Page 37 of Chasing the Puck

“Tuck! What are you doing?” she asks through a bubble of surprised laughter.

“Ninety-four, Olivia,” I say, still whirling her around, creating a scene in the middle of campus that students are stopping to gawk at. “A ninety-fucking-four!”

She gasps in my arms. “Your essay?”

“Damn right,” I reply, beaming. “All thanks to you.”

“It’s not all thanks to me,” she protests as I set her down. “I wasn’t the one who wrote it.” Then she adds, with a grin, “Despite your best efforts.”

For just a second, looking at her standing in front of me, my brain short-circuits. I’m thrust back to last weekend, when I held her tight against me and fucked her with my finger. My mouth tingles with the memory of her taste, when I sucked off her juices.

My chest squeezes, desire igniting in my blood. My cock twitches as I remember how stiff I was when I got home that night.

Never in my life was my dick as rock-hard as it was when I got to my bedroom and immediately pulled down my pants, fisting it with the same hand that reached up Olivia’s dress and into her panties.

But I clamp down on the desire, and it subsides.

We didn’t see each other until our tutoring session the following Monday. When she walked into the room, I was already sitting there, waiting for her. Our eyes locked, and she said, in a firm tone, “We act like nothing happened. No one else knows.”

I shrugged and answered, “You got it.”

Since then, that’s what we’ve been doing. Acting like nothing happened. We’re back to normal.

Not our old normal, where Olivia can barely stand me. But our more recent normal, where she acts like she only tolerates me, but I know she’s actually enjoying my company. The new normal where she only halfway tries to hide it when I make her laugh.

Of course, we might be acting like nothing happened, but we both know something did happen. I sure as hell don’t forget that fact for even a single moment of the day.

I know Olivia can’t forget it, either. The way I felt her shudder in my arms as I made her come, I’m pretty damn confident I gave her an orgasm that no woman could simply forget.

Still, we’re doing a pretty good job of pretending. Even though there are times when our eyes meet, and a charged silence passes between us.

With this solid A on an essay from a notoriously difficult grader, Coach has already relieved me of needing to continue the tutoring session. Both Olivia and I have busy schedules as it is, and those sessions were only meant to be temporary until I turned my performance around enough that Coach is no longer worried about me getting dinged with an academic eligibility issue.

My chest falls as I think about no longer spending those forty-five minutes together with Olivia twice a week. Without that, I wonder if we’re going to default back to our old normal, where she avoids me at all costs and we can’t even have a conversation with each other, can’t even joke around a little bit …

Damn. The thought feels like a pinch to the heart.

Olivia’s walking to the arts building for her next class, so I join her on the brief walk.

Today is pretty nice. The temperature is low, but there’s no wind, and the sun shines down on campus, tempering the chill. It’s almost mild when you’re standing right under it.

Olivia’s wearing a pale purple knit beanie on her head, her light chestnut hair billowing out from underneath. Her cream-colored puffer jacket is zipped up, and her legs are encased in a pair of tight black jeans. The outfit might be pretty basic, but there’s nothing basic about how adorable she looks in it.

As the excitement of my unprecedented ninety-four-percent grade wears off, and we’re still chatting as we walk towards the art building, I can tell that something’s bothering her.

I seem to be pretty good at sniffing out when Olivia’s in a bad mood. When she’s feeling off about something.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

“No. Nothing.” Her answer is far from convincing.

The possibility occurs to me that she might be regretting what we did at Starlite on Friday. The thought makes my chest ache. I need to be assured that’s not it, so I keep pushing.

“Olivia,” I say, a sing-song tease in my voice. “You know you can’t hide your emotions from me. If I can tell when a craving for Pretzel M&M’s is making you grumpy, then you know that no secret is safe.”

She blows out a laugh, rolling her eyes. There aren’t many sights I enjoy seeing more than when Olivia can’t help but let her lips form a reluctant smile at something I say.

“Fine. I am in a bad mood. It’s …”

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