School Ties Page 18

  He sucks the last bite of oatmeal off his spoon, mouthing it thoughtfully, and I can’t take my eyes off his lips. I would give anything in a bucket to be that spoon. When it clatters into the bowl, I’m shocked back to attention. “Yes, you do.”

  I shake my head, pressing my lips together.

  “Look. Communication, talking about this, is huge. It won’t work if we can’t talk to each other. It’s the only way to keep you safe, and I want to keep you safe. I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do, and the only way I’ll know is if you tell me. I pay attention to your body language and your responses, but I’m not a mind reader. I know it’s hard. It’s not something that comes naturally. It’ll take time. I’ll wait as long as I need to. But while you get comfortable using your own words, maybe we can talk about this by borrowing someone else’s.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got a whole stack of dirty words under your bed.” Right. All those times I’d wished I could give Will an annotated copy of one of my books and here Shep is asking for exactly that. “You must’ve gotten some ideas from there, right? How would you feel about showing me?”

  “Now?”

  He shrugs. “If you want. There’s no rush. I’ve waited for you for four years, I don’t mind waiting longer. But now works, if you’re ready.”

  I’ve already started compiling a list of my favorite scenes in my head, so while some of me is shouting to play coy, I don’t want to. I want to share this with someone; someone who wants to know, someone who might want the same things I think I do. The thought makes me stumble. I think I want this. “What if we talk and what if we try, but then . . . what if I don’t actually like it?”

  His features that have been so relaxed tighten like I’ve pulled a rubber band. His chest expands with an inhale and the line I want to soothe away with my thumb forms between his brows. “Honestly?”

  I nod even though I’m not sure if I want the answer. Maybe I should plug my ears with my fingers and sing at the top of my lungs with my eyes scrunched closed, pretend that’s not a possibility.

  “I don’t know. But you know I’m in the same boat, right? I’ve never done any of this with a partner, for real.”

  His uncertainty should make me panic and there’s an unmistakable flutter in my stomach, but of course he doesn’t know. I’ve always liked his rock solidness but the fact that he’s human, not perfect, soapstone instead of granite, somehow makes this more real, more possible instead of less. He’s told me the truth. If there’s anything Will taught me, it’s that I don’t want lies. Even when the truth isn’t pretty.

  “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  Shep

  As I watch Erin walk away, her round hips swaying in a pair of pajama pants with goddamn rainbows on them, blood starts to pool where it shouldn’t. You cannot think with your dick, Shepherd. I need to pay attention to her, listen to her, what she wants. Cross my fingers and ask the universe to do me another fucking favor and let the Venn diagram of what she wants and what I want overlap enough to make this work. Please. I won’t survive breaking her heart again.

  What I told her wasn’t a lie. I’m a total pervert. Even Mordecai’s said so, and he would know, but he’s in his own stratosphere. I can live without some of the kinkier shit, and who knows? She could surprise me. Some of the things she’s read . . . they’re not for the faint of heart. But I have some particular tastes I don’t know if she’ll be in for. I clear our places and while I wait for her, my mind wanders over various scenarios.

  She comes back with a few books as I’m putting the last bowl back in the cabinet. She’s clutching at them and her face is pink, I hope a mix of excitement and embarrassment. I sit on her couch and she snuggles her way under my arm, not shy with her affection. I love that it comes so easily to her. It makes me feel adored and protective at the same time.

  Settled with some well-thumbed volumes on her lap, she looks up.

  “What do you want me to call you?”

  “I like it when you call me Shep. I remember the couple of times you slipped like it was yesterday.” It still gives my heart a kick whenever she says it.

  “I like calling you that, too. It’s like we’re finally in the same place. You get to be Shep and I get to be Erin. But, I thought it might be easier, when we . . .”

  Her face crumples up. She’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. Mordecai liked the heavy hitters, people who knew what was up, but I had a soft spot for the new kids. Guiding them through all this newness that was confusing, and awesome, and scary as shit all at once. I had been young—really young—for the average age of our members, but I’d never felt brand new even though I had a shit ton to learn. So I fill in the blank. “Play, Erin. You can say play. Or ‘scene’ if you like it better.”

  She purses her lips, and it’s all I can do to keep from grabbing a fistful of her hair and wrestling her onto her back to kiss her.

  “Play,” she declares. “That sounds fun.”

  She’s going to kill me. Her cuteness is going to stab me through the heart and I’m going to bleed out on her couch. Jesus fucking Christ. “It is fun. It can get intense, too, but if it’s never fun, or funny, you’re doing it wrong.”

  She smiles without showing her teeth and her eyes light up. “So when we’re having fun, what should I call you?”

  The possibilities race through my mind, every option urging my blood south. What I wouldn’t give to hear her call me Master when she’s on her knees about to suck me off. But if she got in the habit and she slipped in public, in front of the guys? How humiliated she would be tugs on the reins of my runaway craving. I’d like to push her, embarrass her, make her cheeks bloom pink, but her being ashamed and in a situation I can’t turn around quickly? Hell no.

  “Why don’t you call me Zach?” Her eyebrows pinch in a pout. Before she can argue, I lay a finger on her lips. “What if we were in the dining hall and you called me sir?”

  Her face flames so hot I feel it and she claps her hands over my finger, still resting on her mouth. She shakes her head, a flick of panic.

  “That’s the only reason why. No one here calls me Zach. They’d think it was special, because we’re together. It wouldn’t mean anything to them, but it would mean something to us.”

  She loosens the hands clamped over her mouth and lays them on my thigh, close enough to my cock my breath catches and she looks up at me through her lashes. “So we’re together?”

  “I think so. What do you think?”

  She nuzzles my chest with her cheek and the hot dampness of her breath through the fabric of my shirt is testing my self-control. “I think I’d like that.”

  “How do you feel about calling me Zach when we play?”

  “It’s like a code, right? A secret code.”

  I’ve never thought the word “darling” before, but there’s no other word for her. At least no other word I haven’t used a hundred thousand times before. This girl. Goddamn. “Yeah, lamb. Our secret code.”

  “Okay, Zach.” Just like that, the name I was called for the first fourteen years of my life is transformed from something I hate to hear because it means I’m back in Shamokin where everything is dark and shitty and hopeless to a ray of fucking sunshine because it’s dropping from her lips in her sweet, compliant voice. Okay, Zach.

  I clear my throat before I rub her arm. Limits, Shepherd, limits. Before I do anything else, I have to get a sense of her limits. “So what have we got here?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shep

  It’s an open weekend and the guys who didn’t leave campus have been herded into the student center by the faculty who drew the short straws. Lucky for us, we both got the night off. It’s not often we have the dorm to ourselves, but tonight’s my lucky night. Hopefully when it’s over, Erin’s going to feel it’s been one of hers.

 
I’ve spent about an hour stripping her slowly, torturously, one button at a time between touching the skin I’ve bared, studying it, memorizing it and savoring it. I’ll only see her naked for the first time once and I want to remember revealing every inch of her. Of course, the process has been slowed by kissing. A lot of kissing.

  It wasn’t technically our first kiss. That happened four years and a lifetime ago. So much has changed since then. Erin’s not married, I haven’t been her student for years, we’re sitting on her comfortable couch instead of crouched on the floor. You’d think all that would make it easier. But instead, the deliberateness made it more awkward. I’ve kissed girls before, but never like this. Never with intent. Never with this desperate, achy, beaten-off-with-a-stick desire. God, I wanted her. I’ve had my mouth on one part of her or another for the better part of an hour and I want her still. More. I’ll never get enough.

  But putting my mouth to hers . . . My heart had pounded as I leaned closer, threaded my fingers through the silky hair at the nape of her neck, held and twisted it to remind her, remind myself. I’d hesitated, inches from her sweetly eager face, emotion rioting in my chest while I begged the universe to please let this be good, for both of us. She’d tilted her head and raised her chin, laid her small hand on my shoulder. When she’d leaned forward, tipped, I closed the gap.

  It wasn’t fireworks so much as stillness. My heart was still beating hard, my thoughts fraught and running wild. But with the touch of her, the answering softness, the slight part of her lips begging me to take more of her, give more of myself over . . .

  I don’t get a lot of peace. Something always needs taking care of, looking after. My students, my teams, my brother. That’s how I like it. Working, earning, proving. But for a few seconds, I’d been granted serenity in the form of Erin in my arms, trusting me, wanting me, kissing me.

  For my whole life, I’ve tried to do the right thing. I’ve tried to be what people have needed me to be, taken up responsibility or offered help where I could. But until then, there had been something missing. I’m familiar with duty, loyalty, but when I kissed Erin, it wasn’t because of those things. My fidelity to her is flavored differently, with an added zeal that turns those virtues into something more complete. Devotion. The heat of her, the welcoming wet invitation. It had felt like love.

  Now she’s sitting in my lap wearing a pair of light blue lace panties and nothing else. I’ve been running my hands all over her, wherever I want because she’s mine, all mine. I cup a full breast and strum a thumb across her nipple, fascinated by how it gathers and hardens under my touch. When I keep at it, her hips shift in a squirm that doesn’t need translation, but I ask anyway. I want her to get in the habit of talking to me. It’s so hard for the poor little thing and I won’t deny I get off on her embarrassment.

  “Do you like that, lamb?”

  “Yes, Zach.”

  “What do you like?”

  She blinks mournful brown eyes up to mine and you’d think I told her that her favorite sweater got ruined at the dry cleaner’s. “Go on. Tell me what you like, or I’ll stop.”

  I pause to emphasize my threat and her brow furrows. “Please don’t, Zach.”

  “Then you’ll tell me.”

  “I . . .” She swallows hard and huffs out a breath. Come on, Erin.

  “You can do it. I want to hear you.”

  “I . . .” She heaves a huge sigh. A laugh bubbles up inside of me, but I swallow it. She’d be mortified. She just needs to be handled right through this. I tighten my hold on her and up the intensity of the strokes across her nipple, tight and hard as a cherry stone against the pad of my thumb. God, I want that in my mouth, against my tongue, between my teeth. Not yet. Rein it in, Shepherd. She needs you.

  Some of the tension leeches from her body under the increased sensations, and she makes a tiny mewling in the back of her throat. Maybe if I tease her hard enough she’ll forget to be embarrassed and spill. But my little lamb is wound pretty tight. I don’t want her to snap.

  “Why are you so afraid to talk about this, Erin? Hasn’t anyone ever asked you what you liked?”

  “No.”

  The way her eyes dart away and she curls her body up tighter, making herself smaller, makes me wonder if this isn’t a sex thing. Maybe no one’s ever asked her what she wants so she’s afraid to ask, to say it out loud. Why bother if no one’s going to listen to you? I know she has, but mostly she lets it slip by in a swiftly moving stream of what everyone else wants, what everyone else thinks she should be.

  That stops here. With me.

  “I’m asking you. And I’m ordering you to tell me.”

  She looks up again, her eyes gone wide and her face flushed.

  “Ordering me to?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I have to do what you say?”

  I’m on the right track. Permission isn’t going to cut it; demand will. “Yes. If you want to please me. Do you want to please me?”

  “More than anything.”

  Those three words make my mind go Technicolor and buzzy like a late-night color test, but I keep my voice calm and easy. For her. “Then you’ll tell me.”

  I watch her turn it over in her mind. Then there’s this stubborn set to her face, softened but not buried by embarrassment. “I like . . .”

  That’s a word farther than we’ve gotten before.

  “I like it when . . . when you . . .”

  Come on, Erin, you can do it.

  “I like it when you play with my nipples.”

  It’s come out in a flood of whispers, so fast that if I didn’t expect it, I might not have understood. But this isn’t debate team or mock trial. She’s not being graded on elocution. She’s done as I’ve asked, hard as it was, and now she gets to see what happens to good girls who follow orders.

  I take the hard peak in between thumb and forefinger and roll it, back and forth. The change in action is met by a sigh, and a tiny “Oh!”

  Yes, Erin. Oh.

  “Do you like that?”

  “Yes, Zach.”

  I apply more pressure and roll farther into a twist, and she gasps. Her hips are grinding into my lap, giving me ideas I shouldn’t be having. Yet. “Do you like that?”

  “Yes, Zach.”

  Fuck all, do I love the way her voice gets breathy and soft when she’s turned on. I could listen to her say that all day. Yes, Zach. Yes, Zach. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  “More or less than what I was doing before?”

  Hesitation. “More, Zach.”

  More, Zach. More, Zach. More. More. More.

  “Do you want me to do it harder or softer?”

  Quiet. She’s so quiet when she lays her head on my shoulder, her breath hot on my neck, and her eyelashes flutter against me when she says, “Harder, Zach.”

  Harder, Zach. Harder.

  Yes. More. Harder.

  So that’s what my good girl gets.

  Erin

  Why has no one ever done this to me before? Maybe because no one’s ever bothered to ask me what I want, in any context. Not really. Everyone who’s been responsible for me has shirked that particular duty. My dad because he was too focused on his career to factor in my needs or wants; my grandfather because he felt anything beyond the time he’d been allotted with me was off-limits for comment and was probably right; and Will . . . well, I’m guessing because he didn’t give a crap. But Shep, Zach, does. Though at this particular moment it’s about sex, I get the feeling he means always, about everything. I matter. I’d like to luxuriate in that for hours, but I’m distracted by what he’s doing to me.

  I didn’t know I could get this hot from someone playing with my nipple, but this is, oh, god, this is . . . grammar-destroying good. I can barely form a coherent thought. I clutch at him like I might fall down if I don’t. I might. I can’t keep still. When he
twists hard, I yelp but it turns into an embarrassing noise. You know, one of those sex noises people don’t actually make, except they do. I do. “Unh.”

  Then he’s laying me down on the couch on my back and kneeling beside me. One of his hands rests under my breasts and the other sweeps some stray strands of hair out of my face. “Open your mouth, lamb.”

  When I do, he slips his thumb inside, and I cinch my lips around the last joint, closing my eyes; licking, sucking.

  I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes sucking my own thumb. It’s something I hate, that I’ve done my best to hide from anyone I’ve shared a bed with. Will used to make fun of me even though it only happens when I’m stressed far above and beyond my constant low hum of anxiety. I can’t help it. It’s something shameful. But this—Shep’s thumb between my teeth, his hand holding my jaw—god, is it sexy. So sexy I’m making more of those stupid sex noises.

  “Lace your hands behind your head.”

  He doesn’t tell me to let go of his thumb, so I don’t, but work my hands up and under, my fingers getting tangled in my hair. The motion’s arched my back and it makes me notice my breasts more. Shep notices them more, too. He cups the neglected one and squeezes before he treats this nipple to the same attention the other one received earlier.

  I’m whimpering around his thumb and I wish he had more hands. I’m insatiable. I want him to touch me everywhere all at once.

  “I’m going to touch you between your legs. Is that okay?”

  I nod emphatically. Yes, yes, yes. The corner of his mouth tips up and his gaze follows his hand skimming over my stomach. I expect him to slip inside my underwear—the sexiest pair I have—but he slides fingers and a palm over the gusset of the powder-blue lace and then presses the heel of his hand above my clit, making my hips buck to get the contact I want. God, I’m shameless. But he doesn’t seem to mind. “Again.”

  I’m frozen until he presses down on my pubic bone, and again I lever my hips against the not-quite-satisfactory contact. “That’s right. Again.”