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 Gage. 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 Gage 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 Gage 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.
"Gage." 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-Gage? 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.
"Gage?"
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, Stella. 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, Gage. 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."