In Ruins (29 page)

I can see the moment I win her over, but I've gotten her so worked up that her chest heaves with her aggravated breathing, and her gorgeous tits surge with every inhale.

“My eyes are up here, Tucker,” she scolds, biting her bottom lip to conceal her mirth.

I continue to stare at her chest. “Yes, baby, but your perfect tits are right here.” I step away to lock the door, then return to her, enjoying her wide-eyed stare. My hand slowly skates from her hip, up along her side until my fingers tease the outline of her breast. I meet her gaze, finding hers glazed with desire, letting her see how much I want her. My fingers follow the edge of her top, trailing along her neckline, my middle finger slipping just under the cotton fabric.

Both of us stare at my hand, and I take my time, but she does nothing to stop me. I let only the tip of that one finger explore the silky skin just under her neckline, watching with satisfaction as it leaves a trail of goosebumps in its wake. She has the most beautiful cleavage. Her breasts aren't the biggest, but they are perfectly round and full—an ample handful of pale, unmarred flesh, untouched by the sun or anything else. Except me.

I take the half step that brings me flush against her irresistible body, and my other hand reaches up to cup her jaw and angle her face upward. She seems so delicate—breakable.

“Tuck,” she breathes. I love the sound of my name on her lips—always have.

“You make me crazy,” I admit. I've said it before, many times, and it's no less true now than it ever was before. “I want you so much I can't even think straight when you're around.” I drop my hand from her chest to her thigh, tracing the line where hem meets skin. “You knew exactly what this skirt would do to me.”

She unconsciously licks her plump, pink lips, calling to me like a fucking siren, and my mouth crashes down on hers without another thought. Her arms fling around my neck as we consume each other, our breaths mixing and our tongues wrestling.

I pin her against the table, desperate to get closer, my tongue ravaging her mouth with impatience. Carl is practically gasping with need, and when her hips grind into my thigh, I lose all sense of control. I grab hold of both ass cheeks and lift her, lining our bodies up just right and guiding her long, gorgeous legs around my waist, and I place her on the table.

Better. But still far from good enough. The table is too low—or I'm too tall, so without disentangling from her hot mouth, I pick her back up and spin us around, setting her on the washing machine instead.

Perfect
. Our hips are perfectly aligned, and I swell to the point of pain, my dick knowing how close it is to its target. Its
home
.

Her knees part and I charge between them, grabbing her hips and hauling her forward, but she pushes me back, startling me until I realize she means to rid us of the barriers separating our bodies.

Good fucking thinking
.

Carl gets to work on obstacle number one—my jeans—unfastening my belt buckle. Her hands don't stop long enough for me to remove her shirt, so I just push her cardigan over her shoulders and shove her tank top up over her bra.

Fuck. Me
.

She
knows
how much I love her in white lace. Most girls think a black or red bra is hotter, but Carl introduced me to the erotic appeal of white—a color I'd never considered sexy before I saw it on her when we first hooked up. And it's no less powerful right now, her pert, pink peaks peeking through the transparent fabric, and my mouth lowers to the swell of the bounty it holds, kissing and tasting.

Carl moans, and the sweet, sexy sound shatters the last of my patience. I shove my jeans and boxer briefs down my thighs, freeing my furious hard-on, and flip her skirt up around her waist.

I nearly come on the spot.

White. Fucking. Lace. Panties
.

I have to close my eyes and suck in a gulp of air to regain control of myself. Carl makes matters worse, boldly wrapping her fingers around me, and I forcefully snatch her wrists before she can stroke me and end this before it begins.

She peeks up at me from beneath her long, lacquered lashes, mouth slightly parted and eyes hooded in lust. It strikes me that I am the only man who has ever seen her like this, and in this moment I know that I would do absolutely anything to keep it that way.

I run my hands up her thighs, spreading them further as I go, losing myself more and more to my lust with every inch they separate. My fingers grasp the thin, sheer material, and I yank them from her body in one swift tear. Carl gasps at my savagery, but with her most intimate of places bare and open for me, she can't hide how turned on she is.

I take her mouth in a fierce kiss, and she surrenders to me, her mouth as open as the rest of her, and I can take no more. “No man will ever make you feel like this, Princess. Only me.” I need her to know this. To make sure that she knows there's no point in looking at other men while we're not technically together.

She winces, as if I said it as a punishment of some kind.

“I know.” Her tone is resigned, almost sad, and it makes my chest ache. She still thinks I'd never be with her again, not for real, and I want so much to tell her she's wrong. That I would take her back today if she'd have me. But then I'd also have to tell her I treated her like garbage for months for no fucking reason. That I had the audacity to believe she knew about my father all along, and chose to keep quiet. And I know her well enough to foresee the indignation, the hurt that would cause, and I'm not ready for that. First I need to remind her how good we are together, make it up to her before she even realizes I've fucked up. And I know one way to start.

I stroke between her legs, marveling at how ready she already is for me. “I'm going to fuck this hard, Princess,” I breathe gruffly into her ear. “I'm going to come so deep inside you I'll still be there next fucking week.” I stare down at her, my eyes bright with my promise.

“You're always inside me, Tucker,” she whispers, her words an arrow straight to my heart. Here I am making dirty little vows, and Carl says something so transcendently beautiful.

She leaves me fucking speechless. But I can express myself in other ways. I capture her mouth with mine, and kiss her with everything I feel—every desire, every regret. But right now it's the need to possess her that's strongest, and I pull her hips to the edge of the washing machine, and guide myself into her welcoming body.

I swallow her long, strangled moan, tasting its perfection as I hold myself still inside her. She grips me tight and hot, and I close my eyes and just feel. I've missed this. I miss this every single goddamned moment I'm not doing it.

“Tuck,” she whimpers.

Carl wraps her legs around me in encouragement, like she wants to keep me a part of her, as if without me she's missing something vital. At least that's how it feels, and I love that, too.
God
, I love every fucking thing about her. I always have.

I gently fist her hair, pulling her head back so she's forced to lie down, and follow with my body covering hers. She grabs the hem of my T-shirt and tugs it up, and I reach back and yank it off in one quick motion, desperate to get back to where I belong.

I lean down over her, and then, finally, I move. I rear my hips back until I nearly withdraw, and then push slowly, deliberately in until I bottom out. Again, I pause. I'm struck with a wave of overwhelming humility. I don't deserve this, but fuck if I could ever bring myself to walk away. Not again. Not for real.

“Please, Tuck.” Carl's voice is a breathy plea, and it obliterates my free will. There is nothing in this world like hearing her beg, and there's no other place she would ever do it. It's a heady thrill, and my body takes control, giving her what she's asked for.

My hips start pumping, gradually increasing in pace and force, and she meets me thrust for thrust. As always, my words pour out without a filter, and I tell her how good she feels, how tight and hot, how my favorite place in the world is inside her perfect body.

I feed on her moans of pleasure, letting them fuel me, until we are slamming our bodies together like animals, trying with everything we have to leave a piece of ourselves in each other.

She goes off first, exploding around me in pulses and ripples that do me in, and I burst inside her, marking her as deeply as I possibly can.

We both gasp for air, suspended in time. Right now, in this moment, she is still mine, and I don't want to return to a reality where we have come full circle. Where we are back to being fucking friends with benefits.

“Tuck…”

I lift my face from where it's hidden in her neck, and stare into a sated emerald sea. I want to get lost in it.

“We should go.”

I sigh. I can't believe I'm back in a laundry room being rushed away from the girl who should be in my bed every night. Fuck my fucking life.

I reluctantly peel myself off of her and start getting dressed, pocketing her ruined panties. I know my silence is discomfiting to her, but I don't know what to say. I don't know how much longer I can do this. I need to tell her how I feel. I keep waiting for some way to prove to her that I deserve her—some way to guarantee that when I confess my fuck-up and profess my love, she will take me back. But maybe I'm just being a coward.

I look over at her, smoothing down her rumpled skirt, running her fingers through her tousled hair, and I wish I could wipe away her uncertainty. And I will.

Just not right now.

But when the moment is right, I'm going to tell her.

Soon.

Someone knocks on the door.

“Yo, Green! I know we said you could shoot in there, but some of us need clean clothes!” Sherman shouts from the other side of the closed door.

“Just a minute!” I call back. “Getting some B-Roll!”

Carl has herself back together in seconds, and then busies herself organizing the release forms while I fasten my fly.

“Dude, my girl's got class in an hour!”

Carl shoots me a puzzled look, and I roll my eyes. “She does his laundry,” I explain with a smirk, knowing how she'll react to that.

Her scowl makes me grin.

I turn to go unlock the door.

“Tuck.”

“Hmm?” I reach for the handle.

“Tuck!”

I turn back to Carl, at her panic-stricken, wide eyes, directed right at Manny's tripod, still in the corner of the room, camera still aimed at the washing machine, its recording light still blinking ominously.

Mother. Fucker
.

“Tuck.”

“Fuck.”

“Tuck,
it's on
.”

“
Fuck
.”

I pounce on the thing like it's alive and hit the power button, and then rip out the memory card and glare at it. But I already know that the camera automatically uploads to the Cloud, and then to Manny's laptop.

“Tuck.”

“I know!” I snap. “Shit, I'm sorry.” I reach for her, but she dodges me. Great, now she's freaking out. Shit,
I'm
freaking out.

“What do we do?” she asks. She's looking to me like I have all the answers, and I don't know what the fuck to do.

“Maybe the footage didn't upload,” I offer.

“You think?”

I don't think. I
think
Manny is walking around—albeit probably still unknowingly—with a video of me plowing into Carl like my life depended on it. But her anxiety stabs me in the gut, and I can't stop myself from reassuring her, even if it's a lie. “Yeah. He already downloaded today's footage to the project file. So even if it did upload to the Cloud, there's no reason for him to find it.” I hope.

“Yeah.” Carl wants to believe me, but she's unsure. “Tuck…”

“It's going to be fine,” I reassure her, but she shakes her head.

“Ben told me one of your teammates got benched last year because he got a bad peer review and Zayne docked his grade.”

Huh? What does that have to do with anything? “Yeah. I know. Crauper. Screwed some girl on his team and it came back to bite him in the ass.” I smirk at her. “Are you threatening to screw up my grade?”

But she's not amused. She shakes her head frantically like I'm missing something. “No. Listen. I mentioned it to Zayne, and he said it didn't matter that the girl lied on her review because him sleeping with a teammate was unprofessional in its own right.”

“Okay?”

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath like she's growing impatient with me. “Manny doesn't like me. Or you, for that matter. And if he sees this…”

I finally get there. “Then he has proof we fucked up.”

Fuck. My heart races in my chest and I worry she can hear it. Because if I blow the grade on this project, then it's half the grade in the class. It could be the difference between keeping my scholarship, or having to leave school. But I don't tell Carl that. I don't need her to worry any more than she obviously already is at the thought of a bad grade or losing that internship she wants so much.

I reach for her again and this time she lets me wrap my arms around her. We ignore the angry banging from the other side of the door. “It'll be okay,” I promise her. “I'll make sure it's okay.”

“How?”

“However the fuck I have to.”

Present Day

I walk into creative marketing with Carl a little over a week later. It's the second to last class of the semester and we're about to make our presentation for our group project. I've been keeping an eye on Manny, searching for signs he's seen footage of my naked ass, but he's given me no indication that he has, and it's a relief. I can't be sure, but I think he probably would have mentioned if he stumbled upon a video of Carl and me going at it, or I'd at least have picked up on some cryptic glances or something.

The rest of the class filters in and sits with their groups. I hand Carl our note cards and Manny boots up his laptop. Zayne calls up the first group, who picked the Quality of Life Foundation. Their video isn't bad, but it's amateur hour next to ours. It focuses on family milestones—birthday parties, holidays, etcetera—and sets them in hospitals using the kind of supplies the foundation's funding provides. It's obviously meant to pull at the heartstrings, but it feels more than a little unoriginal, and falls equally short. Zayne sits off to the side, taking notes, his expression inscrutable.

The next four groups are called and each presents. Two are actually pretty good—one sentimental and one pretty damn funny—but ours is the only one that's both serious and funny, and I still think it's the most creative. Manny's edit is brilliant, and I'm ninety percent sure we're winning that prize.

I peek over at Carl, who happens to glance at me at the same time, and her lips pull into a wry smile. She knows we've got this. I grip her shoulder and rub it firmly the way she likes, and I feel the small dose of tension dissolve. She's not lacking in self-assurance, but still, she is human. “You're gonna kick ass, Princess.”

Carl winces so subtly I nearly miss it.

Shit
, I keep forgetting not to call her that. But it only hurts because she still thinks I don't want to get back together. We've been getting along better than I could have hoped, and I think I'm finally ready to tell her the truth.

Soon.

The moment I'm confident it will go our way.

Fuck,
I'm such a pussy.

The fifth group's video comes to an end, and the group claps perfunctorily. Zayne makes some notes as Manny clicks around on his keyboard to set us up. “Oh, I made a small edit last night, by the way,” he murmurs nonchalantly.

Huh?

“Why?” Carl asks. “The cut you showed us yesterday was perfect.”

“It's still perfect. I just made one small addition at the end. No worries, it's still under two minutes,” he assures us as he clicks away.

He's such a perfectionist and he's done this so many times—made changes on details that to laymen like me felt so insignificant and immaterial to the actual content that it seemed like a total waste of time, but I guess that's why he's the expert.

Carl shrugs and Julia rolls her eyes, and Manny just keeps working. I give Carl's shoulder one last squeeze as she gets up to make our presentation, and move over into her empty seat as Manny brings the final file up on the screen and connects to the room's main screen.

“You better not have fucked it up,” I tease Manny.

He laughs under his breath. “
I'm
not the one who fucked anything.”

My heart freezes. “What did you say?”

But Carl's about to speak and Manny doesn't even meet my gaze, he just looks casually at his laptop waiting to hit play.

Fuck!
I'm not willfully delusional enough to convince myself his comment was a coincidence, but I can only hope that his words weren't related to his last-minute edit.

Because there is no reason on earth he'd show that video in class.

Would he?

“So who here has ever heard a friend or acquaintance make a joke about rape?”

As predicted, no one raises their hand, and several mouths gape open at Carl's brusque question.

“No one?”

Still nothing.

Carl nods. “Well, that's good. Because we'd all agree, it's nothing to joke about, right?”

A murmur of affirmative answers.

“Except, I'd venture to guess that you've all heard these kinds of jokes, or snide comments. You know, about getting a girl drunk so she'll be more…
fun
. Or what about slipping something into someone's drink?”

Slowly one guy raises his hand. Then a few more. Carl waits patiently until half the room raises their hands.

“I thought so,” she says. “Well, the thing is, it seems there's this weird phenomenon where some guys—and girls—think the idea of incapacitating someone and taking advantage of them is cool…But we think it's pretty lame for someone to have to resort to any type of force just to get some. You know what's cool? Getting laid because someone wants you when they're good and sober.”

A few cheers and a whistle, and in the corner of my eye I see Zayne laughing, his eyes fixed on Carl like he could just fucking eat her, and it makes me want to pummel him.

“The thing is—and no offense, guys—we know you're not always the most original bunch.”

There are a few guys pretending they're offended, including one who shouts “hey,” but most of them are in complete agreement.

“So we realized that if we're going to change your humor, we'd have to write you the material.”

Someone shouts “Thanks!” And several people laugh.

“On behalf of Sexual assault Awareness and Victim Empowerment, or SAVE, we present ‘She Wants Me So Bad.'”

The lights go off, and Manny hits play.

The video begins with upbeat music and a fade-in to a party scene. Manny, me, and a couple of guys who volunteered are mixing the alcoholic punch and I repeat the same joke I heard Leo make before that first party at the house about lacing it. On the video the guys laugh and agree, but in the classroom, everyone boos. It's the most interaction a video has gotten and it bodes well.

Then Carl shows up on camera, and asks why I need to drug girls to get laid, whether it's a size issue, an endurance issue, or both. The room breaks out into laughter.

Then the scene starts over, with a joke about making the punch nonalcoholic so the girls don't go home with some loser by accident when they can have me. Sure I come off like a cocky asshole, but the guys who make these jokes in the first place are all cocky assholes.

The scenes continue like that, first with jokes we've heard, then with our suggested corrections, and it's effective both in message and entertainment value.

The text before the final scene is serious. It reads,
When you joke about sexual assault, you never know who's listening, and who might take you seriously
. But the scene itself is far from serious, as we have a gay couple, both of whom are in earshot of a roofie-joke, each separately spiking each other's drink without the other's knowledge. They go into the laundry room to “talk,” each obviously planning to take advantage of the other, until they both go in for the kiss and promptly pass out on the floor.

The room bursts into a cacophony of howling laughter, and I smile proudly up at Carl, waiting for the final text and fade to black.

But it doesn't come. Instead, with fifteen seconds left of the video, a new scene comes into view.

I instantly recognize the lax house laundry room. Shots of the washing machine…and legs. Bare, feminine, familiar legs, wound around either side of a denim clad backside. My throat goes Sahara dry and my pulse rockets to the fucking moon. My hands curl into fists as I resist shooting Manny a death glare. I can't bring myself to look at Carl either.

The text on the screen reads,
But look what happens when we're sober…

Splices of the camera zoomed in on smooth skin glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, in images reminiscent of one of those overtly sexy cologne commercials.

More text,
She wants me so bad…

The scene cuts back to Carl's nails raking my naked back, my muscles rippling beneath them with exertion, her barefoot heels pushing against my ass that—
thank fucking God
—is still covered by the back of my jeans. The text of the final frames,
The only thing I slip her…

I hold my breath, because if Manny added vulgar text to go along with his edit, then we're all fucked. Our video is risqué enough as it is.

Is mutual respect. Looks like it worked.

Now how cool is that?

Fade to black.

The video concludes to roaring laughter, a few catcalls and whistles, and a round of applause. No particularly intimate body part or discernible feature had been visible at any point, and, at realizing this, I release the breath that hasn't left my lungs since the scene began.
Thank the fucking Lord
. No one knows that was Carl and me except Carl and me. And fucking Manny.

I turn to him with a glare that foretells of his impending doom, but I have to hide it quickly, because the room's attention is on our group, and the last thing I want is to give away who that couple at the end was. Finally I peek over at Carl, whose mortified blush and stunned gaze makes me wonder how she's going to finish the presentation. I'm about to get up and do it for her when she clears her throat and slips on a mask of composure.

“Who still thinks it's cool to drug someone for sex?” she asks the room.

A chorus of chuckles.

“That last guy got it right!” one kid shouts, and I grit my teeth until the hinges of my jaw throb painfully.

“Hell yeah! Did you see those legs? I'll totally take that washing machine for a ride!”

Carleigh hides her embarrassment behind a smile that's only obviously fake to me, and for once I'm thankful for Zayne, who unknowingly comes to her rescue. He gets up and thanks our group, does the short question-and-answer session he did after each video, then starts going over what he liked and what he didn't about each one.

I lean subtly into Manny. “Do you have a death wish?” I whisper.

He tries to act unaffected, but his nervous swallow is audible. “Do you think it's
professional
to fuck someone you're working with?”

Now I'm the one with the anxious swallow. But he's overplaying his hand. Because as important as this grade is—as much as it could ruin my future—that's barely even on my radar right now. Because all I can think about is that he's just shown the whole fucking class splices of my girl getting fucked, and he should be more worried about his life than my grade.

“Do you think I give half a fuck about that shit when you just exploited my fucking girl?” I growl into his ear, and he finally has the brains to look scared.

Carl sits next to me like a statue, refusing to look anywhere but the front of the room.

“Manny, that was sick!” Julia gushes. “Where'd you get that footage? That was the laundry room from the lax house, right?”

I stiffen in anxiety.

“My friends from performing arts. They're both actors. They agreed to do it at the last minute,” he says. “I thought it would be a funny ending. Sorry I didn't have time to show you guys.”

I'm relieved he lied, but if he thinks he's sorry now, he should wait until after class, because I'm going to fucking slaughter him for putting Carl through that. Still, I take a deep breath and compose myself.

I lean over and whisper in Carl's ear. “No one knows, Princess.”

She nods uncertainly.

“They couldn't see anything,” I assure her.

Another shaky nod.

But Manny did see. He would have watched the entire thing in order to cut the edits, and knowing that he saw Carl like that—heard her like that—makes me want to tear his fucking head from his body.

“That was some serious acting.” Julia giggles. “I wouldn't mind doing a scene like that,
Jeez
! He looked like he was trying to actually climb inside her! Carl, did you see those muscles in his back?” She dramatically fans herself and licks her lips, and I can't help but laugh.

“Yeah, Carl,” I tease in my best impression of a girly voice. “He's
so hot
, isn't he?”

She cracks a small smile. “He was hot,” she agrees. “But you know guys like that. I'm sure he's a total player.”

Ouch
. I lightly pinch her thigh in retaliation, but at least I've got her smiling again.

Zayne's been talking this whole time, and when he announces our group as the winner, there are cheers and applause.

Zayne says we'll be presenting our video to the ad execs next Wednesday, and he'll tell us then who gets to interview for the internship. I glance sideways at Manny, and realize this was his move to intimidate us so he can get it for himself. He's about to learn that's not how I work. But Carl is focused on our win, and her smile is genuine, and it's breathtaking.

Zayne dismisses us, and Manny is out the door in a flash.

I race after him, only vaguely aware of Carl calling my name from behind me.

I spot him halfway down the hall, and I burst into a sprint, catching up to him before he can turn the corner and try to lose me.

“Not so fucking fast, motherfucker,” I growl, grabbing him by the collar. There's a janitorial closet a few feet away, so I push open the door and shove Manny inside.

He throws his hands up in surrender. “No one knows it was you, dude!” he defends.

“Until you threaten to fuck up Carl's and my grade by showing it to Zayne, is that right?” My tone tells him to tread carefully.

He shakes his head. “I wasn't really going to. I was just fucking with you, I swear!”

I don't believe him for a microsecond. I bet he wants that fucking internship badly enough that he'd have showed Zayne that video if it meant taking Carl out of the running. But I believe he won't now. Because he can see in my eyes that some things are more important than grades.