Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (31 page)

My dad’s shouts have died away.

I breathe slowly until I’m calm again.

Now, my submission piece is ready.

NELL

One week turns into two, and then Brant is waiting for me outside my complex in his small blue pickup. He leans against the side with his arms crossed, sporting a form-fitting plaid shirt and jeans that are all distressed at the thighs. He looks so clean and dirty at the same time. When he lifts his head, his eyes shimmer and glow in the afternoon sunlight.

“That all you got?” he asks when I approach, opening the door for me as I slip into the cab.

“I pack lightly,” I answer.

He gives me a crooked smile, then shuts the door and comes around to the driver’s side. “You look really pretty,” he tells me before shutting his own door, his eyes going down to my breasts.

I picked a simple black top that hugs me, paired with the only pair of blue jeans I own. I figured if I was going to meet Brant’s parents, I should probably not go with my whole all-black thing I normally do in front of people I’ve never met before. I imagine Brant’s roommate Dmitri and I would have a lot of chromatic overlap amidst our wardrobes, considering how much black and grey he wears.

Brant twists a knob, flipping through the radio stations as he eyes me. “So, like … you still wanna do this, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, you can still back out. My parents can be a bit much, and … well, I guess it should go without sayin’, but—”

“Having second thoughts about introducing me to them?”

“No, no, no. It’s more, uh … I don’t want
you
to feel uncomfortable. Get me?”

I smirk. “Doesn’t seem like I’m the one who’s uncomfortable.”

He bites his lip. “Alright. Fair enough. It’s just that I … never, uh—”

“Never take girls home?”

He lands on a station, then looks up at me with a grave expression. “It’s been … a
long
time.”

“Like, last year Theatre gala long?”

“More like freshman year of high school Sadie Hawkins dance long.”

“Yikes.”

“They might be a tiny bit overexcited and weird and, like, cook you things and interrogate you and stuff.” His face is already going red and he’s not even pulled the truck into drive yet. “Just try to ignore it and play cool if you can.”

“Ignore your parents’ hospitality? That would be rude of me,” I return with mock offense.

“Hospitality? Alright, babe, if that’s what you call it.”

I eye him for the term of endearment, which he clearly said to annoy me judging from the crooked grin on his face as he pulls out of park and takes off.

We enter the interstate and cross through the dense downtown, dodging buildings that tower over the highway and sandwich us on either side. When the city passes by and becomes another shrinking thing in the rearview, the highway soon grows narrow until we exit and rip down a few streets at a speed I presume to be well over the limit. The cookie-cutter houses line the road now with neatly-trimmed sidewalks on either side shadowed by homely trees.

It’s at 702 Barkley Lane that he draws to a stop by the curb. Brant takes a deep breath in, then lets it out all over the steering wheel, his eyes popped wide open as he stares at his hands.

He is clearly tense and unprepared for this. Maybe he
is
having second thoughts.

“It’s going to be okay,” I tell him, patting his back in some totally inadequate gesture of assurance. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“My parents … are like … really, really, really—”

“Relax, Brant. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

He takes another breath, then shuts off the pickup, stealing away the music from the radio and casting us into silence. “You ready?”

I lean over the gearshift and kiss his cheek. The gesture comes so naturally, it startles both of us. “Ready.”

The outside of his little one-story house is peach-colored from corner to corner. There is a porch that wraps from the front around to one side with a two-car garage comprising the other. A cat looks up lazily from the top step of the porch as we ascend and couldn’t be any less bothered by our interruption of his nap.

When Brant rings the doorbell, dogs bark and yap and howl from within. I can’t tell how many there are, but the sound is overwhelming. I’m only used to one growing up, not the six or seven I imagine are awaiting us on the other side of that door.

The moment there’s a sound at the door handle, Brant’s hand snaps to the small of my back and he pulls me against his side. The maneuver is so sudden that I gasp just before the door swings open.

Standing before me is a pretty, petite woman with a blonde ponytail and enormous blue eyes. For a split second, I wonder if this is his sister before I remind myself he’s an only child.
This is his mom??
The woman regards me with surprise for two seconds before a polite, expectant smile crosses her face instead.

“Mom, this is Penelope.”

I jerk at hearing my full name, giving Brant a bit of confused side-eye before facing his mom and extending a hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Rudawski.”

“The same to you, Penelope!” she exclaims sweetly. “Come on in! I have some iced tea mixed up, raspberry and peach, your choice. I can show you the guestroom as well, if you’d like to bring your things. We’ll get you settled in.”

“Mom, we don’t need a
guestroom
,” blurts Brant, his grip on me tightening. “This is my girlfriend. She’s staying with me.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” Mrs. Rudawski says, giggling. Her face flushes.

Girlfriend.
The word is still ringing in my ears when I say, “Thank you,” and offer a smile that I hope doesn’t betray my inner misgivings.

Inside the house, I’m relieved and impressed to discover it was only two dogs that made all the noise: two Labradors, both cream-colored and panting. Even their eyes look the same.
How do they tell them apart?

“Juliet Montague,” says Brant into my ear, “and Bach Van Gogh.”

“Should I ask?”

“Bach and Van Gogh, my dad’s favorite composer and painter, respectively. And Juliet Montague because … well … my mom believes in happy endings.” He rolls his eyes.

“I do,” Mrs. Rudawski chimes in, having heard him despite his whispering. “Do you want raspberry or peach?”

“Peach,” blurts Brant.

“I was asking our guest, Brant.
You
can help yourself,” she teases with a smirk at her son. The smirk gives away her laugh lines, though I still couldn’t believe she’s a day over forty, even if she is. She must’ve had him young. “Peach or raspberry, Penelope?” she directs at me.

“Peach will be fine,” I answer, not wanting to be difficult even though I like raspberry more.

Mrs. Rudawski smiles and places a hand on my back just as the dogs race past us, knocking into her feet and nearly tripping her. “Jules! Bach! Crazy dogs. Please, Penelope, make yourself at home.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Rudawski.”

Brant leads me down a short hall and into his bedroom. I’m not sure what I expected—walls filled from one end to the other with posters of naked chicks and sports teams—but that’s not what greets my eyes. The bed is fluffed with several comforters and blankets in alternating orange and blue colors, the headboard utterly engulfed by a mountain of plush throw pillows. A giant mirror overlooks a dresser that has bumper stickers lined down its side, and the word “faithful” is etched into its face. The window on the other side of the room overlooks a little backyard hot tub, a deck, and a fire pit. It’s a very slapdash mix of suburban stereotypes with a country vibe.

“Wow,” I finally say after letting myself be struck by my environment. This is quite a departure from my loft, or from all the inner-city apartments I grew up in.

He flicks on a lamp at a desk I didn’t notice, then sets his bag down in the chair there. “Yeah, home sweet home.” He lifts a crooked smile at me, then nods at the bed while pulling out his phone to give it a glance. “You can put your stuff anywhere. Kick back and—”

“You called me your girlfriend.”

Brant freezes. He tilts his head innocently. “But … you are.”

I close the distance between us, pull the phone out of his hand, and gently set it on the desk. My face is inches from his. “I sure am.”

He clears his throat, swallowing hard. “I mean, we call ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend, don’t we? I thought that you …? Did … Did I just make it weird?”

“Weird as fuck,” I confirm. “Just how I like it.”

My lips latch onto his, and we breathe in one another as the kiss consumes us. The whole room seems to shrink as I taste Brant in his own bedroom, the room he supposedly grew up in, the room that holds all the secrets of what made Brant into who he is today.

He pulls away and stares at me longingly, his fingers linked at the small of my back as he holds me against his hips.

He’s hard. I announce my timely observation. “You’re hard.”

“Throbbingly so,” he agrees.

I hook a finger into the waistband of his jeans. “We better do something about that.”

His eyes flick toward the door, his confidence suddenly shaken. “Yeah … uh, maybe later. Y’know, when my, uh …”

“When your mommy and daddy go to bed?” I finish for him. “Wow, I feel sixteen again.”

“I’m pretty sure my parents know we’re boning,” he spits back flatly.

The heat between my thighs is unimaginable. I don’t know if it’s the excitement of sneaking around that has suddenly worked me up so much or if it’s just that I’m crazy as hell for Brant, but all I can think about is his cock slipping inside me as I plunge into his eyes.

“I wonder what you were like as a teen,” I ponder out loud, “and whether we would’ve gotten along, had we … grown up together.”

He licks his lips, touching his forehead to mine. “I was a bad boy back then.”

“Compared to now?”

“Bad, bad, bad boy.”

I smirk wickedly. “You know what a bad boy needs?”

The next instant, I throw him onto his stomach on the bed, folded over the edge. After giving his shirt a tug up and his loose jeans a tug down, his tight butt is exposed to me. Seriously, I’ve never been much of a “butt girl”, but damn. Brant’s is a fucking work of art.

He turns his face, craning his neck to see me with a mild look of concern. “Uh … N-Nell?”

I swat his bare ass. He jerks, his eyes stretching wide.

“Did I say you could speak?”

He blinks. “No.”

I smack his ass again, harder. He hisses in lieu of shouting out, then clamps his teeth down on his fist.

“A bad boy needs a spanking. You’re a bad boy, aren’t you?”

Still biting his knuckles, he only turns his face ever slightly, his hilariously alarmed eyes slowly meeting mine. He doesn’t say anything.

He’s a fast learner.

I suppress a laugh, biting my lip in the process.
This is so much fun.
I raise my hand, then bring it down quickly, but don’t spank him. He flinches, expecting the sting, then turns around when the spank doesn’t come, his face wrinkled in a mixture of confusion and alarm.

I allow my fingers to gently caress his ass, exploring it from cheek to cheek. There’s something about Brant’s cocky demeanor that makes having any sort of power over him that much more sexy. There’s nothing quite like putting a hot man in his place.

Especially when that place is at the end of his own bed with his pants down.

“Did you get all your bags?” calls a voice in the hallway.

Brant is off the bed as fast as if the sheets just transformed into the Jabberwocky. His pants are pulled up the second his mother emerges at the doorway, a glass of tea in either hand.

“Thank you,” I say without missing a beat, crossing the room and taking the glass from her. After an innocent sip, I lift my eyebrows. “Tasty. Thank you.”