Staying On Top (Whitman University) (22 page)

“Can’t help it. You killed me.” I shifted closer, smiling into his chest. “Besides, I’m the guy in relationships. Because I don’t like mushy.”

“You like hard?”

I snorted. “Duh.”

He hooked the spare blanket with a toe, dragging it up to his fingers and then over us, then rested his chin on top of my head. We fit together, next to each other or him inside of me, and it scared me more than a little. Despite my strange, lonely life, I had always felt whole. I knew who I was, and had long ago learned to be happy with it.

Now, being so happy with someone else, I worried losing him would make me feel less than whole. As though he had somehow become part of the puzzle that was me, and without him, pieces would be missing.

And there was no doubt I would lose him. The only question was when.

Chapter 15

Sam

The sun woke me up long before I would have liked, but with a beautiful, frustrating, naked girl pressed against me, at least there was a way to make it better.

Her ass was smooth under my palm. Blair was soft everywhere on the outside, a complete contradiction to the girl hidden away underneath her skin, and the yin and yang made me like her even more. It also made me harder than my typical morning situation, and I worked my hands higher until they found the swell of her breasts. 

Her nipples tightened between my fingers. I played with them softly at first, waking her with tiny circles, then graduating to tweaks and pinches, rolling them between my thumb and forefinger as she moaned and arched into me.

“Good morning, you gorgeous little devil, you,” I murmured, earning a twitch of a smile.

“Morning,” she replied, slipping a hand between our bodies and wrapping it around me.

It didn’t seem like I could be any stiffer, but her touch accomplished just that. I moved one hand down her side, over the swell of her hip, then grabbed a handful of her ass again because I truly loved it. I didn’t even know why, really—asses typically weren’t my thing—but hers was too perfect to miss out on any opportunity to get my hands on it. 

Lower, I found heat and a slickness that made my stomach tighten. As oppositional as Blair had been with me, as many times as her words had pushed me away, her body seemed in a constant state of eagerness to welcome me.

Unwilling to wait, I grabbed a second condom and fixed it in place, then rolled up on my elbows and spread her knees. I paused for a second to take in her face. The wrinkle between her eyebrows, plus a soft whimper, communicated her impatience and I pushed inside her, the pleasure of feeling her heat squeeze around me sucking a shudder out through my spine. I held still for a moment, gathering my bearings, enjoying the moment. When she tipped her hips back, pulling me deeper, I took the hint and rocked inside her until our bodies found a rhythm.

Like last night, our eyes locked and some kind of innate, silent conversation flowed between us. The intensity in her gaze frightened me, not because catching a girl as complicated as Blair would have its difficulties, but because I worried that I would fail her. That I wouldn’t be good enough.

That despite what she’d said about living in the moment, the inevitability of our failure would leave her more broken than the way I’d found her.

Her feet locked behind my back, knees pressed against my sides as she thrust against me and her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. It had been a long time since a girl had come for me with as much ease as Blair did, and watching it fall over her from top to bottom made it almost impossible to hold off on my own orgasm. Made me forget about everything but this moment.

I managed to keep it together, unwilling to end this any sooner than necessary, and after a moment she shook off the cobwebs and bent her legs farther, until I was buried so deep I couldn’t think about anything but how it felt. We moved faster, her elbows hooked under her knees, our bodies working together without any help at all from our brains.

Blair threw her head back and writhed when my fingers found her breasts, and as I felt myself crossing a line I wouldn’t be able to come back from, I pressed a finger into the slick spot between our bodies. She jerked against me, her fingernails digging into my back, and thrust against me harder. That killed me, and when she clenched around me and came, I tumbled over the edge of reason beside her, riding her and the waves of pleasure with equal abandon, lost to the pounding of my heart, the trembling of my muscles, and the sound of her scratchy voice gasping my name in the dawn.

I don’t know how long it took before the world came back into focus—before the sound of the waves against the shore and the shriek of seagulls against the sky broke through the cloud of cotton draping my brain.

Blair’s legs shook against my sides, her rib cage expanding and pressing her breasts against my chest, and I dropped a kiss on her sweaty forehead. Her fingers dug into my back, kneading lazily, and her lips smiled into my throat. “That was about the best way to wake up with the sun I’ve ever experienced. And I am so not a morning person.”

“Could have fooled me.” 

Our fingers twined together and we lay in silence as the sun rose over the ocean. It was new to me, being able to sit with another person quietly without feeling awkward. With Blair, sometimes it seemed as though her silences told me more about her than her words, which were often so calculated that they must be designed to hide things. Her confession about her past, about never being able to be close to anyone because of not being able to share her father’s secrets, made sense.

It made me sad for her, but it impressed upon me her strength.

My stomach growled, and I felt her smile. “Hungry? For food, I mean.”

“I mean, if you’re giving me the option of going again with you or eating food, I would choose the first. Unless you’re hungry.”

The twinkle in her dark eyes undid every thought in my head.

“I have a feeling you and I will be going again, but at the moment I think we should get a jump on the day. Breakfast. And coffee, for God’s sake. And it’s best to get out early for diving, so we can make at least two trips. Since we’re only here for the day.”

I trailed a hand over her belly, watching her muscles twitch. “We can stay longer if school really isn’t an issue. I don’t have to be back in Australia until the end of the year.”

She paused so long I thought she might be considering it, but in the end, she shook her head with a smile sad enough to make me believe she regretted it. “I can’t stay away that long. As fun as pretending to be on an international vacation is, that’s not why we’re really here.”

The way her lips spat the word
pretending
, as though that’s all we were doing, made the blood in my veins turn to ice. I wanted to protest, but she wasn’t wrong. We
were
pretending to be people we weren’t, except somewhere along the way we had become more like that vacationing couple than the opposite forces we’d began as in Melbourne.

It was best to play to my strong suit and go with the flow. I had no idea what was happening between us, but I enjoyed Blair’s company, we were compatible as hell, and the thought of going back on tour and never seeing her again made my heart sink all the way into my toes. That’s what I did know. What I didn’t know was how she felt about it, how this trip would turn out, or how either one of those things would affect everything else.

“Let’s get you some coffee, gorgeous. Then we’ll spend one day with the fishes.”

*

The weather had cooperated, with the temperature rising into the low eighties and the sun shining on the deck of the sailboat that hauled us out to a perfect dive site. We’d been down twice, once after breakfast and then again right before lunch, and were waiting two hours before taking one last trip. It had been a long time since I’d dove, but it came back to me pretty well and the supervising divemaster had been meticulous and patient.

I had never seen turtles before, and at the end of the second dive a school of dolphins had shown up to play. The entire experience had been magical. Blair had laughed often, her face brilliant under a smile and droplets of salt water, but every time she looked at me with undiluted happiness, the word
pretending
flashed before my eyes. 

Could she be that good of an actress? Had I fallen into Wonderland, a place where Blair had turned into someone else, but only until she unearthed the opportunity to go home?

It killed me to think that, so I decided not to. I was being paranoid, which was unlike me, and the reason for that should stay unanalyzed, too. The enormity of the feelings circling my heart like sharks were too intense for the fact that Blair and I had really only known each other for a couple of weeks total.

I shouldn’t have felt so lost at the idea of not having her around. First and foremost, no girl liked a stage-five clinger of a guy, independent girls such as Blair even less so. She wasn’t pretending to have a good time today, and neither was I. We were two people enjoying the day and each other’s company, end of story.

The internal lecture did little to salve the worry darkening my mind.

“What are you thinking about?”

Blair’s question shook me out of my ridiculous melancholy. I rolled my head her direction, squinting in the early afternoon sun and wishing I’d called Oakley rep for a couple pairs of sunglasses after putting the call in to Head.

“What?” 

Her body had bronzed in the few hours we’d spent on deck, and looking at her in her plain black bikini gave rise to certain thoughts that gave rise to other things not so easy to hide in my swim trunks. At least the divemaster left us alone.

“You look worried. There’s a wrinkle right here.” She reached over and rubbed her finger between my eyebrows. “It’s weird. Do you not want to go down again?”

“Oh, I haven’t gone down at all. But I’m looking forward to it.”

“I meant down on another dive, perv.” The way she bit her lip said she was thinking about the other kind of going down now, though, and I wished the divemaster would disappear altogether.

“No, it’s not that.”

“What is it? Your bed-bug rash is already clearing up, if that’s it. I think the saltwater helped.”

The bed-bug rash hadn’t entered my mind for hours, which shocked me. It didn’t seem wise to be honest with her about what
was
on my mind, since my concerns could be chalked up to insecurity, which was about the most unattractive thing in the world. But I didn’t want to lie to her, either. “I was thinking about how nice today has been.”

“And . . . ?”

So much for skirting the issue. I should have known that wouldn’t fly with her. “And I’m already feeling a little bit sad that we won’t have another.”

“Well, one is one more than we expected when we set out, right?” She squinted back at me. “And really, Sam, with the way our lives are, the two of us should take what we can get.”

“You two ready?” The divemaster, a short Mexican woman, stepped out onto the deck with her wet suit hanging off her hips.

I smiled at Blair and helped her up, choosing to drop the conversation. Choosing to ignore for as long as possible the fact that I could hardly enjoy the good day for the sorrow over the thought of all of this ending. Choosing, as I had done my whole life, to be happy with what I had.

Chapter 16

“You’re better than you let on!”

Blair grinned from the other side of the net, resting her racket on her shoulder and striking a sassy pose. I’d been regretting not asking Head for some clothes, too, because her legs in a tennis skirt would have been a sight. 

“Oh, come on. You’re taking it easy.”

“Well, yeah, but this is my job. You’re a great hitting partner.” It wasn’t a lie. She was quick on her feet, and had an early read on the ball and a killer backhand that had caught the deuce court sideline more than once.

“I’m having fun,” she admitted, breathing a little hard. “It feels good to exercise after days of sitting on my ass.”

“Diving isn’t for slouches, either. I’m going to be sore tomorrow. Can we take the rackets when we leave?”

“I don’t care. Don’t know if we’ll be able to play again, though.” Blair squinted up at the setting sun, then wandered over to the benches between the courts and checked the time on her cheap cell. “We’d better go. Xander’s expecting us for dinner, and we need to book our flight out of Athens tomorrow.”

“So, who is this Xander character?” I asked, trying to sound casual as we packed up our gear in the bag that had been at the post office when we returned from diving.

“Why, are you jealous?”

“As if.”

That earned me a snort. “He’s the caretaker for our house here. Has been since I was a kid. I trust him.”

“You trust him not to tell your dad we were here?”

“If we convince him we’re on the island for an impulsive romantic getaway? Sure. He’s my dad’s man as far as business stuff, but he supports my flights of fancy.”

“I have seen no evidence of flights of fancy.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You mean having sex in a boat that smells like fish doesn’t count?”

The quick response surprised a chuckle out of my gut, and I leaned down, drawing her lips to mine. Even though we were in public, it wasn’t long before she parted her lips for me, inviting my tongue to play with hers, and before we were both sweating again.

“Are we going back to the boat after this dinner? I mean, we did leave our blankets.”

“I do like those blankets,” she teased, dropping her arms from around my neck and shouldering her bag. “But I do think we should find somewhere to shower before dinner.”

“Agreed. How are we going to do that?”

“Do you trust me?”

I decided to not answer rather than lie, which made her laugh, which led to more kissing before we finally left the tennis courts and hailed a cab a few minutes later.

It dropped us off at the base of a narrow path that zigzagged upward. A man kept an eye on a group of five donkeys as people brushed past, some choosing to hike, others continuing on their way. My eyes went up, up, up the side of the volcano, then returned to find Blair watching the donkeys with a wicked grin.