Page 4 of Study Hard
“Oh fuck,” I gasped out as his teeth scraped over the sensitive point before he licked a soothing circle around it. And though maybe it wasn’t exactly the target I’d been hoping he’d go for—that would always, A1, be my dick—a warm stream of pleasure radiated outward as he alternated between my pecs. I twined my fingers through his hair and when his torso rubbed against my groin, couldn’t help the tiny, friction-seeking thrust of my hips.
Eric dropped back on his heels and licked his lower lip. “Moving on.”
I frowned in confusion. I mean, I expected to be teased, yes, but that hardly even counted as a reward. “That’s it?”
“We have forty-five more cards to get through.”
“We should’ve set parameters regarding what qualifies as a reward.”
“Guess you should’ve thought of that beforehand,” he teased. “Terms have already been agreed upon and mutually accepted.”
I rested back on the palms of my hands and exhaled noisily. “Fine. Carry on.” I could be patient, even if my nipples were still tingling and my dick was definitely disagreeing, obscenely tenting my sweatpants in protest. Eric kept glancing down at it as he returned to his chair and picked up the cards again. The third glance had me fighting to suppress a smile. “Getting distracted, taskmaster?”
He ground the heel of his hand against the lump in his sweats and shifted around. “Nothing I can’t handle.” And before I could challenge him again, he read the next question.
I responded correctly, laying out the interaction between civil society and politics in Nigeria. The next four questions fell in quick succession. All correct.
“Did you set me up?” Eric narrowed his eyes dubiously at me, and I snickered.
“No. Schemes and plots are your territory. I’m good with being the beneficiary. Now get your ass back over here.”
But he didn’t. Instead he stood and lifted his T-shirt over his head, back arching in a stretch afterward that was probably more about making my mouth to water than actually limbering his spine. He knew me well; my gaze remained transfixed to the lean stretch of his stomach and dark circles of his nipples pebbling in response to the change in temperature until he tossed the shirt at me with a challenging quirk of his brow. Before I could complain, he gripped his cock through his pants and squeezed the base, pulled the fabric tight against the head of his dick with his thumb, and caressed the stretched fabric until a small, damp circle appeared and his eyes went half-lidded and hazy. I pulled in a slow breath, fingers curling against my palms to keep me from launching from the bed and attacking him. “More.”
One corner of his mouth curved, and he stroked the fabric a couple more times. “I swear you get greedier every week, Nate.”
“You keep feeding me,” I quipped as he eased back into the chair and picked up the cards. “C’mon. There better be a touching reward this time.”
I tried to blow through the next set and got a little too cocky on the fourth question. “I meant Germany,” I protested as Eric rose to his feet. “I really did know that one.”
“Too late.” He made a new pile of the note card I’d flubbed and crossed the room to his closet. I watched him with narrowed eyes as he riffled through his hangers, then selected a tie. Pondering the various ways he might use it, I decided I was definitely down for being tied up. That wasn’t a terrible punishment. And not even something new to us.
I already had my wrists behind my back at the ready as he returned to hover in front of me with the tie. But instead of bending down to secure them there, he stretched the shiny fabric taut between his fingers, considering the tapered width briefly before he pressed it to my eyes. I groaned. “You asshole.” He knew how visual I was, how much I liked to see every damn thing that went on between us. Fuck me, itwasa punishment. And not a fun one.
Eric’s hands lingered on my temples, one thumb gently caressing the apple of my cheek, and the way it trembled made me certain he was silently laughing at my frustration. I could hear it in his voice, too, when he spoke. “Too tight? Can you see?”
“No, and not a goddamn thing,” I grumbled. “Get a move on.”
“Not yet, frat boy, settle down. What was the correct answer?”
“Germany,” I repeated.
His thumb traced from my cheek to the corner of my mouth, then swept across my lower lip, parting it. Unexpected pleasure surged through me with the light contact, the touch, the surface area itself somehow feeling larger without the benefit of sight. I could feel the rise and fall of my chest speed up with each soft, slow caress.
“What are you doing now?” I asked after a few seconds passed without any further questions.
“Looking at you. Didn’t expect to find you so damn irresistable like this, but goddamn.” Warm skin brushed mine as he lifted my wrist. Eric splayed my fingers open and laid them across an even greater warmth. Hard, silky, and immediately obvious. I gripped his cock eagerly, and he guided my hand up and down his shaft a couple of times, a quiet groan of appreciation escaping him before he pried my grip loose and dropped my hand. “Mmm.”
I shifted on the bed, too turned on for my own good. Thatmmm, it could mean a hundred things, but what I thought it meant in that moment was that he was still touching himself but I wasn’t allowed to see it. “This is cruel and unusual punishment.”
“For both of us, maybe.”
“Keep going,” I demanded, and though I was growing impatient, I made sure to keep my focus this time when he asked the questions instead of trying to race through them. When I got all of them right, I lifted my chin victoriously. “Now get this fucking tie off my eyes so I can see.” It wasn’t as if I couldn’t do it myself, but that would feel like cheating.
“Is that what you want as your reward?” His voice was close. Close enough that the hairs lifted on my forearms, and a second later I registered his body heat. There was promise in the warmth, and in the undertone of his question.Hmm. I hesitated. “I think so?”
Eric took my hand again. Wet heat enveloped the tip of my index finger and slid slowly down the length to my knuckle, then back up—a tight, groin-tingling mimicry of what he was capable of on other parts of my body. His tongue swirled over my knuckles and the pad of my finger, setting fire to nerve endings I wasn’t even aware existed. Releasing my finger, he turned my hand within his, the point of his tongue mapping the lines on my palm and then flattening to a velvet slide over the entire surface that made me shudder. Fuck me, I added palms and fingers to the ridiculous list of innocuous places Eric could turn into erogenous zones at will. The first time he’d sucked one of my toes while he was plowing my ass, I’d started laughing because it had taken me by complete surprise and because I figured toe sucking was solely the territory of foot fetishists. Wrong. That laughter quickly morphed into white-hot pleasure that had me nutting all over my stomach well before I intended to. So I was down with the palm licking, ready to see where he was going with it. I had my own guesses.
I couldn’t say I was surprised when Eric guided my hand to his dick again, but I wasn’t mad about it either. I had a near worshipful relationship with that particular tool of his, and gladly picked up where I’d left off, jacking him as soon as he was within my grasp, my own cock twinging in my pants, a familiar ache building.