We go to my bedroom, where he sits on the edge of the bed while I close and lock the door. A couple seconds tick by. Then he pats his lap and says, “C’mere, darlin’.”
I’m on him in a heartbeat, my legs wrapped around his waist and my fingers in his hair. “I really did miss you,” I whisper, pressing my lips to his.
Kissing Tucker is like sinking into a hot bath. It makes my skin tingle and turns my limbs to jelly, surrounding me in a cocoon of heat that I never want to emerge from. His tongue drags over my lower lip before easing into my mouth. His hands are warm and solid as they slide underneath my tank top and stroke my bare hips.
Before I know it, we’re tangled together on the bed, clawing at each other’s clothes even while our mouths stay locked. Once we’re naked, my body strains against him, aching for release. Tucker is just as frantic. There’s no foreplay, no words exchanged. I grab a condom from my nightstand, toss it to him, and he puts it on without delay.
It’s the quietest sex we’ve ever had. It has to be, because Nana is right down the hall. And there’s something so hot and dirty about the silent way we fuck. He fills me completely, sliding in and out of my pulsing core in a slow, sweet pace that drives me wild.
“Gonna come soon,” he whispers in my ear.
I open my eyes to find his handsome features stretched taut, his teeth digging into his bottom lip as he struggles to keep quiet.
The gorgeous sight succeeds in splintering the tension building inside me. As the orgasm crashes to the surface, I gasp and cling to his broad shoulders and hold him tight as he shudders on top of me.
Afterward, he rolls over and pulls me against him. His fingers thread through my hair as I curl one leg over his lower body. We snuggle wordlessly for a while, until Tuck finally breaks the silence by telling me what he’s been up to lately. We text regularly, so I know most of the stories already, but this guy’s voice is so sexy that I would listen to him recite a restaurant menu if it meant hearing that southern drawl purring in my ear.
I smother giggles behind my hand when he tells me how Dean’s girlfriend—figure that one out—knocked Dean unconscious with a paperweight last night. I kiss his shoulder when he confesses how much he’s looking forward to seeing his mom for the upcoming holidays. And when I admit how stressed I am over finals, he strokes my back and assures me that I’m going to kick ass.
Eventually we throw our clothes on and do put on a movie, but he’s the only one watching it. I crack open a textbook and start highlighting passages that I want to source in my paper. Tuck chuckles softly at the raunchy comedy on the small TV mounted to my wall.
Every so often he leans over and kisses my temple, rubs my cheek, tweaks my nipple.
Every so often I lean over and suck on his neck, stroke his beard, pinch his ass.
It’s the most perfect night I could’ve ever imagined. And in the back of my mind, a little voice keeps whispering, I could get used to this…
16
Tucker
After I get off the plane in Dallas, Mom is waiting at the bottom of the escalator with three balloons. You’d think I was coming home from the battlefield instead of a posh Eastern college.
“Look at you!” she cries.
I pick her up and swing her around before setting her back on her feet. She leans in, the familiar smell of hairspray and ammonia wafting up.
“What should I be looking at?” I tease.
She gives me a sappy mom smile before wrapping one thin arm around my waist and squeezing. “How handsome you are. You look wonderful.”
I shrug as we begin to make our way to the exit. “I feel pretty good.”
“Thank goodness. I thought you’d be depressed over how your season is going.” Our games aren’t televised often, but she follows the results online.
“Is that what the balloons are for?”
“Did you think the balloons are for you? Because they’re not.”
“Is that why the silver one says ‘Welcome Home, Son’?”
“It was discounted. I would’ve bought the ‘I’m the Greatest Mom in the World,’ but it cost five dollars more.”
“Man, the patriarchy is even ruining balloon sales?”
Thrusting the attached streamers toward me, she laughs. “It’s a terrible world, which is why we need balloons.”
“This feels suspiciously like the pink apron incident,” I say in mock protest, but I take the balloons anyway and bend down to press a kiss on the top of her head. Like the pink apron my roommates gave me, carrying a few balloons through the airport isn’t going to dent my ego.
“If I were you, I’d give them all something pink in return.”
I contemplate the pink dildo that Dean likes to take baths with. “That’s not a bad idea. I’ve got to pick up a few gifts before I head back. I’ll make sure everything I buy is either pink or full of glitter. Both, if possible.” Garret and Logan would die laughing at the thought of giving Dean a pink, glittering dildo. I make a mental note to text the guys later.
“You didn’t check a bag?” she asks as we bypass the baggage carousels.
“No, ma’am.” I don’t need to look at her face to know she’s disappointed. “You know I’ve got to get back for practice. Even if the season is sucking wind, I’m still required to lace ’em up. That’s the price of my scholarship.”
My busy schedule during the holidays has always been a source of dismay for my mother, who goes all out celebrating stuff. She lives for Christmas, which is why I made the trek home even though a lot of the guys stayed back at Briar.
“I thought maybe because this is your last year and you guys weren’t doing well, that you’d be allowed to spend the entire break with me.”
“Doesn’t work that way. Besides, soon I’ll be underfoot all the time and you’ll be begging me to leave,” I warn her.
But even as I say it, my mind zips back to Sabrina. She’s going to be in Boston for the next three years. I wonder how we’re going to make that work.
I wonder if she even wants to make it work.
It’d be a lot easier if we’d met last year. Or hell, even last semester, but we’ve only got a few more months where we’ll be in the same zip code, and for reasons I’m not fully prepared to examine, especially with Mom at my side, the coming distance between us bothers the shit out of me.
I fight the urge to climb back on the plane and return to Boston. But I’ll have to settle for texting, phone calls, and maybe if I’m lucky, a little video chatting. I’d like to see how she uses her toy when I’m not around.
I nearly run into Mom’s SUV, lost in my thoughts about Sabrina and her vibrator. I clear my throat. “Mind if I drive?”
She tosses me the keys. “I’d never complain about you being around too much. You know I’d love it if you came back and lived with me.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening. No woman alive wants to go out with a guy who lives with his mom,” I say, holding the door open for her.
She climbs in with a frown. “What’s wrong with living with your mother?
“Everything, and you know it.” Then I lean forward and press another kiss on her forehead to take away the sting.
During the four-hour ride home from Dallas, she catches me up on the local gossip of Patterson. “Maria Solis’s daughter is home from UT. She gets her hair cut in Austin now, but she still has the nicest manners. She stopped in the other day just to say hi.”
I nod absently, wondering if I had invited Sabrina to come home with me for the holidays if she would have said yes. I figured the invitation would be unwelcome, not just because she’d view it as a sign we were moving too fast, but because she needs the money from work. Before I left, she was nearly beside herself with happiness about the time and a half she was going to be making.
“You should ask her out.” Mom’s voice penetrates my daydreams again.
“Who?” I ask.
“Maria Solis’s daughter,” she replies impatiently.
I glance away from the road to give her an incredulous stare. “You want me to date Daniela Solis?”
“Why not? She’s gorgeous and smart.” Mom sits back in her seat and crosses her arms.
“She’s also gay.”
Her mouth falls open. “Dani Solis is gay?”
“I guess the appropriate term is lesbian,” I say, remembering my gender studies course.
“No,” my mother protests. “She’s far too beautiful.”
“Mom, beautiful girls can be lesbians.”
“Are you sure? Maybe she’s bi. I know they say kids experiment in college.”
“She took Cassie Carter to prom! You did both their hair.”
“I thought they were friends.”
“They had to go as friends because the prom folks wouldn’t let them attend as a couple.”
The small West Texas town I grew up in is a tad on the conservative side. Dani and Cassie were friends, only ones that kissed and felt each other up in the hallway. And drove every teenage boy in eyeballing distance right out of their ever loving minds. I’d spent many a teenage night fantasizing about the things those two girls did in private. It was probably inappropriate, but the majority of my thoughts from about age ten to seventeen fell into the inappropriate category.