12. Miller

I’m up before Ryan, as usual. Today, I stand beside his bed and look down at him as he sleeps. He’s on his side, curled into a tight ball. Dark lashes wash his cheeks with spiky shadows. He looks so different like this, completely relaxed. His face looks different. His features look like they belong to someone else without the tension he normally carries. Awake, he’s scarily attractive, sculptural, and different. Asleep, there’s something almost soft about him.

Almost. Not quite.

I follow the line of his nose and consider trailing my finger along the curve of the bridge. I want to. I don’t though. Something tells me waking Ryan from a deep sleep would put me at serious risk of violence. And while I wouldn’t mind that per se, not if he was the one dispensing it, it does seem like the sort of thing that would go down better after a nice cup of coffee.

Sweet Jesus, last night was something else.

That blowjob was seriously hot. Breathy, nervous perfection. The way he looked at me when he was on his knees. Pure hatred, red hot and vicious, shining out of his eyes like lasers. I don’t know why that gets me so hard. I really don’t. I think it’s one of those things that’s probably best not to think about too much. But it does. It gets me rock-hard. Just thinking about it now is making me stiffen.

I stroke myself lightly through my boxer briefs as I watch him sleep.

Maybe it’s the conflict I like. Maybe it’s the strength of the emotion. He was literally shaking with it last night. His hand shook so hard it felt like he was holding a vibe to my dick when he first touched me. It was there the whole time, the hatred, the disdain, but that wasn’t all. The second he touched me, there was a spark in his eyes. I was watching him closely, so I didn’t miss it. His pupils dilated. His hair hung in his face, a dark screen he tried to hide behind, but still, I saw it. Big black orbs circled by crazy wild flecks of green and gold.

The sounds he made were unreal. Soft. So soft I could tell he was trying his best to be quiet. Now and again, when he pulled his mouth off my dick, he pressed his lips together so hard they went white. Even then, little noises escaped him, tiny whimpers and moans.

Fuck, it was hot.

Can’t wait for him to wake up so we can start all over again.

He starts to stir, groaning and swiping at his face with his hand. I hot-foot it over to the coffee maker and start pouring.

“Boobs or dicks?” I offer, pointing to my mugs.

Oh, don’t act so surprised. I’m not a complete asshole, and besides, having my dick sucked just right always puts me in a good mood.

He doesn’t answer. He puts his glasses on and blinks once or twice as his vision adjusts. Then he holds out his hand and twitches his fingers at me to hurry me up. I hand him the boob mug and try not to laugh at the state of him. He looks like he’s been dragged through a forest. Backward. By his hair.

When he’s had a few sips of coffee, I dig my wallet out of yesterday’s jeans and stand next to his bed again. I carefully and pointedly count off five Benjamins, folding them over and fixing them in place with the money clip he threw on my bed. A gold letter M glints against a background of pale blue.

He watches as I do it. Jaw ajar, eyes brimming with shock and fury.

Hmm, interesting. He thought yesterday was a one-off.

How wrong he was.

He looks at the money out of the corner of his eyes, fingers tugging at his bottom lip. Pinching it, making it crease down the middle.

I tap the money lightly, the way you would to get the attention of a bartender.

“Same again,” I say.

He makes a sudden movement toward me, so I step back, my heart thudding in excitement or fear or hope, but it’s a false alarm. He gets out of bed and huffs toward the bathroom.

He slept shirtless last night, and I’m here for it. His arms and chest are beautiful, a large expanse of olive skin. He’s lean and hard, with just enough muscle to drive me crazy. I don’t get totally lost in the sight of his chest this time because as hot as his body is, it’s nowhere near as hot as the fact his sleeping shorts are tented, barely containing a massive erection.

“Mmm,” I say, smiling and making no effort to hide the fact I’m looking.

“It’s morning wood. Get over yourself.”

I run a hand down my torso and stroke the outline of my cock with my thumb. “Mine’s not. It’s all you.”

It’s been three days, and he still hasn’t touched the money. Literally has not touched it. I took note of exactly where I put it on the desk, so I know. I know the exact knot of wood the top left corner was touching. I put it there so I’d know if he moved it, and he hasn’t. Three fucking days.

Four days.

Five.

Shit, I’m losing my mind. I’m going to beg soon. I can feel it. It’s awful. It’s a horrible feeling. I’ve never begged anyone for anything before, but I can tell I’m going to do it. I felt the words on my lips this morning, dancing across my tongue. I could almost taste them. The only thing that stopped me was the determined resolution in his eyes.

I followed him yesterday. I didn’t exactly mean to. It’s just that when I asked him where he was going, he said, “Nowhere,” very defensively, so I hung back when he left, holding the door open a crack so the lock didn’t make a noise when I opened it again. He went down the hall and took the stairs one floor down. I got to the second floor just in time to see him disappear into Emily’s room.

It was only when I got back to our room that I looked down and realized I was barefoot and didn’t have my wallet or keys. I had to get Carmen, our RA, to use the master key to unlock our door.

Though I didn’t enjoy yesterday’s experience, when he leaves under similar conditions today, I’m ready. My shoes are on, and my wallet and keys are in my pocket.

I’m going to have a shit fit if he goes back to Emily’s today. I can feel it coming on.

I’ve always got on pretty well with her in the past. I don’t know her super well, but some of my circles overlap with hers, so while I don’t know her know her, I know enough about her. She’s a free spirit. Happy-go-lucky and one of those people who always makes a point of being nice to everyone. A little too nice, maybe, if you were looking for a fault, but that’s not my main problem with her. She’s one of those people who doesn’t love being who she is. Wealthy and privileged. She feels bad about it. Not a little. Not just in words. Properly bad about it. Deeply bad. She’s the type of person who wants to make a difference. A real one.

She’s the type who rescues strays.

Stray cats.

Stray dogs.

Stray guys who have that whole big nose, sad eyes, misunderstood thing going on.

Luckily for everyone involved, he veers right when he leaves today and heads out of the building. He walks across campus with his earbuds in. Head tilted down, shoulders raised like usual. He’s wearing a long-sleeved charcoal T-shirt and a pair of jeans that are so ripped I think they might actually have been bought like that. He sits on the steps outside the library for a while, checking his phone and then closing his eyes and tilting his head back. The mid-morning sun washes his features, forming shadows in all the right places and making his cheekbones look angular and dreamlike.

Damn.

It’s a miracle a scout from some major modeling agency hasn’t approached him.

Come to think of it, they probably have. He probably told them to piss off.

I quicken my pace when he heads up the stairs and into the library, but I still manage to lose him in the crowd at the circulation desk.

My stalking skills are going to need work if I plan on keeping this up.

It’s been six days now.

I’m not losing my mind anymore. That shit is officially lost.

I followed him again today. I lost him in the library, but today, I managed to stay on his tail long enough to see him go up to the third floor of the building. I have no idea where he went after that. I walked around like a lost fart for a while, but I couldn’t find him, and after two librarians asked me rather reproachfully what I was doing there, I had to leave. Plus, my phone’s blowing up. I’ve hardly spent any time with Sienna or the guys this week, and let’s just say they’ve noticed, and they mind.

Trip: Yo, where you at???

Dean: The Pardon tonight?

Sienna: I’m getting worried, M.

Sienna: Message me, or I’m going to come looking for you. Seriously. Don’t think I won’t.

My business law lecture is more painful than usual. It’s agony. The hall feels stifling. People are sitting too close, and the tap-tap of fingers on keyboards is like nails being dragged over a chalkboard. Forty-five minutes never felt so long. Prof. Dinkleman has never spoken slower either, and that’s saying something. I feel a fresh wave of fury at my father. I shouldn’t even be doing this course. I don’t care about it. I’m not interested, and I’m never going to use it.

By the time I start walking back to our room, I know I’m unraveling. I can feel it. I’m hot and shaky inside, burning with pent-up frustration and desire. Burning for him. Dread and excitement pool in my chest as I open the door. Dread because if he’s not here, I’m probably going to lose my shit and go looking for him in Emily’s room, and excitement because if he is, I’m putting my dick in his mouth even if I have to beg him to do it.

I open the door and see his silhouette standing at the window in front of my desk.

“Ryan.” My voice cracks as I say it. It’s just a word, just a name, but it’s broken. Carried across the space between us on the back of a ravenous plea.

He turns slowly toward me. He’s holding the money I left on the desk in his hand. His face is a picture of self-loathing and lust. He slides the clip off the cash and stuffs the money into his back pocket with a shrug I think is meant to imply nonchalance, but comes off a little stiff. Blood floods my cock. It rushes down so fast I feel lightheaded. He flicks the money clip over to me. It glitters as it flies through the air. I catch it easily, uncurling my palm and looking down at the high-karat letter M in my hand. I let my bag drop on the floor right where I stand and take three or four large strides toward him, unbuttoning and unzipping and ripping my shirt off as I move.

He drops to his knees, and before he’s properly parted his lips, I’ve wrestled the head of my dick into his mouth.

Fuuuck.

It feels good. Too good. So good that I almost nut on contact. What the hell? I dig my thumb into the base of my cock and squeeze hard until the threat passes. Oh, Jesus. What’s happening?

I’m not normally like this. I’ve never been a two-pump chump in my life. It’s just that his mouth is so warm. Puffy, soft, and inviting. Nothing at all like the rest of him. I feel like I’ve fallen into a pool of pleasure. A hot, decadent pool. Not just my dick, the whole of me. I feel it everywhere, lapping my skin and my insides. My hands tingle and so do my lips. Every tentative lick sends deep vibrations through me.

“I’m not gay,” he slurs around my dick, eyes slanted in open contempt.

“So you keep saying.” I smile as I feed him my dick again. I stroke a hand through his hair, making him slow down and not finishing my statement until he looks up at me. “Bisexuality exists, Ry,” I say softly. “It’s real, and it’s valid.”

He grunts, less angrily than usual, and almost loses his stride. He swallows and blinks watery eyes but quickly recovers.

“Mmm, yeah, like that.” My voice doesn’t sound like it’s coming from me. “Just like that. Give me those lips and that tongue.”

He does. He makes it sloppy like last time, and he uses both hands, circling me at the base, holding me steady as my legs tremble. He bobs his head, but now, when he pulls back, he adds a little suction. My eyes roll back as my soul starts coming unglued at the edges.

I pull out to catch my breath. His nostrils flare and he gives me an angry growl. His eyes are blazing, he’s breathing open-mouthed and hard, and there’s a slick shine of saliva running down his chin. He looks up accusingly. Wild. An animal that just had a bone taken away from it.

I push my jeans and boxers down a little more and lift my balls slightly, offering them to him. He butts them gently with his nose, and I have to screw my eyes closed tightly to stop myself from falling over the edge. I take slow breaths through my nose, trembling as he sweeps his tongue across the sensitive underside of my balls and clawing at my own thighs in desperation as a poisonous tongue licks the most vulnerable part of my body.

I’m the one whimpering this time. I can’t help it. I’m not sorry about it either. I want him, and I want him to know it.

He looks up at me and opens his mouth. Showing me teeth and tongue. Showing me softness and warmth. Showing me heaven on Earth.

I slot my dick back into his mouth, and this time, he uses one hand on my dick while the other slides up my chest and rolls a nipple between a thumb and forefinger. Lips, tongue, mouth, and throat all work in perfect concert with his hands and his moans. The pleasure is unreal, big and heavy, drowning everything out. Ecstasy leans in and whispers my name.

I answer.

I answer with a long, mournful howl, a hard buck of my hips, an impossible arch of my spine, and fingernails that dig into my palms. Wave after wave of pleasure surges through me and out of me. He swallows it all, drinking it down, looking at me when it’s over and licking his lips as if he wants more.

His eyes spark and then darken. I see the slight twitch of his right shoulder, and I quickly step back, putting my dick back in my pants hurriedly and zipping before he can give me the post-orgasm torture I know he’s planning.

His face breaks into a huge smile, his lips part and quirk up at the sides, top lip flattening, bottom lip curving into a perfect half-moon. His shoulders quake and he makes a soft, gruff sound. A distant rumbling. Thunder rolling in from a long way away. It’s so beautiful it takes me a second to piece it together.

Ryan Haraway just laughed.

I reach out with one hand and brush a lock of hair out of his face. “Fuck me.” My voice still isn’t mine. “That’s a beautiful sound.”

That snaps him out of it. He jerks his head back, away from my embrace, and blinks at me. I think he’d like to say something scornful, but it’s taking him a while to get back to speed. He looks wrecked. Absolutely wrecked. His eyes are big black holes, his lips red and swollen, chest still heaving. He has a hand over his dick, but even so, I can tell he’s hard.

“D’you want me to take care of you?”

He scrambles to his feet, pushing himself up with one hand on the floor and the other on his knee.

“Nah, I’m good,” he says through clamped teeth.

“I meant what I said, Ryan. You can have whatever you want from me. Mouth, hands, ass. Whatever you want, it’s yours. No question. No price.”

He pushes past me, buck-kneed, as he staggers to the bathroom.