Read My Lips (A College Obsession Romance) (17 page)

I am utterly pinned and totally at his mercy.

Then he bends down and nibbles on my neck, sending shivers of joy up and down my body as I squirm against him in pleasure.

The weight of his body presses down on mine, nearly taking the air out of me. I’m so dizzy with what he’s doing to my neck that I hardly notice. In fact, I welcome it, clinging to him in an animal effort to somehow fuse our bodies together.

Pressed against him, I experience a split second of wondering if we’re moving too fast.

The next split second, I’m crying out, “
Oh my god!
”

Clayton’s worked his way up to my ear, his tongue tracing my jawline. When he reaches my mouth again, the animals are reunited and I throw my arms around his shoulders, crushing his face into mine.

“Dessie,” he whispers when he pulls away for one fleeting breath.

“Clayton,” I agree to nothing in particular, each of our breaths blasting against the other’s face, before plunging our mouths back together.

Our lips locked, he lifts his chest and runs his hands down the length of my body until they reach my hips. His fingers tease under my top, tickling the sensitive skin there.

Oh god.

Slowly, cruelly, his mischievous fingers work their way back up, taking my top with it.

I sit up for one moment.

My top’s gone the next.

His face hovers over me as his hand trails down from the top of my lace bra to my exposed stomach, then traces the waistline of my jeans, flirting with the buttons. I feel a quiver of anticipation below. My legs squeeze together and I feel a jolt of excitement.

“Wait.”

Clayton saw my lips move. He lifts his eyebrows, breathing heavily.

“Wait,” I repeat, placing a hand on his warm, bare chest. “Wait, wait, wait.”

He obeys, his dark eyes locked on me and waiting, for whatever reason, he doesn’t yet know. The only sound in the room is our erratic breathing. I watch my hand rise and fall as his chest does with his every breath. His body is so perfect, I can’t even compare it to anything or anyone. The shape of his pecs, the definition of his abs, the subtle ripples of muscle that work down his sides, his artful tattoo … There’s just too much for my eyes to drink in all at once.

“Too fast?” he breathes.

I nod once, warily looking into his eyes.

What I see isn’t frustration. In fact, he seems to agree, like a thought or two has worked through his brain. He holds himself up with a hand pressed into the cushion on either side of my head, his face over mine as we each catch our breath.

His lips twist into a smirk. “Can’t handle me?”

I laugh, despite our circumstance. “You are a lot to handle.”

He pulls away, giving me room to sit up. I fetch my top from the floor and slip it back on. It doesn’t escape my attention that Clayton watches my every move. At some point, he had managed to undo the top button of my jeans, so I fix them up as well.

I give him a smirk of my own. “Quit staring.”

He shrugs. “I like what I see.”

After a moment of staring into his eyes, feeling oddly powerful, I grab his shirt and throw it at him. He catches the sleeve with his teeth, biting it like a dog and growling at me.

I can’t help but laugh.

Clayton holds up the shirt. “Put this back on?” I nod in response. “That’s a first,” he says teasingly.

I love the way his teeth, tongue, and lips form the word “first”, a hint of Texan accent in it and the “s” muffled slightly.

“Well, unless you want me to hold a conversation with your
chest
…” I tease him.

He throws an arm over the back of the couch, the shirt dropped to his lap and forgotten.

I sigh with pleasure, unsure if he heard me or not. My eyes are helplessly glued to his muscles. “Fine,” I say breathily. There are worse things I’ve been subjected to. “You going to tell me how you got that thing on your face?”

Clayton’s forehead screws up. I assume he didn’t catch what I said, so I indicate my own cheek, then point at his expectantly.

He sighs and looks away, biting his lip. I slap the couch, drawing his attention back. “I know you didn’t just … ‘fall’.”

He shakes his head no, confirming my suspicion.

“So?” I prompt him.

It seems to take a measure of effort for him to even think about it, which casts a lightning bolt of worry through me. Finally, he pulls his phone out, taps a bit on it, then shows me the screen:

Some punk assholes

from the corner store

followed me out n jumped me.

“Oh my god!” I blurt out as I read it. “Why??”

“Bad attitude,” he answers quietly. “Dumb.” He shrugs, all the muscles of his shoulders moving with him. His eyes linger on my lips.

I remind myself that he’s staring at my lips for the functional purpose of grasping what I’m saying and urge myself not to be so damned turned on by it.

“You don’t like to talk much,” I observe, though I meant it as a question.

His eyes detach from mine, caught in a thought. Then, with a short sigh I’m not sure he meant for me to hear, he types into his phone again. I watch his face work through a bunch of different word choices as he struggles with how to say whatever it is he’s typing. With a pinch of reluctance, he shows me the screen:

I’ve always been weird

about talking out loud

since I can’t hear myself.

Been this way

since I lost my hearing :/

I nod slowly, then take his phone from him, earning a snort of protest as I delete what he typed and write my own message. I reveal the screen:

I like what you sound like.

Not that you need any more boosts

to your insufferably large ego.

He grins, and half a laugh escapes his lips, all his pearly whites shining. He meets my eyes with his head still tilted down to the screen, his forehead scrunched up in an adorable way.

“I like what you sound like,” I repeat, shrugging.

His eyes harden. “I … wish I could hear what
you
sound like.”

“My voice is pretty boring,” I assure him. “You’re not missing much.”

“I doubt that.” His eyes brush over my face, a hint of curiosity in them. He reaches for the tequila and pours two more shots. When he offers me one, I shake my head and gently push it away. To that, he shrugs and downs them both, one at a time. His face visibly loosens, his eyes turning watery. “There’s a lot about you I’d like to learn, Dessie.”

I put an arm over the back of the couch. Utterly incapable of enforcing discipline on my hands, I find myself curious about his tattoo. The moment my finger touches his neck, he seems to freeze in place, staring into my eyes intensely as I observe his ink, tracing the shape.

“Why the tattoo?” I mouth to him, hardly using my voice.

“Mmm.” He gives it some thought. “Tattoo,” he mumbles, his mind seeming to go somewhere far away. “Had to watch my back all through high school. When I turned eighteen, I … I decided I wanted to look like a bad-ass no one should fuck with. So I … wanted to …” He sighs and takes his phone out of my lap, typing into it as I continue to trace the ink on his neck. I wonder what that’s doing to him, if anything.

Then, he shows me the screen:

            
 
Ur finger is driving me nuts

I grin. He glares at me playfully, but I see the tightness in his jaw.
I might be waking the beast again.

My finger reaches his earlobe. I study it curiously and find my mind arriving at a question I’d wanted to ask for quite a while, the most obvious question.

“How long have you been deaf?”

He squints at me, the humor in his eyes traded quickly for solemnity. I wonder if he understood the question, due to his lack of response. I let go of his ear and take the phone back, typing into it:

How long have you been deaf?

He hardly looks at the screen before he murmurs, “Since I was twelve.”

“How?”

“Measles.” He mumbles the word so bitterly that I almost miss what he says. “It spread to my ears, shitty parents, lack of medical treatment, lucky to be alive, blah, blah.”

The sensitive topic seems to have brought him to a dark place. Maybe it was that
and
the tattoo. I regret ruining the mood, if that’s what I just did.

“Sorry,” I murmur. “I was … I was just curious.”

“It’s okay.” He takes a quick breath, his eyes not leaving my face. Then he forces a smile. “Touch me all you want. Another drink?” He reaches for the bottle.

“No,” I say at once.

He freezes, studying my face. “You sure?”

A flutter rushes through my stomach. For some reason, I find myself thinking of all the warnings people have been giving me. Is Clayton trying to get me drunk so he can continue having his way with me? Am I just tonight’s girl, and tomorrow there will be someone else on this couch being talked out of her clothes? His roommate Brant nearly slipped, laughing at the idea of Clayton ever settling down with one woman. Is that because he sees all the tail Clayton catches?

Am I an idiot for staying here, entertaining some idea of a relationship with him?

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly. He obviously reads the tension in my face. He’s remarkably observant, even when buzzed.

I type another message, then show it:

So you said there’s a lot about me

you want to learn?

Like what?

He studies my eyes long and hard. After a second, he reaches and gently takes a tangle of my hair, then brings it to his face demonstratively and sniffs. “Like what shampoo you use,” he moans.

I slap his hand away and laugh.

He looks at me. A brief moment of gravity hardens his face, and then he reaches for the tequila. “I’m gonna need another,” he says without looking at me.

I touch his wrist, then pinch the fingers of my other hand in the air twice by his face, sort of like the universal gesture to indicate a person talking.

He squints at my hand, reading the sign. “No?”

“Too much,” I say, to which he snorts. “I don’t want you falling asleep on me.”

He lifts a brow. “You want me to sleep with you?”

“That’s not what I said!” I know he’s teasing me, but he stares at me as if that’s really what I asked him. I make the pinching sign again—
No
. “Am I doing that right?” I murmur, repeating the sign by pinching two fingers against my thumb twice.

A devilish smirk crosses his face. “Isn’t this how we got into trouble earlier? Sign language lessons?”

I blush, then lean back on the couch, crossing my arms. He laughs, then pours himself a single shot. After giving me a quick, daring look, he downs it. His eyes turn to water and he slams the glass down on the table too hard and hoots. He wipes his mouth with the back of a wrist, connecting his eyes to mine as he leans back into the couch himself.

Then, he asks, “So why Texas?”

I shrug. “It looked like a good Theatre program.”

He doesn’t seem to be looking at my lips. He leans the side of his face into the couch, inclined toward me with his hands in his lap and his dark eyes zeroed in on mine. The way he watches me, I feel like he’s penetrating right into my thoughts. I lay the side of my own head against the couch too, mirroring him and gazing at him.

Then, in a moment that’s so fast it startles me, he swipes the phone out of my grip, types on it, then shines the screen at me:

What was so bad in New York City

that u had to run all the way

down here?

His question makes me sit up, as if the words on the screen hit my face. I can hear Claudio screaming again. I see my sister’s disapproving look. I picture my mother filling another damn glass of chardonnay and ignoring me. I imagine the empty rows of seats in the theater, dreading the day they would be filled.

Then I think about the knot in my stomach that’s there because of the secret I’m keeping. The secret I’ve kept from every single person I’ve met so far. How can I make any real friends here if I can’t even be honest with any of them? I’m a liar. I was a liar the moment I stepped foot on campus.

Clayton is something of an outcast too, if even a hair of the rumors are true. We are both, in our own ways, running away from what people think—or
could
think—of us. I feel like there’s so much more about us that’s alike than I expected. I feel oddly safe.

“I want to tell you something,” I murmur, my eyes averted, “but … you can’t tell anyone.”