“What?” I wondered.
His eyes were shiny with mirth when he leaned forward and caught my nipple up between his lips.
“Nothing. I just wanted you to watch when I fucked you,” he explained as he slowly twisted his hips.
The twist, combined with a short slide, had my pussy tightening around him in surprise.
“Sometimes I used to watch you walk around in your short shorts,” he said as he pulled back, admiring my stiffened nipple. “I used to watch you squat or do a burpee, and I’d think how nice it would be between those shapely thighs. I wondered what you would do if I caught them around the back of your knee,” he did just that. “And pushed them up behind your ears.”
My breathing hitched as he completely changed the angle of his thrusts.
“Sometimes,” he said as he thrust hard, twisting his hips slightly toward the end. “I can’t breathe because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I curled my arms around his neck and held on, feeling like a pretzel and loving it.
His thrusts sped up, and it dawned on me that for the first time ever, I was making love to a man that I knew would be it for me for life.
Croft was my man. The love of my life that I knew, despite our rough start, would be there whether I wanted him there or not.
Croft was mine, just like I was his.
My breath hitched at the knowledge, and when his next thrust came, a little harder than the ones before it, I detonated.
My breath left my lungs through a strangled scream, and in seconds my vision was dimming and my heart was racing to catch up.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, feeling a massive explosion of sensation in my lower belly spread outward.
Then he was flying high right along with me.
In three short grunts, he emptied himself inside of the condom, and a wave of sadness passed through me at knowing that I wouldn’t have him inside of me until I could find some birth control to get on.
Until then, I’d just have to make do with a barrier between us.
But I wouldn’t be waiting much longer because that was the first thing on my to-do list the next morning.
I had priorities.
After he got up and divested himself of the condom, he came back and all but collapsed onto the bed.
“You did too much today,” I found myself saying.
He grunted something that sounded suspiciously like ‘maybe.’ But it was buried so far into a pillow that I couldn’t be sure.
As we were drifting off to sleep he surprised me by saying, “You really will move in, right? If I ask you in a month?”
It was through a sleepy haze that I replied with, “Yep.”
CHAPTER 18
I’m the party tit.
-Coffee Cup
CARMICHAEL
I was very much aware of the way my ass jiggled in my shorts. But for once, I didn’t freak out over the way that the fabric rolled up my legs.
Instead, I was very much aware of the man that’d entered the building in front of me.
We hadn’t arrived together.
In fact, he’d driven from work, while I’d driven from the school.
I’d stopped by my house to change, and the shorts that he’d talked about last week when I’d stayed over at his house had been on the very top of the stack as I was getting dressed.
I contemplated not wearing them since they were my least favorite for all of about five seconds before I said, ‘fuck it’ and put them on.
Now I was walking quickly up to the door, very much aware of the way my thighs rubbed together. And the way people liked to zero in on my thighs when I was wearing them.
However, my give-a-fuck meter was busted today.
Especially after having to deal with my problem children again.
When I’d first taken over that class, I’d had great hopes for us.
But as the days passed by, things didn’t get better.
In fact, they got worse.
How much worse?
Well, today my students thought it would be utterly hilarious to pull my chair out from under me when I went to sit down.
And now I had a rather large bruise on my back and butt where I’d fallen and hit the rolling wheels of the chair.
The first person I saw when I entered the gym was my brother.
He was doing strict pull-ups from the rack.
He dropped down upon seeing me, and his face narrowed.
“Where were you today?” I barked.
In Flint’s place was a newbie cop who, upon hearing about what my students had done, had given them a lecture on ‘how that wasn’t nice’ and had left. My brother would’ve scared the absolute Jesus out of them and then returned it.
“Camryn had an appointment that I wanted to make,” he answered. “Why?”
I turned around and showed him my back, not bothering to pull my shorts waistband down because I knew that he’d be able to see the bruise just fine.
“A few of the kids from my class thought it would be hilarious to pull my chair out from under me today,” I said to him. “I…”
My pants were tugged down, and I squawked. But when I looked over my shoulder, it was to see Croft there examining my backside and not my brother.
“That looks bad,” he said softly.
I nodded. “It hurts so bad that I’m not even sure I can teach today.”
Today was a lot of squatting, and I wasn’t even sure that I could stand up for that long.
“Go home and rest,” he suggested. “When you get home, put some of that ointment on my nightstand on it.”
I felt a smile growing on my face for the first time all day. “That’s your home, not mine.”
His eyes gleamed as he pulled me into his chest and buried his face into my neck.
“I hate, like super fuckin’ hate, that you were hurt,” he said. “Have you ever considered leaving that particular class?”
I had. A lot.
“Everybody helps,” I said. “Ezra comes in twice a day sometimes and shows his presence. As does Flint. I just… I don’t want to give up on it. I want to work there, and though I may not like the particular class that I’m teaching, I do like being at the school and feeling involved in something. I just… I don’t really want to teach CrossFit all damn day. It’s not my dream. Being a teacher is.”
“What did you want to teach?” he asked, his hands traveling up the inside of my shirt as we spoke.
“I wanted to be a middle school English teacher,” I said. “Then, when that wasn’t an option for me here, I chose being a high school English teacher. But the only opening the entire school system had was the theater department. And, to be honest, I don’t really have an interest in theater. But it was a job to get my foot in at the school.”
“Then tell them that you want a different class. What can it hurt?” he asked.
What could it hurt?
Well, it wouldn’t be like they’d fire me from the position because I wanted to change classes. They’d ask why, and they damn well knew why, so then they could either say ‘I have no openings’ or say ‘I have an opening.’
“Just ask,” he suggested. “That’s the only thing that you can do.”
I did know of one teacher leaving at the end of the year. Her class was senior English.