In Ruins (5 page)

“Well said, Carleigh,” Zayne praises, and smiles, and it makes my stomach roll.
I'm Mr. Green, but she's Carleigh
.

He continues on about viral campaigns and how they don't even need to feature an actual product to be effective, but I can't stop thinking about the way he smiled at Carl. Suddenly I stop thinking of him as a professor trying to relate to his students, and I see him as something else. As a twenty-three-year-old good-looking guy whose eyes stray way too often to a hot-as-fuck eighteen-year-old girl. And the fact that she's smart—that she continues to participate and make what he describes as
keen observations
—surely isn't making her any less appealing to him.

This time I don't rush out when Zayne dismisses us. Instead, I stay seated, watching intently as he looks at Carl just a second too long as she heads out the door.

Tonight we're throwing the first party of the year at the lacrosse house, and I'm supposed to help set up, but I'm distracted as fuck. I keep picturing the way Zayne watched Carl's ass as she left class yesterday; and whether it's jealousy or protectiveness that keeps me from letting it go, the fact remains that I have no business with either.

I force the thought from my mind and go make sure the kegs are tapped and the punch is mixed, ignoring a bad joke by one of the second stringers about mixing in something extra to “make the girls better company.”
Fucking asshat
. I kick him off of punch duty and decide to keep an eye on him.

A few hours later the house is alive with bodies and music, slurring words and staggering steps.

I can't help but wonder if Carl will have the nerve to show up at a party at the house I live in, knowing she wouldn't hesitate if it were anywhere else.

“Hi, Tucker.” Some girl bats her eyelashes at me and smiles suggestively.

“I know you?” I ask, the slight gruffness in my drawl hinting that I'm drunker than I realized.

Her smile grows. “Ben told me you're the new starting defender.”

I find Ben across the room, and he holds up his beer in a gesture of cheers—like he's giving me a gift. Like I need his fucking help to pick up a girl.

I'm probably the only guy in the house who hasn't bagged anyone since school started just over a week ago, but that isn't because I haven't had the opportunity. And
for fuck's sake,
it's only been a goddamn week.

I make myself check out the girl in front of me, but she does nothing for me. She's cute, sure, but I just can't get myself interested.

And then I zero in on Carl. She's across the room with that same girl she was at the bar with, and I guess that the two are roommates. I can't believe she had the gall to show up here. She at least has the decency to look nervous, and her eyes dart around anxiously as she clings to her beer.

“Hello?”

I realize that this girl has been talking to me for the last minute and I haven't registered a word. “Huh?”

“You know her?”

Shit. She's followed my line of sight, and I pry my gaze away. “Who?” I play dumb.

The girl—a very unnatural redhead wearing way too much makeup—rolls her eyes. She shakes her cup. “Want to get me another beer?”

Not really
. My gaze meanders back to Carl, and this time she's spotted me. She stares at me first with fear, and then with something that looks suspiciously like jealousy when she takes in Red.
Interesting
. “Sure,” I lie, and then follow Red back to the kitchen.

First Carl has the balls to show up at my house, and then she thinks she has a right to be jealous that I'm talking to a girl? Especially when she so clearly reminded me she's single the last time we spoke. Sure, I'm the one that ended us, but she's the one who lied from our first fucking kiss. From even before then. Carl's been lying since we were fucking kids.

Last Year

The summer weeks drift by, long and lazy. Tucker has been in East Hampton for the past couple of weeks with Cap's and Dave's families. He's sent me a few texts but I've successfully ignored or blown him off. So successfully that he's stopped texting. Tina is deep into her fledgling relationship with Andy, and though I don't begrudge her her happiness, it does leave me a little lonely.

My mother is away on her usual August tour of the Côte d'Azur, currently holed up in a villa in the south of France, and frankly, it's a relief to not have her commenting on everything I do, everything I wear. I've spent a lot of time with Billy, which makes me happy, but more and more he wants to be with his friends. Typical twelve-year-old. And I'm the makeshift mother at seventeen, watching my favorite little boy need me less and less.

I've been reading a lot, lazing by the pool, and I've gone out a few times with some of the other girls. They flirt, and hook up, and I feign interest, all the while telling myself the reason I can't get Tucker out of my head is because of the sex.

And maybe it is. I've heard enough stories to know mine was not a typical first time. Tina lost it to a senior our sophomore year, a guy she'd been dating about six months, and she says it took her another six months before she ever had an orgasm from him.

Maybe I just need to do it again. To find out if I'm playing it up in my head, or if Tucker really is that good. If he's not, maybe I can let go of this borderline obsession, and if he is, then at least I'll know for sure that it's sex-induced. Purely biological, and maybe excusable?

I ran into Cap at Bagel Boys this morning, so I know they're back, and that they'll most definitely be at Andy's tonight.

I text Billy to check in, and he tells me he's going to stay over at Kyle's, so I text Kyle's mom to make sure it's okay. Really I just want to make sure that those are actually his plans. I know the tricks, I'm only seventeen after all, and, sadly, it doesn't take all that much effort to be a better parent to Billy than my mother ever was to me. Kyle's mom texts me back that she's happy to have him, and I lie back on my poolside chaise and relax.

Andy's party is packed. Besides partying and hooking up, it looks like Tucker spent his weeks in the Hamptons getting a deep brown tan. It makes his blond hair look blonder and his green eyes shimmer like sea glass in the evening light. And it makes me wonder what those T-shirt-covered muscles my fingers recall with aching detail look like in their darker tone.

It isn't long before Tucker obliges me, when he, Cap, and Andy, strip down to their underwear and jump into the lake. I sit back against the enormous weeping willow and watch their drunken escapades, trying to be nothing other than amused as Tucker tries to convince girl after girl to go skinny-dipping. Maybe it's his ridiculous Tucker tone, but I find myself laughing at him. That is, until he notices, and makes his way over to me.

“Something funny, Princess?” He arches a playful brow.

“Just the lengths you'll go to get any random girl naked,” I tease.

Tucker smirks. “Not
any
girl, Princess. Not you. Not here. You're for my eyes only.”

I swallow thickly. “Is that so?” I challenge.

Tucker nods, staring intently down at me, as if waiting for what I'll say next. But he should know by now there's only one way I respond to a dare—even a vaguely implied one.
His eyes only? Please.

I stand up. “So I shouldn't go for a swim, then?”

Tucker shakes his head. “Fuck no. Not here.”

“Hmm…but the water does look so inviting…” It doesn't. I have no desire whatsoever to go swimming right now.

“Carl.” His tone is suddenly censuring, and I'm surprised by the way his features drain of mirth. But his reaction only eggs me on.

“Teen!” I shout, getting her attention from where she sits on the dock, feet in the water, being splashed by Andy. “Why should these guys have all the fun?”

I grab the hem of my tank top and peel it up over my head. Tina is immediately on board. She hops to her feet and starts stripping. We won't skinny-dip, of course, but our bras and underwear cover as much if not more than a bikini, and
God
do I love the shock on Tucker's face right now.

I shimmy out of my shorts and slip my fingers around to the hook of my bra, just to mess with him.

His face darkens in anger. “
Carl
.” He reaches for me as if he's actually going to forcibly stop me from getting naked, and I snake around him and race toward the dock. Moments later, Tina and I jump into the lake, shrieking with laughter.

We start some kind of equal opportunity stripping and swimming feminist movement, and by the time I turn around to face the shore, half of the girls have joined us.

Thirty minutes later, almost the entire party has moved into the cool, refreshing lake, which does feel pretty damn great after all. A chicken fight breaks out and people watch and cheer.

Eventually I feel him behind me. He doesn't touch me, but I know he's there. I turn my face to him, smirking, and he takes another step so I can feel his chest against my back. He isn't mad anymore, just amused, his eyes alight with challenge.

“I'm gonna get you back for that, you know,” he murmurs into my ear.

I shrug. Any time he wants to strip down for me is just fine.

But then I feel his fingertips ghosting along my sides, and I suck in a sharp breath. We are deep enough that the water comes up to my chest, and it's dark enough that it hides everything below it. I can't help it, his touch makes me lean back into him until I am flush against him.

“You see what you've done?” he asks, hands banding around my waist as he presses the conspicuous evidence of his desire against my ass.

I nod, pushing my thighs together as I arch into him just a little bit more.

He walks us slowly and casually back away from the crowd until he is leaning against the now empty dock, his fingers caressing all the while. I just let him. I have no witty words or snarky quips to shoot his way, not when he's touching me like this.

“You tease me, now I'm going to tease you.” His voice grows deeper with each word.

I trace my nails gently over the back of his hands, and he takes it as encouragement. He slips a finger into the waistband of my boy-cut underwear, and just slides it tauntingly back and forth, back and forth.

I gasp in a breath, waiting to see how far he will go. His other hand explores, roaming around my hip and then to my ass, his fingers digging softly into my flesh. My head lolls against his shoulder and I feel his chest rise with his sharp inhale.

“You like that, Princess?”

I don't want to admit that I do, because I don't want to be the one to lose this challenge. But more than that—more than
anything
—I don't want him to stop. So I nod.

Tucker lets out a soft growl from the back of his throat, and then his fingers dip slowly into my underwear.

“Tuck,” I sigh.

His head drops over my shoulder and he kisses my throat. “I said I was going to tease you, not make you feel good,” he whispers. “But fuck, Princess, when you say my name like that…” He trails off, but his fingers start stroking me, and I whimper.

He takes me higher and higher, my hips moving with his hand, my ass grinding into his steel erection, and his breathing races mine. He pushes his hand farther down until he thrusts one, then two fingers inside me, the heel of his hand rubbing purposefully, his rhythm making me gasp for air.

Tucker whispers dirty little things about my body and what it inspires in him, how jealous his dick is of his fingers right now, how he wishes he could do the same thing with his tongue.

And then he takes me over the edge, right there in the lake, our friends no more than fifty yards away. I bite my lip so hard I almost draw blood to keep from crying out, my nails digging into his flexing forearms.

It takes several moments for me to return to earth as Tucker's hand slows and eventually withdraws. He traces his fingers over my belly and around my navel as I try to catch my breath.

“Now I'm never going to be able to leave this lake,” he says with a laugh.

“Hmm…?”

Tucker answers by grinding his raging arousal against my ass again.

“I came back into the lake to wait for it to go down, and to get you back for getting me riled up in the first place.” He laughs. “And now I'm going to have to spend the night in this fucking lake.”

Or…I could return the favor
, I think to myself.

I suck in a deep, courage-mustering breath.

I reach behind me and let the tips of my still-tingling fingers graze over his thigh, dipping under the hem of his boxer briefs. Tucker stops breathing behind me. I turn my head, and my lips reach up to the base of his throat, just softly brushing his skin. His Adam's apple rolls under my lips with his thick swallow and his hands grip my sides.

I don't dare turn to face him. If anyone looks over and actually manages to make us out through the blackness, it will look like he is just holding me as we watch our friends party. If I turned, it would look too intimate. We would at the very least look like we were making out, and that would destroy the clandestine ambiance—as if our intimacy is a secret that belongs only to us.

I slide my palm up over his underwear until I find the massive shape of him under the thin, wet cotton. My other hand assaults from above, slipping beneath his waistband and immediately finding its target.

“Princess…
Fuuuck
.” Tucker groans into my hair, emboldening me, and I grasp him firmly and start to stroke.

I've only done this once before, when I was probably too young to be doing it at all, and certainly didn't know how to make it especially good. And granted, my knowledge now only comes from the couple of porn videos Tina and I have watched online, but Tucker's rapid breathing, the way his fingers burrow into my waist, the trembling of his taut belly behind me, tells me he likes what I'm doing.

I silently marvel at his size, how he possibly managed to fit
that
inside my body. I move faster, a little stronger, stroking and twisting, wanting so much to make him feel as incredible as he made me feel. He hides his face in my hair, his chest rising and falling fast and hard behind me.

“Fuck, Princess. I'm going to come in your hand.” He says it like a warning, but it feels more like a promise.

And then he stops breathing entirely, his fingers root themselves almost painfully into my skin, and he does exactly as he said. I strain my neck to watch him, his face turned upward to the night sky, eyes shut tight, teeth clenched as he fights to keep quiet just as he forced me to do minutes ago.

In those short moments he is perfectly mine, and I revel in it.

He takes a moment to calm his breathing, and then spins me to face him, green eyes shimmering with awe in the moonlight. “You never do what I expect,” he murmurs.

I bite my lip to keep my smile from growing into an epically embarrassing grin.

It feels like a victory. But certainly not a defeat for him. And I wonder if Tucker and I have found a new way to challenge each other, one where we can both triumph, and I try to ignore the warmth in my chest as my heart swells with pride and something else—something that threatens to thoroughly unravel this new delicate truce of friendship and wonderful, world-spinning benefits.