Our warm breaths mingled, his exhale becoming my inhale and vice versa. I was dizzy with remnants of my orgasm when his dick pulsed against my hand, reminding me that I still held it in my grasp. I resumed my lazy torment, aftershocks of pleasure making my strokes eager but disjointed. Laird pushed his shorts partway down, and shifted my hand until it wrapped around his impressive length. He was so big my fingers didn’t touch. I pumped him slowly, reveling in the contrast of hard steel covered by hot velvet. With a rough growl, he wrapped his fingers around mine until I gripped him harder, and then he showed me how he liked it, tight and slow at the bottom, fast at the top, sometimes pausing for a few shorter passes at the head before dropping back down. The chords of his neck stood out in sharp relief, and his eyes darkened and fell halfway closed as he watched our hands.
Biting my lip, I reached down to cup his balls as we worked together to stroke him off. They were already tight and drawn up, and I knew he was close. I rolled them in my hand, and he cursed when I tugged on them, golden satisfaction swirling through me at his response. He crushed my hand tighter around him, our fists a blur as we jacked him faster.
“Do it again.” He pressed haphazard kisses to my neck. “Fuck, Reese, do that again.”
I did, twice. He groaned the first time and came the second, his hips jerking with his release as he spilled over our joined fingers. Laird shuddered as he repeated my name in a whisper with each of the half dozen strokes it took for him to finish.
It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen, his face slack with pleasure as he watched me watch him. He made no attempt to hide his reaction, and he held my gaze with a quiet fierceness, as if he wanted to make sure I saw exactly what I did to him, how he came apart because of me. Something inside of me shimmered and sighed when he used his clean hand to stroke my cheek and trace the curve of my lip reverently. “Reese. I—” He broke off and the moment sharpened. The musky scent of our arousal, the hum of the ancient air-conditioner, the stillness of our bodies after the impetuous intimacy. He dipped his head and his lips met mine softly, like he was saying thank you for something he wasn’t sure he deserved.
Hot tears I couldn’t explain pricked the back of my eyes as he released me, and I blinked rapidly, ducking my head so he wouldn’t see. His gentleness in the aftermath was my undoing.
He whipped his shirt off and used it to clean us up, then wrapped me in his damp embrace, peppering my face with aimless kisses, as if he wasn’t quite ready to stop touching me yet.
“Forgive me, Reese.” His lips skimmed along my jaw. “Forgive me for last Saturday.” Across my forehead. “Don’t.” The tip of my nose. “Please don’t push me away.” The corner of my mouth.
I shivered. My hands roamed from his waist to his ribs. I couldn’t form words.
And then the door banged open, and Marco’s sharp voice cut across the room. “What are y’all still doing in here?”
Ice froze my veins and I couldn’t move, my wild eyes flashing to Laird’s in a panic. He put a foot of distance between us, keeping his back to Marco and partially blocking his view of me.
“She needed to work on her stance some before this weekend. Her shoulders were slumped and her arms were too low at practice earlier.” He nudged me fully against the wall and raised my arms parallel to an imaginary drum. “It’s nine inches, Reese, not six.”
My eyes widened at the double meaning of his words and he winked at me. I choked on my next breath.
Marco snorted in disgust from the doorway. “Told you we shouldn’t have picked her.”
“It’s not a problem.” Laird dropped his hands to his sides and moved back a step. I bristled at the insult but held my position. “I’m gonna make her do it over and over and over again until I know she’s got it right. Even if it takes her all night.”
Images of us doing it over and over again all night long cartwheeled through my mind. Until we got it right.
“Need any help?” The offer from Marco was grudging at best, the words sour as they lingered in the air.
“No,” Laird responded easily. “I can handle her.”
Dear sweet mother Mary and her perfect virgin womb.
Yes. He could.
Laird
“And then at the end of the second quarter, we were down by three to Louisiana State. That fumble on the opener really cost us in the first half.” Eli hung on my every word as I recounted Saturday night’s game.
“Then you killed it in the halftime show?” His expectant smile took up half his face, the other half mostly hidden beneath a blue knit beanie. Rodner University blue with the shark mascot embroidered on the front.
“You know it.” I held up my hand for a fist bump and pretended like my knuckles were sore after he tapped me. “Watch it, man. Don’t make it so I can’t play this weekend.”
“Did someone record it?”
I gave an exaggerated huff and withdrew my phone from my pocket. “Of course. Our biggest fan needed to be able to watch it.”
I pressed the screen to make the video play, pointing out which speck was me and which one was Reese. She did well that night, much to Marco’s disappointment. She stumbled a bit on the first roll, coming in a beat too late, but it was a minor bobble easily attributed to her first time playing for such a large crowd. No one would’ve noticed unless they studied her specifically on the video afterward, which I did only because I couldn’t take my eyes off her. With her height, she blended right in to the rest of the line, and if it weren’t for the fact that I knew she was second from the left, I probably wouldn’t have been able to pick her out. Her skill level more than held its own.
A little swell of pride filled my chest as Eli watched our performance, his nose inches from my phone.
As the band marched in perfect sync off the field to a drumline cadence, he glanced at me with a solemn expression. His eyes seemed even bigger without eyebrows or eyelashes, dominating his face now that he was no longer smiling. “She did good, didn’t she? I prayed she would do good.”
My ribs threatened to crack open from my heart breaking so hard for this kid. “She did great.”
“When she comes by tomorrow, I’m gonna tell her she sucked. That she needs to work harder.” A sly smile curled the corner of his mouth. “That even I could’ve done better than her. Don’t want her getting a big-ass ego like you.”
I reached down for my bookbag and withdrew two pairs of drumsticks. “Big claims, little man. Let’s see what you’ve been working on.”
He held the sticks expertly, just the way I’d shown him in the past, but he hesitated. “Can we get Amelia to play with us too? Last time Reese was here, we had a joint lesson. I think Amelia really liked it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure wanting Amelia to be a better drummer is your only motivation,” I teased him.
The blush on his face spread down his neck until it disappeared under his green hospital gown. “Suck my dick, Bronson.” He used the plastic bedrail to bang out the cadence I’d been teaching him for the last few weeks, not missing a single beat. When he finished, he looked at me expectantly.
I ignored his performance. “You talk to me like that and pray to God with the same mouth?” While I appreciated his spunk, one day he was going to say that to the wrong person.
“Do you talk to God with the same mouth you eat pussy with?”
Little shithead. Now I was the one blushing. “What do you know about,” I cleared my throat, unable to say the word pussy to him, “…girls?”
“Enough to know that’s what makes them crazy.” His voice was confident, but his eyes wavered, shifting from side to side.
I held back a laugh. He didn’t know what the fuck he was even saying.
My mind drifted back to Saturday. To what happened after the game with Reese that I didn’t share with anybody. We’d already put our equipment on the trailer to go back to East Hall and I’d tugged her back inside the stadium to a darkened corner away from security and the cleaning crew that was starting to make their rounds through the bleachers.
I pulled her against me, her back to my front. The boxy polyester uniforms we wore did nothing to hide the sweet curve of her ass. Our military-style jackets with yards of looped braided detailing and a yellow sash had been ditched after halftime, the band allowed to strip down to matching t-shirts in deference to the Alabama heat. The lack of sun did little to lower the temperature this time of year. Her shirt hung loosely around her hips, but clung to the slope of her breasts. The cotton was slightly damp from the pervasive humidity.