Girl Least Likely to Marry (11 page)

He strode the three paces that separated them and placed his
card on her desk. ‘Goodbye, Cassiopeia. It was fun.’

He didn’t wait for a response, just turned and walked out
through the door. It wasn’t until he reached his car that Tuck realised it
had
been fun.

Not fun in the yee-ha, laugh-out-loud, usual way. It hadn’t
been gambling in Vegas with a pocketful of green and a blonde on his arm, or
partying in Paris, or hearing the roar of the crowd coming out at him from under
the Thursday night lights. Those had been the things that had defined fun for
him until now—especially since his career slump and his marriage breakdown. But
they felt kind of empty in comparison. Like an act. A façade. Something that
Tuck-the-jock did to ensure he was the toast of the town, the life of the
party.

But three days in bed with Cassie had made him reassess his
definition. Okay, there hadn’t been a lot of talking, but neither had there been
a lot of sexual gymnastics. Mostly they’d just explored each other’s bodies.
Just touching and stroking and joining together, then drifting to sleep and
starting all over again.

But it was the first time he could remember he’d been himself
in a long time. Stripped back to the man, not the quarterback, because Cassie
didn’t have a clue who the footballer was nor did she give a damn. He’d been
anonymous for a change.

And
that
had been fun.

Cassie stood very still for a long time after Tuck left,
staring at the closed door.
Fun.
No one had ever
told her she was fun. Not even as a child. The kids at school had called her
brainiac and geek. Her doctor had called her a smart little cookie. Her teachers
had said she was a whizz-kid. The university chancellor had called her a
once-in-a-generation mind.

She’d never been anyone’s
fun
before.

She picked up his card, his scent enveloping her as she brushed
it against her mouth. It took all her willpower to toss it in the empty rubbish
bin.

Three days later Cassie realised she’d created a
monster—or fed one anyway—because her libido was back at full bitch again. The
first day had been good. She’d felt focused and invigorated, springing from bed,
eager to live the dream. But the next morning her thoughts had returned to the
carnal, and slowly things had started to slide until her concentration was shot,
her ability to analyse simple data non-existent and her interest had hit an
all-time low.

And
everything
reminded her of
Tuck. Passing the students hanging out in the hallway. Pulling one of her geek
logo shirts over her head. Looking at the images from deep-space telescopes and
seeing a pair of starburst-blue eyes.

Her professor had asked her earlier today if everything was
okay
.
Actually enquired if she was homesick.
As if she was
one of the fifteen-year-olds currently running around campus instead of an
almost thirty-year-old astronomer with a Mensa-rated IQ studying auroras on
Jupiter.

Even now, at nine o’clock at night, sitting at her desk, she
looked down at the paper she was reading to find she’d been doodling a certain
name in the margins.
Like a teenager!
Not that she’d
ever been
that
kind of a teenager.

Cassie squirmed in her chair in disgust, throwing her pen down.
But that didn’t help as her body was hell-bent on betraying her too. The
movement stirred internal muscles that were still hypersensitive and sensation
rolled through the pit of her belly. The brush of her arms against her nipples
had them hard and aching. The same type of ache that had taken up semi-permanent
residence between her legs and woke her in the middle of the night.

Cassie reached for the phone to dial Gina. She’d know what to
say, what to do. But she withdrew her hand at the last moment, not sure she
really wanted to hear her friend’s recommendations or—worse—advice about needing
to collect more data from Tuck for her libido experiment.

She was a freaking genius, for crying out loud! Her head
would
rule her body.

She threw the paper down and opened her laptop, looking at the
latest images they’d received today. Jupiter’s auroras were particularly
vibrant, and usually just the sheer enormity and random beauty of the solar
system was enough to lift her beyond any of the mundane issues of earth. But it
wasn’t tonight.

Half an hour later she closed the laptop lid, knowing there was
really only one solution to her problem. She could feel herself sliding towards
an abyss she was all too familiar with and, whether she liked it or not,
the jock
seemed to be her way out.

Okay, she’d told him her brain was back. And it was. She’d told
him her libido wouldn’t be out of control again. And it wasn’t. It just needed
one more night.

Maybe he’d be open to one more night?

Mind made up, she scrambled frantically through her
wastebasket, her fingers snatching at the card sitting at the very bottom,
automatically bringing it to her nose for a long, deep sniff. His lingering
pheromones catapulted through her system like a shooting star and any arguments
her brain might have made got lost in a sea of stupid.

Her fingers trembled as she rang the number. Her heart
thundered as it rang once, twice, three times. Her breath caught in her throat
when he picked up and said, ‘This is Tuck.’

His voice sounded deep and sexy and deliciously Texan and her
brain powered down. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing
came out.

‘Hello?’

Cassie tried again and failed. For crying out loud, she could
recite the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence and every
single one of Winston Churchill’s war speeches word for word and she couldn’t
say a simple hello?

‘Cassiopeia…is that you?’

Still she couldn’t get the words to come.

‘Cassie!’

His sharp enquiry snapped her out of her daze.
‘T…Tuck…I…’

‘Cassie? Are you okay?’

There was concern in his voice and she hastened to assure him
she was fine. ‘Yes, I’m good…fine… I just… I…’

Now she was talking to him she didn’t know how to say it. She’d
already asked him for sex once—it should be easy. But it wasn’t. There was a
silence at his end now too, that seemed to stretch interminably.

‘Don’t move,’ he said in her ear. ‘I’m coming.’ And the
receiver clicked.

Cassie was lying awake when the soft knock sounded on
her door at exactly one-thirty. She’d spent the last four hours convincing
herself he didn’t really mean he was coming for her straight away—
tonight.
And how could he
possibly get inside the locked dorm? But she didn’t know anyone else who would
be knocking on her door in the middle of the night.

She padded across the floor, her pulse thrumming so loudly in
her head she was afraid she was going to wake the whole dorm. She took a
steadying breath as she flipped the lock and turned the knob—to reveal one
ex-quarterback standing on her doorstep, oozing pheromones in loose running
pants and a T-shirt with some sports logo that stretched nicely over every
muscle in his chest.

‘Tuck,’ she murmured. ‘How’d you get in?’

‘The RA at the front desk is a Texan,’ he muttered, his gaze
zeroing in on her mouth. He’d been daydreaming about kissing her like some
lovelorn Romeo for the last three days and talk just wasn’t on his agenda.

He reached for her, yanking her into his arms, his lips
swooping to claim hers as he kicked the door shut behind him. Her mouth opened
on a frantic little whimper and she tasted like toothpaste and desperation. He
sucked it all in, hauling her up his body, gratified to feel the press of her
breasts and the wrap of her legs tight around his waist as he ploughed a path
straight to her bed.

And then they were falling back on to it and they were
stripping away each other’s clothes. Her shirt hit the floor and his followed.
Her underwear joined the pile. His running pants and cotton briefs seemed to
melt away, and then they were skin on skin, licking and sucking and sniffing and
kissing and stroking and stoking until they’d built to a fever-pitch where only
the strong, thick thrust of him pounding inside her was enough to satisfy the
primal roar in their heads and the even more primal demands of their bodies.

Tuck collapsed on top of her as they both lay spent in the
aftermath. For a moment he couldn’t even move. It had been that intense. Then he
rolled off her, groaning his bone-deep satisfaction. He hit his head against the
wall and then banged his perpetually sore knee as he tried to adjust his too-big
frame. He cursed as it twinged painfully.

‘You really need a bigger bed,’ he panted as he shifted to
dispose of the condom, then scooped her up and pulled her half on top of him to
accommodate both of them within the narrow confines of the mattress.

Cassie gurgled something unintelligible in response as her body
seemed to levitate in the afterglow. When she could string enough words together
to make a sentence she raised her head and looked down at him through
half-lowered lids. ‘You came,’ she murmured as a strange sort of peace suffused
her.

Tuck grinned. ‘So did you.’

She rolled her sleepy eyes at him, then snuggled her cheek
against his nearest pec as if he were her own personal pillow.

He smiled and stroked her hair, his own eyes shutting as long
sleepless nights combined with a potent sexual malaise drifted them both into a
deep slumber.

SEVEN

Everything ached when
Tuck woke at six the next morning. His back was
stiff from the wafer-thin mattress, his knee throbbed, his neck was at an
awkward angle and his ankles were sore from his feet hanging over the end of the
bed.

But Cassie was warm and pliant, snuggled along the length of
him, her hair streaming over his chest, her leg bent at the knee, trapping his
thigh, her hand splayed on his abdomen, dangerously close to a part of his
anatomy that had been
up
for a while.

Tuck smiled.
Atta-boy.

Unfortunately he didn’t have time this morning to do it
justice. He had to get up, get going. He had a meeting with some execs in New
York at eleven about the app. But, despite the aches and pains from a night in a
bed made for an Oompa-loompa aggravating his injuries from a decade of being
regularly slammed for sport, he was reluctant to move.

Soon.
He’d go soon.

His gaze drifted around a room quite unlike any other female
dorm room he’d ever been in—his jock status had pretty much seen to it that he
could judge from personal experience. Hell, it was unlike
any
female bedroom he’d ever been in. No personalised curtains. No
pretty rugs. No flowers or multiple soft stuffed toys or brightly
coloured
cushions or throws littering surfaces. No pinks, no purples, no pastels. No
ornaments, no lava lamps, no photographs of friends or lovers.

It was about as girly as a jail cell.

Still, there were some touches to break up the starkness of the
room. A couple of star charts were posted above the desk. Some blown-up
photographs of who knew what were stuck to the walls. Stars? Black holes?
Galaxies far, far away? Whatever they were, they were captivatingly beautiful in
their majesty, and Tuck couldn’t think of anything more awesome than having the
solar system as your office.

A poster of an eerie green glow being cast over a landscape of
white was stuck to one wardrobe door, and on the other what appeared to be a
planet with a wispy ring of electric blue light at its pole. Auroras,
perhaps?

But it was the large poster taking up the entire back of her
door that drew his attention. It was of Barringer Crater in Arizona. He knew
that because he’d been obsessed by the fifty-thousand-year-old hole in the
ground since he’d been a kid and had been there several times. It was a big
brown pockmark in the middle of nowhere, and it seemed an odd, even ugly
earthbound addition compared to the beauty of the other celestial
decorations.

She stirred and Tuck looked down at her. Her hand on his
stomach curled into a light fist, dragging its fingernails deliciously against
his skin, and he shut his eyes for a moment enjoying the sensation. As did his
erection.

‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ he said, opening his eyes and dropping a
kiss on her hair. He really, really had to get going.

Cassie woke to solid warmth and her nostrils full of Tuck. No
thoughts of anything
but
Tuck in her head. ‘Hmmm,’
she murmured, stretching against him, her eyes slowly drifting open. She smiled
as her bird’s-eye view down the flat of his stomach ended in the delicious
outline of his erection.

‘Hmmm,’ she said again as her hand slid down his belly and
reached for it.

Tuck shut his eyes as her hand closed around him and talons of
need clawed deep into his buttocks. He reached down and placed a stilling hand
on hers. ‘I can’t stay. I have a meeting at eleven that I can’t get out of.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Cassie said as she gave his girth a squeeze, her
thumb running over its firm head.

Tuck dragged her hand away—that was
not
helping. ‘Why,’ he asked in an effort to distract her, him and
his erection, ‘do you have a poster of Barringer Crater on your door?’

Cassie dragged her gaze from his fascinating anatomy and
glanced up at him, resting her chin on his pec for a moment. He didn’t look as
if he was going to be easily dissuaded, and the fact that he knew its actual
name rather than calling it Meteor Crater, as it was popularly known, piqued her
interest. She sighed, then turned her head towards the door, resting her other
cheek on his chest.

‘I’ve always wanted to go there,’ she said, eyeing the poster.
‘There’s one like it in Australia, called Wolfe Creek. My mother took me when I
was little so it’s a bit of a fascination of mine. The girls and I were going to
stop in and visit it on our road trip a decade ago, but then…then there was “the
great falling out” and it never happened.’

She turned her head back, resting her chin on his chest again,
looking straight into his starburst eyes. Tuck’s hand absently stroked the small
of her back. There wasn’t a lot of room in her single bed and he seemed to take
it all up. Her position close to the edge was precarious and his hand at the
base of her spine was the only thing anchoring her.

‘So I promised myself this time around I’d go and see it. It’s
my reward for when I complete my three months at Cornell.’

Tuck chuckled. ‘Sounds much more sensible than getting wasted
at Daytona Beach.’

Cassie nodded, not remotely concerned about being thought of as
sensible. She
was
sensible. She never did anything
rash or ill-considered.

Except this.

Tuck was the very definition of rash and ill-considered. But
surely one blip in almost thirty years was allowable? ‘I take it you’ve been?’
she said. ‘To Barringer?’

Tuck nodded. ‘A few times, actually. The stars out there are
amazing.’

‘Well, they would be,’ Cassie said. ‘It’s the middle of the
dessert. No ambient light. No pollution.’

‘Yeah.’ Tuck smiled as she got all scientific on him. He picked
up a lock of her hair and let it sift through his fingers. ‘So…about last
night…’

Cassie dropped her forehead to his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she
said, her voice muffled against his pec. She looked up. ‘I think my libido went
into some kind of…withdrawal situation. I just needed…
it
just needed another night.’

Tuck grinned. ‘Another hit, huh?’

Cassie didn’t like the idea that she might be addicted to Tuck.
She was far too highly evolved for that—even if evidence to the contrary had not
been forthcoming of late.

She had to stay in charge of this thing.

‘Libido is influenced by a variety of factors often not under
conscious control,’ she said, trying to give herself an out for her inexplicable
behaviour.

‘So you may require my
services
again?’ Tuck tried to decide whether he cared about being used by a horny PhD
student who cared even less about his celebrity status than she did about
football.
He didn’t.

Cassie’s nipples beaded against his chest at the suggestion, as
if it was made from a block of ice instead of hot, pliant muscle. She looked
down at his still present erection. Her nostrils flared. Lust surged through her
belly.

‘Possibly,’ she murmured, entranced by the pure masculinity of
it, her synapses shorting out as her hand slid down.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Tuck said, grabbing her fingers before
they could wreak havoc at their destination. ‘I really have to go.’

Cassie glanced at him. ‘I’ll be quick,’ she said, and shimmied
down his body, kissing his ribs, his belly button, his hip on her way down.

Tuck shut his eyes as the heat of her mouth closed over him.
‘Oh, God, I’ve created a monster,’ he groaned, his eyes shutting as his
resistance ebbed beneath her onslaught. He threaded his hands through her hair
and surrendered to the pleasure, his appointment forgotten.

When she called him two nights later, asking for just
one more night, Tuck hired a helicopter, grateful that his money and celebrity
meant he didn’t have to endure another eight-hour round trip in his car.

Two nights later he did the same thing. But she hadn’t
instigated the trip this time, so he was a little nervous when he knocked on her
door at ten o’clock.

‘One more?’ he asked when she opened it.

Her shirt said ‘Never drink and derive’, and she looked all
smart and serious and cute and nerdy, with a pencil tucked behind her ear, and
he wanted her so damn bad he didn’t even wait for an answer before yanking her
into his arms, swivelling her around and using their combined body weight to
shut the door, pressing her hard against it as he plundered every millimetre of
her mouth.

Hell, they didn’t even make it to the bed.

He sure as hell had no idea what delightful underwear logo
awaited him, because he just tore it right off in his haste to be inside her.
And nothing mattered after that except the crazy, blind, driving need that
seemed to grow more desperate every day.

Tuck woke the next morning, every bone, muscle and joint
protesting, knowing he would never survive another night on Cassie’s
mattress.

He was just too old and injured for dorm beds.

Cassie wasn’t with him and he raised his head, expecting to see
her sitting at her desk or standing by her wardrobe getting dressed. But the
room was empty. He looked at his watch. Eight o’clock. Given how late it had
been when they’d eventually gone to sleep, he wasn’t surprised he’d slept
in.

But when had she left?

Tuck unfolded himself from the bed, his body aching as he stood
slowly and headed to the pile of clothes by the door that he didn’t even
remember losing last night. He bent over and both knees twinged. He climbed into
his shorts and pulled his T-shirt over his head. A scrap of fabric remained on
the floor and he picked it up, grinning at what was left of Cassie’s underwear
and its amusing logo:
Vacancy: Rocket Scientists need only
apply.

He walked to her desk and tossed them in the bin. And that was
when he saw the note propped up by a couple of textbooks. He opened it, and the
first line jumped out at him.

We can’t keep doing this, Tuck.

Well, she was damn right about that. Her bed just wasn’t made
for two.

I’m getting nothing done. I can’t
concentrate. And all I do is think about you. I think it’s best if I go cold
turkey. I know that with hard work, focus and medication my libido will have
to eventually submit to the dictates of a higher power. It has been my dream
to come to Cornell, a much desired step in a grander plan, and I ask that
you not derail that. Or, given that you are so much more practised at this
than I, let me derail it either. If I call, please ignore me. No one’s ever
died from sexual deprivation and I don’t expect I’ll be the first. It has,
as you say, been fun, but it’s over.

Tuck read the note several times. Even the way she wrote, so
precise and matter-of-fact, cracked him up, and he found his grin getting
broader with each read-through.

She was right, of course. What they were doing was utterly
distracting and not very productive. He had some work backed up on the app that
he’d been neglecting. So ending it—whatever the hell
it
was—would be one solution. But suddenly he had a much better one.
He scrunched up the note and threw it in the bin.

He had a busy day ahead of him. He needed breakfast and a
plan.

Two hours later he was sitting in the very posh offices
of a property rental agency, talking to a very attractive woman about finding
him an upmarket serviced apartment in Ithica for him to move into
immediately.

Of course he could have done it himself—got a phone book and
rung around. But in his experience it was best to outsource these things to an
expert who knew the local market and had an eye for class.

The brassy blonde called Abigail fitted the docket perfectly.
It helped that she knew who he was, although she was careful not to fawn, which
told him she was used to dealing with the higher end of the market. Even so he
was more than aware from her subtle body language that she’d be first in line to
volunteer should he need company in his bed whilst in Ithica.

The problem was she just didn’t do it for him. She should have.
She was exactly his type—blonde, well put together, and a cougar to boot. Tuck
liked cougars. They weren’t usually out for anything other than a good time and
a few hours of action between the sheets. If they could bag a celebrity that was
just the cherry on the cake for them.

But, surprisingly, over the course of a week his type had
changed.

Her eyes were artfully made up, with perfectly arched brows,
but they didn’t glitter with intelligence or hold the secrets of the universe.
Her hair fell in a fluffy cloud around her head and shoulders and reeked of a
posh salon, but he’d bet his last dime she couldn’t go three hours without
brushing it, let alone three whole days full of head-banging, style-destroying
sex.

And then there were her…assets. They were nicely on display
and, hell, Tuck had always appreciated a nice rack—but he realised there was a
certain degree of titillation in having to check things out thoroughly to find
the good stuff.

And he knew just the woman who fitted the bill. His new type.
And it wasn’t Abigail.

She was, however, exceedingly efficient, and within an hour she
had located the perfect place for him in a quiet tree-lined neighbourhood a
ten-minute walk from campus. Tuck took a taxi to the posh low-rise and spent all
afternoon making phone calls to set himself up for the next three months.

Even if Cassie was resistant to moving in with him—and he had
to admit it seemed kind of crazy after only a week—he’d slept his last night in
that god-awful dorm bed. She could stay on campus if she really wanted, but if
she called in the middle of the night again, wanting him, he’d be sending a car
for her.

From now on any and all naked action would be taking place on
the cloud-like comfort of a pillow-top mattress.