Page 65 of Lovefool

“Hey, don’t say that. You are. It’s not even…fuck, Lake, it’s not even trouble. I want to be your protector. And I know you’re fully capable of handling yourself, but you deserve someone who will fight for you.”

I’m used to fighting my own battles, and I definitely don’t choose them wisely. Sutton has single-handedly shattered the BREAK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY glass surrounding my heart. Now I’m about as vulnerable as the lesions scarring his knuckles.

Everyone has left the locker room. It’s just the two of us in here, and the intimacy of our conversation is starting to plant some lecherous ideas in my head—ideas that have no business materializing past nine p.m.

I drop my hand from his jaw, instead employing it to unravel a strip of sterile dressing. The action is painfully mechanical, and despite basking in the heat that emanates off his body, I’ve never felt colder.

I bandage Sutton’s hand without saying a word. Tears begin to bludgeon the backs of my eyes, and I pray that they’re dry enough not to reflect the state-of-the-art lighting overhead.

Once, twice, I wrap around the affected area, tearing the gauze off to complete my sloppy wound management.

Sutton crooks his neck to press his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You could never scare me. I just…none of this would’ve happened if I didn’t break into Buford’s house that night and capsize your entire life.”

“You didn’t capsize my entire life,” he insists.

My guilt is propulsive, and I get a sour taste on the palate of my tongue. “It feels like it.”

“Kiss me. Please,” he begs out of nowhere, brushing his nose against mine, the smell of his breath surprisingly minty as it warms the bottom of my face.

“What?”

“Kiss me, Trouble. I’m in pain, and you’re my only salvation. Let me show you how much better you’ve made my life.”

Sutton has a habit of rendering me speechless, but this is…almost unbelievable. Not in the sense that I don’t doubt he could ever feel this strongly for me, but in the sense that he’s choosing now to bare his heart to me.

Before him, I was in a permanent purgatory where nothing mattered except taking care of Max. Not my academics, not my social life. It was like I was sinking into a cold, bottomless lake, and every time I tried to surface, I wasn’t able to break through the ice.

But then, one day, I saw the first sliver of sunlight penetrate the sheet of frost above my head, and there he was—the unidentifiable silhouette of the person who was going to save me from myself.

Full-throttle, I kiss him before he implores me again. I kiss him because I can’t breathe without him. I kiss him because it’s the only thing that silences the voices in my head.

When I marry our lips together, I don’t bother with taking things slow before I’m swinging my leg over and straddling his lap. My makeshift first aid kit clatters to the floor. He anchors his injured hand into my hair to pull me even closer.

The kiss is fucking transcendent. He exacts just the right amount of pressure to draw my tongue out from its hiding place, and he initiates a rhythm that pulls me deeper into his orbit with every modest nudge of his mouth.

The tug on my head becomes incessant but not painful, and I’m doing a terrible job at measuring my breath through each elongated French kiss that compels a shudder to stampede through my body. Sutton and I are both teeming with adrenaline tonight, and the gentleness that he usually reserves for me is absent.

Finally pulling away for air, I feel him grin against my mouth, pulling my plump bottom lip between his front teeth and letting it go with a pop. It’s a pinnacle of pleasure-pain that takes a string of spit as compensation—that awakens a hidden pulse in my cunt intent on ruining the state of my gusset.

“Fuuuck,” Sutton groans, licking my residual saliva off his lips, his bulge bursting through his hockey pants. He’s as hard as a goddamn rock from a tepid kiss alone, and pride runs counterpoint to the unconcealed desire itching under my skin.

Maybe it’s the fact that my thoughts are cobbled together by runts of testosterone and the badgering reminder that it’s been years since I had wall-banging sex—looking at you, Micro Penis Montgomery—but my sanity is on hiatus, and dearly missed debauchery is now its new stand-in.

“What if someone catches us?” I breathe, grinding my crotch over Sutton’s impressive hard-on, producing a friction so delicious that more arousal spurts against the material of my panties, pooling against the swollen lips of my neglected pussy.

He nuzzles into my neck, nipping at the thin skin of my jugular with a surprising amount of restraint.

His tone hovers between deference and arrogance, as if two halves of the same whole are fighting for dominance. “Then let them watch,” he growls, the sound so jarringly deep that it ricochets off the moisture-resistant walls and sinks into my belly.

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. I’ve never seen this side of him before. Chivalry really is dead, and I couldn’t be happier.

Voyeurism is something I’ve dabbled in, but never to this extreme. Sutton’s thick, ten-inch dick splitting open my cunt in the confines of our rendezvous point, bumping against my cervix with a sensitive, half-gloved head, stretching out the skin of my stomach where his monstrous cock leaves a stark impression.

I scoff, but it’s good-natured. “Let them watch?”

“Yeah, baby. Let them watch how I touch you…here,” he drawls, slipping his hand underneath my long-sleeve shirt to reach up and fondle my bare breast. I ditched the bra tonight because it was uncomfortable. Not because I thought I’d be celebrating with Sutton in the guys’ locker room.