Dominate (University of Gatica #5) (6 page)

Tyler's mouth was soft and warm on hers as she drew him down over her on the towel-covered bench, his hand still resting on her hip, and Aileen ran her fingers through his hair, blinking back the sting of tears that threatened at the backs of her eyes. She wasn't going to let him see them. It would only make him feel worse.

“You know,” he said against her neck as his mouth moved down, his hands going to the hem of her shirt to start pulling it over her head, “I think we've had sex in almost every sports-related place on campus now.”

She would have laughed, any other time, and she tried to, but it came out a little weaker than she'd meant. He looked down at her, his eyebrows drawing together over those amazing eyes. She'd spent so much time trying to map the color in them, and even now she couldn't quite say with any certainty. They were always shifting. Grey then green then amber. She wanted to imprint them on her memory so that she would never forget looking into them like this.

Her heart clenched, and she forced the thoughts and the feeling away. If they were only going to have one last time, she wanted it to be good. She wanted it to be a memory that she could treasure, not one that she would regret.

She lifted her hands so that Tyler could pull the shirt over her head, arching her shoulders up off the bench. He dropped it on the floor, and she reached for his, sending it the same way.

He was as glorious under the shirt as she'd thought he was the first time she saw him, all those rippling muscles, and she traced them with her fingertips, feeling the ridges of them under her hands, the rise and fall of his breath.

“I want you,” she said, because she did. She would always want him.

Tyler smiled down at her. “Well that's a good thing, because I want you, too. You drive me crazy, you know that, Aileen?”

“Do I?” She managed a better laugh that time, and dragged him up for a kiss that started slow and became hungry. Needy. She was going to have to give this up and she wasn't ready, but better she end it before it became a chore for both of them. Something bitter and toxic, more painful than it was already going to be.

“Absolutely wild,” Tyler said when the kiss broke, and his voice was rough.

He tugged at the waistband of her shorts, and Aileen lifted her hips to let him take those off, too, kicking her shoes off the end of the bench when they were gone. Laid out under him in nothing but her underwear and sports bra, she breathed in the scent of his cologne and wrapped a leg around his thigh, urging him closer so that he straddled the bench between her legs.

Two of his long, slender fingers stroked up the curve of her under her panties, and Aileen pressed up into it, her body starting to sing with the pleasure of his touch. It didn't know or care that this would be the last time. It only wanted him and his hands and his mouth and his cock, and Aileen wasn't going to argue with that.

“Tyler,” she breathed, soft enough that if her voice cracked he wouldn't hear it.

“You want something?” he teased, smiling that brilliant smile at her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Told you already what it is. Now get to giving it.”

He laughed, and the sound pooled warm in Aileen's chest. She let out a slow breath, pushing herself up so that she could strip out of the sports bra, and then settling herself practically in his lap, kissing him hard.

His hands slid over her hips and up the bare curves of her waist to cradle her breasts, and he dipped his head to take one of her nipples into his mouth, making her gasp. Aileen wrapped her fingers around the nape of his neck again, wanting to hold him near. Wanting to never let him go. Warm lips brushed against the curve of one breast, then across the valley between them so that he could catch the other nipple gently between his teeth.

She didn't want gentle, Aileen realized suddenly. Her hands wrapped around his shoulders tight. “No more foreplay,” she ground out through her teeth.

Tyler lifted his head and looked up at her, and for a moment there was something like concern on his face, but she saw him push away whatever had made him uneasy, and he chuckled again. “Want it that bad, huh?”

“Yeah,” Aileen said, pushing him down onto his back on the towels. “I want it that bad.”

She yanked her panties down and off and then his shorts, and he reached up to hold her hips as she straddled him, guiding him into her where she was already wet with need. Both of them groaned, and his fingers tightened their hold. When he looked up at her, his eyes were dark and hot with want, and Aileen felt an answering heat growing in her belly, burning between her thighs. She lifted herself up and slid down again setting a fast pace, and he watched her through half-lidded eyes with his lips parted and his hips rocking up to meet her.

This was the way that she wanted to remember him: looking at her and only her. Wanting her just as much as she wanted him. She wanted to remember the way that he felt inside her, and the grasp of his hands on her hips. The burn in her thighs as she worked herself up and down on his length. The way his breath sounded, coming fast and tight with pleasure.

“Damn, Aileen. Have I told you that you're perfect?”

Not nearly enough
, she might have answered if she could have found the levity, but she just shook her head, tossing a few loose strands of sweat-damp hair out of her face.

“Well, you are,” he said, and his hands slid up her back, guiding her to bend down so that their mouths could meet, the kiss much slower than the hard pace she'd set.

For a moment, her rhythm faltered and slowed to match, and they were rocking against each other, every nerve lighting up with pleasure. But it was too much like making love. Too much like the kind of sex that people who thought they were going to be together forever had, and Aileen couldn't take it. She broke the kiss, arching back to brace her hands against his thighs, and picked up the pace again. Tyler moaned her name like he was praying it, and god she was going to miss him. She was going to miss everything about him.

His hands were sliding over her thighs, curling around the backs of them so that he could run his short nails up over thin, ticklish skin, tracing lines that just barely stung in their wake. She wanted him to press them deeper, leave marks that she could remember him by. She wanted his touch to sink under her skin and stay there forever.

“Fuck,” she breathed, and he echoed the word.

One of his hands left the other lingering on the muscled curve where her thigh met her buttock and slid between them, fingers stroking over her clit. Aileen's hips bucked into the touch, and he rubbed a little more firmly. A whine slipped its way up from somewhere behind her ribs and escaped through her clenched teeth, and he smiled.

“Love the sounds you make,” he said, soft, like it was a secret.

She rolled up to meet his touch, down onto his cock, and let herself make the sounds that were tangling up in her throat. If he wanted to hear them, she could give that to him. Give him something to remember her by the same way that she was storing up memories of him. She doubted they would last, not when he would have so many other choices once he started in the NFL, but she hoped that they would come into his mind sometimes. That he would think about her, and want her. Because she was going to be thinking about him, wherever she was, and it would be a comfort to think that maybe sometimes he was lying in his bed somewhere, remembering her and wishing that maybe they'd had a little longer. That maybe he would wrap his hands around himself and come with images of her behind his eyes. She wanted to give him that.

Her body wound itself tighter under the press of his thumb against her clit. He was just holding it there now, letting her do all the work. She was close, his cock inside her and his hands on her too much to keep resisting. Her pace picked up, lost its smooth, even cadence, and she knew that he could feel how close she was, too. His eyes, which had closed at some point as she moved over him, opened again, and he watched her like he was drinking her in.

“Come on, Aileen. Let go,” he said, low and smoky. “I want to feel you. All tight around me.”

She shuddered, and the pleasure pulled taut. It burned at the core of her. She moaned his name. His hands tightened on her hips, dragging her down hard, and that was it. It exploded outward, sparking along her nerves. He groaned under her, and she felt him follow.

The world reduced itself down to a single point.

When it expanded outward again, she was still straddling Tyler, his hands on her hips. She swayed a little. Her body wanted to sink down, lay against his chest, but she didn't let it. That would be too much like cuddling, and she wasn't going to send him that kind of signal. Not now. Carefully, she pulled off him, and reached for her underwear.

Tyler levered himself up on his elbows, eyebrows furrowing.

“Aileen?” he asked softly, his voice as unsure as his expression. He sounded like he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to the question that was obviously running through his mind. “What is it?”

She didn't turn to look at him as she pulled her shorts and then her sports bra on, and she heard him move behind her, rising from the bench. She dragged her shirt overhead.

Hands closed abruptly around her biceps, still gentle despite the fact that Tyler was obviously frustrated with her lack of answer. She didn't want to look at him, though, couldn't speak to him. If she did, she wasn't sure that she could stop herself from crying.

His hands turned her around, and Aileen clamped down on her emotions, refusing to let them out on her face.

“Aileen,” he said again. “What the hell is going on? Why did that feel like... like that? So different?”

She pulled back, and he let her go.

“Because it was goodbye,” she said.

“Goodbye?” His eyebrows arched upward. “What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean that we can't keep doing this.”

He looked at her like she'd lost it. Aileen pulled her hair back into a ponytail and caught it up with one of the ties she kept around her wrist. Tyler was still staring at her. “We can't keep doing this...” he said, like all he could do was echo her.

“You're going to be joining the NFL, and I'm still going to be here at Gatica. It wouldn't work, Tyler.”

His mouth opened, and then closed again. The look on his face made her heart feel like it twisted in her chest. “You're breaking up with me.” His voice was flat. “Seriously, Aileen? You're going to fuck me in the locker room and then tell me 'Oh, by the way, have a nice life'?”

She flinched. “It’s not like that.”

“No? Then what is it like?”

“It’s like this isn’t going to work, and I just wanted to have one more good moment, I guess. I thought it was the best way to say goodbye.” Aileen pushed a stray lock of hair back from her face. “You’re NFL now. You’re not going to have time for a college girlfriend. Especially not from Boston.”

“That’s what this is about?” Tyler demanded. “The NFL? After I specifically had a clause put in my contract so that I could spend the rest of the school year with you, you’re going to break up with me because I got drafted?”

“I don’t want to hold you back.”

He got up from the bench and took a step toward her, hand held out, but Aileen retreated from the attempt at touch, shaking her head. He dropped the hand back to his side. “You’re not going to hold me back. I don’t know what makes you think that—”

“I am. You’re going to be a professional athlete on a pro team. You’re going to want to enjoy that to the fullest. And having some girl waiting for you back at your alma mater isn’t how you do that.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Tyler snapped. “Aileen…”

“You’re going to have women hanging all over you,” Aileen shot back, refusing to let a sob escape. If she started crying, she wasn’t sure that she would stop. He’d want to comfort her, and she would almost definitely let him. She couldn’t let that happen. “Celebrities. Models. Cheerleaders. How am I supposed to compete with that?”

His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to speak, but she turned away.

There was a moment of silence.

“I guess I need to focus on the game anyway,” he said behind her. “Or I might not make it into the NFL after all.”

She heard his footsteps moving toward the door of the locker room. He paused there, and for an instant she thought that he might come back, but she should have known better. They started up again, moving down the hall and away. She listened until they were gone, straining for one last sign that Tyler had been in the room. Had been in her life at all.

When it was quiet again, Aileen took a deep, shuddering breath. Her hands were shaking. She was so caught up in trying not to cry that she didn’t hear the approach of new footsteps.

“Aileen?”

Turning, Aileen found Chrissy in the doorway, looking at her with concern.

“I just saw Tyler. Are you…”

She didn’t even finish the question. Apparently the answer was obvious. Aileen squared her shoulders and tried to make the words come out without trembling.

“I broke up with him,” she said, her voice catching. “It’s over.”

The final word quivered, and almost before it had left her lips she burst into tears. Chrissy was across the room in an instant, wrapping arms around her and hugging her tight, but the touch wasn’t any comfort. Aileen didn’t want anyone but Tyler.