Double Dare(352)

So I tried again.

“I’m not sure why you’re going back so soon,” I began roughly. “I thought you said you didn’t like school. Besides, don’t I pay you enough?”

And this time, Mandy stopped soaping herself for a moment, looking at me pointedly through the steam.

“Of course you pay me enough, Peter,” she said gently. “You’re the most generous man I’ve ever met,” she added softly, eyes going warm, appreciative. “But you know my parents are so proud that I’m a college girl, so proud that I’m getting a BA, that I might be a lawyer one day.”

I snorted. What her parents wanted was different from what she wanted, and I didn’t get why she was confusing the two. So I stuck to my guns.

“Yeah, but what Jim and Trish want is irrelevant,” I ground out harshly. “You’re looking to be a mom, this college shit is bullshit, you told me that yourself.”

And the brunette sighed then, soaping up her breasts now, those curves slickly wet and delicious.

“I know,” she murmured in the stall, “I know. But things are different for me, Pete. You’ve always done what you wanted, other people be damned. It’s part of the alpha male in you, why I love you so much,” she said with a gentle smile. “But don’t you see? It’s not like that for me. I can’t just do whatever I want,” she said helplessly, shrugging her shoulders. “Even though I know the degree is more for my parents than anyone, still, it makes them so happy, and they’ve done so much for me in life. I can’t just blow it off, not now.”

I seethed. Honestly, I didn’t understand what she was saying. Mandy and I grew up differently, I was out on the streets by the time I was sixteen, my parents never played a role in my life. So this pleasing your forebears shit made no sense, and it didn’t make me happy. But there had to be another way.

“Listen, you can always go back to college, take a leave of absence. They have those, right? You can leave for two years and then go back without having to reapply,” I ground out.

And this time Mandy put her hands on her hips, still nude, looking at me through the clear glass of the shower stall.

“Pete, I get it,” she said pointedly. “I get what you’re saying. We’re in love, we adore one another, we get along great in so many ways, emotionally and physically,” she said, cheeks coloring, flushing a bit under the hot water. Yeah, that’s what we did to one another. The loving was so strong that even talking about the attraction revved us both up to two hundred miles an hour immediately. “But I can’t just stop my life like a freight train screeching to a halt. There’s too much going on. My parents raised me since birth to get a degree, they’d be so disappointed if I didn’t finish, or even if I took a leave. And yes, I want your baby, but I’m not supposed to want it, don’t you see? Ever since junior high, they’ve been making us go to these safe sex seminars, warning us that our lives were over if we have babies too early.”

I snorted.

“You’re hardly a baby, not with the way we’ve been fucking,” I ground out.

She smiled gently at me then, that slick, nude form still beckoning to me from inside the shower stall.

“I know, Pete, I know I’m not,” she said with a softness in her voice, an acknowledgment of the Russian roulette we’d been playing. “But I can’t go against everything I’ve been raised just like that.”

This was getting out of hand.

“You’re not a robot,” I ground out. “You’re not programmed like a fucking computer, you don’t have to do everything they tell you.”

And this time, the brunette fixed me with a glare.

“Stop it,” she said sharply. “I’m just explaining to you what’s going on in my head, it’s not as simple as you think. I’m an eighteen year-old college girl, I can’t just throw everything away. I’m sorry you don’t feel that way, but that’s how I feel.”

And my shoulders slumped then because Mandy was right. Yeah, I wanted to take care of her, I wanted her to move into my huge house, for her to take care of my kid, shit, for us to have a dozen babies of our own. That’s what would make me happy, that’s what would rock my world. But Mandy didn’t see it that way, and it frickin’ broke my heart. My little girl still had a future to pursue, a life to live, and couldn’t just drop everything for me. She had a path of her own, something she’d been building and planning, something waiting for her. So I turned to the only weapon I had left. Shedding my clothes, I stepped into the stall with her, big frame hard and demanding against her soft, succulent one.