"Wait, there's more. Like I said, I screwed up during our night together at the party and didn't take the necessary precautions. I believed her when she said she was on the pill. Two months later, she and her dad showed up at the frat house as I was heading out to take my bio exam."
Dread filled me as I began to suspect where this was leading. I stopped trying to pull away and instead snaked an arm around his torso so I could be the one to comfort him for a change.
"Her dad claimed that since I had knocked up his seventeen-year-old daughter, it only seemed fitting that I marry her. The only thing missing was a shotgun. It was a fucking mess. She cried the entire time and looked totally pitiful. Seeing her in tears, I realized had I not been so wasted, maybe I would have noticed that she wasn't a college student. I mean, this girl seriously looked young, even for seventeen. Sometimes, now, I think that subconsciously I had known, but all I cared about was keeping my dick happy. I was utterly disgusted with myself."
I tightened my arm around him, feeling his pain. It was a shitty situation, and I felt bad for him.
"I knew I was the king of assholes, but I also knew I couldn't marry some girl I didn't even know. We would have made each other miserable. When her father pressed me, I had to get my parents involved, who of course, agreed with me that forcing two people to get married wouldn't help either of our lives. Her father made it clear that abortion was not an option. I tried to tell Candace that I would be there for the baby. I had acted like a dickhead up until that point, but I wasn't going to shirk my responsibilities. Candace's father refused to discuss any other solution but a wedding, and everything pretty much fell apart after that. The fraternity decided they didn't want to deal with any more drama, and threw my ass out. Candace's father did everything in his power to keep me from becoming involved in the pregnancy."
I gasped at his words. "No." I couldn't believe her father had done that. I wondered what my dad would have done if I had put him in the same position. I suppose no father wanted to feel like his daughter had been taken advantage of.
"Yep. It was a nightmare. My parents had to get the courts involved. It got to the point where I couldn't concentrate on my classes, so I left school for a year while we tried to sort out the situation. I felt like my life was ruined. One single night had totally kneecapped me. All my plans and dreams had now changed."
I could not believe my ears. It was a terrible thing to happen to any person. "God, I'm sorry. They shouldn't have done that to you. You didn't deserve it."
He sighed. "It definitely made me grow up, and in the end I got a daughter out of it. She just turned five last month. She's cute as a button. I can't regret that night because without it I wouldn't have her. I hated that it played out the way it did, but Candace and I both had to make sacrifices. She basically had to give up her senior year of high school. No one was left unscathed that night, except for Lily."
My throat was thick with emotion. Alec had a daughter, and clearly he was quite fond of her. His admission was far beyond what I had been expecting when I pressed him for the answer to his virgin mystery. Hearing the way his voice had softened when he talked about Lily made me melt. Alec was proving to be a great guy.
"So, that's what you meant when you said you had to take time off from school?"
He nodded against my head. "It took me a while to get my shit together. After a lengthy court battle, I was awarded joint custody. It was rough for a couple of years after that, but eventually Candace and her family came around. She'd grown up a lot since the night we met. I guess having a child will do that. She apologized for what her dad had done and for lying to me about being on the pill. I wanted to stay mad at her, but we both agreed that we would do everything in our power to make sure Lily always came first. Candace likes to joke that Lilly wrapped me around her finger and won't let go."
"You two are close? You and Candace?" The way he talked about her, I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
He nodded. "She's the mother of my child. We're always going to have that connection, but I was right when I refused to marry her. We would have never worked. I guess you could say we were destined to be friends. Maybe If I wouldn't have been some horny teenager when we met, I would have realized that." He removed his hand from my back and raised it above his head to stretch his shoulder. "I guess you could say I'm a lot smarter now when it comes to that."
Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, but I felt I knew what he was getting at. This was Alec's way of telling me we would never work. As far as he was concerned, we would never be more than friends. My stomach twisted into knots as I struggled not to embarrass myself by doing something crazy like crying. I knew that I would have to respect his decision, especially knowing what he had gone through. "Okay," I muttered against his neck. We would be friends. It's not like I had any reason to complain. He'd proven to be excellent in that category, so it wouldn't be any great hardship.
"Okay what?" he asked, pulling me closer. Feeling him pressed against me only made me angry, like he was now taunting me. If he just wanted to be friends, he shouldn't be allowed to press his hard cock against the part of me that was being denied what it wanted the most.
I attempted again to squirm out of his arms. "Okay, I get that you just want to be friends, but if that's the case, you need to stop rubbing your junk against me," I said sourly, scooting to swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I needed to put some distance between us.
Alec's firm arm encircled my waist, dragging me back to where I had just been. This time I was on my back with Alec perched over me on his hands and knees. I could barely make out his features in the thin band of moonlight that peeked around the curtains. "You know what, sweetheart? For someone who writes romance novels, you're clueless when it comes to reading a man."
I blew out an exasperated breath in his face. "Oh, well enlighten me, oh wise one. You just said you're smarter about knowing when a relationship would be better as a friendship, and let's not forget, it wasn't that long ago that you flat turned me down. What would you expect if you were me, except that you were trying to let me down easy? Well, message received."
"Hush up a second," he said, resting his lower body so he was cradled between my legs. Every inch of him was still hard and ready with desire. I couldn't help lifting my hips, pressing myself against him. My toes curled under and gripped the blanket. "Does that feel like someone who wants to let you down easy?" His hand reached out for the side of my face before he paused. "Are you okay with this?"
I knew what he was asking. A lot had transpired in the last day or so. Maybe what happened to me in the hallway should have made me gun shy about intimacy, but what my attacker had tried to do felt nothing like this. That had been a violation. What Alec was asking was worlds apart.
I nodded my head and without hesitation, his lips captured mine. A thousand sensations flooded my mind at once. Like the way his tongue entered my mouth with finesse and ease, tangling with mine and stroking it boldly. How it moved in my mouth in such an intimate way that I felt we were already making love. The heat between my legs rose to a feverish fire as my hips began to grind against him. I pulled relentlessly at his shirt, wanting to rip it from his body.
He reached out and captured my hands, chuckling as he pulled back slightly. "Baby, slow down. I've been obsessing about this for weeks. I'm not ready for it to end before it really gets started. Trust me. I'm going to do you the way you deserve." He nearly brought me to climax with his statement. He raised his body and pulled his shirt over his head.
I placed my hands on his expertly sculpted abs, but he captured them again, placing them back over my head. I began to think he was deliberately toying with me until I felt him lifting the hem of my shirt. Moments later his mouth found the sensitive skin of my stomach and I almost came up off the mattress. Gripping the sheets with clenched fists, I arched my back as his lips left a fiery trail over my abdomen. I moaned, begging for more of his tongue that stroked over my ribcage, traveling up my side. His tongue moved over the swell of my breast, taking me fully in his mouth. He tugged gently at my hard nipple with his teeth and my hands moved instinctively to his hair, pulling me closer against his mouth. I wanted so much more, which sounded greedy, but I didn't care.
"Please," I begged.
He listened but continued tormenting my hunger as he swirled his tongue around my nipple before releasing it and looking up at me. "Please what, baby? What do you want?" His voice was husky and sexy as hell. He knew exactly what I wanted. My body felt like it was coming apart at the seams, and we were just getting started.
My breathing began to rise like I had been sprinting and I panted the words out, trying to tell him what I wanted. "You," I finally said, pulling his mouth to mine. I tried wrapping my legs around him to drag him back where I needed him to be, but he took control again, anchoring me in place. He rested again on top of me and I moaned in pleasure. Every nerve in my body was alive and seemed to be seeking the same release.
I reached for his shorts, trying to pull them off his hips. He lowered his body, taking them out of my reach. Just as I was about to display my displeasure, his mouth returned to my lower stomach again, taking a southern turn while dragging my sweats and panties with him. Yes, god, yes, I chanted. He was a magician with his mouth, making everything from my hips down quiver with need.
He lifted his head for a moment. "You like?" He didn't wait for an answer as his mouth returned to the part of me that throbbed out of control.
The wave of pleasure that had approached time and time again, only to be squashed when he pulled away, began coming at full force. The faster his tongue moved, the more intense it felt. I was no stranger to orgasms, but none that ever came from my own hand had felt like this. This was no fantasy. It was real and beyond my control.