Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (8 page)

Throwing myself on my bed, the springs squeak as I picture that last look mystery green-eyed girl gave me. I see the smart twist of her lips as she smirks at me. Why do I think that, with a whip and the right circumstance, that woman could make me her bitch with one loud, sound-barrier-breaking crack?

That thought is all it takes for me to get so hard, my pants become a denim dam of pressure. I unzip and unbutton, mercifully releasing not-so-little Brant.

When my fingers wrap around him, I sigh with relief.

The woman’s green eyes in front of me, her dark hair sweeping behind her, I start jerking off until I see stars.

My legs spread by instinct, the toes in my shoes curling. My other hand grips my balls and holds on tightly as I stroke so hard and fast that the sound of my
fap-fap-fap
fills the room unapologetically.

The woman leans down from the pedestal I’ve placed her on, her hair curtaining my face as her lips draw near.
“Camera boy,”
she calls me, almost like an accusation.

“Sketch girl,” I accuse her right back, biting my lip.

“
Dog,
” she moans, her lips touching my ear.

“I’m lucky, lucky, lucky …” I whisper back, out of breath as my working right bicep steals away all my energy. I’m already so close, fucking my sweaty hand and imagining it’s her tight pussy I’m invading. I even buck my hips, keeping my fist in place while I thrust my cock up into and out of it, pumping, pumping, pumping.

“
You know how to work that big ol’ scary thing?
” she asks. “
You’re no artist.
”

“I’m gonna art you so hard.”

“
You’re no artist.
”

“I’m gonna Rembrandt your ass. Brant’s gonna Rembrandt you.”

“
You’re no artist.
”

I clench shut my eyes, frustrated where the fantasy keeps going. Why am I so focused on those words of hers? She doesn’t even know me yet. Do I think she’s right? Do I not belong in the art school?

“Holy shit.”

I flick open my eyes. Eric is standing at the door, wide-eyed and holding a bottle of red wine. For a solid bucketful of seconds, we stare at one another, my cock stuck in my vagina-fist.

“Well?” I prompt him, annoyed. “You here to finish me off, or you need something?”

“Corkscrew.” He lifts the bottle, indicating it.

“Drawer by the stove with the ice cream scoop and chopsticks.”

“Was that an actual offer?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow. “I mean …”

“Get me drunker and I just might take you up on that. For now, my fantasy of the hot pussy I’m dividing and conquering will do.”

“Nope. TMI. I’m good,” he blurts as he spins on his heel and slips out of the room as fast as he’d come in, the door clapping shut behind him and sounding like half a spanking.

And speaking of spanking, I resume stroking my cock as if I’d never been interrupted … except I can’t seem to see her face anymore. All I see is her backside, or the whipping of her black hair, or the blank, white nothingness of a canvas yet to be graced with a stroke of the pencil.

I breathe heavily, staring up at the ceiling and seeing nothing.

Fuckin’ nothing.

There’s a diner at the corner just off campus where Clayton, Dmitri, and I used to eat at once or twice a week all last year. It’s at this special diner that I see my best friend Clayton for the first time in almost a month. It’s just another Friday and the place is hopping like a bunny in the springtime.

I’m already seated and waiting for half an hour when Clayton Watts comes through the door in a skintight heather grey shirt that basically screams “I work out twenty-five hours a day” and “Don’t fuck with me” at the same time. Down his bicep and up the side of his blunt neck runs a network of dark, snakelike, thorny tattoos. His gaze is the dark, dangerous variety that, to those who aren’t his friends, ought to be damn intimidating to find yourself caught in.

If I was deaf like he is, I could pretend that every one of his footfalls shook the building and cast thundering booms throughout the whole diner, rattling plates and stirring silverware from their slumber.

Instead, his shoes softly shuffle as he approaches my table. His eyes find mine. “Hey,” he says, smirking down at me. “You order yet?”

“Yes. And I got you your usual.”

He sits down and lifts a quizzical eyebrow at me, to which I just nod, then point at him and hold up three fingers, then make an egg-shaped fist which looks like I’m cussing him out in some Italian hand language, but Clayton gets the message. He smirks appreciatively, then starts drumming his fingers on the table as he says, “Feels like it’s been forever since we’ve hung out, man. I miss our late nights.”

“You never come over anymore,” I complain when his eyes find my mouth, following my words. “Dessie takes up all your damn time.”

“Dessie?” He chuckles when I nod, then grabs a spoon and spins it on the table absently. “Things are getting pretty serious between us. It’s pretty fucking scary, actually, what she does to me.”

“Scary?”

“She’s got me thinking of things,” he goes on, staring down at that spoon after it stops spinning. He never used to talk this much; Dessie’s brought out his voice a lot over the past year. “Things I didn’t think I’d ever find myself thinking about, man. Kinda … kinda freaks me out.”

I lower my head to catch his gaze. “Like what?” I ask when he looks up, then tap my forehead with a finger. “What’re you thinkin’ about?”

He itches the side of his face where some dark stubble is coming in. “Like … permanent things. Long-term goals. What I want to do with my life. Or with her. Like … like maybe moving to New York someday.”

“New York??” I blurt.

His face breaks into a laugh, though only a sigh seems to escape his lips. “Dude, I told you. She’s got me all fucked up. In … in the best way possible.”

His phone vibrates and lights up, stealing his attention. As he looks down at it and starts to type a reply to whoever it is (I’ll give myself exactly one guess) I fold my arms on the table and wonder what the hell I’m gonna do without Clayton around. New York??

I sigh, my breath tickling the hairs on my arm. I mean, I guess I should have seen it coming. We all can’t just sit around our apartments playing games and sharing stories about our various sexual exploits all our lives, right? I know we need to give some honest consideration to our respective futures at some point, but to actually
hear
Clayton talk about it really sends my mind into a spin that begins and ends with the same question:
What about me?

I don’t want to lose Clayton.
Then a quiet voice in my head reminds me that I’ve already lost him as I watch him quietly text on his phone.

When he finally looks up, he smirks and says, “Dessie. Cece’s driving her crazy. Her uptight sister. Oh, she says hi.”

“Hi,” I mutter back.

The word is lost as he’s already buried back in his phone, typing to his girl, the one who stole his heart or whatever. At first, annoyance floods me. But the longer I study Clayton and the light in his eyes as his thumbs make sentences to that girl on the receiving end of them, the more my mood shifts. When I pull my own selfish needs out of the equation, I realize that all that’s left is a ringing relief and happiness that Clayton’s finally found someone who’s shed light in that dark-as-hell heart of his. I’d be a pretty shitty friend to hold that against him.

And maybe someday, there’ll be a girl that I’ll tell Clayton about to the point of making his own eyes roll. Maybe there will be someone with whom I’m so consumed that I start canceling plans with friends, or start clumsily walking into walls, or negotiating taking off all my clothes in front of a classroom just to impress them.

I chuckle dryly at that last thought.

“I met this girl,” I start to tell him, staring at my hands. “Or maybe it’s more accurate to say, this girl met
my cock
.” I take the spoon for a spin of my own along the tabletop. “Y’know, I’m not gonna lie, I can’t stop imagining the squeakin’ that the springs will make when I drop her onto my bed. Is that bad? I mean, she’s hot. She’s
hot
hot. Like, I don’t know if I want to have sex with her or kiss her first. I could do both with this one. She’s got this sly sort of … always-something-up-her-sleeves thing going on. Finally I got her attention and she wants me to meet her somewhere on Saturday and, like, I’m feeling all these nerves I haven’t felt since we were kids and
you
were gettin’ all the girls. I can’t stop thinking about getting my face in her boobs. Just the thought makes me sweat. Mmm, and what she tastes like between her legs. Damn. But … I mean, is it worth it if all she’s gonna do is turn me down? She’s …
feisty
. Is it worth all the damn trouble when I got a hundred or two other pretty girls who won’t make it so damn difficult to just … wang-bang ‘em?” The spoon stops. I pick it up and talk to it. “But maybe that’s the point. This girl isn’t like the others, is she? She’s making me work. I think that’s kinda hot, too. I’ve had too many easy girls. I need a hard one. And she makes me hard. Hell, I’m hard now.”

When I look up from the spoon to see if Clayton’s laughing at my joke, I find that he’s missed every word, still buried in his phone and typing away. As if pulled by my little glance, he looks up suddenly, then smiles. “Sorry. Dessie just scored Jeremy Hardenberg. Can’t believe it. Our set’s gonna
rock!
I can’t wait to work with him and make a fucking color and light orgasm onstage. Oh, how’s the painting thing going?”

I’m gonna make a color and light orgasm with an art chick Saturday night.
“Photography, not painting,” I correct him with a smirk. When he gives me a quizzical look, I bring a couple hands to my face to mimic a photographer looking through his camera.

“Shit. Photography. Right.” He sets his phone down. “What’re you gonna do with your photography degree? Doesn’t that add, like, two more years to your college time? You’re gonna miss graduating with the … the rest of us.”

I sigh, annoyed. “It’s not about
graduating
that’s the goal. It’s—”

“You need to graduate, dude.”

His phone jumps, but thankfully he ignores it, keeping his eyes on me. I hate how much like a scolding older brother Clayton looks right now. He’d given me this same look half our lives ago when he could still hear, reprimanding me for how dumb I got when I talked to girls, or berating me about what we’d achieve when we grew up, or fuming over my inability to skip class without getting caught by Principal McPherson. The tables turned when we hit high school, and then they seemed to turn even more when we hit college. Now he’s the driven one with the fire in his eyes and the arrow in his heart, and I’m the one with just a fire between my legs. I think the arrows are there, too.

“So?” Clayton prompts me, lifting his eyebrows. “Is this art school photography thing gonna work out?”

“I hope so,” I finally say. “It’d be better if I was any good.”

“You’re no good?”

“Not sure. Last week, I had to take forty photos of trees. Lights and shadows, or something. The hell I gotta take photos of trees for?”

“Trees?” he echoes, eyes on my lips.

“Yep.”

He smirks. “The more you take, the better you get, right?”

“I guess so,” I respond, thinking of all the
girls
I’ve taken, each girl like a photograph burned into my retinas.

“Maybe you’ll score some perfect photo and it’ll land on the cover of a magazine or some shit.”

“Maybe I’ll work for a newspaper.”

“Maybe you’ll take pics of dead bodies at crime scenes.”

“Maybe I’ll work for some porn company,” I throw in, sneering as I poke a finger through a ring I make with my other hand, simulating the mystic act of human fornication. “I’m told I catch good angles when it comes to photographing the ladies …”