School Ties (19 page)

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.”

My hips cant up and as soon as they hit the fabric of the couch cushion, he says, “Again. You're going to rub your pussy on my hand until you come. Again.”

I want his fingers, all of him, inside of me but if this is what he wants me to have, if this is how he wants to watch me get off, I'm not going to argue. I rock against him, and he cups my sex, his fingers warm and hard through the thin fabric. I press harder and faster, moaning in time with my thrusts and then . . . Oh.
Oh.
My insides clench around nothing, and I rub the aftershocks out on his palm.

I've spent quite a bit of time getting myself off when Will left, and even when he hadn't yet, mostly while I was single-handedly reading one of the books under my bed, but there's something about orgasming under another person's touch. Shep leaves his hand resting between my legs when I've burnt myself out but he extracts his thumb from my mouth and puts it in his own before he kisses me and strokes my neck.

“Did you like that, lamb?”

“Yes, Zach.”

“Would you like to do it again?”

“Now?”

He laughs and tightens his grip around my sex, wringing one last pulse of climax from my body. “Not now.”

“Then yes, I'd like to do it again.”

“Would you like me to put my fingers inside of you?”

Through the damp fabric of my underwear, he traces my labia and applies pressure at my entrance.

“Yes, Zach.”

“Would you like me to put my cock inside you?”

“Yes, Zach.”

“Long winter weekend is coming. While the guys are gone, and the Silvas are in Aruba, I'm going to fuck you.”

Long winter weekend is three weeks away. He's going to make me wait three whole weeks? “But—”

He presses his thumb against my lips and I hush. “Whether or not you want to have sex is up to you. But once you've said yes, you're ready,
when
is not. I don't want you worrying about people being able to hear, or whether some stray student is going to come knocking at the door.

“Even though I want to flip you over and have my way with you, I'm not going to. For the next three weeks, we're going to date like normal people because I've never had a girlfriend and I don't know that I'm going to have another one. So let me, okay?”

It's like my heart's a game of KerPlunk and all the marbles fell out. I would've waited before and not because he told me so. Everyone deserves to wait until they're ready. But what he's just said? Kills me dead. More than my orgasm, more than the teasing. He moves his thumb so I can answer. “Okay, Shep.”

Shep

For three weeks, we torture each other. I take Erin out the one night a week we both have off and I walk down to Turner every night she's on duty so I can walk her back to her apartment. The first night I showed up, I brought her a lily and I held her hand as we walked up that path for the hundredth time. But this time feels a world away from the others. Like my life is starting over. Like I've earned something worth having.

Holding hands is rookie stuff, minor league. With everything I've done, everything I've seen, it shouldn't impress me. But somehow, her warm hand holding mine tight like she's not quite sure I'm real, like I might tug away . . . it half makes me feel like king of the world and it half carves a hole in my stomach.

I want her to hold me tight because she can't not, not because she's worried I'm going to leave. I'm going to rebuild that wall one brick at a time, make her believe I'm in this for the long haul, because I am. It might be stupid—we don't know each other all that well—but I don't know if there's anyone else for me. If things don't work out with Erin, I might be able to find someone who makes me half happy, but she's a soft ball of sweetness and light, a little pitcher filled to the brim with everything I want.