The Studying Hours(35)

I want to wrap the gleaming locks of her hair around my fist and tug, so I twirl some into a curl with my finger.

“I’m sorry Jim. I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Ask you out. Date you. I would never treat you—” I stop, not knowing how to finish my thought. “Jameson.”

“Sebastian.” Her lips twist into a patient smile.

“Nothing about you is easy…”

Her soft laughter fills the room. “Thank god for that.”

“I can’t believe I’m fucking saying this, but for someone who started off as just a study partner, you’re all I can think about lately.” Her glossy hair slips from my fingers, greedy hands raking through the hair spread across my bed. “Night and day. Being on the road and not seeing you is killing me. That’s never happened before. Not talking to you was killing me. Dreaming about you—”

“Was killing you?”

I still, narrowing my eyes at her. “You didn’t look like such a smartass the day we first met.”

James cocks an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What did I look like?”

“Smart and sexy.” Confident and complicated.

Jameson snickers. “You did not think I looked sexy. You thought I was a dork, don’t lie.”

I respond by raising my eyebrows and lowering my voice. “I’m going to date you, and one of these days, Jameson, I’m going to pluck all the buttons off your cardigan, one at a time, and screw you senseless while you wear nothing but your pearl necklace.”

“There are no buttons on this cardigan,” she whispers.

I lean in closer, lips resting above her ear. “I know.”

“That’s not fair,” she complains, shifting restlessly beneath me.

“What’s not fair?” The tips of our noses brush while I finger the neckline of her soft, pink sweater. It’s delicate and pretty and so very Jameson.

“The way you make me feel.”

“How do I make you feel? Tell me,” I plead.

I’m okay with begging.

I have to know what she’s thinking, hoping it might help make sense of the tangled shit I’ve got going on in my own damn head.

“You make me think about not studying,” she whispers, arching into me, nose nuzzling a trail up my neck to the valley below my ear.

Whoa!

I move my hands, bracing them on either side of her thighs, and tilt my head to give her better access to my neck. “Is that good or bad?”

“Both.” She sniffs it. “Mmmm. You smell good, though half the time I want to strangle you with my bare hands.”

“What about the other half?”

Jameson feigns a sigh in my ear so blissful and sweet it sends a shock straight down to my cock. I resist the impulse to climb all the way on top and pin her down.

“The other half, I want you to do all those dirty things you’re always threatening to do to me. Like right now, I want you out of that shirt. I want to touch you, feel your bare flesh against the tips of my fingers.”

“Oh yeah?” I croak.

“Yeah.” She’s still running the tip of her nose up the side of my neck, up and down, up and down, breathing me in. “Allison says I should let you screw me into a coma.” Her tongue flicks my earlobe and she blows lightly. “What do you think about that?”

“Holy shit, yes.” I breathe, dick officially hard inside my mesh athletic pants—painfully so. The thin fabric strains and pulls against my erection. “I knew I liked Allison.”

“But what I think I should do now is…”

“Yes?”

“Leave.”

“Leave? Why? We’re just getting started.”

Jameson pulls back, cupping my face gently in the palm of her hand. “If we don’t stop, we won’t stop, and I don’t want whatever this relationship is to be based on sex. That makes sense right? Oz, tell me it makes sense.”

“It makes sense,” I echo unhappily, crossing my arms to pout.

She’s right, of course; this relationship shouldn’t be based on sex. Or orgasms. Or blowjobs. Or round, perky tits. It should be based on getting to know her personality and her likes and dislikes. Her hopes and dreams and—

Holy shit, what the hell am I even saying?

Her lips are moving and she’s speaking, but the stiff dick in my pants is straining angrily against my boxers, cutting off the blood to my brain and making it impossible to concentrate.

“So you agree?” Jameson says, licking her lips. Her glossy, juicy, pouty lips…

I jerk out a nod. “Whatever you just said, I agree. Okay. I’ll do it.” I expel a shaky puff of air and gulp back my raging disappointment. “Wait. What did I just agree to?”

“If you’re going to date me, I insist on rule number ten: No sex until the fifth date.” She bites down on her lower lip, carefully extracting herself from under me and scooting toward the headboard, where she props herself up and begins the process of buckling her heels. “Or maybe the third or fourth, depending on how it goes.”

No sex until date number five! Is she fucking insane?

“Oz? Do we have a deal?”

My eyes catalog every single one of the delectable curves I won’t see naked for at least five dates. Three if it goes well. Three, three, focus on three. Focus on her crotch, her flat stomach, her boobs, her chagrined mouth—

“Oz?”

I like her. I can do this. We’ll just crank out the dates, one after the other, rapid fire.

I nod again, lips arching into a wicked grin. “Yes, yes. Excellent.”

She beams at me and I feel a million feet tall walking her to her car. I plant a chaste kiss on the top of her head to leave her wanting more.

I stand, watching her glowing taillights travel down the empty street, stop at the light, and disappear from sight once she turns left.

“Brace yourself Jim; I’m going to date the shit out of you.”





Jameson





“God. This ugly-ass thing is actually really cute on you,” Oz says, reaching to adjust the blue batting helmet resting on my head. Giving it a little tap, he leans in and—

“You did not just kiss the tip of my nose.”

“It’s an adorably perky little nose.” He steps back, letting his eyes scan the rest of my body. “Almost as perky as your boobs.”

I whack him in the gut harder than I intend to. My hand stings like a mothertrucker when I pull back, prickly like needles are stabbing from within, and I slap it over my mouth to quiet my dismay. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. I mean—I meant to tap you, not smack you.”

“If that was your apology, it sucked.”

“My hand hurts,” I whimper, cradling it like a baby.

“Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

I do. I do want him to kiss it and make it better, so I step toward him, palm extended. “Be gentle.”

“Here, let me see it.” He drops his helmet to the pavement, moving toward me with a purposeful stride, taking my hand in his. “Poor baby.”

Oz makes a grand show of examining my hand, my fingers, then soothes his palm up my goose bump-covered arm, back down again. When he lowers his head and drags his nose along the delicate skin of my inner wrist, my eyelids flutter closed.

When his lips find my pulse, I moan.

“Poor.” Kiss. “Poor.” Kiss. “Baby.” One more kiss and he lifts his head. Winks. “Be more careful next time. When I have you, I want you in one piece.”

“It was my special brand of flirting.” No doubt my expression is wobbly. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

A slow smile creeps across his face and he dips, reaching for my arm. Drags me closer by the wrist he’s just branded with his lips. Drags my flattened palm over his stomach and over his hard abdomen.

“Feel these abs?”

“Yes.”

“Rock. Solid.” He moves that palm over the flat plane of his six-pack, the muscles constricting under my feather-light touch. His arm slides around my waist as he moves my hand up over his firm pecs. Up over his right shoulder. Forces me to step even closer. “You can’t hurt me, James.”

You can’t hurt me.

Flirtatious words with a bewildering wallop of fiction.

Those four words cause me to look up into his dark, expressive eyes. His mouth has a smile tugging on it but…those sullen eyes? Those eyes are saying something else completely: you can hurt me.

All this time I was worried about myself and my own heart, never once stopping to consider that I could hurt him. How selfish.

Shamefaced, my head drops for a split second, considering his bald-faced lie. He’s lying. This behemoth, mountain of a guy, gazing down at me with jokes and smiles and laughter, is lying.

“You really do like me,” I say breathily, the words full of wonder.

“You like me,” he breathes back.

“But you like me, like me,” I challenge like a ten-year-old on the playground. “Do you have a crush on…my cardigans, Sebastian?”

I get an eye roll for that one. “Get over yourself, Clark.”

Oz tilts his head to study me, one hand rising between our two bodies to cup my chin. Leans in. Lands his mouth squarely on mine and presses gently as his other large palm squeezes my butt cheek. “Pick up the bat, slacker.”