Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Her hand, soft and delicate with glossy nails the color of the sky, glides down the railing as she makes her way to the lower half of the auditorium. The faint scent of her wildflower perfume catches in her breeze and I steal a generous inhalation, though it hardly satisfies.
I want to smell it on her skin—warm and brilliant, alive.
I also want to run my hands along her curves and bury my face between her thighs and hear her soft voice in my ear as her limber body melts beneath mine.
I want her nails digging so hard into my backside they leave marks for days. Marks I’d earn. Marks I’d deserve …
I could make her feel so fucking good if she’d just let me.
One night.
That’s all I want, all I need with Irie Davenport.
I want to unwind her, untighten that coiled personality. She’s guarded and private, unlike the other girls who throw themselves at me and the second they’re finished riding my cock, they lie in my arms and tell me their life stories like I give a shit. But Irie is different. She’s not from around here—someone told me she’s from the Midwest—and she’s not an open book.
She’s a padlocked diary.
A padlocked diary who wants nothing to do with me.
“Do you want my email just in case?” I ask, sounding like a schmuck as we pass through the door and into the hall. We’re side by side now but seconds from losing one another in a sea of shoulder-to-shoulder students.
“If I need it, I’ll look it up in the student directory,” she says.
“Cool, cool. See you Wednesday,” I say, but she’s already disappeared into the crowd.
Rebuffed again.
It’s not the first time.
And it sure as hell won’t be the last.
But I walk away with a smile the size of Texas and the swell of hope in my chest—no different from the feeling I get when I lead the team onto the field during the opening game of the season.
In football, when you see an opening, you take it. You hold onto the ball with your life and you run like fucking hell until you score—or at least until you advance the ball.
I’ve been advancing the ball since the first time I laid eyes on Irie at Collin Holbrook’s house party freshman year, and I’ve been running like hell ever since, but with four months until graduation, the end zone is finally in sight.
My cock swells in an anticipation of my sweetest victory yet.
I’m finishing the year with that touchdown.
Chapter 3
Irie
“Aunt Bette, I’m home,” I call as I hang my bag on the back of a kitchen chair. “Brought you dinner from the deli. Got that soup you like.”
I place the brown paper bag on the counter and trek to the living room to find my great aunt passed out in her recliner while the TV in the corner plays Wheel of Fortune. Well, technically she’s not my great aunt. She’s my mother’s brother’s wife’s aunt … but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter because she’s cool as hell and I’m honored to be related to her in any capacity.
“Hey,” I say softly, placing my hand on her shoulder until she stirs.
“Irie. Hi.” She blinks a couple of times. “What time is it?”
I lower the footrest of her chair, fold her crocheted throw, and help her to the kitchen. At eighty-three and a hair under five feet tall she gets around well enough, but I still like to do anything I can to make her life that much easier.
Also, it’s kind of why I’m here …
Four years ago, she offered to pay my college tuition and let me live with her for free—she only asked that I be her caretaker, which mostly consisted of running her errands, getting groceries, preparing basic meals, and maintaining the house inside and out. It was kind of strange at the time because I’d never met my mother’s aunt before. She lived in Southern California and I grew up in middle-of-nowhere Missouri.
It was a lot to think about at first … committing to four years of living with and caring for a complete stranger.
But the first time we met, she offered eighteen-year-old me a fuzzy navel wine cooler and told me stories from her stint as a strip club manager in the seventies.
We’ve kind of been best friends ever since …
Aunt Bette’s slowed down quite a bit over the last few years, though—particularly over this past winter break, when she spent nearly the entire month of December at the hospital battling a stubborn case of pneumonia. Every waking hour of Winter break was spent by her side, reading her the latest gossip articles from her favorite magazines, discussing her case with the doctor when necessary, sharpening her colored pencils and organizing her adult coloring books so she had something to do when she wasn’t sleeping.