Chapter Fifteen
Theo
“Still can’t believe you were trying to shut me out.”
Helen scratched the back of my neck and leaned into me. “Lock is smarter than you. Obviously I’m going to pair up with the smartest dude in our class. That’s just good thinking. You can’t blame me for that.”
I took her leg and slung it over mine. “I can, and I absolutely will. You need a partner in class, it’s me. We’ll rub our two dumb brains together and come up with something smart.”
She snorted an adorable laugh, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “That’s not how it works. And we both know if we were alone, working on this project, we would not be rubbing brains.”
Considering we were in the library and my hand was creeping up her inner thigh, she had a point. A terrible fucking point, but still a point.
It’d been a couple weeks since our post-Abby bathroom encounter. Things were smooth. I wouldn’t say easy, because Helen wasn’t an easy kind of girl. But that was fine. I’d take her difficult any day. And I did. Bent over the side of her bed. In the back of my car. Pinned to her wall. On top of her. Behind her. Every way we could have each other. Except sleeping. The one time I’d wanted to crash at her place, she’d shoved me out the door.
I got it. I’d been tired as hell from fucking the living shit out of her, but I still got it. We functioned within parameters I’d set for us. If Helen was sticking to them, all the better. As long as I got to be inside her, I could deal, because I was well and truly addicted to having her raw and unencumbered. I could deal for now, at least.
That was why, when Professor Davis announced we had to pick a partner for our midterm project, Helen choosing to work with Lock sent me sideways. Luck was on my side, though. We had an uneven number of students in the class, so after some cajoling, Davis allowed me to wedge myself between Lock and Helen.
Her reasoning for the partnership was sound. Lock’s brain was in proportion to the rest of him—big, meaty, and able to crush lesser mortals. She was also right that if it had just been Helen and me, we’d spend our work time fucking and flunk the assignment. The difference between us was I didn’t care. I should have. My dad would dance on my metaphorical grave if I fucked my academics the way I’d done my athletics. Maybe spending so much time with Helen, I’d found a streak of rebellion deep in me, and I was thinking about leaning into it. Luck found me again that I had a girl who was far wiser than me and took her grades seriously.
She swatted my hand off her when the door pushed open, Lock ducking his head inside. We were in a private study room to work out the breakdown of the project.
“Yo.” Lock lumbered into the room, threw his backpack down on the table, and folded himself into a chair. “I have a half hour before I have to head to work.”
Helen straightened, crossing her legs and opening her laptop. My dick twitched at her being a serious schoolgirl. Those smooth, muscular, tan legs pressed together. Her straight spine leading to plump little hips and a ridiculous round ass. Long, shiny hair flowing down her back in tumbling waves. Red, red lips pursed in concentration, then moving to shape words as she and Lock bounced ideas back and forth.
“What do you think, Theodore?” Helen slapped my arm. “Do you have any ideas?”
“No. What you guys were saying works for me.”
God, I was sick in the head. What the hell was wrong with me? I was sitting there with an erection, no idea what was going on around me, while my girl and Lock were both looking at me like the weak link.
“Are we boring you?” Helen teased.
I cleared my throat. “No, I’m here.”
Lock glanced up from his laptop, giving me a long look that said he didn’t find any fucking thing about me spacing in the middle of our first group meeting amusing.
“I have twenty minutes now,” he said lowly. “Can we get the preliminary planning done?”
“Yeah. I apologize. My weight, from here on out, will be pulled by me.” My laptop open, eyes turned away from Helen, I shifted my mind to Shakespeare and the project that was going to take up twenty-five percent of my grade.
Lock cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get started.”
After the study session, I trapped Helen in a quiet stairwell so I could kiss the Shakespeare out of both our brains. She was the one to push me away, but she did it laughing.
“What was going on with you in there?” she asked.
I raked my hand through the side of my hair. “God, nothing. My mind just wasn’t there in the beginning. I’m square now. I know what I need to be doing for the project.”
She nibbled my chin. “Good, because Lock will squash you like a bug if you even think about being a deadbeat.” Then she bit my chin a little harder. “I need to get my ass in gear. I have homework and I want to take a nap before work.”
Pulling her closer, I took two handfuls of her ass. “This isn’t an invitation, is it?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I have shit to do, Theodore, and you do too.”
I gave her ass a squeeze. “Who knew you’d be the responsible one of us?”