff tip of my tongue and kiss my way up the valley between her breasts to her neck.

The smell of her perfume simmers at the base of her throat, where she applied it, and scent memory sends me reeling, my cock throbbing inside her at the raw, animal memories of a thousand moments of wanting her with everything I had. Wanting this.

“Fuck, Ruby, I need you,” I say hoarsely. If she wants me silent, too fucking bad. I squeeze her face in my hands and kiss her hard. I didn’t realize how much I missed her, how close I need her. But she only lets me kiss her for a moment before she turns her head and gives me her cheek.

“I missed you, baby,” I whisper into her skin.

“Me too.” But she twists away abruptly and stands up to turn herself around. “Let’s do it this way instead. From behind.”

Fine. Great. Perfect , I think, watching her round ass as she lowers herself onto me again.

Grunting as she arches her back and spreads her knees to take me deeper.

My cock straining as she grabs my hands, cups one around her breast, and sucks one finger on the other into her hot mouth.

She rides me with frenzied, rolling thrusts of her hips, and I keep thinking any minute some dirty, beautiful words are going to start dripping from her lips, but the only sounds she makes are her ragged breaths as she fellates my finger.

I want to wait for her orgasm, but she doesn’t want me to.

She moves like feeling me erupt inside her is her only desire.

She won’t let my hands drop to her clit.

I want to feel her body pulse around mine, and I want to kiss her and taste her tongue and feel the reverberations of her moans as she comes, but all she’ll give me is her back.

So I pull her tight to me and kiss the bikini-strap tan line that cuts across her smooth, bare skin.

My body releases with a jerk, and I spill inside her as a high rips through me.

I love her so much. I bury my face in her back, her body my entire world.

She comes fast and hard a minute later. She throws herself against me and gasps my name as her eyes squeeze shut. I kiss her neck and her ears, getting every inch of her that she’ll let me. But she never turns around to meet my mouth.

As soon as we catch our breath and peel ourselves off the chair, she scoops up her clothes and heads for the bathroom.

“We should never go that long without making each other come,” I say once she returns fully dressed. “Ever. Again.”

She chuckles, but her smile quickly evaporates.

“What?” I step into my boxers.

“I know you’re joking, but that’s how it’ll be next year.”

All the good feelings buzzing inside me die down. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Phone sex?” I raise a suggestive eyebrow, but I’m not feeling the playfulness. “Anyway, we might not need it. We don’t know where either of us will end up.”

She cuts her eyes away and sighs.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Bad week, I guess. Bad day.”

“What happened?”

“I’m just struggling with school stuff.” She drops into a chair. “Everything’s getting harder, and then yesterday my advisor tells me this class I really wanted for fall semester has a mile-long waitlist.”

“Is it offered in spring? I’ll help you come up with a plan B if you want.”

“I know how to check the course catalog, Lorenzo,” she snaps, then immediately looks remorseful. “Sorry. I’m just really stressed.”

“About school?”

She studies her hands, tracing the backs of her fingers. “I’m scared about next year,” she says finally.

“You mean your job? Or us?” I swallow.

“All of it.” Her eyes are pained when she lifts them to meet mine. “I don’t see any way we end up living in the same place.”

“Hold on. My life could go anywhere from here. We don’t have a clue how my season will turn out, let alone what happens after graduation.”

“We know where you’re going to end up.”

“Don’t even start with?—”

“Don’t you even start with the jinxing bullshit! If you want to play pro, you can make it happen. And even if you didn’t,” she adds, waving me off, “you can be anything you want.”

Her certainty makes my pulse pound with frustration. “What I want is to be with you. That’s why I’m getting a bad fucking feeling lately, Ruby. Like there are things you’re not telling me.”

“No,” she says quickly. “There’s not.”

“Really?” I give her a long look. “I can barely get you to call me back lately.”

She doesn’t meet my eye. “I’m sorry. Maybe I have been pulling away a little.”

“Yeah, no shit you’ve been pulling away.” But hearing her admit it herself—that maybe I’m losing her—sends fear surging through me.

Her fingers curl nervously, her eyes moving around the room like the right response is written somewhere on the walls. “You know how I feel about you, Lorenzo. I’m just trying to be more independent. I have to stop acting like a baby and running to you for comfort all the time.”

“That’s a relationship, Ruby.”

“I need to be able to take care of myself no matter what happens. If I could have it my way, nothing would change. But if things go your way, everything will change. That’s reality.”

“Circumstances will change. Not feelings.”

She gives me an empty look. “You can’t know that.”

I swallow against my tightening throat. “Okay, what would change?”

“You’ll be a celebrity.”

I scoff. “I’m not that good, Ruby. I’ll be lucky to make the NFL at all. And even if I was ... so what?” I lean close and press my hand to her cheek. “You’re all I want. I love you.”

Her eyes close, and she turns her head so her lips brush my hand. She dots a tiny kiss against my palm.

“Ruby,” I say quietly.

She looks at me, but when no words come out, I get a sick feeling. Something’s about to go wrong.

“What do I have to do, beg you to say it?”

She shuts her eyes again. “I’m sorry. I love you, Lorenzo.”

I take my hand away, cold running through me. “You can’t even look at me when you say it?”

She looks at me then, surprise and hurt in her expression, which pisses me off. What right does she have to be hurt?

“You haven’t said those words to me since the first night we slept together. And then never again. What’s going on?”

“Nothing! It’s hard for me to say it sometimes, that’s all.”

“Really?” I spit, anger flaring unexpectedly. All I want is for her to reassure me I’m not losing her, and all she’s doing is convincing me I am. “Seemed pretty easy for you to say it to me four years ago.”

Her eyes turn laser sharp on me, her lips parted. “What do you mean?”

I shouldn’t have told her, not in a moment like this, but it’s too late now.

“Last night of summer before senior year. My dock? You didn’t just kiss me, you told me you loved me.

” I see the exact instant shock and fear transform her eyes.

These feelings scare her, but I hold her eye.

They don’t scare me. “That you were in love with me.”

She’s trying to stay calm, but her chest rises and falls visibly. She shakes her head and stares at me, though her gaze looks far away. “I don’t remember that.”

“I do. I’ve been remembering it over and over.

” The bewildered look on her face fills me with regret.

I should have told her a long time ago. I lean across the table toward her.

“Ruby, I’m not trying to pressure you, I just want to understand.

We’ve wanted this for so long, and now that we have it, you’re running away from me. ”

She puts her hand up and stands. “I—I don’t want to talk about this right now. Please. I can’t think straight.”

I stand and reach for her. “No, I want to hear you tell me you love me and you want to be with me as much as I want to be with you. And if you can’t say that to me, I deserve to know why.”

“Why do you need to hear me say it? Apparently you’ve known for four years I’m in love with you! How is that not enough?”

Shame burns bright in her eyes before she turns away.

I step back, silenced. It’s then I really see myself: begging my best friend to tell me she still loves me, to swear she won’t leave me next year. And for the first time, I don’t like us together.