“It’s just because I’m way too hot for you.” I could feel the heat—the heat of my own desire—getting more and more intense. I was glad he was ready to go again already. If I’d had to wait much longer I’d have started touching myself.
“You’re the smart one and the hot one. Okay, Evie—what’s it going to be?” I turned over onto my back and peered up at Zack.
“You on top. To the beat of the song—whatever song happens to be on—until we both come.”
Zack listened to the song that was on at the moment. I reached down and wrapped my hand around his still-hardening cock, giving him a few strokes to finish the work of getting him ready.
“Okay,” Zack said.
The song that was playing over the speakers was a steady, not-quite-slow pace, and Zack covered my body with his own, slipping between my legs and repaying my kindness in bringing him to full erection by spreading my labia and giving my clit a quick, firm stroke. He guided his cock up against me and thrust into me slowly, letting me feel every inch of him pushing past the initial resistance of my body. I breathed in, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, draping my legs around his waist, pushing my hips down to meet his thrusts as he fell into the rhythm of the song. It wasn’t familiar to him—he kept working to keep up, to slow down or move faster as the song meandered along. I grinned to myself, satisfied with my strategy and feeling so completely turned on by the syncopated rhythm that Zack and I were creating. The friction built up, my muscles tightening around him, our movements falling in together as we listened to the song and each other.
It transitioned into a much slower song—a ballad—and Zack smiled briefly.
“I know this one,” he told me, kissing me lazily on the lips as he slowed his thrusts.
He plunged deeper and deeper inside of me, taking advantage of the slow pace to make me feel him, really feel him. He was thick and hard, almost scorching hot inside of me. My muscles fluttered around him as he ground his hips up against mine, somehow finding a way to rub right up against my clit even as his cock rubbed my inner walls with every movement. We kissed each other all over, everywhere our lips could reach, while our hands explored each other’s bodies, touching and teasing, caressing and kneading. It was sweet—delicious friction building up, making me almost impatient even though it felt absolutely amazing. Zack didn’t let up; he kept pushing into me, shifting his hips to get the best possible angle.
He found my g-spot just as the song concluded, and I shuddered against him at the sudden jolt of intense sensation that shocked me. The next song came on and Zack picked up his pace accordingly—I was more than ready for it. I pushed my hips down to meet his, clutching him close as we moved together in rhythm. I couldn’t be sure where the music ended and our bodies began; everything swirled in a blur of color and sound, feeling and taste. I could even smell the ocean-and-sweat scent of our bodies moving together in the cool air of the room.
Zack thrust into me steadily, brushing up against my g-spot with every other stroke, until I was gasping and panting, moaning and crying out in pleasure. I couldn’t take anymore, I thought—if I had to go through another song, one that might be slower, I would die from the pleasure eating away at my brain with no release. Zack reached down between my legs and began to stroke and rub my clit with his fingers even as he pounded up into me, in time with the fast-paced end of the song. I cried out and clutched his body to mine as the first jolt of orgasm shot through my body. I continued moving—and Zack thrust into me relentlessly, carrying the rhythm he had fallen into even after the song ended. I no longer cared; I was consumed with the feeling of pleasure washing through my body, how good it was. It wasn’t as intense, as mind-shattering as the first one, but it was more pleasant for that. I managed to hold onto consciousness as wave after wave of sensation crashed through me, and I felt Zack’s body tense against mine as he reached his own orgasm, letting out a long, low groan that filled my ears, blocking out the song playing over my speakers.
We rode through our orgasms, not stopping in our movements until we were both utterly spent; then Zack collapsed against me heavily, burying his face against my breasts as we both panted. I went half-away for a long moment, the music filtering through my head in an ebb and flow of distorted guitars and twisting, sweet-and-then-sharp vocals, and heavy drums. I was tingling all over, hot and cold flashes of sensation crackling through me. I was contented; utterly satisfied in a way I hadn’t been in years, my breath slowing gradually and my rapid pace calming with it.
Zack pulled himself up and shifted onto the bed next to me, draping his arms around me loosely.
“That was a really good idea,” he said, smiling slightly.
“I know. I always thought about it before but never really tried it with anyone.” Zack brushed a lock of hair out of my face lightly, his dark eyes peering down into mine.
“God you’re going to ruin me,” he said, shaking his head. “Good at oral, full of great ideas for how to make sex better—I’m going to fail out.”
I rolled my eyes and grinned, my cheeks warming with a blush. “Yeah well, you’re still responsible for your own choices. Study if you need to. You can always get more sex—you can’t get more hours in the day.”
Zack laughed. “You aren’t entirely changed from the girl I knew and loved in high school,” he told me. “You’ve still got your eyes on the prize. If I had ever interfered with your studies back then you’d have broken up with me immediately.”
I raised one finger. “I actually did break up with you for a while and for exactly that reason.” Zack furrowed his brow in confusion. “Oh, I didn’t tell you then but yeah. When we broke up for like two weeks in spring of my freshman year, it was totally because my grades had started slipping and I couldn’t even handle the idea that it was because of a boy.”
“Leave it to you,” Zack said, shaking his head. “But you got back together with me.”
I shrugged. “I was miserable without you, and anyway, I knew I just had to do better at being a student. Make better choices.”
Zack laughed. “Yeah, you were always good at pointing the hose at me—so to speak—when I got you too distracted from what you were doing.”
We both fell into a doze and I thought about the time I had spent with Zack when we had been in high school together, listening to the music and enjoying the closeness of his body next to me in the bed. My mind drifted in sleepy circles as Zack’s hands trailed over my body, touching and teasing me lightly. I knew neither of us was up to another round; not yet, anyway. But every last bit of tension was out of my body. It wasn’t like anything had been when we’d been together. There was a kind of sweetness to the ache I felt between my legs that I knew could easily be addictive. I closed my eyes as the music flowed around me and just floated.
SLAMMED #3
CHAPTER ONE
I came back to myself all at once as I lay in Zack’s arms, floating in some place between asleep and awake. Zack’s body was pressed to mine, and I loved the sensation of his warm, velvet-soft skin, the steady thrumming of his heartbeat in my ear as I lay there with my face pressed to his chest. Half-asleep, Zack trailed his hands over my curves slowly, not trying to turn me on again, but caressing me lazily, producing a comforting tingle along my skin. I wanted to hang in that delicious state of almost-asleep forever; I wasn’t tired, but I had a bone-deep satisfaction that flowed through me, lighting up my veins, crackling through my nervous system. I thought idly that it would be nice to just keep lying there, and maybe wake up from the dreamy state just to roll over onto Zack and kiss him into another tryst.
Through the thick fog of satisfaction, I realized that it had been lunch when I stormed out of the dining hall—and that I still had classes for the day. I sat up quickly and looked at the clock on my desk; it was just after two. My heart beat a little faster. I had a class in twenty minutes; I needed to get ready.
“Hey,” I said, giving Zack’s shoulder a shake. “I need to get to class.”
Zack stirred, opening his eyes and giving me a lazy smile.
“What time is it?” He stretched and I couldn’t quite tear my gaze away from the sight of his naked body; he was all rippling muscle, with slight tan lines where his football gear sat, the skin paler there. I shook away my distraction and looked around for my clothes.
“It’s two. Or just after.”
Zack sat bolt upright in my bed and looked around until his gaze fell on the clock.
“Shit. I gotta run too—or I’ll be late to practice.”
He leaped off of the bed and grabbed for his clothes on the floor, a faint smile lingering on his lips. I put a robe on, telling myself I’d get dressed after he left; I was too distracted by the sight of him moving, taking in his tight, rounded ass, his muscled legs and thick shoulders as he pulled on his boxers, throwing his shirt over his head and then stepping into his jeans. Zack caught me staring and laughed, taking a moment to step up to me quickly and kiss me on the lips.
“Walk me out?” he asked.
I nodded, still tingling all over from the orgasm.
Jess was coming out of her room as Zack and I walked to the door; I blushed as she caught my eye and winked at me, standing silently next to the bathroom. Zack stopped in the entranceway and turned, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling my body against his. “One more,” he murmured, brushing his lips along mine and then kissing me harder, his tongue probing my mouth for a few hot, fast moments before he broke away.
“Catch you later, Evie,” he said with a little grin, opening the door. It was swinging shut behind him and I reeled slightly, smiling like an idiot in spite of myself.
“Well, well, and well,” Jess said, crossing the room and looking me up and down with a knowing glance. “Let me just guess what you’ve been up to.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, shut up.” My cheeks were burning, and I sat against the back of a chair, unable to help the smile that kept tugging at my lips despite how embarrassed I felt. “He came and apologized for being an asshole, that’s all.”
“Oh, so you accept all apologies naked in your bedroom, I see.” I shoved Jess’ shoulder as she laughed.
“Okay, fine, we had sex again. It’s not that big a deal.”
Jess crossed her arms over her chest and looked me up and down once more, snickering.
“You know, the way you stormed out of the dining hall, I would not have thought you’d even let him in the room.”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought so either,” I admitted. “I sort of opened the door before I even thought about it, and there he was.”
I told her about what Zack had told me—that he had intended to embarrass himself, not me, that it had been aimed at getting the stupid girls at his table to shut up.
“I have to admit, I thought you were overreacting. No one in the DH was actually laughing at you—they thought Zack was being an idiot.”
“Yeah, well, it felt an awful lot like they were—and I thought Zack was doing it just to be a jerk, like he didn’t mean it.”
“Be careful, Evie,” Jess suggested. “But I will admit that announcing that he’s in love with you in front of the entire dining hall is a pretty good indication that he feels something at least. It was kind of romantic.”
I rolled my eyes. “It was dumb and silly. But I’m glad he came and apologized to me. I made him promise no more public spectacles.”
“Well in fairness to him, the last one was all you.”
I shook my head, still smiling, and turned to go back to my room.
“Oh! Did you by any chance think to grab my bag?” My cheeks were burning again and I realized I had forgotten all about the fact that I’d left my backpack behind in the dining hall when I’d fled Zack’s public declaration of love.
“I did, in fact. What would you do without a conscientious roommate like me?” Jess went into her bedroom and came back out a moment later, carrying my backpack.
“If I didn’t have a conscientious roommate like you I wouldn’t have been the subject of two very embarrassing public displays because I would have never run into Zack at the party you made me go to.”
“So then, you still wouldn’t be getting laid, is what you’re saying.”
I couldn’t say anything to that—she was, technically, right. “I can get my own guys!” I shouted as Jess sauntered back to her room.
I had to hurry to get ready; there was my assignment for class to print out, and of course I couldn’t walk across campus in my bathrobe. I found my clothes and put them on while I printed my assignment for the class, humming along with the music still playing on my computer. My body was tingling still, and I could feel a ghost of the sensation of Zack’s cock inside of me, the lingering wetness between my thighs from the sex we’d had.
****
I managed to make it to class on time, hurrying across campus and avoiding everyone’s gaze as my cheeks burned. I didn’t know how many of the people I passed on the walkways had seen Zack’s pronouncement of love in the dining hall—or how far the word of it had spread throughout campus since I’d gone back to my room. It had been an hour and a half since I’d run back to my dorm—so it could have easily spread throughout half the campus already. I wondered, feeling mortified, if someone had gotten a video of it; they probably had.
Once I was in class, I tried to turn my thoughts firmly onto the task at hand, but I found my attention straying every few minutes. I imagined Zack at practice, running through plays, doing the standard exercises that seemed to always come up for football players. I assumed that the routine at the college level wasn’t that different from what I had seen Zack work through when we had been dating in high school; there were only so many ways that a team could practice. I thought, remembering the article I had turned in and the stakes of the last game, that running plays and staying in fighting shape were more important than ever for the team. As long as they managed to win the next big game, our team would go on to national championships—a major bowl game that could bring fame to our school. If Zack were the man in charge of the team when that happened, he’d have a permanent reputation at the college for years to come.
In a flash, I remembered Zack’s hands on me, the image of him in my mind firmly replacing the thoughts of him virtuously at practice, focused on running plays. My cheeks burned with a deep blush as I played through the way Zack buried his face between my legs, my mind sending ghostlike jolts of remembered sensation through my body as I tried not to squirm in my seat, heat rushing through my body from head to toe. When we had dated in high school, Zack had been okay with his hands—I could easily remember him getting me off with his fingers—but he’d never been too interested in going down on me. I shivered in the memory of how enthusiastic he had become.
I took notes mindlessly, hearing and not hearing the lecture going on in the front of the classroom, thinking about the strange set of events that had led to having Zack in my bed. I smiled to myself, remembering the sight of him stretching; the thick, dark patch of hair tangled around the base of his cock, the ripple of his abdominal muscles, the deep cut of his hip bones. I felt giddy and satisfied, worried and contented all at once, and I knew—in a sudden flash—that I was every bit as infatuated with Zack as I had been in high school, that it would be incredibly easy to fall head over heels in love with him just the way I had before. The thought of that gave me a moment’s pause. I had fallen completely and totally in love with Zack when we’d dated in high school, and he had ended up breaking up with me—he had left. We were in the same position in college as we’d been when we’d first started dating; even if we lasted the semester, and then Spring, what would happen when it came time for Zack to graduate?
But it was too soon to be worrying about what would happen years in the future. For the moment, I could let myself think of Zack without too much danger. He was undoubtedly every bit as hot as he’d been when we’d dated before, but he’d changed too. He was better in bed by far than he had ever been when we were both in high school. The subject of Zack apparently going to the library every day tugged at my mind; was he really studying? If he was, then he had definitely changed. If he was goofing off, then it was a little strange that he would pick that location. I felt a flush of heat rush through my body as I remembered the time we had sex, on the couch of his frat house; I thought about how he had seduced me so easily, kissing me until I was so turned on I couldn’t have formed the word no if I had wanted to—and I certainly didn’t want to. I shivered as I remembered how eagerly he had buried his face against my pussy, sucking and licking until he brought me to an intense orgasm.
I went from one class to another and still couldn’t shake the thought of Zack; I relived the acute embarrassment of his impulsive decision to apparently announce his love of me to as much of the campus at one time as he could. I saw him in my mind’s eye climbing up onto the table and getting every last person’s attention, looking at the girls and the guys at his table before telling everyone, “I want everyone to know that I am stupidly, head-over-heels, hung up on Evelyn Jackson. She’s the only girl for me. No one else could ever compare with her.” I couldn’t quite make myself believe that he was actually in love with me, per se; but when I thought about the way he’d done something so rash and stupid to shut up the girls making fun of me, I had to admit that my reaction had been a bit much.
I was struggling to pay attention during the last class of the day but failing miserably as my mind kept drifting back to the incredibly hot sex that Zack and I had in the aftermath of our fight. I smiled to myself as I remembered telling him that I could get him off just as thoroughly as he’d brought me to orgasm, and the silly wager we had made—and of course how I’d won it. Zack’s words, in his low, pleased voice, filled my mind. “God, you’re going to ruin me. Good at oral, full of great ideas for how to make sex better—I’m going to fail out.” I made myself pay at least enough attention to get the notes off of the board; it was lucky for me that my last class of the day was English Literature, something that I could do well in even if I occasionally lost myself in thought. In spite of the bone-deep satisfaction I felt after my afternoon tryst, my mind kept coming back to the question of whether it was all going to end this time the way it had before; was Zack just going to move on once he graduated? Or would he wait for me? I shook off the thought as best as I could. We’d had sex twice, and Zack had publicly declared his love for me—but that wasn’t exactly an indication that there was anything serious between us, no matter how tempting that possibility might be.
****
After class ended, I walked back towards the dorms, still distracted by thoughts of Zack. He wanted to see me again; well, I thought, of course he did. Even if he wasn’t serious about me, I knew good and damned well that I was an excellent lay. I didn’t need his confirmation of it, but his words had expressed how much he’d enjoyed himself—just as much as I had. So of course Zack would want more of that. I grinned to myself as I swiped my card to get into the building, barely noticing the world around me, my thoughts alternating between the homework I had to do and the thought of when I might see Zack again. Would he ask me on another date? And if he did, where would he take me?
I took the stairs once more, climbing them slowly and dreamily, able to feel the aching tenderness between my legs. I would text Zack once I got back to my room, I thought; he should be out of practice and maybe we could make plans. I had to get my homework done, but maybe Zack would be willing to come up to my room and we could study together and then have sex again. That was a good date, no matter who you were. Or maybe Zack would be up for going to the movies in a few days, and coming back to my room afterward; in spite of the fact that our first sexual encounter at the college had taken place on the couch at his frat house, I didn’t like the idea of going to the frat house to be with Zack. I could still remember his brother’s comment about me being Zack’s piece of ass. I didn’t think that Zack took the same view—I hoped he didn’t—but I didn’t want to hear it from anyone else, either.
My mind kept going back to the way Zack had improved in the time we had been apart. The thought of him—of what it was like to have sex with him—was so intense that I felt myself getting turned on in spite of the fact that I was walking around campus, into the dorms, up to my room. I thought about calling Zack, inviting him over to have one more little quickie in my room before dinner. I could still feel the ache between my hips when I moved, the sweet feeling of tenderness between my thighs that was so satisfying. I wanted more of it—I couldn’t help but want more. I smiled to myself. I could easily just offer Zack a massage; after practice he’d definitely want one, and he’d know right away that it was the perfect opening for sex.
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t spot the guy in front of my dorm room until I was nearly at the door. I looked up and saw one of the guys who had been sitting with Zack in the dining hall at lunch standing right there, looking up and down the hallway. The sight of him confused me; since he was on the team, I had to suppose that I’d been right—practice was over for the day. But what was he doing hanging around in front of my dorm room? The guy was bigger than Zack—bulky and hefty where Zack was lean and muscled, with dark hair already starting to thin at the top in the crew cut he wore. He shifted uncomfortably and watched me as I approached, his pale gray eyes firm and his lips pressed together.
“Uh, hi? Who are you and what do you want?” I shifted my backpack, feeling an instinctive fear creeping up from my stomach.
“Hey,” he said, trying to give me a friendly smile, but I could tell he was tense about something. “I’m Robbie—I’m on the team with Zack. How’s it going?”
I shrugged, feeling impatient. “I’m doing pretty well—or I was until I found some strange guy standing outside of my door looking like a creeper.” I raised an eyebrow and Robbie shrugged uncomfortably. I set my jaw. “Maybe you’d rather just get the point of why you’re here.”
Robbie looked at his feet for a moment before meeting my gaze. “Look,” he said, “You need to just cut Zack loose.”
I frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?” My heart was beating fast, and I wondered if Zack had told all of his teammates about me.
“I know you don’t know me and we’re not friends, but consider it a personal favor. Don’t hang out with him, don’t go on dates with him, leave him alone.”
I felt anger mixed with confusion rising inside of me. “Excuse me, but I don’t have any reason to do you a favor. I don’t know what’s going on in that big blockhead you’ve got going on, but this was probably the dumbest way to ask me to stop seeing Zack.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You don’t know me and you can’t do anything about what Zack wants to do.”
“Listen—hey—I get it, but just hear me out…” The guy started forward, giving me an opening. I darted around him and got my key in the door quickly, unlocking it with a wrench and yanking the door open.
“Get the hell out of here before I call one of the RAs and tell them you’re harassing me,” I told the big, beefy guy, scowling at him before I slammed the door in his face. I twisted the lock and stormed away from the door, telling myself I’d give him two minutes before I checked to make sure he was actually gone.
I went into my room and threw myself onto the bed, shaking slightly. Who was that guy to tell me not to have anything to do with Zack? I shook my head, feeling the anger boiling up inside of me, twisting my stomach into knots. I couldn’t get comfortable. I sat up, threw myself back down, got out of bed and sat down at my desk; I couldn’t even manage to get into the reading assignment for one of my classes. Part of me wanted to call Zack and tell him what his teammate had just done. I went through my bag to find my phone and looked at it for a long time; but I couldn’t quite make myself make the call.
I put my phone back down and considered it. What reason would the guy have to ask me to stay away from Zack? The guy would have had to have come directly from practice to be waiting at my dorm when I got there; had something come up during practice—had Zack told his teammates about ending up in bed with me? The thought of that brought the anger boiling up even more; if he had told his friends he’d gone straight from the dining hall to my dorm and convinced me to sleep with him, I would kill him. But then, I remembered the spectacle he’d created. The guy who’d been at my door had been sitting right next to him—he had probably taken the proclamation of love at least a little seriously.
I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking about it. Even if Zack hadn’t told his teammates about getting into my pants, I doubted that Zack went around jumping onto tables and proclaiming that he was hung up on girls on a regular basis. The team was reaching the end of its season, and they were close to that elusive ideal—the perfect win-loss record. I got up from my desk and left my room, going to the door to the common area and opening it hesitantly. The guy who’d stood there waiting for me was gone. I went back to my room and climbed into my bed, thinking about the situation from the team’s perspective. I could see where they’d be worried that Zack would get distracted by the prospect of dating me—or anyone. The team only had one more game in the regular season to get through, and then they would be into the national championships. With their record they would be playing against a top-tier school for sure—but a perfect record would definitely bolster their hopes.
I looked at my phone again and decided that at least until the end of the season—only a couple of weeks or so away—I could afford to put the possibility of a relationship with Zack on hold. It wasn’t that I was doing what I was told; it was that I didn’t want to distract Zack, and I didn’t like how fast things were going between us. I told myself firmly that I would just put the brakes on things for a little while, let things cool down. There would be time after the season ended to reconnect with Zack if he was really, truly serious about being with me—if I wasn’t just some kind of convenient fuck buddy for him.
I felt a wrench in my chest at the possibility that if I did decide to slow things down—in reality, to stop them until after the season had ended—I might lose Zack altogether. It was a risk I had to take, I told myself firmly. If Zack moved on to another, easier girl while I wasn’t around, that was on him, and I would just have to move on. It wasn’t as though we’d been dating seriously anyway; or even, really, at all. We’d gone on one date together, and at that it was because Zack made it a condition of answering my interview questions. I thought about the fact that about a week after we’d had sex for the first time since high school, he’d told me flat out that it was just sex; if that had been his attitude, then I could easily give him up. I put my phone down and turned my attention back onto my homework as best as I could, even though I was still haunted with the possibility that I would really, really regret my decision.
CHAPTER TWO
For the next few days, I buried myself in schoolwork. I barely left my room except to go to classes or the library, and I always made sure to get in early enough to book a private study room. Midterms had passed, but I knew that if I gave myself too much free time, I would come to regret it. Jess rolled her eyes at my diligence, reminding me of her “all work and no play makes Evie a dull girl” crack—but I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her exactly what had happened, only that I had decided to take a little break from Zack and even dating in general.
It was harder than I had even imagined; I knew that it was easy for me to become infatuated with him—but I hadn’t counted on how quickly it could happen. I couldn’t exactly tell Zack what had happened either; I didn’t want to start a fight amongst his teammates, and I honestly didn’t know how to explain it to him. I felt guilty, but I couldn’t think of any other way to deal with the situation. The first time Zack texted me—right before dinner hours at the dining hall—I simply responded to his invitation to sit with him that I planned on getting something to go and studying in my room.
After that I couldn’t bring myself to answer any of his messages or calls. While I sat at my desk in my room going over the class readings the day after my altercation with Zack’s teammate, my phone buzzed.
Practice was canceled today, the message read, with a little smiley face. We could hang out…maybe you could show me more of those skills you picked up.
I pressed my lips together and didn’t even pick my phone up to contemplate replying. It buzzed again, breaking through my focus.
Or if you don’t want to get down we could just hang out and watch a movie.
I took a deep breath. No—I wouldn’t respond to him. I wouldn’t even reply to tell him that I was too busy with homework. If I did, he might offer to come up and study with me; of course, knowing Zack, he would be able to very quickly convince me to do anything but study.
The next day, he tried again. I was in the library, in the private study room that I’d reserved for the afternoon trying to make heads or tails of the new Stats lesson. My phone buzzed, on silent per library rules.
Hey, are you mad at me? Can I at least get a chance to figure out what I did wrong?
My heart wrenched in my chest. It took all I had not to open the message that was flashing on my screen and reply to it—tell him that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that I wasn’t mad at him, that I just needed some space and thought he did too. But instead I turned it off altogether and tried to bury myself in my textbook.
When I got back to the dorm, there was a note taped to my door.
Jess let me in—I’d hoped you were here. Call me, please?
It was signed in Zack’s messy scrawl. I ripped it off my door and went in, closing myself into my lonely room and deciding that I’d rather just curl up and go to sleep rather than risk running into him at the dining hall. I turned off the lights and tried not to think about the times that Zack and I had been together, or the sound of his voice, or the way that he seemed so interested in being with me. He would give up soon enough and maybe later—if I hadn’t ruined things for good—I could explain to him that I had just needed space, and wanted him to have the ability to focus on the game. Even if he couldn’t forgive me for that, I needed to be able to tell him. Maybe, I thought with a mixture of dread and hope, he would just forget about me completely, and move on with his life. The frat he belonged to must be having parties; there would be plenty of girls all around him vying for his attention, more than happy to take his mind off of me.
The next morning, I woke up with my stomach in knots, twisting in on itself from hunger. I realized that I had left my phone turned off all night and dug it out of my bag, turning it on. At least I hadn’t managed to oversleep. As my phone loaded up, I saw the flash of two more messages and a voicemail—all of them from Zack.
Look, just tell me you’re okay. I can’t find you and your roommate won’t tell me where you are. The second one read: If I did something wrong you should at least give me a chance to apologize.
Steeling myself, I opened up the voicemail he’d left me. It was three minutes long. “Evie, come on, I know you’re avoiding me. I just want to know why. My phone is showing all the texts are delivered—and I saw you read most of them. What’s going on between us? I already told you: no more public spectacles. I promise. Just give me a chance to figure out what I did wrong and how I can make it right.”
My eyes stung as I deleted the message, unable to listen to it all, and took a deep breath. I didn’t think he’d try to contact me again after that. At least I hoped not. I just hoped that once everything was said and done, I’d have some kind of a chance to explain to him why. But then, I thought, I didn’t even fully understand why I was doing it myself.
It would have been bad enough to handle Zack’s texts if I was able to keep my reaction purely emotional; it bothered me to hurt him—and I definitely was—but the sex I knew I was missing out on bothered me almost as much. I had gotten so used to not getting any; even before I started college, I had cut myself off from sex, having too much to deal with after my mom died. Even more to the point I didn’t even particularly want to date anyone after—not just because I was wrecked by having my biggest support and cheerleader gone from my life, but because I had discovered that guys were just a bunch of trouble.
But from the first time Zack and I had made out, I felt the juices flowing in my veins again. When we’d had sex on the couch at his frat, I’d been easy prey—it wouldn’t have been that difficult even for Zack to convince me to head to his bedroom at the frat house during the party. Now that it had happened again I was consumed with the memory of how good he’d become, of how great it felt to have him touching me, tasting me. I shivered in class as my brain—against my will—reminded me of how great Zack’s cock had felt deep inside me, brushing against my inner walls, filling me up. I couldn’t focus on my work the way I used to be able to easily; I was distracted, having to take breaks to get myself off to the thought of Zack in my bed again, going down on me or working me with his fingers, thrusting into me, rocking his hips against mine until I came. I didn’t tell Jess about it, but I was almost afraid of how intensely I wanted sex—how much I wanted to just give in and call Zack, tell him to come over and screw my brains out.
I told myself that it would pass—that it had always passed before—but I was on fire constantly, hoping and dreading that I would run into Zack. If I just saw him, I knew I’d end up throwing myself at him, begging him to forgive me and find us somewhere private where we could be together. I could only grit my teeth and hope that it would pass in time, that I would be able to get back together with Zack once the football season ended and I could be with him without distracting him. It occurred to me more than once that it was—for me at least—more distracting to be separated from him than it was to be with him. But I had to stick with what I had decided. Even if it was torturing me slowly every day.
****
I had to miss the staff meeting for the newspaper; I told Professor Grant in advance and also emailed Lisa that I couldn’t be there because of a class. They both told me that it was a perfectly valid excuse, and Lisa said that I could drop by her office in the student union after class to get my assignment from her. I hurried over to the student union as soon as the professor let us out of class, and made my way to Lisa’s office, still drinking the last of the coffee I’d brought for my late class and ready to take notes on the assignment she had for me.
“Hey, come on in,” Lisa said, gesturing to the chair on the other side of her desk. “I wanted to tell you we all really loved your piece on the last game. The interview was great—you really got Zack to open up!” My cheeks burned with a blush but I didn’t say anything, struggling to keep my composure. I nodded, not quite trusting my voice. “In fact, we didn’t have to do much editing to it at all! Good work.”
“Thanks—that means a lot.” I took a deep breath. “So what have you got me on for next week, Chief?”
Lisa grinned. “Since you did so well on the game last time, I figured you were a natural to cover the final game of the season. This time, though, we want you to get an interview with Coach Bullden, about our prospects for the nationals, that sort of thing.”
I nodded quickly. The very last thing I wanted in the world was to have to go to another football game and watch Zack. But I couldn’t exactly tell Lisa that the reason I’d been able to get Zack to open up to me was because he and I had a history together—a history that I was risking by staying away from him. Besides, since I couldn’t make the meeting, there probably weren’t any other assignments open anymore, and I wanted to make sure I was in the campus paper as many times as I could be.
Lisa gave me the details and asked me to do some research on my own about the coach—his career, his strategies, the kind of material that would make a good profile on the man to accompany the coverage of the final game of the season and the one that would determine our position in the national level. I took notes, trying to calm myself. I wouldn’t have to even talk to Zack, I told myself over and over again. I would just ignore him—as much as you can ignore the quarterback when it came to a major football game. I would cover the game, talk to the coach, and have done with it. If I had any luck at all, Zack would just head straight for the showers after the game and I could get my interview without any fuss or even any attempt from him to talk to me—he might not even know I was there until the article came out.
CHAPTER THREE
Jess had a date for the night of the game—away from campus, with a guy she had met in Women’s Studies. So I went to the stadium all on my own. I had my campus newspaper ticket and my press pass that would allow me to get onto the field after the game, and I told myself that I would be just fine on my own, that it didn’t matter; after all, when I’d gone the last time, Jess had left when I went out onto the field to talk to Zack. With my notebook and camera, I’d be left to my own devices, more or less, by the people seated with me.
I thought about what I should wear. Jess, I know, would have suggested that I dress up for the event—wear something cute, something just a little sexy. Especially since she would assume that I would be waiting for Zack at the end of the game. On the other hand, the very last thing that I wanted was to look as though I was interested in flirting. I decided to dress as plainly as possible; the main benefit to that was also that it would at least be comfortable—but I also didn’t want to look like a scruffy, unprofessional college kid. Not when I had to interview the head coach. I put on my least-ratty pair of jeans and a medium-brown cardigan over a matching camisole. I put my hair in a bun, smoothed back but not overdone. I kept my face mostly clean, just a little powder and lip tint to make me look polished. It was a relief to be going to a game without having to worry about if I would smear my eye makeup or my lipstick. I could focus entirely on the game; I’d be practically invisible.
The stadium was absolutely packed with people—as it should be, considering it was the last game of the season, with some of the highest stakes. But the team we were playing against wasn’t huge competition—they were ranked third or fourth overall, with more losses than the team we’d been up against the last game. It should have been a decent game, but overall the chances of us winning were pretty good.
I grabbed pictures of the packed stands, of the marching bands on either side warming up the audiences. I tried to figure out what my angle for the article would be; after all, it wasn’t going to be a massive struggle like it had been for the team they were up against the previous week. There was no real rivalry between our school and the one we were playing. I couldn’t focus on Zack—because I already had in the previous article, and because I frankly didn’t think I could handle it. I decided that I would—without Jess’ flirting to distract me—look at the game as a way to show off my knowledge of strategy and tactics in football.
Part of my research on the coach had been on football strategy in general. Of course, the skill of individual players came into play with the game—it was unavoidable. And if you had the best possible players in all positions, you didn’t have to worry that much about strategy. But knowing that another team had a particular weakness on the defense, or a lag in their offense because of certain players, could mean the difference between win and loss. I had looked over Coach Bullden’s usual strategies and tactics, the way he put his players to the best possible use. I’d also done a little bit of digging on the strategies of the coach that Bullden would be up against.
I was starting to feel more than a little bit fidgety as the bands played on, and the crowd of people continued chanting, watching the cheerleaders on the sidelines performing. I just wanted to get the game over with; it would be a definitive win, and then I would get my interview and have a rest from the pounding of my heart.
The opposing team took the field first, coming out of the lockers with a roar. They may not have been the best team in the division, but they looked energetic, in their white, black, and gold jerseys. They warmed up on the field, garnering plenty of cheers from their fans in the stands. They were clearly hungry to prove themselves—they were up against the number one team in the division, which should have daunted them, but it would be a great opportunity if they could manage to score a few times against us; at least if they put on a good game, they could lose with dignity. They went back to their sidelines, jumping up and down, smacking themselves, and I grabbed a few more pictures of them.
Our team finally took the field with a burst of enthusiastic musical noise from the marching band, running out of the locker rooms and basking in the cheers of the fuller section of the stadium that belonged to the home team. I tried not to look for Zack while I snapped pictures of the team warming up and showing off. The team looked confident, as they should; they had a winning record, they were on their way to a bowl game, and they were almost certain to win that night’s game. I thought, with a sudden sense of foreboding, that I hoped they wouldn’t take it too easy on the other team—even if they were the best team in the division, they couldn’t afford to become overconfident.
As the game started, it was difficult for me to try and piece together just what the problem was; the teams had both taken the field full of energy and looking confident in themselves. But from the first play, I was shocked at how disorganized our team was. Zack went down in a tackle right away. I watched in concern, but he got up onto his feet and shouted something, and then they were onto the next play. The other team seemed to sense something different in our team; they took advantage, rapidly getting their first touchdown early in the first quarter and then managing somehow to keep our offensive line at bay through most of the rest of the period. I shook my head, and I wasn’t alone; the people in the stands next to me were murmuring amongst themselves between plays, wondering out loud what was wrong with Zack.
Someone said that they thought the pressure must be getting to him, but I didn’t think it was likely; after all, the team they were up against had lost several games. If Zack was going to crack under pressure, it would have been the previous game, where we had been up against our greatest competition for the top spot. But it was hard not to argue that something was clearly wrong; we were down by two touchdowns heading into the second quarter, and didn’t manage to even the score by halftime. Zack’s plays were all over the place—he was getting instructions from the coach, but I couldn’t imagine that he was doing what he was told, at least not exactly. The other team became more and more confident of their possibility for a win, driving us back again and again, defending their end of the field more aggressively than I could have imagined.
I watched the halftime show with my mind full of questions. What was going on? Our team was much better than this, and a win was almost a foregone conclusion going into the game. How could we still be lagging behind by a touchdown going into the second half? I had taken notes throughout the first part of the game, but even with my notations on the different plays I could see, I couldn’t understand just how it was that Zack was consistently missing his passes, or being tackled before he could make the handoff. He was obviously distracted—he didn’t have his entire brain on the game. But surely, I thought, that couldn’t be the only thing going on? It was just as much the other members of the team that would be to blame, wouldn’t it? Maybe they were overconfident, and Zack was distracted.
The team tried to rally in the second half, but it was an uphill battle. A wave of relief moved across the stands when we finally managed to close the gap at the bottom of the third quarter, getting a miraculous touchdown when the other team’s defense left a gap—pure chance. I was shaking my head, grabbing pictures where I could, trying to understand what was going on in front of me. It was as unlike the previous two games I’d gone to as anything could possibly be, and I dreaded having to interview the coach if we lost—he would be pissed, I knew.
My heart was in my throat throughout the fourth quarter. Both teams—ours and the other team—were playing their hearts out, trying to break the tie. The clock continued its downward count, and it seemed as though it might go into overtime—the disorganization of the first half was still present, but not as glaring, and it seemed like the team was trying to just keep Zack from being tackled long enough to get a pass. The line of scrimmage moved from one end of the field to the other, back and forth; it was exciting but dreadful at the same time, and I knew that by the time I got back to my dorm—even if everything else went the right way for the rest of the night—I would be exhausted from the stress of the game. There was a near moment when Zack went down, thrown to the ground by an overzealous offensive lineman, when he laid there for a long time after the whistle was blown. My heart pounded in my chest—what if he was injured? It wouldn’t just mean the loss of the game. In my mind I chanted at him to get up, get up, get up. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being seriously injured, even if I had cut him out of my life for the duration of the season.
But then he got to his feet and shook it off, and I sighed with relief. Everyone in the stands was screaming, shouting, cheering, trying to get the team to a final touchdown by any means they possibly could. Of course, it would be exciting if the game went into overtime—but if we could get a definitive win before the clock ran out, that would be much better. I was clenching my fists as the end of regulation time came closer and closer, rocking on the balls of my feet, staying quiet but wishing I could make myself scream and shout to get rid of the nervous energy that filled me.
With only a couple of minutes left on the clock, the final play of the game started. Zack handed off the ball successfully just before being tackled—and the player he’d handed it to managed to dodge and evade, spinning away from the group that had gone straight for the QB and exploding into a desperate full-pelt run. I stared at the field, without even the presence of mind to take the pictures I knew would be the most dramatic of the game, as the clock came to the last minute of regulation time. Everyone was silent—all the screaming and shouting down to nothing, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife—until the instant right after the player got to the touchdown line, with just seconds to spare. After a brief sigh of relief, everyone in the stands on our side erupted in an enormous, shrieking, shouting cheer.
I sank down onto my seat with relief, closing my eyes and breathing as slowly as I could. At the very last, we’d managed to eke out a win—that would make it easier to interview the coach in a few minutes, once everyone was done with the post-game celebration and started to clear the stadium. Zack was uninjured, and the team would go on to Nationals. The cheering went on and on; I looked up to see that the team was cavorting about the sidelines, congratulating themselves on the narrow victory they had managed to eke out in the very last moments of the game. A few of the players grabbed up cheerleaders and got kisses or hugs from them—or simply lifted them up into the air. I smiled to myself; I could easily understand their excitement.
After several moments, though, people in the stands realized that there were better things to do. It was chilly out and there were parties to go to, other celebrations with free or at least cheap liquor. As the people started to slowly trickle out of the stands, the band played on, the players kept to the field, and I tried to decide if it was worth the risk of confronting Zack to get my interview without missing the coach. I was sure that in spite of the team’s apparent desire to keep jumping, running, and shouting, they’d be corralled into the locker room soon—and the coach would follow, to congratulate them and to critique their performance. I needed to get out onto the field before Coach Bullden left. I looked around and spotted Zack talking to some of the other members of his team; I hoped that if I could just slip out onto the field and pull the head coach aside, he might not even notice me at all.
I took my pass out of my purse and took a deep breath, moving in the opposite direction of the steady flow of students and fans who were heading to the exits. I got down to the field level and showed my pass quickly to the security guard standing there and he nodded, giving me a little smile.
“You were here last game, too; I remember cute faces like yours.”
I smiled in return but felt more than a little strange at that compliment from the source. I dashed out onto the field. Bullden was calling out to the players to finish up their celebration and start heading in.
“You have plenty of parties to choose from, guys—get yourselves cleaned up so you can get out of here.”
I slowed down as I got closer, determinedly not looking for Zack. If I spotted him, he might feel my gaze and look in my direction. Of course, even without looking at him, he managed to see me.
“Evie!” I heard my name in his voice and determinedly looked anywhere but the direction it had come from. “Evie! Do you need another prime quote? C’mon, Evie, I won’t even make you go on a date with me for it this time!”
I squared my shoulders and tried my best to ignore the calls.
“Coach Bullden,” I said, moving quickly to intercept him as he turned to head for the locker rooms. “Do you have a few minutes? I’m from the campus newspaper—I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about tonight’s game.”
The coach stopped and gave me a quick, polite smile. “You spoke with Zack last game, didn’t you? That was a fine article. I don’t mind at all.”
He turned towards the stragglers—and following his gaze, even though I knew better, I saw Zack among them, watching me intently. He ran up, stopping a few feet away from me, staring at me with so much hope in his eyes that I felt my heart lurch.
“Does she need another interview, coach? I’ve got lots to say about the game.” Zack was talking to Bullden but he was looking at me, and I felt my cheeks getting hotter and hotter. I kept my lips pressed together to keep from saying anything at all to him.
“Nah, Zack—you did well enough last time, but this lovely lady wants to talk to the man in charge. Hit the showers.” The coach gestured for me to walk with him to the bench, and I sat down next to him. He was an older guy—it seemed like there were no young head coaches in college football—in a windbreaker spattered with our school colors, with good-quality embroidery on the sleeves and the lapel showing the school’s mascot. In the corner of my eye I saw Zack reluctantly heading back to the lockers and put my mind firmly back on the task at hand: getting good quotes out of the head coach for my feature article about the game and about him.
“Thanks for agreeing to the interview—after a game like that you must be exhausted,” I said, smiling politely as I took my recorder and my notebook out of my bag.
Bullden grinned. “You’re right about that,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Are you a fan of football, young lady?”
I shrugged. “Please, call me Evelyn. I watched a lot of football in high school; one of my boyfriends was on our school’s team.” I somehow suppressed the blush that threatened to give me away at the thought of Zack. “I would have been a pretty terrible girlfriend if I didn’t go, you know. So I appreciate the game.”
“Probably got your fill of training routines too,” the coach said with another smile.
“Oh yes, definitely.” I laughed and set down the recorder between us. “Now I need to get your agreement that it’s okay for me to record. I want to make sure that everything that ends up in the article is exactly what you said, exactly how you said it.”
“Good to see a responsible journalist. Of course I’ll give my consent.” I hit the button to start the recording and the coach cleared his throat. “This is Head Coach Charlie Bullden, consenting to be recorded by Evelyn here, so that she can write another great article about the team. That okay?”
I grinned. “More than okay, Sir,” I said, opening my notebook.
“Please, just call me Coach. I get too used to it from the players—even my own kids call me Coach.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Coach. Now, this was a rough game—why do you think that was? The odds for a shut out for our team were really high.”
“Well, of course you never fully know what you’re going to be up against when you play another team. You can prepare for weeks, and look at their games—their style of play, you understand—and then when you get to the actual game, they might have changed everything up during their practices.” I nodded. “In this case, we were as ready for State as we could possibly be, but they were ready for us too—they knew about the few weaknesses the team has, and more power to them for exploiting them.”
I consulted my notes. “It’s unusual for our team to lag behind at the half, isn’t it? What did you see going on there on the field to explain it?” I licked my lips, looking up from my notebook.
The coach smiled wryly. “We had good plays; I think there was just some miscommunication. Between me and Zack or between Zack and the other players—it happens. There was a lot of pressure this game, even if we weren’t playing rivals. The last game of the season is always tough—everyone gives it all they have.” The coach paused a moment to reflect. “Especially if a team’s going up against one like ours—where we’ve won almost our whole season—they have something to prove. They may not have the record, but they knocked the top team down a peg.”
“I was thinking that when the other team came out,” I said with a smile. “They looked hungry for it. They looked like they at least wanted to go down having scored some points on us.”
The coach laughed. “You’re a shrewd woman. Of course, we had those issues in the first half, and we struggled in the third quarter, but we all came together in the fourth.”
“Do you think it was more an issue with offense or defense?”
The coach picked a piece of lint off of his chinos. “I think our defense was doing all they could. There was some scramble-up with the offense. Timing was off. Guess I’ll have to focus on that in the next couple of practices leading into the nationals.”
I found myself becoming more and more at ease with the coach the more questions I asked—it helped that he praised my thorough research on his strategies and the other team’s coach. In the back of my mind, however, the whole time I was getting the information I wanted and needed to write the best possible article about the game, I kept thinking about Zack. I had hoped to avoid him; but of course, he had seen me—and he would have to have noticed the way I ignored him. It was too obvious. I felt a minor irritation at the fact that he had shouted across the field to me—in effect creating another spectacle of himself even after he had told me he wouldn’t do that. But then, I thought, I had sort of goaded him into it by ignoring his texts and calls and the note on my door. I hadn’t given him any reason for my sudden break-off of contact.
I finished up the interview as quickly as I could, thanking the coach profusely for giving me so much to work with. “I look forward to your article, Evelyn,” Coach Bullden said, shaking my hand firmly and professionally. I smiled up into his weather-beaten face and said I’d email him the finished article before I submitted it to my editor.
I left the stadium, shivering against the chill in the air. It was a long walk across the campus to the dorms, but I didn’t mind it. I had a lot to think about; in the back of my mind I could still see Zack’s face—hopeful, excited—as he’d called out to me, asking if I needed to interview him again. I closed my eyes and swallowed against the lump in my throat. It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t nice—but I knew I had made the only choice I could in the situation.
I managed to get the article done just as quickly as the first I had written for the newspaper; I sent it to Coach Bullden to get his approval—I hadn’t embelished anything, or tried anything fancy at all. The story of the game was compelling on its own, and I was glad that I had done my research to learn about passing game and running game, strategy and tactics; it fleshed out what there was to say about the game itself and the reasons that it had so nearly gone poorly for us. The coach replied to my email quickly, thanking me for doing such a thorough job and for getting his quotes precise.
You have a bright future in front of you as a journalist, Evelyn. Keep your wonderful manners and obvious passion for getting it right, and I think you’ll have all your subjects eating out of your hand.
I turned it into Lisa, and she looked over it while I was in the office with her. “This is fantastic, Evelyn!” she said as she finished it. “You really captured the drama of the game, the complexities of what was going on—and I like that you put in the different theories the people in the crowd had for why the team was struggling, alongside the coach’s explanation.” She scrolled through the pictures I had included, nodding a few times. “We’ve got a lot to work with. I’m glad Grant signed you on. You’re working out really well!”
I couldn’t help but beam at the praise—after all, as the newest member of the staff, I had the most to prove. As long as I could keep Lisa happy, keep the people I was interviewing happy, and most importantly, keep my grades up, it would be a very good addition to my resume.
Once the assignment was over, though, I still found it hard to keep myself focused. Zack didn’t try to call or text me again after the game and I was almost surprised—though why should I be, when I had ignored him so obviously. I must have thought that he would try harder to win me back. But that was ridiculous—stuff out of a bad romantic comedy. Zack had gotten my message; even if he had gotten a stronger message than I had intended. He was obviously already moving on.
CHAPTER FOUR
After a few days, Jess cornered me in the dorm room while I sat in front of the TV, studying History and half-watching an episode of Bones. “Something is up with you,” she said, sitting down in a chair nearby without preamble. “Spill it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, shrugging and pulling my History textbook closer to me. There were so many battles to remember—so many dates in the Civil War—that I despaired of ever keeping them all straight in my head for the final. I highlighted something that was totally irrelevant, shaken slightly by Jess’ opening.
“Oh come off it already, Evie. Anyone who knows you even a little bit could tell you’re off your feed. What’s wrong? Did you get a C on something?”
I smiled slightly, pushing my hair away from my face and setting my textbook aside. It was clear that Jess wasn’t going to leave me alone until she got an answer to her question.
“No, I haven’t gotten any bad grades,” I said, looking at the TV rather than at her. “I will hopefully have an A in everything except Stats, and I’m more than happy to scrounge a B in that infernal class.”
Jess laughed. “Okay, so then what is it? Because every time I see you you’ve got this gloomy look on your face like someone is holding your puppy ransom.”
I rolled my eyes. “I just…okay. Fine. So here’s the thing.” I took a deep breath. “I haven’t been seeing Zack for a while. A couple of weeks. It’s no big deal or anything, but it sort of has me… confused, I guess?”
Jess raised an eyebrow.
“So let me get this straight: the cute QB who you told me is now apparently great in bed, who proclaimed his love for you in front of half of the student body, just brushed you off?”
I shook my head.
“Not…exactly.” I looked down at my lap and picked at lint balls on the blanket I’d spread over myself, twisting my lips into a grimace. “See, I’m…I’m the one who’s not seeing him. Not the other way around.”
“What? Why the hell not? He didn’t like, try and do something gross, did he?”
I shook my head, my cheeks burning. I sighed, deciding that I would have to tell Jess the whole story; I owed it to her.
“So after Zack and I had sex…when I got back from classes, there was this guy hanging out outside of our dorm.” Jess’ eyes widened. “It was one of Zack’s teammates—one of the tackles, I guess. I don’t know if he was offense or defense. But he told me I shouldn’t hang out with Zack anymore, or have anything to do with him.” I rolled my eyes.
“What an asshole! Did he tell you why?”
I shook my head. “No, just said that even though we didn’t really know each other, he’d consider it a personal favor. I don’t know what he was thinking.” I scrubbed at my face with my hands. “Anyway, I told him to get the hell out of the dorm before I called one of the RAs. He left but it got me to thinking—I was really kind of letting things go too fast with Zack anyway.”
“Well, I mean, a date and sex twice—that’s not really that fast.”
“But we have history,” I insisted. “I was already…I mean, look: I wasn’t like, planning our wedding or anything, but he was already starting to be a distraction, and I guess I sort of figured that I was a distraction for him too—otherwise why would one of his teammates hang out like a creeper at my door to ask me not to have anything to do with him?”
Jess shrugged. “Maybe the guy knows there’s a case of herpes raging through the locker room and doesn’t want you to get it.”
I rolled my eyes. “It wouldn’t be a favor to him, then, would it? He’d be doing me a favor.” Jess shrugged and nodded, conceding the point. “Anyway, I decided to sort of put Zack and me on hold for a bit.”
“Ah, so that’s why he was in here the other day looking for you. I just sort of figured he was really horny and you weren’t in any of your usual haunts.”
I rolled my eyes. “I kind of…didn’t tell him, exactly.” I felt my cheeks burning with embarrassment at how poorly I’d handled the situation. “I answered the first text he sent me saying that I was busy and couldn’t hang out but after that I just sort of…didn’t answer.”
Jess sucked her teeth, grimacing. “I know you’re not exactly one for confrontation, Evie,” she said, her voice sounding only slightly disapproving, “But man, that’s not the way to go. You should have just said ‘Zack, I think we should take a break.’ Or something.”
“But he’d want to know why and I’d be kind of a bitch to tell him one of his teammates came to try and talk me out of having anything to do with him, right?”
“Well yeah, but it’s more of a bitchy move to just ignore the poor guy.” She made a face, thinking for a moment. Her eyes went wide. “Oh, shit—you had to cover the game and interview the coach! How did that go?”
I bit my bottom lip, remembering all too well how it had gone. “He saw me coming onto the field to do the post-game interview and came over, asking if I needed a quote from him.” My cheeks burned as I remembered the way he’d called out that he wouldn’t even make me go on another date with him for it. “I just sort of…ignored him and went right to the coach.” I twisted my lips, feeling ashamed of myself. “I’m kind of a bitch, aren’t I?”
Jess laughed. “If you really were a bitch, you wouldn’t be asking that question like it’s the worst thing you could be.” She went into the mini fridge that we kept in the common area and took out a bottle of water for each of us. “Okay, so this dude shows up and tries to convince you to stop seeing Zack. You tell him to go to hell, but when you think about it you decide it’s probably a good idea after all.” I nodded. “So when Zack tries to hook up, you basically put him on ice, because it’s too hard to explain everything that’s going on.”
“Basically, yeah. I probably should have asked you for advice first, huh?”
“Yeah. Live and learn. So Zack gets all worked up and then gives up because, of course he does…and then at the game he nearly blows it.”
“Oh come on, that can’t be my fault. There were a whole bunch of mistakes and things that happened, and that other team was just looking for an opportunity to score on us.”
Jess shrugged. “Well yeah, but where did the mistakes come from? Like was it the whole team, or was it Zack?”
I thought about what I had seen in the course of the game. The team itself had been disorganized, confused—Zack wasn’t where he was supposed to be, he was slow, and he didn’t get the ball where it needed to be at the right moment.
“It was…okay, so it was mostly Zack.” I sighed. “But come on, that can’t be my fault. Zack was probably feeling the pressure.”
“You tell me: when he played in high school, was he the kind of guy to crack under pressure?” I picked at the blanket, not wanting to admit what was apparently already clear to Jess.
“No,” I said reluctantly. “He lives for pressure. He thrives on it. At least he did in high school.” Jess smiled slowly.
“I don’t know why you’re so down about it. The verdict is clear: Zack plays better when you’re in the picture. Without you he’s all distracted and stupid.”
“He’s pretty stupid, generally,” I said, smiling in spite of myself.
Jess laughed. “Well yeah, but you saw how he played. It’s obvious he can’t function properly without you.”
I rolled my eyes even though I was still smiling, my cheeks warm at the thought of Zack being unable to function properly without me. But then my pleasure at the thought came crashing down.
“If that’s true,” I said slowly, feeling guilt tugging at my stomach, “then I’ve totally screwed him up.”
Jess shrugged. “Well, so then fix it. Shouldn’t be hard.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes. “How am I supposed to fix it? Run up to him and make out with him in the quad?”
Jess laughed. “Well that’s one way. But probably you should at least explain to him what’s going on, give him a chance to understand why you acted the way you did.”
“What if he hates me?”
“I mean, if he hates you it’s because of what you already did—not much you can do about that.” I had to acknowledge that that was true. “You know you’re going to be miserable until you go back to him and at least try to explain things.”
I looked at my history textbook. “You’re right. I’ll do it tomorrow.” Jess giggled, taking her bottle of water with her back into her room.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next night, I made the trek across campus to see Zack. I knew the frat was throwing a party—there were fliers for it all over campus—but I wasn’t there to get drunk. It was just a question of not having the opportunity until evening to actually talk; my schedule was too packed. It was already dark when I left the dorms; Jess had detained me in my room until she was completely satisfied with how I looked to confront Zack and tell him what was on my mind.
“You can’t just go over there looking like you just left the library,” Jess told me when I announced I was going to go find Zack.
“Why not? I did just leave the library.”
Jess groaned and dragged me to my bedroom, sitting me down on the bed as she rummaged through my closet.
“You need to look like you’re on point, girl,” Jess said, picking up and putting back hangers, flipping through the different dresses, skirts, shirts, and everything else in my closet.
“If Zack doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say then wearing something different isn’t going to change that.”
“First of all,” Jess said, turning to face me with her arms crossed over her chest. “You don’t know that for sure. Looking sexy could very well tip the balance. Second of all, you’re going to be seeing a bunch of his frat brothers too—you don’t want them to give you the run-around, do you?”
“They’re not going to treat me any differently based on how I’m dressed, Jess.”
Jess sighed. “Okay. Say Zack has given up on you and told his frat brothers he doesn’t want to talk to you. You show up looking like you’ve been under a pile of books all afternoon, you’re nothing more than a mousey freshman. Easy to run interference on. Roll up looking so hot you might burn them and they won’t have any blood flowing to their brains to think of lying to you.” I tried to come up with an argument against that, but I couldn’t.
So Jess picked out a skintight pencil skirt for me to wear, and as soon as it was on, she inched up the hem a little bit to show more of my legs. “It’s cold outside!” I protested, trying to tug the fabric back down. Jess swatted my hand away.
“It’s not that cold and you’re walking there, right? Besides it’ll be warm enough in the frat house with everyone packed in.” I made a face but once more gave in. Jess went into her own closet and found a blouse that would fit me; it was a deep red, with a plunging neckline that showed off my cleavage, made of a flimsy, soft material. “Wear a jacket over it, but take the jacket off as soon as you get to the frat house,” she suggested.
Jess then went to work on my hair, pulling it back in a sexy loose bun with messy little distracting strands falling around my face.
By the time I was done, my makeup in place and a pair of low-heeled boots on my feet, I had to admit that I looked incredibly hot—but that I didn’t look as if I’d spent an hour on getting ready. I thought to myself that it probably wouldn’t make any difference at all—after all, if Zack had already moved on to someone else, no matter how hot I looked, he wouldn’t be interested. But it certainly helped to bolster my confidence as I walked along the different pathways that led from the dorms across the campus to frat row.
My toes were starting to hurt in the boots by the time I got to the frat house; even a block away I could hear the roar of music turned all the way up, and as I slipped my jacket off and draped it over my arm, following Jess’ advice, I could make out the fact that there were a ton of people scattered over the lawn, packed into the house—and probably still more in the back yard. I shook my head; at least some of the people partying it up had to have classes the next day—but they’d either be too hungover to make it, or they’d be utterly useless when they did get into class. I rolled my eyes at myself. Not everyone had my priorities, and not everyone was depending on scholarships and their own hard work to pay their way. If they wanted a raging hangover the next day, it was on them.
I approached the front door, moving through a throng of people who were milling around, stumbling and talking too loudly. It occurred to me that at the rate the party was raging, it would end up getting dispersed in next to no time. But that wasn’t my problem. I went to the front door and knocked on it—fully expecting to have to knock again. But there was someone who was apparently waiting for new arrivals; one of the pledges, wearing a toga that couldn’t possibly be warm enough for the weather outside, opened the door with a boozy grin.
“Good evening, and welcome to the party!”
He handed me a red Solo cup from a loaded-down table next to the door; I almost refused it—I wasn’t there to get drunk—but I decided I’d be able to move around a lot more freely if I had a cup in hand; I wouldn’t be as conspicuous.
“Maybe you can help me,” I said, trying a polite smile on the freshman in front of me. “I’m looking for Zack—any idea where he is?”
The guy shrugged, nearly losing the shoulder on his bed sheet toga. “No clue, hot stuff,” he said, the grin still on his face. “They have me manning the door—I don’t know where anyone is unless they’re right here.”
“Thanks anyway.” I edged away from the guy, taking a sip of the cup. It was punch; it wasn’t as good as the punch I’d had the previous party, but I figured that the people at the party were so intent on getting plastered that it wouldn’t much matter to them anyway. I wandered through the public rooms of the frat house, looking for any sign of Zack.
I grabbed one of the upperclassmen as he was walking through the living room. “Hey,” I said, keeping my polite smile plastered on my face. “I’m looking for Zack—is he around?”
“I don’t know; I saw him around earlier but I haven’t seen him in a minute. I’ll talk to you, though.”
My smile grew in my nervousness. “That’s okay—I just needed to talk to Zack about something. I think that girl over there is trying to get your attention though.” The guy looked in the direction I pointed out and saw a girl who was looking in our direction; he made a beeline to her.
I sipped my drink, trying not to go too fast. I went to the back yard and saw—to my amazement—a bunch of people cavorting in and around the pool; it was in the fifties outside but they seemed to be mostly comfortable. There was no sign of Zack, and I narrowly avoided getting pulled into the pool by an aggressive partier. I went back inside and into the kitchen. Someone tried to convince me to take another drink, but I waved my mostly-empty cup, smiling brightly and saying I was just pacing myself so I wouldn’t get sick.
I found another member of the frat dispersed amongst the crowd; he was someone I thought I’d seen with Zack at the dining hall at one point or another. “I’m looking for Zack,” I said; the guy looked like he was just this side of plastered, staring down the front of my shirt. I felt skeeved out, but I didn’t make a move to cover myself up—after all, this was what Jess had had in mind with the outfit I was wearing. “Have you seen him?”
The guy’s features screwed up into a caricature of deep thinking, his brow furrowing and his lips twisting in a grimace. “I know he was in the living room a while back—but I don’t know if he’s there anymore. Zack kinda moves around a lot.”
I nodded and thanked the guy, pulling away and heading towards the living room before he could think of who he was talking to—or decide to waylay me.
I wandered through all of the public areas of the frat house, even going upstairs to the den there to see if Zack was hanging out with some of the more elite guests. I watched someone get thrown into the pool for smoking inside the frat house, saw couples canoodling together on couches and any horizontal surface that would hold their weight. I remembered the fact that Zack and I had been making out right in public—just like so many of the couples here—and blushed. I tried my best to find Zack on my own, moving constantly until my feet started to ache. I started to despair of ever finding him; the frat was simply too packed, and there were too many places where Zack could be. It would be impossible to track him down if no one knew where he was.
Part of me even started to wonder if Zack was there at all. After all—those of his frat brothers who could remember seeing him had said that it had been a while. Zack could have gotten the party started, and then wandered off to another party at a sorority or another frat, or he could have even gone off campus. I realized I really didn’t know very much about his life, all things told; I had been shocked to find out that he apparently went to the Library regularly, after all. The music, pounding constantly in my ears, was starting to give me a headache—I couldn’t hear myself think, and if I had to ask many more people where Zack was, I was going to end up hoarse the next day from shouting. It was a stupid idea; I should have just called or texted him and asked him to meet me somewhere. That way, he could have told me outright if he never wanted to speak to me again.
I decided that I would ask one last person—someone at the frat—if they knew where Zack was, and if I couldn’t get an answer that made sense, I would call it a night and maybe go back to the dorms and send him an email. It was a cowardly way out of the situation, but at least it was something. I couldn’t deal with the drunk, lurching, loud mess of the party for much longer. I looked around and found someone who I thought I recognized from either the previous party or one of the times I had seen Zack around; he was wearing a toga, indicating he was a member of the frat, and he looked like an upperclassman—probably he was in the same year as Zack was.
“Hey! Excuse me!” I ducked and darted around the people between me and the frat brother. “Hey!” The guy stopped and I caught my breath, downing the last of the contents of my cup. “Hey, you know Zack, right?”
The guy looked me up and down with an undisguised leer on his face. “Yeah, I know him—he was in the same pledge group as me. You looking for him?” I nodded. “He’s up in his room. Punked out on the party early. Must be off his feed.”
I laughed, the alcohol beginning to fuzz my brain slightly. “Where’s his room? I just need to talk to him about something.”
The guy looked me up and down again. “Yeah, you might be able to get him to talk. He’s been moping these last few days. He’s on the third floor, last door on the right.”
I let the toga-clad brother give me a quick, sweaty hug—holding back my instinctive cringe. He was off in the direction of some other girls in the next instant, fortunately; I didn’t know what I would actually do to distract him if I’d had to.
I climbed the stairs, dodging around people who were heading down to the living room or to the second floor—or who were simply stalled out, too drunk to know where they were going. The last flight of stairs was much less crowded, and I raced up them, my heart pounding in my chest at the thought of seeing Zack. What if he didn’t even want to see me? I bit my lip, telling myself that surely he had enough feeling for me to at least hear me out. He had to.
It struck me as strange that the music was every bit as loud on the third floor as it was downstairs; I looked around as I walked through the hall of bedrooms, and noticed that speakers were mounted at the ends of the hallway—that made sense. I wondered if there were ever issues with sick brothers trying to get sleep in their rooms while a party raged downstairs; probably not, with a group like the one Zack belonged to. I walked the length of the hall, smiling slightly to myself as I spotted a few doors with neckties on them; as innocent as I was, I knew full well that particular sign and its meaning. I hurried to the end of the hall and looked at Zack’s door for a long moment. There was no necktie on his door knob; he wasn’t with anyone.
For a long moment I was just standing there, the music pounding around me, the sound of a couple hundred people partying below. The one drink hadn’t been enough to get me drunk, but it had left my brain fuzzy, and I didn’t quite know if I was ready. What if Zack didn’t want to talk to me? I pressed my lips together. My hands felt like they were weighted down with lead. I swallowed against the tightness I felt in my throat. I just had to get through it, I told myself. If he didn’t want to hear me out, I’d at least know that it was done with us permanently. I lifted my hand to knock on the door; it fell to my side once more as I continued to stand there. If he sent me away without hearing me out—if he didn’t answer or if he did and then just told me not to bother, I’d have to be ready to walk through the frat house without looking like I was going to cry. I took a deep breath and lifted my hand again. I knocked on the door quick and hard, my knuckles stinging from it—I wanted to make sure that Zack could hear me over the music.
“Yo! I’m not feeling it!” he called out from inside. My heart fluttered in my chest and I knocked again. “I said I’m not feeling it, bro!” I knocked a third time.
Instead of calling out again, after a moment, the door opened abruptly, showing Zack standing there, changed out of his toga—if he’d ever been in a toga in the first place. He was standing there with an irritated look on his face, in a pair of worn jeans and a tee shirt. The irritable look dissolved in a moment, as soon as he saw that it was me. I blushed as Zack’s gaze traveled up and down along my whole body, taking me in slowly, a mixture of surprise and consternation on his face. The red Solo cup was still in my hand and I fidgeted with it, smiling nervously.
“Evie,” He said; I could barely hear him over the music.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, my throat tight. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Zack’s eyes widened and he opened the door wider. “Yeah—yeah, absolutely.”
I stepped into Zack’s room and my knees went weak. It was cleaner than I would have expected; there was a pile of dirty laundry next to the closet, but there was no trash hanging around, only a few empty reusable water bottles. It smelled like him, and I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing it in. I turned in time to see Zack closing the door and I wondered if he had put a necktie on the knob—to signal that we needed privacy. I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted everyone to think that Zack was having sex.
“I…” I licked my lips, leaning against his bed, unsure of how to actually start saying what I was there to tell him.
“It’s so good to see you. What did I do, Evie?”
I shook my head. “You didn’t do anything, it’s not your fault, it’s my fault.” Words were tumbling out of my lips in an unsteady rush. “There’s…I’ve been an idiot. Just…okay. I’m sorry; I just don’t really know how to explain it.”
“Evie, calm down,” Zack said, smiling faintly. He moved closer to me and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Just say what you came to say. I swear I’ll listen to you—I won’t interrupt.”
I swallowed again, wishing I hadn’t had the drink that the brother at the door had handed to me.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and tried to collect my thoughts. “So the other day, after…I guess after practice…there was a guy hanging out at my dorm room door.” Zack raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything to interrupt me. “I recognized him; he was someone from your team. Anyway, he told me he would consider it a personal favor if I would stop hanging out with you, if I would just leave you alone. He didn’t really give me any reasons. At first, I just sort of brushed it off. I told him if he didn’t get the hell away from my room I’d call the RAs.” I smiled slightly.
“That sounds about right,” Zack said, reaching out and taking my hands in his. I hadn’t realized how much they were shaking until I had Zack’s firm, warm grip.
“But then I got to thinking that he must have thought I was a distraction, and that things could really easily get to be really serious between us, and I don’t want to be a distraction to you—I just panicked.” Zack nodded. “I didn’t know how to tell you why—or what was going on. So I just sort of…” I shrugged.
“You could have told me, you know,” Zack said gently.
I nodded. “Well yeah, I figured that out, but I sort of wasn’t thinking rationally, you know?”
Zack grinned. “So that explains you totally freezing me out at the game the other day.”
“I suppose, yeah. I just…I’m really sorry, Zack. Jess has already explained to me how much of an idiot I am.”
Zack shook his head, smiling still. “Man. I—I shouldn’t admit this to you, but I was a total mess that night because I just couldn’t get you out of my head. I kept wondering if you were watching, and I didn’t know if I wanted you to be watching or not.”
I laughed slightly. “You’re mental, you know.” I leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips.
Zack wrapped his arms around my waist and deepened the kiss, pressing my body close to his. In spite of the alcohol I’d consumed that night, I didn’t start to really feel drunk until Zack and I began to kiss. I could smell the scent of his cologne and soap, the softer smell of his skin, the undercurrent of his sweat. The music swirled around me, penetrating even into the room—muted, but still present. Through the floor I heard a loud cheer, but I didn’t care what the cause was.
Zack broke away from my lips after a long moment; my heart was pounding in my chest. I had only come to apologize and explain, but in a matter of only a few heartbeats, just being around Zack and feeling his body pressed to mine had awakened the bone-deep hunger I’d been trying to ignore for days.
“Why were you up here, and not at the party?” I asked him breathlessly, that one aspect of the evening sticking in my head. “I’ve been looking for you for like an hour.”
Zack shook his head. “You could’ve just texted and asked what I was up to, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “And that would have ruined the whole point of coming here. That’s not an answer to my question, you know.”
Zack kissed my temple, and then my cheek, and finally my lips, probing my mouth with his tongue hungrily until I was breathless again.
“What can I say?” he said, pulling away from my lips just slightly. “I didn’t really feel like partying. I just haven’t had the energy for much of anything since you dropped off the radar.”
I kissed him once more, letting my hands trail over his broad shoulders, down along the lines and planes of his back.
“How can I make it up to you?” I asked him, smiling playfully up into his eyes.
Zack raised his eyebrows and kissed my forehead. “Hold on a second.”
He let me go and turned to the door; I watched as he grabbed a neck tie off of his headboard and opened the door. He hung the tie on the knob and closed it once more, not quite sealing out the noise from the rest of the frat house, but giving us once more some degree of privacy. He locked the door for good measure and turned to look at me.
“I think you know pretty well how you can make it up to me.”
He closed the distance between us once more, wrapping his arms around me and lifting me up onto the bed, pressing me against it as he climbed up to join me.
Zack’s weight against my body felt so good—even with clothes on—that for a long moment all I could do was lie there, holding him close, batting my tongue against his and writhing underneath him, loving the contact, loving the simple act of kissing him, of making out once more. I hadn’t let myself realize how much I had come to treasure just the feeling of physical closeness to Zack—how good it felt just to be in his arms, just to taste his lips and feel the slight rasping of his stubble against my skin, the way he touched me just so. I was trembling from head to toe, shaking almost uncontrollably unless I held him very tightly. I felt as if I was alternately burning and freezing as the kiss went deeper and deeper, as every nerve ending in my body came awake.
Zack’s hands moved along the curves of my body slowly, mapping out every inch of my topography, tracing me everywhere while I moaned softly against his lips. I felt my pussy getting wet, felt my heart racing and my body tingling under the onslaught of sensation. It was too much—it wasn’t enough. I pulled back, needing just a moment to catch my breath and to find something to hold onto in the face of so much incredible sensation.
“God I’ve missed you,” Zack said, his voice only a little above a murmur.
He tilted my head to the side and brought his lips against my neck, kissing and nipping, lapping at my sensitive skin, lavishing attention down along the column of my throat and then back up. His hands were slipping up underneath my blouse, touching my bare skin, tickling my ribs and caressing my waist.
I ducked my head to the side and nibbled sharply at Zack’s neck, smiling to myself when I heard him groan, tensing against me. His hips rocked against mine; the skirt was too tight for him to shift down between my legs, but I could feel the hard ridge of his cock pressing against me nonetheless, digging into my hip. I took advantage of his temporary distraction and launched myself upward, twisting and throwing Zack off of me. I tumbled him onto the bed next to me and climbed onto him, smiling down at him with self-satisfied victory. Zack laughed out loud breathlessly, shaking his head, his dark eyes almost black with lust and glinting with amusement. “I thought you were supposed to be making it up to me,” he said, looking at me with challenge in his gaze.
“I am,” I said, straddling his hips. The skirt rolled up along my legs, barely covering anything anymore, and Zack glided his hands along my thighs, tickling and caressing me teasingly. I reached out and grabbed at the hem of his tee shirt, tugging it upward. “I mean, do you have a better idea than me going down on you? Because I’m all ears.”
Zack laughed again, pulling my blouse up and over my head. He tossed it across the room, sitting up slightly and throwing his arms up over his head to help me get his own shirt off of him.
“Okay—I’ll give you that. But I have a lot of ideas. This is just a start—you really owe me, after all.”
I rolled my eyes, smiling to myself. I shifted on top of Zack, moving my hips down to his thighs, and leaned down to kiss him on the lips hungrily. Zack crushed me against him, his hands moving over my back, touching me seemingly everywhere at once until I was almost distracted from the task I had in mind. I broke away from his lips, panting slightly with desire, and began to kiss a trail down along the line of his neck, over his collar bones. I took my time kissing his chest, nuzzling against the soft velvet skin with nearly no hair on it, listening to his pounding heart as I made my way slowly but inevitably downward. Zack let out a low groan when I nipped playfully against his abs, looking up to smirk at him. As I came nearer and nearer to my objective, I shifted down along his body, settling my weight just above his knees. I reached down and unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, revealing his boxer-briefs to my hungry, eager gaze.
I hooked my fingers in his jeans and tugged them down, over his hips; Zack arched up off of the bed, helping me. I got the thick fabric down to his knees and Zack kicked his pants the rest of the way off, lying there on the bed looking up at me with nothing but desire in his eyes. I pulled his underwear off next, grinning with unabashed delight at the sight of his hard, thick cock rising up proudly erect, freed from the confines of his clothes. I wasn’t even fully aware of what happened to Zack’s underwear; they seemed to disappear without a trace in an instant. The next moment I was straddling him, wrapping my hand around the base of his cock. I leaned in and brought my lips to just barely kiss the tip of him, looking up into his half-lidded eyes as I pumped him slowly but steadily. I finally wrapped my lips around the head of his erection, sucking and licking almost immediately, tasting the sharp bitter-salt of his precum beginning to flow.
Gradually, I took more and more of him into my mouth, bringing my lips to meet my fingers, moving my head slowly up and down as I worshipped him with my tongue, swirling it around the tip, pressing the tip in a long line along the underside, wrapping the slick muscle around him as I sucked harder and softer. I rubbed the base of his cock with my fingers, stroking him steadily in time with the bobbing of my head, bringing my fingers up to meet my lips and my lips down to meet my fingers. Zack reached out and somehow found the elastic holding my hair in the messy bun; he pulled carefully and my hair came tumbling down about my face and shoulders.
Zack’s fingertips brushed against my scalp, his hand tightening its grip as he became more and more turned on by what I was doing to him. I settled my weight on my legs, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t get dizzy as I gradually picked up my pace. I was able to take him into my mouth almost all the way—keeping my fingers wrapped around the base of his cock and plunging my mouth down onto him until my throat began to tickle with the beginnings of my gag reflex and then pulling back. I breathed through my nose, trying to dispel the reaction, trying to take him as much as I possibly could, wanting Zack to know how sorry I was, how much I wanted him, how deep my desire for him was. If I could make him come—as I had the last time we’d had sex—I could feel as though I was absolved of my shitty handling of the situation. Logically it made no sense, but in the buzzing hum of my deep arousal I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted.
I became utterly focused on Zack and giving him pleasure, barely even hearing the noise of the ongoing party, barely aware of the music pounding into the room through the walls. I could hear Zack moaning, feel his fingers tangling and tightening in my hair, feel his body tensing underneath me as his cock began to jerk and twitch between my lips. His hips moved in an instinctive rhythm, thrusting up to meet my mouth, but he was—even in the midst of his arousal—careful not to choke me. I heard my name on Zack’s lips over and over again even as my mouth filled with the taste of his salty-sharp precum, flowing more and more freely, coating my tongue. I reached down between Zack’s legs and cupped his balls carefully in my hand, jiggling them slightly, playing with them while I worked him with my mouth. Zack groaned out and I felt a hot spurt of his precum shoot alarmingly—and almost laughed. I suppressed the reflex and continued my worship, giving his balls a gentle squeeze, rubbing them carefully even as I bobbed my head faster and faster, swirling my tongue everywhere it could reach.
I felt the tension come over Zack’s body all at once; every muscle clenched and he let out a long, low moan, shuddering for just an instant. I backed off slightly, letting the first hot, sticky-slick spurt of his come shoot into my mouth before I continued sucking and licking, swallowing each burst of bitter-salt fluid that jolted out of him. After a few moments, Zack collapsed against the mattress, his grip on my hair easing, his body shuddering slightly as his cock began to soften. I swallowed the last of him and pulled back, letting him fall from my lips slick with saliva.
Zack’s eyes were open already as I sat up, smiling like the cat who’d finally gotten the canary, satisfied with myself beyond belief and incredibly turned on. “I cannot believe how good you are at that,” Zack said, shaking his head with a hazy grin.
“Well I was pretty motivated this time,” I said, slithering up along his body and kissing him on the lips. Zack plunged his tongue past my lips, tasting himself, crushing me against him with more strength than I thought he’d possess after such a climax.
“My turn,” he murmured lowly.
He sat up, pulling me around and up along the length of his body. Instead of stripping me down, he pulled my skirt all the way up over my hips, hooking his fingers in the waistband of my panties and tugging them down. I was already soaking wet—incredibly turned on by what I had just done to him, beyond belief. Zack nibbled at the sensitive skin just below my navel and nuzzled against my hip as he worked my panties down my legs. I shifted on top of him, somehow managing to contort myself enough to get my underwear off and cast it aside.
Zack spread my legs wide, lifting me up slightly with his strong arms. I cried out as he buried his face against my pussy, nuzzling my labia as his tongue slid up and down, working its way deeper and deeper between my folds. He held me in the position he wanted me in, my legs barely in contact with the bed, my balance entirely dependent on his strength as he teased my inner labia with the tip of his tongue, flicking it along the sensitive flesh until I was moaning and twisting, struggling to find leverage. He slid his tongue deep inside of me, past the meager resistance of my inner walls, plunging it as firmly into me as he possibly could while he held me in position. In a matter of moments I was moaning, reaching out blindly for something to hold onto, shaking with the need for more.
Zack teased me until I was certain I couldn’t take anymore, and then I was suddenly tumbling backwards, jolted at the last moment by an impact with a soft surface—his mattress. Before I could recover Zack had renewed his attacks, bringing the tip of his tongue up to my clit; he flicked the rough, slippery muscle against the tiny bead of nerves and sending tingling crackles of electric sensation throughout my body. I twisted and writhed, throwing my head back against the mattress, reaching out blindly to grab at Zack’s shoulders and head, threading my fingers in his hair as I pushed my hips down to meet his mouth. He sucked all of my pussy between his lips that he could, his tongue lashing up and down along my folds, finding my clit and then dancing away from it. I was whimpering, moaning, words of praise tumbling out of my lips without any thought, as pleasure jolted through me, obliterating my ability to think.
I couldn’t tell if we had been going at it for minutes or hours, but I felt the tension mounting inside of me, growing more and more like a steadily tightening knot somewhere below my navel, making me arch and twist and squirm for better contact. Finally, when I couldn’t possibly take it any longer, the tension broke all at once, the knot inside of my body unraveling in an instant. I cried out as wave after wave of pleasure shocked through me, crackling through every nerve and every vein. Zack didn’t let up—he kept sucking and licking, sending more and more sensation rocketing through my body. By the time the spasms of pleasure finally began to abate, I almost begged him to stop—my whole body oversensitive, shaking, my clit tingling almost uncomfortably from the overload. But Zack pulled back, giving my labia a lingering lick before he broke away from my body.
Zack kissed a rapid path up to my lips, lingering to lavish attention to the tops of my breasts along the way. I was shaking, trembling as he wrapped his arms around me tightly, kissing me hungrily. I held onto him tightly, hovering in a haze of orgasmic bliss for a long moment, unable to think of anything other than how good I felt.
“You do realize you’re not fully naked, don’t you?” Zack nibbled playfully at my neck, murmuring in my ear. I opened my eyes and looked down—realizing it for the first time since he had started to go down on me.
“I had forgotten. It didn’t seem to get in your way much.”
Zack grinned. He lifted me up off of the bed and reached around to my back, unhooking the clasp on my bra before he guided the fabric away from my body. Then he was tugging my skirt down over my hips, along my legs, tossing it aside and leaving me completely exposed to his hungry gaze. He trailed his hands all over me slowly, caressing and soothing me, cupping my breasts and stroking my arms and legs.
“Much better,” Zack said, kissing me lightly on the lips. I touched him everywhere I could reach, kneading his tight shoulders, running my fingers through his hair, caressing along the line of his spine.
“Have I mentioned how sorry I am that I acted like such an idiot?” I asked, still smiling dreamily.
“Oh trust me, I know exactly how sorry you are,” Zack said, kissing me hungrily until I was nearly breathless. He pulled back and looked down at me with a smile. “I think we can safely call it even now, don’t you?”
I laughed. “Okay, fine. We’re even.”
I reached down between our bodies and found Zack’s cock by touch. I wrapped my hand around him and gave him a long, slow stroke; Zack obediently started to harden immediately, his hips twisting and thrusting up into my touch. He groaned, burying his face against my neck for a moment as I stroked him until he was once more fully hard, the tip of his cock beginning to flow precum against my hand. Zack slipped his hand between my legs and began to caress me, his touch feather-light to start and then steadily firmer. He worked his fingers up between my labia, rubbing me slowly and steadily as I pumped him. In a matter of moments we were both burning up, our sweat running together, our bodies twisting against each other and our limbs tangling.
Zack moved my hand away and guided his cock up against me, rubbing up and down along my slick folds until I was panting with need. He thrust into me slowly, filling me up inch by inch, letting me feel his thick hardness as it pushed past the initial resistance of my body. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pushing my hips down to meet his thrust, kissing wherever my lips could reach. Zack dragged his lips along the line of my throat, bringing them up to my mouth as he began to rock his hips against mine, rubbing against me and pushing deeper and deeper into my body.
“Fuck, Evie,” Zack murmured, his hands moving over my body slowly, “you feel so good.”
“You, too,” I said, throwing my head back to give him better access to my neck.
Zack nipped at my sensitive skin, while his hand trailed upward from my waist to cup my breast. He twisted and rolled my nipple between his fingers, making me gasp and shiver underneath him. We moved together in a steady rhythm—I smiled to myself as I realized it was exactly the same rhythm that was blaring through the speakers outside, the music of the party going on downstairs. Every shift of our bodies sent more and more tingling pleasure through me, building up the tension deep down between my hips. I clung to Zack as if for life itself, writhing underneath him, hot and cold flashes flickering through me like electric fire.
I held myself back as much as I could, wanting to prolong the pleasure as long as possible. Zack picked up the pace of his thrusts, and I matched him, pushing down my hips to meet his thrusts. Every movement between our bodies brought more friction to bear against my clit, even as Zack pushed deeper and deeper into me. I gripped his shoulders tightly, digging my nails into his skin, gasping and panting as the friction built up until I simply couldn’t control myself anymore. I cried out, clutching Zack close to me, my whole body tensing and then relaxing in turns as wave after wave of pleasure shot through me, racking me with the intensity of the sensations.
I was barely aware of it as Zack’s cock began to twitch and jerk inside of me, barely aware of the splash of sticky-slick heat that shot into me in spurts while we continued to move together until we simply couldn’t keep it up anymore. As the spasms of pleasure began to abate for both of us, I felt Zack sag against me and I drooped against the mattress, panting and so full of satisfied pleasure that I couldn’t think.
I stayed there for a long time, my mind drifting, music and the sounds of a few hundred partiers filtering through the walls as I caught my breath and tried to convince my pounding heart to slow down. Zack pulled himself up, falling to the bed next to me with his arms draped around me loosely, lazily touching me everywhere.
“I’m so glad you found me,” Zack said, burying his face against my neck and kissing me.
“I am, too. This is certainly a lot better than I expected.”
Zack laughed against my skin, pulling back and brushing my long hair out of my face before he kissed me hungrily, his hands coming to life along my curves, teasing me once more.
“Man, Evie—I was miserable without you. I don’t think you even know how much it hit me.”
I shrugged, still smiling. “I saw you play the other night. But I didn’t think…I just figured you’d move on once I froze you out.” I leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I was expecting you to have some girl in here, so I could feel justified.” Zack laughed again, kissing me hungrily as he started to touch me all over again, cupping my breasts, teasing my nipples and starting up the flames of desire inside of me again. “Hey—so what were you doing in here before I came?”
Zack shrugged. “Pretending to study, mostly just moping. Considering trying to call you one last time, actually.”
Zack pulled my body against his and slipped his hand between my legs. He began to stroke my still-slick folds slowly and gently at first, and then more firmly. He found my clit by touch and began to stroke me as I shivered and arched against him, pushing my hips down for better contact.
“You should stay the night,” Zack suggested, rubbing my clit in tight little circles while my hips bucked, sliding some of his fingers down to stroke my inner labia.
“Mm—no, Zack. I am not staying the night here,” I laughed slightly, breathless and moaning, leaning my head back against his shoulder. “There is—there is no way that I’m doing the walk of shame away from your frat tomorrow morning.”
Zack kissed my shoulder, nibbling playfully. “Aw, come on—everyone already knows that I’m madly in love with you. Of course you stayed the night.”
I rolled my eyes, my breath hitching in my throat as Zack’s fingers slipped inside of me, rubbing along my inner walls. “I’m not staying the night,” I insisted, moaning softly as Zack continued to work me, sending tingling jolts of hot and cold electricity through my nerves.
He didn’t argue the point, but instead kept touching me, rubbing and stroking me inside and out, pressing against my clit until I shivered almost uncontrollably against him, hitting orgasm once again before I slumped against his body.
I slipped out of the frat house a few hours later; the party had wound down, with only a few revelers still drinking and laughing and talking, the music long since dead. I knew I’d be totally wrecked for my classes the next day, but the sweet tingling aftermath of so many orgasms coursing through my body told me it was totally worth it. I would maybe get a nap in the afternoon; I had a span of a couple of hours between lunch and my evening classes. It wouldn’t be that difficult to fit in a rest. My phone buzzed in my purse and I took it out, looking at the screen; there were two text messages. One from Jess and one from Zack.
You okay? Jess had asked me. I sent back that I was, and on my way back to the dorms.