Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Iris

The next day and a half are blissfully…intense.

After our study session at the cove, Teddy drove us home. We ordered takeout from the Chinese restaurant down the street from the apartment and we studied some more. This time, there was no kissing agreement, as much as I would have loved one, because I meant what I said. He’s going to pass the test and play in the championship. The more that becomes a reality, the more I can see he yearns to be out on the field. He was born for it.

Several times throughout that night together, we woke up straining against each other, his fingers in my panties, his hips restless against my thigh. In his half-asleep delirium, he proposed to me no less than a dozen times, his tongue moving feverishly in my mouth, on my breasts. It’s a miracle I made it through the night with my virginity intact, but I did. And the next night, too, though my boyfriend has started prowling around me like a wolf stalking a lamb.

He backs me into corners and fists my clothing. He sweats and curses.

He gets down on his knees and licks at my backside through my clothes.

He holds me down and asks me questions about my life before him. What I like to eat and drink. My favorite movies and music and holidays. He interrogates me about my dreams, my hopes, my secrets. Where and how my body reacts when he kisses me certain ways.

He peels off his shirt at the oddest times to tempt me.

I stand firm, though, repeatedly pointing at the textbook and our new, joint notes.

Teddy also makes good on his vow to douse me in his cologne and make me walk around campus wearing his jacket. Truth be told, I hated it at first. Everyone stared and whispered as I passed, speculating about me, our relationship. But after a while, I started to feel untouchable. As if I was walking around in a bubble of his protection. I loved having the smell of him available to me all day, when he couldn’t be right next to me.

I’m in love.

I’m deeply, wildly in love with this man.

He’s still in pain over the loss of his father and he lets me soothe him when I see he’s down. He lets me take his head into my chest and stroke his hair, his huge, athlete’s body curling around mine, pulling me tight and choking the air out of me, my name a whisper on his lips. And in turn, he asks me a million questions about my time in the monastery, growing visibly troubled when I recount the lonely years I spent within those walls. I can see that he would go back in time and rescue me, if possible, and somehow that helps. Makes me feel so much less alone now that it makes up for lost time. Or it will, as our years pass together.

On the morning of the test, I wake up alone in bed. I walk out of the bedroom to find Teddy going over the study outline, his mouth moving as he reads. When he glances up and sees me in the doorway wearing one of his old game jerseys, his eyes darken to black and he wets his lips. “You and me go straight to bed after the test, Iris. Don’t even think about disappearing somewhere.” He quickly swipes perspiration from his brow. “I’m going to have my reward. I’m going to have it all day and night.”

Heat trickles down to my womanhood, muscles seizing. “I know.”

His gaze drops to the juncture of my thighs. “You want it, too. Climbing all over me in your sleep. I came this close, honey, to railing you up and down the bed last night.”

He’s right. In my sleep, I slung a leg across his hips and rode him through his briefs, my sex aching, swollen, in need of the relief we’ve been denying ourselves since the cove. “But you wanted to do the right thing, so you stopped.”

“Yeah. It turns out…I fucking live to make you proud of me. So…” He blows out a shaky breath, then puts his attention back on the textbook. “So I’m not just going to pass, I’m going to get an A. And then I’m going to win the championship, just so I can lay it all at your feet.”

“It’s not just for me. He’d be proud, too. And you can be proud of yourself.”

He drops the pencil in his hand and stands, coming toward me, intense as ever. “I know. And I am. But I never would have considered any of that if you didn’t come into my life, so I’m doing it all for you, Iris.” He cradles my face in his hands, the gentle touch at odds with his determination. “Your man is going to give you the world.”

Our mouths gravitate toward each other and we both grow winded on the spot, our bodies pressing, grinding briefly, before we both pull away. Aching.

“Goddammit,” he growls through his teeth, slamming a fist into the wall. “I…angel, it’s going to be hard for me to be gentle today. I know I said I would, but fuck. Fuck. These last two days have me at the end of my rope.”

“However it is between us, it’ll be right,” I say, brushing our fingers together. “You’ll make it right.”

Teddy nods, swallowing, seemingly fascinated by the way our fingers touch. “Get ready to go, huh? I want to be there early. I want you to wait outside the test room, where I can see you.” He reaches down and grips his manhood through his jeans. “And honey, I want you thinking about this fat dick, so you’re nice and wet when they’re done grading the test. No more foreplay. We’ve been doing that for days.” Hot eyes tick up to mine. “Outside the classroom, wet and waiting. Understood?”

“Yes, Teddy,” I whisper, because whether it’s right or wrong, I love the way he commands me. It’s not done in the name of keeping me under his thumb. No. He commands me in ways that keep me close, keep me safe, because I think if he didn’t have those two assurances, he might lose his mind. And I’m getting to his level, too. I’ve become his identical counterpart, yearning for him when he’s at practice or even just in the shower. We reunite like long-lost lovers afterward, hands stroking and getting reacquainted, syncing our breaths once again. I miss him when he’s standing right in front of me.

He advances on me slowly now, turning me toward the bedroom, lifting up the borrowed jersey and slapping my bottom. “Wear something I can take off easily.”

* * *

I’m not the only one waiting outside of the test room.

Half the school is here in red and gold, our official colors. Some people even have their faces painted or hold signs with encouraging messages for Teddy. When it was just the two of us studying, the pressure to help him pass was more than enough, but this? So much is on the line. If Teddy doesn’t pass, he won’t play in the championship and we will lose. It’s a given.

No. He’s going to pass. Not only that, he’s going to get an A.

He worked so hard and he’s a lot smarter than he gives himself credit for.

Remembering his directions to me before we left the apartment, I close my eyes and recall him beneath me last night, the way he rode me on his bucking hips, sweat dripping off his abs, jaw clenched tight, shuddering, trying not to come. How he groaned my name so brokenly. How he threw himself off the bed and took a cold shower while I lay panting, my underwear clinging to my skin. It’s almost over. The waiting is almost—

My thoughts burst like a bubble when I hear a door creak. Slam.

My eyes fly open. The mass of students is deadly silent as Teddy walks out, backpack slung over one shoulder, a backwards hat on his head. He’s holding a paper in his hand, but I can’t read his expression. Oh God, he’s not smiling. What happened?

He’s focused on me, jaw set.

He stops in the center of the courtyard, holds up the paper. “I got an A.”

Utter pandemonium breaks out. Deafening cheers, screams of joy. Male students chest bump as they watch their hero stride toward me. Somewhere in the distance, a marching band begins to play, but my heartbeat drowns out the noise almost immediately. Because my boyfriend very clearly does not care about the fanfare whatsoever. And if I had any doubt about that fact, he rids me of it a second later when I’m thrown over his shoulder and carried out of the courtyard.

My smile is so huge that it actually hurts my face.

“Teddy.” My laughter is watery—and delivered to the muscular swells of his butt. “You did it. You did it. I’m so proud of you.”

He keeps walking. Faster. He doesn’t slow down until we’re at the parking lot.

The next time I glimpse his face, there is a fine layer of sweat on his forehead. His breath rattles in and out, the Western Civilization test crushed and forgotten in his hand. He wrenches open the passenger side of his truck and tosses the stapled papers into the footwell, then sets me down on the seat, buckling me in with shaking hands. It’s impossible to miss the growing ridge behind the fly of his jeans. Or the way his restless touch scrubs up and down my thighs, higher to my breasts, which he squeezes once with a strangled groan.

“T-Teddy? Are you okay?”

No answer.

He slams the door closed and circles around the front bumper, never taking his eyes off me. They pin me through the windshield like a hundred-mile-per-hour wind. My legs scoot together on the seat in an attempt to suppress the spreading ache there. I’m growing hotter by the second, muscles tightening like the cogs of an engine. And the wetness. It comes on so fast, it’s almost embarrassing. By the time he climbs into the driver’s side of the truck and starts the engine with a violent twist of his wrist, my nails are clawing the seat on either side of my hips.

“Don’t say another word. Your innocent voice is too much when I’m this hard,” he rasps, gunning the truck in reverse and peeling out of the parking lot. We travel down the street leading off campus and once we’re past the gates, he opts for the backroad, instead of the interstate. “Get those little fucking panties off.” His fingers flex around the steering wheel, green scenery flying by on either side of us. “I’m not going to make it home.”

“We’re only five minutes away,” I whisper.

“Too long,” he clips. “Pull them down or I’ll tear them straight off, so help me God.”

My underwear is in limited supply and I can’t afford to lose a pair, plus I want to follow his orders. Some undiscovered part of me is thrilled by the fact that I’ve pushed him to the edge, even if his intensity concerns me. Makes me fearful that he won’t go slow like he promised. I barely recognize him right now, he’s in such…heat.

Biting my lip, I reach up beneath my skirt and work the panties down my thighs, his groan rending the air in two when I lift up my hips. “Jesus Christ,” he growls, swerving off the road into the forest. We go bouncing across uneven terrain before he skids to a stop in a shaded clearing, the sound of wind and the nearby ocean filling the cab of the truck, along with his harsh panting. I twist the panties in my hands nervously, but he takes them from me, shoving them up against his nose, inhaling, groaning. Keeping them pressed there as he exits the truck and prowls around the rear bumper.

I squeak when my door is yanked open. There he stands, eyes on fire, muscles seething. I’m freed of the seatbelt and pulled into his arms, carried around to the rear bed of the truck. He settles me on the lowered grate, returning briefly for the blanket in the rear cab, spreading it out behind me in the truck bed.

“Teddy?”

He doesn’t answer me.

No, he drags me closer to the blanket and pushes me down, so I’m looking up at his strained features and the towering trees above us. “Don’t,” he pleads, stripping off his shirt and starting on the button and zipper of his jeans. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re nervous. Or scared of me. Please…I’ll go back to being me as soon as I can get this one fuck, honey. I’m dying. I need to bang you—hard and rough and mean. I thought I could go easy, but I was wrong. I was wrong.” He shoves the jeans down to his knees and fists his enormous erection, coming down over me, baring his teeth against my mouth. “I hurt everywhere. Your pussy is the only thing that can make it stop. It’s going to take a pounding, Iris. There’s nothing I can do to stop myself at this point. You’ve driven me insane. With the honey and cream smell of it and that tight fucking grind you give me through our clothes, right to the edge. Stopping me right at the fucking edge. Not this time. Open your legs.”

I’ll go back to being me as soon as…

He’s right. He’s not himself right now. He’s been reduced to his basest instincts and I had a major role in making him this way. Pushing him to this animal state. So I have to snap him out of it before he does something he regrets. Like hurt me. “You can be sweet,” I breathe, sliding my fingers into his hair. “You love me, Teddy. You don’t want to hurt me or make me cry. You can be gentle for my first time.” I lap at his upper lip with my tongue. “My hero can do anything.”

His intensity falters slightly, a crease appearing between his brows. Humanity warms the light brown of his eyes. He does not like the possibility of me shedding tears. Not at all. But he shakes his head, speaking in a low rumble. “I’m not your hero right now,” he grates, pinning my thighs open with his hips, slapping his steely erection down against my slit. One, two, three. “Later, I will be. Right now, I’m the guy who is going to fuck you rotten in the woods where no one can hear you wail.”

Part of me is shockingly turned on by that. By the imagery of his powerful body bucking above my smaller one, the truck pitching back and forth, his grunts mingling with my cries. I want to know him at that most basic level. Man reduced to beast. I want to know him in every single way, even that one, but I know he’ll hate himself for being too rough with me and I want to save him that guilt. “What if I can’t see you as my hero after you hurt me?”

He freezes, fear cutting across his expression. “I’m not me right now, honey,” he whispers. “It’s not just that I’m so hot to fuck you I can barely think straight, it’s…it’s the need to stake my claim. When I walked out of class and you were standing there…”

“What?”

“Men were standing too close. On all sides.” His nostrils flare, murder blackening his eyes. “And I hadn’t put my come inside you yet. They know. They sense it and they wonder if there’s still time to claim you, before I can do it. Next time you’re in a public, every time you’re in public from now on, you’re going to carry my scent. My sperm. Everywhere. All the time.”

“I want that, too.” I go up on my elbows, kissing his mouth. “Come back to me, Teddy.”

It takes a few moments of kissing his lips before they begin to soften. And then he makes a broken sound, dropping his weight fully on top of me, kissing me frantically. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You just drive me fucking insane, Iris. I’m obsessed with you. I’m out of my head.”

“I’m sorry,” I whimper as his teeth latch onto my ear, scrape down my neck. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

After feasting beneath my ear, mashing his lips and teeth into the curve of my throat, neck, shoulder, he moves lower. Kissing down my body until he reaches my skirt, working it up to my hips. His hot breaths bathe my inner thighs and I try not to squirm self-consciously as he looks his fill, nibbling at sensitive flesh, before parting my sex with a groaning lick.

“Oh. Honey. So goddamn wet for your man.” He presses his face to me, rubbing it side to side. Reveling. “Good girl.”

His voice is still incredibly strained, his fingers bruising on my thighs where he holds them open, but he’s working to regain control. The effort is causing him to shake, but he’s trying. And oh…oh God, he’s found that little nub with his tongue and he’s teasing it with bats and kisses, laboring to breathe when he finally gives it a stiff lick that makes me cry out, my back arching in the bed of the truck.

“I’m going to finger you, honey. To let your body know I’m coming.” We lock eyes over the writhing length of my body, his tongue flickering against my swelling bud and he slowly, slowly, pushes his middle finger inside of me.

Starbursts pop behind my eyes.

Something deep, deep in my belly wakes up and rejoices, clenches, asks for more.

I don’t know what’s happening. I expected pain the first time something entered me, especially Teddy’s long, thick finger, but I’m not getting any. “M-more…” I croak.

His eyes darken, cheekbones awash with color, sweat making his dark hair stick to his forehead. With a rigid jaw, he adds his index finger, pressing both of them deep, but not too deep. It’s obvious he’s holding back, not wanting to go past the barrier of my virginity. I want him to, though. No, that’s an understatement. Whereas a moment ago, I was scared of him hurting me, I’m suddenly desperate for him to fill me with his shaft. Completely. His fingers feel divine. They spread warmth wherever they touch. My hips roll encouragingly and I babble incoherently, trying to express what’s happening inside of me, but I don’t know if I could even if I were able.

I’m a virgin. But my body isn’t reacting like one.

It’s eager. I’m so eager for contact with his naked body, I’m stammering his name, clawing at his shoulders. I want him unleashed on me. What was I thinking slowing him down?

“Honey, what’s wrong?” He prowls up my body, concern deeply etched into his forehead. “Were my fingers too much?”

I shake my head frantically. “N-not enough.”

His beautiful head tilts, his frown deepening. “Help me understand.”

“I don’t know if I can. I just…I thought you being inside of me w-would hurt or feel weird, but I like it. I love it.”

Understanding dawns and his bare, sweaty chest starts to shudder up and down. “My girlfriend is the holy grail of virgins. Is that it?” Without breaking eye contact, he wrenches up my shirt and tugs down the cups of my bra, exposing my hard nipples. And I whimper, arching my back, showing myself to him. Begging. “You were scared. But now that you’ve gotten a little preview, you want to get banged like a barn door in a storm, is that right?”

“I didn’t realize…” I whisper. “I didn’t know it would feel l-like…”

“Like what?”

“Like I’ve just been waiting for you to…”

“Track you down and sink something good and deep between these pretty thighs?” He guides his arousal to my entrance and eases in the tip, gritting his teeth. “Be sure, Iris. Once that cherry juice is dripping off my balls, not even that sweet little voice calling me your hero is going to slow me down.”

Tremors move through me, my femininity squeezing and weeping, demanding to be filled. I can’t believe what’s happening. Is it supposed to be like this? Have I been secretly depraved this whole time and never realized? “Please,” I sob, the sluice of wetness through my folds unbearable without him. Without him taking me, experiencing me. “Hard, Teddy. Fast.”

“Son of a bitch,” he growls, positioning himself, then bracing his right hand on the cab of the truck over my head. With a strangled roar, he punches his hips forward—and unleashes total euphoria inside of me. There’s a gentle tear, one that we both acknowledge with a hard kiss, twin expressions of lust and wonder, but there’s no pain. Instead, there’s a voraciousness. His full, pulsing member inside of my body is like a drug, a brand, an on switch. I’m someone else now. Someone who has been living with hidden needs without realizing it.

“Teddy,” I moan, lifting my hips beneath him, digging my heels into his buttocks.

Scraping at his broad, strong back with my nails.

“Can’t believe this,” he says raggedly, face contorted in pain. “You’re so fucking tiny and tight. Felt that cherry pop, baby. You shouldn’t want it dirty.”

“Yes. Yes, I want it dirty,” I gasp. “Dirty. Please.”

My plea unhinges him.

With a strained curse, he begins to rut me. Hard. My mouth falls open, sensations hitting me like blasts from a cannon. There’s an awestruck whisper in the back of my head, telling me I was born to be intimate with this man. I wasn’t experienced enough to realize it until now—but he knew, didn’t he? That’s why he’s been so sick with lust. If I’d known how vital it is for us to be joined in this way, so completely, I would never have resisted. “Oh my goodness,” I whimper, sinking my teeth into his shoulder, squeezing my sex around him, glorying in the way he jerks and pants and bears down harder. The truck creaks and groans beneath us, mingling with the sounds of wet, pounding skin and intakes of breath. Growls and grunts and cries.

“You fucking goddess.” His voice scrapes in my ear. “Smooth little body. Sopping wet cunt. You’re working me so good. In and out of that tight-ass fuck hole, but you still feel innocent as a motherfucker. How the hell do you do it?” he grinds out.

As if I could respond.

I’ve entered a different plane of existence. One where only sensation matters. Stimulation of my clit and his shaft and bonding with him and sucking his tongue and lifting, lifting, lifting my backside, getting pinned down harder for my efforts and growled at, his hand a manacle around my throat, holding me so tight that I become a cherished possession. The gateway to his release, his pleasure, it’s all I want to be for the rest of my life.

“Ohhh honey, you’re making me come.” The slaps of his hips grow louder, his testicles pressing tight to my bottom with every deep thrust. There’s a dizzying dance taking place inside of me, as if all of my hormones are assembling in a circle and joining hands, gathering closer and closer and closer. And the harder he rides me, the faster his pace, the faster I speed toward Armageddon. “Bought condoms because I wanted to respect your wishes, but I threw them out this morning, Iris. It was never going to happen.” His grips my throat tighter. “You were born to take my fucking sperm.”

“Yes,” I gasp, sparks beginning to dance in my vision. “Fill me up. I can’t live without it. Without you. Please.”

He releases a shout into my neck, pounding me so hard now, my teeth clack together, my legs beginning to tremble wildly with the magnitude of what he’s drawing out of me. “You finally get it, don’t you?” His voice is deep and resonant in my ear. “We’ll live in this world, but we’ve got our own world, too, don’t we? Just you and me and this obsession. No one can touch it. We don’t separate for any reason. We don’t let anything come between us, especially some fucking latex. You want your man’s sperm, baby, honey, clench that pussy one more time and I’ll flood that little thing. And you will come with me.”

“Uh-huh,” I manage, nodding unevenly, the gathering in my tummy cinching closer, closer. Oh God, I can’t stop the landslide. Not even if I wanted to. I’m trapped underneath his huge, quarterback body, double teamed by his strength and the wild, unexpected response of my body. As soon as the rocks start to topple from the cliff, my climax barreling into me, I seize my intimate muscles around him, so tightly that he can’t even withdraw for a final thrust. No, his eyes simply go blind, his thick frame juddering on top of me, scalding hot liquid bathing me from the inside, ripple after ripple passing through me, through him, the mutual pleasure so intense I can’t stop my limbs from flailing, straining, batting at Teddy’s shaking back.

“I love you. I love you.” He chants these words into my neck, his open mouth raking up and down the side of my neck, into my hair. “My angel. Mine forever. My perfect Iris. I fucking love you. I love you. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I breathe, searching for his mouth blindly, connecting, our mouths moving in frantic reverence until sleep claims me and I fade into the black knowing Teddy will take care of me. That I’m safe and loved and nothing can ever invade our two-person world.

Nothing.