Even If the Sky is Falling, page 25
“Thank you,” I huffed, wanting to strangle and kiss her in equal measure. I turned back toward the closed door to the classroom, the room I’d been poking around when Piper showed up. That felt like years ago, even though it was just a few hours. I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and twisted, glancing over my shoulder where Piper was basically stuck to my back and looking pensive. “You okay?”
“You said I was smarter than you,” she whispered.
“That’s what you took from all of that?”
Piper shrugged, her eyes widening. “It just seemed worth noting!”
“You’re impossible, I don’t know why I even—” She nudged me from behind and the door creaked open like it was auditioning for a WD-40 ad.
The lights at the front of the room were still on, illuminating the low podium and table on the small stage. Piper’s fingers dug into my sides and her chest was against my back. “Hello? Anyone here?” We stepped together into the room and I knew her heartbeat matched mine in intensity. The space was cool, making me think the air-conditioning worked better in this classroom than the little graduate student suite we’d commandeered for M&Ms, scotch, sex and waiting out the end of the world.
“Is someone down here?” Piper called from behind me and we looked left and right. I had no idea what I was doing so I channeled every police procedural I’d ever seen, feeling a need to yell, “Clear!” No one stirred or spoke as we made our way along the cinder block wall toward the stage, Piper holding on to me. I liked that part despite the mild uncertainty and fear. I guess that was one way to lose the erection I didn’t particularly want to share with a stranger.
“There’s no one here,” Piper said, loosening her grip on me. She took a few steps from me, padding up the short staircase for the stage in her bare feet and putting us at eye level. “Do you think they went into another room?”
“Maybe... I liked it better when I knew we were alone.”
“Me, too.” She glanced around and I admired the curve of her neck; I couldn’t help it. The curve of her neck was part of every memory of every premed class I took. She’d rub her neck with the tip of her index finger when she wasn’t sure about an answer. It didn’t happen often, but those were the only times I had a chance of scoring higher or doing better. She touched that soft fingertip with the red-painted nail to her neck now and I was lost in the motion.
In an instant, there was a loud crash and Piper was against me, or maybe I was against her. Our arms were tangled and it took a moment to shift my brain from that fingertip to the crash to Piper in my arms. The door had slammed again with no one in sight.
“Damn air-conditioning,” she muttered, her face against my chest. “How could I forget that after four years of doors slamming?”
I willed my acute stress response, my fight-or-flight instinct, to slow. “You’re right. Shit.” I lowered myself to the top step, awkwardly since Piper’s arms were still around me and she was draped across my lap once we were seated. I stroked the spot on her neck where she’d been rubbing.
“Guess that little moment of...whatever in there didn’t calm us down much,” she said, settling against me. Piper would not acknowledge that she was willingly cuddling with me. She would deny it was happening if I brought it up so I didn’t mention how her weight on my thighs made me feel safe and surrounded and how she smelled so good.
“That moment of me giving you the best orgasm of your life?”
“I never said it was the best of my life.” She rested her head against my shoulder.
“But it was, right?” I fiddled with the zipper at the top of her back. “I guess I’m okay if I take second place to your own ministrations. How about that?”
“You can have second place.” Her fingers toyed with the buttons on my shirt, exploring each one as we both came down from the high of adrenaline. “This was our Biology 101 classroom. It’s where we first saw each other.”
“Not exactly,” I said tugging on her zipper, seeing how easily it would slide down.
Piper smacked my stomach with the back of her palm. “Are you challenging me because I gave you second place? Fine, it was, hands down, the best orgasm of my life.”
I tugged the zipper a little lower, rubbing the space between her shoulder blades. “Yeah, I already guessed that, but that class still wasn’t where I first saw you.”
“It was the first day of freshman year,” she insisted, pulling back to meet my eyes. “The professor should have called on me—I had my hand up—but they called on you instead because you’re an Edison.”
“Yeah. That happened, but I’d already noticed you.” I tugged the zipper another inch down her back and I noticed how she squirmed against me when I did. I loved how Piper reacted to me. “It’s why I sat near you in that class.”
“I’d never seen you. I don’t think we ever even spoke until a few weeks after that in the elevator after that first quiz.” She searched my face like I might be trying to pull something over on her. “Where had you seen me before that class?”
“There was some mixer in the dorms. All the new students were there and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t know anybody, but my dad said I should as an Edison. Whatever that meant.” I had a single room so I didn’t even have a roommate to tag along with. By the time I’d arrived, everything was in full swing in the lobby.
“I vaguely remember that. I don’t remember you, though.” She squirmed against me, teasing I was pretty sure, or maybe just not super comfortable on this old wooden staircase, but I tugged the zipper another inch lower anyway, sliding my palm up her spine, memorizing the ridges of her vertebrae.
“I hung out against a wall,” I said with a chuckle. “I was about to leave and go back to my room, but I saw you laughing with some people.” When I trailed my finger down her spine, toying with the clasp on her bra, she shivered under my touch. “And you had this great laugh. You still do.” I twisted the first hook on the closure, which took two tries. I’d never been able to get a bra undone with one hand so I wasn’t sure why the skill would come to me smoothly at the end of the world. “There was some kind of makeshift dance floor. I wanted to ask you to dance with me, which I’d never done before because girls kind of scared me.”
“Because our underthings are so complicated?” She sat up and swatted my hand away before reaching behind her back and unhooking her bra in one swift motion.
“Show-off,” I said, stroking my fingers down the middle of her back and pushing the straps aside. “Because I was a science nerd who was awkward-looking and I knew what people would think when they learned who I was.” I hadn’t even wanted to go to Edison, but I didn’t have a choice. “And you looked...so gorgeous and cool.”
“My high school students tell me no one says cool anymore.” She wriggled against me, her palm settling again on my stomach.
I squeezed her round ass playfully and tugged the zipper down another inch. “Well, we’re old, so it’s fine.” Teasing her was fun but my body had shifted back to its previous state of wanting all of Piper Drake and I fought the urge to rip that dress off her.
“But you didn’t ask me to dance,” she said, bringing the conversation back to my story.
I shook my head. “‘Yeah!’ By Usher, Lil Jon and Ludacris came on and everyone got excited and your group of friends started dancing around you, but I didn’t know how to dance. I watched you a little longer—you wore this blue T-shirt that dipped low in the front and you had this smile that just made me...”
She raised her head again, meeting my eyes.
I wasn’t embarrassed exactly, but I looked into her eyes, the curve of her brow and the shape of her lips. I remembered her crying against my shoulder after we got our MCAT results and the different feel of her against my shoulder now. It was ridiculous that I felt a stronger pull toward Piper than I had to anyone else in my life. I could blame the circumstance or the fact that I was turned on or even the nostalgia of being in this room, but it wasn’t any of that. It felt like I’d missed a lot over the years, but had suddenly found everything I needed. “I went back to my room and watched that music video on repeat until I could do all Usher’s moves, just in case the opportunity to dance with you ever came up again.”
“Wait...wait. I need to see this.”
“No way. Since one drunken night in medical school, I’ve never shown anyone.” I tugged the zipper the rest of the way down and slid my palm down the back of her dress, palming her ass and squeezing, continuing my teasing. “In retrospect, I don’t know why I assumed that same song would be playing and it was before I knew you were the most competitive person I’d ever meet. If I wanted to catch your attention, I probably should have challenged you to a foot race instead of to dance.” I stroked a thumb over the L4 and L5 vertebrae at her lower back. “I didn’t think someone like you would ever notice someone like me, so...I studied, just in case. Anyway, doesn’t that earn me one of your stories?”
“No,” she said, shifting on my lap so she was straddling me, the dress inching up her thighs and her warm, wet center over my dick through my pants. She began undoing my buttons while I palmed her through her dress. She giggled when I gave her a light pinch and the vibration of her laughing made me groan.
“C’mon,” I said, raising a hand to slide the dress down one shoulder, kissing the skin there and sweeping the bra strap away. “I’ll go down on you again if you tell me.”
She laughed again and pulled her arms free from the dress. “You’ll go down on me again regardless.”
“Probably.” I wanted two more hands so I could hold both breasts and keep my hands on her backside, but I had to split my efforts and Piper’s breast was warm and heavy in my hand, her brown nipple pert and responsive against my fingers as I rolled one and then another between my thumb and forefinger. “Tell me, anyway. Tell me something embarrassing.”
She rolled her eyes but grinned and her breath caught when I added more pressure to my roll. “Fine,” she murmured when my lips met her neck. “I had a fantasy of you...”
I continued toying with her nipple. “Had or have?”
“Had. And have. Can I finish?”
“Please.”
“Fine,” she said on a gasp when I gently pinched. “I have a fantasy of you bending me over that podium and fucking me in this classroom.”
“That sounds doable,” I murmured against her neck, pulling her against my cock.
“While saying I was better at chemistry and biology.”
I smiled against her neck because of course that would be Piper’s fantasy. “We haven’t been students for years,” I said as she finished with the buttons on my shirt and rolled her hips against me. “When did that fantasy start?”
“I’ve been having it for...a while. And I know, I’m a classic academic overachiever with a slight praise kink. I can’t help it.”
I thought of the lyrics to that Usher song that lived rent-free in my head and kissed up her throat and spoke into her ear. It had to be fate we’d end up here together and I wouldn’t pass up my chance to dance with her again. “Stand up, Piper. And walk to the podium.”
7
* * *
Piper
The cool air in the room was jarring when we pulled apart and I stood on the stage, my dress at my waist and Hale stalking toward me, his shirt open and revealing the sculpted, lean frame and the thin line of hair running from his belly button. “Will the praise alone do the trick,” he said, reaching me and pulling my back against him, “or am I going to need to find some gold stars?”
“The gold stars are obviously a plus.” I groaned as his palms slid from my hips to cup my breasts and then back down, pushing the dress down my thighs so I was bare, standing on the stage of this lecture hall.
“Of course, they are,” he said into the back of my neck, his lips brushing my nape. “God, you’re gorgeous. Did you always look luscious?”
I did my best Lil Jon impression. “Yeah!” Hale swatted my ass, making me laugh and then moan when his hand traveled lower to between my thighs to stroke me. My brain could not catch up to the level of upside down this night had gone and I didn’t want it to when his finger made one long pass and dipped inside me.
“At what point should I say you were better at chemistry?” His finger worked in and out and I squirmed, wanting more. “Or do I just keep repeating it?”
“You don’t have to limit it to chemistry. You can mention biology, physics—” I sucked in a breath when he added a second finger and his thumb brushed over my other hole, just a swipe but it sent shivers up my spine. “Any class, really,” I added when I caught my breath.
“Ah,” he said, flattening a palm on my back. “I see. So just, decimate my own pride.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, backing against his hand. The podium was cool against my chest but was a perfect height to grip. This was so close to my fantasy I worried I’d wake up at any moment.
“Can you come again like this?” He pumped faster and I felt the jut of his rigid cock against me. “Probably not able to, huh?”
“Are you reverse psychology’ing me into an orgasm?” My body was already coiling as he pumped against my G-spot and teased. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Yes, it will. You like to prove me wrong.” He pumped harder and pressed my back with the flat of his hand. “You like to prove everyone wrong.”
I wanted to roll my eyes and deny him this small victory, but with each thrust of his fingers I was teetering on the edge, with fifteen years of this fantasy behind every stroke and thrust. The fantasy and that he knew me so well.
“Good. Good, Piper.” His voice was a murmur at my back as I tensed, his hand holding me in place as I squirmed against him, so close and so ready until I squeezed my eyes shut against the pleasure racking through me, and everything happening outside the classroom was gone, forgotten. There was my body under Hale Edison’s touch. “So good, Piper.”
I liked hearing him say my name, that always felt more right to me than “good girl” or something like that. He’d always called me by my last name and I liked the way it sounded coming from his lips.
I heard his belt and his pants hitting the floor, then the unexpected, “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?” I straightened, looking over my shoulder.
“I don’t have a condom. I left that box in the grad office.” He looked longingly at the door leading to the hallway and I glanced down to where he held himself in his fist, a drop of pre-cum already beaded at the tip.
“Edison, the world is ending. Who cares? For what it’s worth, I have an IUD.” One of his palms was at my hip and I squeezed it. “Will you do this now while we still can?”
His lips crashed down on mine at that awkward angle with him still behind me, but it was perfect—hurried and frantic but still soft in the frenzy. Hale kissed me like it was a relief, like the kiss was the breath he’d been needing, and maybe I was just projecting, because that’s what it felt like to me, too. “Bend down,” he said into my ear when breaking the kiss, his cock at my backside. “Let me tell you the ways you’re smarter than me.” His fingers spread me for a moment and then the head of his cock was there, the head wide and stretching me in the most delicious way.
I closed my eyes again, cataloging every feeling as he pushed in deeper, the way he filled me, the weight of his hand at my back and his fingers digging into my hip. “You don’t have to say it.” I groaned as he pulled out and pushed back in. We fit together at this angle like we were meant to be joined like this. “This is so good.”
“You were the best,” he said. “For what it’s worth.” He squeezed my hip, thrusting into me while pressing his palm gently but firmly against my back as I lowered my fingers to my clit. “The smartest, the sharpest.” His words were short punches between each thrust and I gripped the podium with my free hand. “I always knew it.”
My body craved each shift, the pressure in the right spots and my own fingers circling my sensitive clit. His words draped over my skin like silk. “Hale,” I panted. “Hale. Hale.”
“I always saw you,” he said on ragged, stuttering breath. “Always. Let go, Piper. Give me another one.” He thrust again, the control in his pace maddening, but just what I needed as my orgasm built to a peak and I crashed around him, the pulse of my core moving through my whole body. “Good. So, Good.”
His thrusts grew shallower and more erratic and then he pressed deep into me and let out a low shuddering groan with his own release.
It was a moment before he gently lifted me to him, his hands pressing against my belly, his mouth at my shoulder and my neck. “You made me better, Piper. You made me want to be better.”
I turned in his arms and kissed him, this time slowly with our bodies against each other, touching everywhere we could until we had to pull apart to breathe. “You made me better, too.” We kissed again and we kept kissing, making up for all the years we didn’t kiss and somehow erasing all other kisses that filled the space before this moment.
“This is romantic,” I said, cupping his jaw and shifting from foot to foot.
“But it’s freezing and uncushioned?” He finished my sentence for me. “Want to go back to our other hideout? There’s a couch there.” He slid his arms out of his shirt and draped it over my shoulders. “And M&Ms.”
“You read my mind,” I said, sliding my arms into the sleeves and involuntarily inhaling his scent on the fabric. “Maybe you’re actually the smartest.”
“I like you so much,” he said, taking my hand, “that I won’t even make you repeat that later.”
