Vernon clapped a hand on my shoulder as we walked the last block toward our house. “I liked Ollie from the minute she showed up looking like a lost puppy. But I love the way she makes you stop and really look at things. You’re so used to seeing the worst the world has to offer, I wondered for a long time if you would ever be able to see the good hidden in the cracks. I’ve always wanted you to remember what it feels like to be happy, and I don’t think that would ever have been possible without Ollie in your life.”
Happy might still be a long way off, but I was inching closer to it each and every day.
We pushed into the dark house, and our steps made the vintage floor creak under our weight.
I muttered a hurried goodnight in Vernon’s direction and watched as he disappeared toward Harlen’s room. It didn’t slip past me that he hadn’t come back with a smartass retort after I mentioned that he didn’t want to crawl into bed with a girl after a long day. The kid always had something to say, but when I pointed out what was obvious to me and anyone else who saw how he and Harlen interacted, he went dead silent.
It was telling.
It was a situation that was bound to get complicated down the road if something didn’t change. They were toying with denial and desire, which was a deadly combination.
I tried to stay as quiet as possible when I entered my room. Ollie was a light sleeper and rarely slept through my nightly routine when I got home from a shift. Tonight she was still under the comforter as I stripped and headed into the bathroom to take a quick shower before I crashed. She really must be worn out and emotionally drained if she didn’t stir in the slightest. It was honestly one of my favorite surprises in the world when she suddenly appeared behind me in the shower. It happened pretty regularly now that she spent most nights in my room.
But not tonight.
I rubbed a towel over my head and tiptoed to the bed so I didn’t disturb her. I crawled under the covers, still slightly damp and totally naked because I wasn’t about to rustle through my drawers to find a pair of boxers in the dark.
Ollie was lying with a hand under her cheek and a few stray curls rested over the front of her face. She looked so innocent, so peaceful.
I realized this was the first night she went to bed knowing with absolute conviction that she wouldn’t wake up with Sawyer hovering over her. There was no way he was still watching her from a distance. It was probably the first good night’s sleep she’d gotten since she was a kid.
I reached out a finger to move her hair out of her face and smiled into the darkness at the soft sound she made. She wiggled closer to me, instinctively seeking out comfort and body heat. I wrapped an arm around her and closed my eyes.
It’d been a long, long time since I had such a sense of contentment. Maybe I was a lot closer to happiness than I thought.
I, too, slept better that night than I had in a handful of years.
And I woke up feeling leaps and bounds better than I normally did. The covers were thrown aside, and Ollie had her head bent over my cock.
I didn’t know if I was hard before she put her mouth on me or if she made me that way. Not that it mattered. The way she used her lips and tongue was bound to make my body react regardless of the situation.
I propped one arm up behind my head so I could watch her do her thing in the faint morning light. I let the other hand fall to the crown of her head so I could hold her wild hair out of my line of sight.
She lifted her long lashes to look up at me, and I noticed that her cheeks were flushed and her freckles stood out even more than normal. She was equally cute and sexy. She had a charm that was all her own, and it got to me deep and fast. She wasn’t a girl every guy would understand or have the patience for, but I wasn’t the kind of guy who was simple and easy either.
We were a matched set in a lot of ways.
I grunted when I felt her nails dig into the flesh on the inside of my thigh.
I bent a knee to give her more access and room to move while her head bobbed up and down in a slow and sensual rhythm. The wet sounds that filled the room and the low groans that escaped my lips every now and then were heady and had anticipation and want pooling thickly in my blood.
I growled her name partly in warning, but more in encouragement, when I felt her fingers creeping higher between my legs. One of the biggest turn-ons was watching her get more confident and comfortable with herself the longer we were together. She might not have technically been a virgin when we first hooked up, but she was definitely a novice. Now, she knew just how to handle me to get the reaction she wanted.
She touched, tasted, and teased better than anyone else I’d been with. Maybe it was because so much more than my body was engaged when we were together, but I had no issue telling her that she was the best I ever had.
She sucked hard enough on the stiff length in her mouth that her cheeks hollowed out. My hips lifted in response, and my hand tightened in her hair.
I gasped her name when her tongue flicked across the sensitive slit at the tip buried deep in the warmth of her mouth. Pleasure pulled tight at the base of my spine, and I felt my muscles tense as her fingertips lightly grazed the tight, tender spot nestled underneath the rigid flesh she pulled deeper and deeper into her mouth.
The graze of her nails across the drawn-up sac had me thrust with more force than I intended. Ollie made a startled sound and rolled her eyes in my direction.
I shifted my hand and whispered an apology, and she hummed lightly around my cock.
The dual stimulation of her tonguing my dick and her hand lightly fondling me between my legs meant I wasn’t going to last much longer.
I grunted out a warning to let her know she was about to get a mouthful, but she simply pushed her head down farther and swallowed hard when the tip of my erection touched the back of her throat. Between the suction, the heat, and the caress on my single most sensitive body part, there was no holding back the eruption of pleasure that rushed out of me.
I told myself not to hold her head in place because it was rude, but I couldn’t help myself. My hips kicked upward as I thrust helplessly against her face. It was a bit rougher than I usually was with her, but Ollie didn’t complain. She picked up the rhythm without missing a beat and continued her sweet manipulation of my cock, taking everything I had to give her.
After I went limp and she let my softening member fall from her mouth, she brushed her very red and damp mouth across my abs, leaving a wet trail. One of her eyebrows quirked upward playfully, and she muttered, “Good morning.”
I grabbed her face in my hands and rubbed my thumb over her swollen mouth.
It was a very good morning, and not just because I woke up with her mouth wrapped around my dick.
It was a good morning because I got to wake up next to her.
As serious as I’d ever been, I told her, “Let’s be happy. Let’s figure out how to be happy, Ollie. We deserve it.”
She smiled softly and rested her chin on her hands, which were stacked together on my abs.
“That sounds nice.”
It really did.
Ollie
I was juggling a notebook, my backpack, a half-empty iced coffee, and my house keys when my cell phone started to ring from the depths of my purse that was slung across my chest. I scowled in frustration as I tried to figure out the quickest way to dig it out. I opted to ditch the coffee as I switched my keys for my phone in my free hand. Now that I knew Sawyer was no longer a threat and Mercer was no longer seeing the suspicious guy who had it in for me, I’d been super focused on school. It was the first time since I enrolled in college that I felt like an average student. There wasn’t an invisible ax hanging over my head any longer. I couldn’t use the excuse of simply trying to survive as to why I was such a poor student anymore. I could put effort into my classes and my education.