Dominate (University of Gatica #5) (10 page)

Aileen wiggled underneath him, her hands massaging his shoulders as they made out, her legs spreading wider the more excited she grew. The anticipation was killing her as the taste of Tyler invaded all of her senses. Tyler moved back just enough to press himself between her thighs, rubbing the tip of his member against her core before pushing in. He took his time entering her as his lips made their way up along her stomach to her breasts. Kissing and teasing the small mounds, dragging his tongue along the edges of her nipples, watching as the sensitive flesh grew tight, glistening with saliva. “The things you do to me, baby. I couldn’t begin to tell you.”

“Please, Tyler, I need you.”

Tyler thrust inside her and closed his eyes momentarily. Then he was thrusting in and out of her, his hand shifting to lift her ankle and wrap it around his waist, driving himself deeper inside of her. Aileen let out a low, whimpering moan as she felt him bottom out inside of her, her hips grinding back against his pelvis in response. Her fingers shifted through his hair and tugged his face up off of her nipples to her mouth.

“Kiss me,” she panted. “Hard.”

Tyler obliged Aileen. As soon as their lips were connected, he pressed the full force of his body into each thrust and each kiss, kissing her hard and deep as he worked his way in and out of her. Aileen used Tyler’s mouth to muffle her moans and screams, her other leg wrapping around his waist, her heels digging into his ass, pushing him harder into her each time he thrust in.

He had waited all night to come to her, and needed her now more than ever. Her teeth scraped against his lips, her hands clutching his shoulders, crushing her chest into his, letting him feel her heart racing beneath her rib cage. Tyler pulled away from her lips, aching to fill his lungs as he took deep breaths of the cold air. Aileen did the same as she leaned her head to the side, sucking in breath after breath of fresh air. She moved her head back to stare up into Tyler’s eyes, her face bright red from the heat of their bodies pressing together.

The intensity of their gazing as he moved in and out of her was overwhelming, causing his emotions to rise to the surface.

Aileen licked her lips and bit down on them, swallowing hard as she tried to speak to him. “Tyler…”

“I know, baby.” He smiled and continued to move at a fast pace; she was nearing the edge and he wasn’t far behind her. Her hands were rubbing up and down along his chest, caressing his hard abs, spreading the sweat along his skin, her nails dragging down the flesh, creating tiny red lines along his chest. His hand moved up to grope her right breast as his mouth worked against the flesh of her neck, sucking and biting his way around her neck and shoulder; he could feel her walls clamping around him. His thrusts became faster, her thighs gripping against his waist as her whole body tensed, her skin covered in goosebumps and sweat as she moved the pillow to cover her mouth and let out a loud, earth-shattering moan.

Tyler felt her body release all around his member, feeling her center tighten its grip, pulling him deep inside her. He continued to grind himself against her thighs, feeling his own release sitting on the edge, reaching up to grab the pillow and pull it away from her mouth. Tyler forced Aileen to look at him, crushing against her with a fiery passion, growling as his body made one more thrust deep inside of her.

Then he held still, his whole body straight and tight as pulse after pulse released inside the condom. When the last drops left his body, Tyler collapsed sideways on top of Aileen. Gasping for air, he made a small effort troll onto the bed next to her. He reached around the bed until he was able to find her hand. Lacing his fingers with hers he let himself slowly come back down to earth.

Aileen was still gasping for air when she rolled on to her side, staring at the sweaty body of Tyler, her intertwined fingers clenching his. Tyler leaned his head over and noticed Aileen’s new position. Rolling onto his side as well, he stared straight into her eyes. They leaned in and started kissing, softly and sweetly. Tyler left little nibbles along her lower lip.

He smiled against her lips; the sex was amazing but this was the part he had longed for. They never had the time to enjoy the after part of the sex, they never got to just enjoy each other, and tonight he was all hers till the sun came up. Tyler groaned, reaching down between his legs and pulling the used latex free from his body, tilting his head up to locate the nearest trash bin, and tossing it in.

Settling back down into the bed with Aileen, he leaned in and kissed her again. “Did you want me to stay the night?”

“Only if you want to.”

“There isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.”

Aileen smiled. She returned to kissing him sweetly, their fingers remaining laced together as their bodies moved closer, pressing against each other while they made out. “You know,” she pointed out between kisses, “if Jani wakes up we’re going to have a few things to explain.”

As though her words had made the thing she spoke about real, Jani suddenly stirred, murmuring something.

Both of them went completely still, hardly daring to breathe.

A moment later, Jani sighed loudly in her bed, then apparently slipped back into deeper sleep.

“That was a close one,” Tyler whispered.

“Mm-hmm; she was supposed to be dead asleep all night.”

“Want me to go so we don’t get caught?” He didn’t know what they had to hide, but he didn’t know what she wanted. He wasn’t about to bring it up now. Not tonight.

“No, I want you to stay for as long as you can.”

“Anything for you, baby.”

Aileen kissed Tyler then, swirling her tongue around his lips, asking for entry, and when Tyler parted his lips she moved in and licked his tongue. “I want to spend the rest of the night kissing you, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

He smiled against her lips, no intention of arguing with her. As he continued to kiss her, he could feel himself growing hard against his leg, ready for round two. He didn’t want to make the night all about sex, though; this was one of their few chances to spend time together like this. He bit her lower lip and tried to fight the rising need to go again.

Pulling away, he decided he would settle the debate with a question of fate. “You don’t have another one of those condoms, do you?”

“Sorry, no. Do you have any?”

Tyler shook his head; the competition had him all kinds of distracted and he hadn’t bothered to pack any. He’d never considered this might happen. Why he hadn’t bothered to hit a local drug store instead of pacing in his room earlier seemed beyond stupid now. Why hadn’t he considered it? “That’s okay; I can spend all night kissing you.”

Aileen grinned at that. She curled her body into the crook of his arm, never taking her lips away from his. Tyler pulled away suddenly and rolled over to reach down beside the bed, grabbing his phone. He slid his finger around a few times before tossing it onto the other night stand, rolling back over and finding her hand. Cupping it, he leaned in to kiss her face everywhere but her lips. “Just setting an alarm.”

“Oh, good idea.”

Nodding, he returned to kissing her, wrapping his arm around her side and snuggling back down. His free hand reached down beside the bed and grabbed the blanket, pulling it up and covering their naked bodies with it. He’d have to return to his room before everyone else was awake, but for a few hours, he was going to hold on to this girl and get some much-needed rest.

Who was he kidding?

He never wanted to let her go.

“With the NCAA indoor track and field championships coming up, the athletes at University of Gatica are training extra hard to reach their goals for the biggest college athletics competition of the season,” the woman with the sleek dark hair said into her microphone, smiling at the camera that was tracking her motion as she paced across the floor of Wavertree Fieldhouse just beyond the edge of the track.

Aileen, going over the hurdles behind the newswoman, made a conscious effort to hold her form perfectly, to look like someone who belonged on camera doing what she was doing.

“Behind me,” the woman continued, “you can see one of U of G's brightest young stars, the up-and-coming freshman Aileen Nessa. She won the World Juniors in Poland last year, and had the tenth-fastest running time of the hundred-meter hurdles in the world for that year. Just recently, she took the women's title at the Northeastern Track and Field Conference. The University is counting on her to take them all the way in the women's hurdle event.” She moved forward, heels clacking, and smiled at the camera again. “And over here, the other Gatica favorite, Mr. Tyler Jensen. As you may recall he won the gold medal at last year’s outdoor NCAAs. What most of you will know is that Tyler was recently selected in the NFL draft. Originally a first-round pick of the Cleveland Browns, he was later traded to the New England Patriots. Mr. Jensen will be graduating this year, and has been one of the school’s top athletes on the track and on the football field for four years running.”

Aileen took the last hurdle and jogged to the end of the straightaway, turning around to do it again. She didn't want to think about the fact that Tyler would be going to Boston at the end of the school year. She'd made her peace with the fact that she was going to end up in a long-distance relationship after all, but until that happened she was going to avoid all thought of it whenever possible, and enjoy the time she had left with Tyler.

He jogged up beside her as she moved toward the hurdles again, keeping pace easily. “You look good,” he said. “Your form, I mean.” He grinned wickedly. “And your form.”

“That’s terrible,” Aileen protested. “I think you just lost points on that.”

The look Tyler gave her was wounded, and she didn’t believe it for a minute.

“Come on,” she said, “that was something that Sean would say.”

“Oh, now you’ve really hurt my feelings.”

Aileen laughed, and picked up her pace, gathering the momentum needed to take the hurdles.

***

“So tell me,” a male reporter asked, smiling a smile that was too wide and too bright. “What do you think your greatest strength is?”

Tyler glanced over at Aileen, who was standing beside him in front of the stands. There was yet another camera in their faces. When Aileen only offered a shrug he gave the reporter a practiced smile of his own.

“I would say that it’s my drive. If I want something, I go out and get it, and I don’t stop until I have it.”

The words were meant more for her than for the reporter, and Aileen knew it. She swallowed a smile and hoped that her cheeks weren’t turning pink.

“And what about you, Miss Nessa? Your greatest strength?”

“I never settle,” Aileen said instantly. “I always go for the gold. And the best.” She shot Tyler a look from under her lashes, and saw from the corner of her eye that his practiced camera smile had widened into something genuine. That wasn’t what she should say. She should have thought it over better. The media would eat that up and turn it into something cocky. If other hurdlers read it… she was just asking for trouble. She glanced at Tyler. He had a way of making her forget to use her brain when speaking.

“Aileen,” Coach Anderson’s voice called. “Tyler. Come on, you two. Enough mugging for the camera. I’ve got actual training for you to do. Grab your weight vests and get on the track.”

“Sorry,” Aileen said, smiling at the reporter. “Looks like we’ve got to get back to work.”

She and Tyler turned and jogged for the track, suddenly appreciating Coach stepping in. She wondered if Tyler—who was always being interviewed and watched—was grateful for the chance to escape the ever-present questions of the media. She could only imagine what it was like for him.

***

Sleep. School. Train. Repeat.

In the weeks leading up to the NCAA championship that’s all Aileen focused on. Reporters crowded Tyler at every turn, and when they caught wind of Tyler and Aileen together they followed her as well. They hung out around the indoor track while Coach Anderson had his athletes running crazy workouts. Whatever his mathematical formula was, it was working. The volume decreased, the rest time between sets increased, and the load lightened. It focused on perfect technique. Aileen felt like she had never been in such good shape. They ran the track, lifted weights, hurdled, and continued pylometrics.

Aileen had never trained like this before and she loved it. She began to understand why she had chosen U of G. It wasn’t just because of Tyler and a silly little crush. She was eating, sleeping, breathing track.

She never wanted it to stop. Everything she had done since August was leading up to this race.

Even as she focused on it, Coach Anderson also talked about what she’d being doing outdoors and the kinds of goals she needed to start thinking about. What did she want? How fast did she want to go? How far? He believed she had a world of potential.

If this was how she felt after her first season, how confident would she be when she was sitting in Tyler’s shoes, four years from now? She had five years of scholarship and she wasn’t about to waste a moment of it.

She sat quietly on a rare moment alone in the locker room and wondered about everything. She loved the track. Loved training. Was born to compete. She wanted to be here.

And yet, she wanted to be with Tyler. She couldn’t imagine being here without him. Come August, that’s how it would be. Would she still have the same passion for track?

Another three years was a long time. Could they make it for that long? Would he wait? Would she?

“Aileen?” Tyler’s voice echoed quietly from the other side of the door. He wouldn’t be sneaking into the ladies locker room now. Not with reporters and uni-paparazzi’s hiding about. That’s what they’d tagged them as a name. “You coming?”

“Yuppers.” She grabbed her bag and headed for the door. “What’s up?” she asked, glancing down the hall to see if anyone was waiting with a camera.

“I was thinking…” Tyler whispered quietly as they headed for a main exit. “Maybe we could head to your place… for a very different kind of exercise?”

Aileen laughed. “I don’t think Coach’ll mind.”

“Coach?” Tyler rolled his eyes. “Let’s not tell him. We don’t want him worrying about raised heart rates.”

“Or pounding blood.”

“Or being breathless.”

“Or getting our muscles hard.”

He groaned. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the media makes an X-rated video of us.”

She giggled but broke into a jog, with him right beside her.

***

The day before the NCAA championship, Tyler walked into practice with hunched shoulders, and dropped his bag on the floor in front of the stands, sinking down to sit on the lowest row. Aileen, who was doing stretches on the track, turned as he came in, and immediately stood up. Several of the other athletes seemed to have noticed how despondent he looked, but hadn't made any move toward him, though Aileen could see Chrissy and Jani exchanging worried looks across the track. She picked up her pace a little, wondering what could possibly make Tyler look like that. Coach Anderson must have seen it, too, because Aileen could see him coming in from the other direction.

“What is it?” Aileen asked almost before she reached him, taking a seat at his side and reaching out to take his hand in hers. “Tyler? Are you okay? Is everyone okay?”

He looked like someone had taken his favorite dream and crushed it in front of him, and Aileen was a little afraid that something had happened with the NFL. Had the contract fallen through? Did the Patriots decide that they didn’t want him? How could they have, when half the teams in the league were clamoring after him?

“What is it?” she asked again.

“Tyler?” Coach Anderson's voice asked above them. He sounded as worried as Aileen felt. “What's going on?”

“The Patriots don't want me to run.”

Aileen stared, her body realizing what he meant before her brain did.
Not run?

“What?” the coach demanded.

Tyler looked up. “They're worried that I'll be injured if I run in the championships, and they can't have that right before training starts. So they want me to sit it out.”

“They can't do that to you! You have a clause in your contract.” He'd told her so, right before she'd tried to break up with him. The Patriots couldn't stop him from sprinting.

“They can ask politely and suggest that if I don't listen to them they might be able to find another defensive back,” Tyler said miserably. “I don't really see what other choice I have. If I run, I could lose everything that I've worked for up until now. But I’ll still be there to watch you race.” He forced a smile that looked more painful than the pain had on his face. “So there’s that, at least.”

“And if you don't run?” Aileen demanded. “This is your last chance to really make a name for yourself in track and field, and I know that you're in the NFL now, but I also know that you want to be good at what you do, and that includes hurdling.” She smiled. “And I know how you hate to lose.”

Tyler looked up at her, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “I do hate to lose,” he agreed. “But it's not losing if I don't run, and I've already kind of won the jackpot. There are a lot of guys who would be really happy to be in my position.”

“And a lot of guys who would be unhappy in your position, too,” Coach Anderson said. “Just because you have one good thing doesn't mean that you have to give up the rest.”

“So what am I supposed to do, Coach?” Tyler asked, lifting his head to look up at the man who'd been his mentor for four years.

“Well,” Coach Anderson said. “That's up to you. You can run, or you can
not
run, but don't let someone else tell you that you're not allowed. That choice is yours and yours alone. Is it worth it to you to potentially be injured? Is it worth it to maybe lose your job with the NFL?”

Tyler was silent, looking down at his and Aileen's hands curled together in his lap. “I'm not sure,” he admitted.

“So think about it,” the coach said. “You've got time. No one needs your answer right this second. Consider your choices carefully. It isn't something that you should decide on a snap. But I’ll tell you something, Tyler, that I know from experience. They’re not going to pull you if you race. They may make a lot of noise about it, but the truth is that coaches want players who are bold. Who are willing to do what it takes, and who have passion for what they do. Those are reasons they picked you in the first place, I guarantee it. Demonstrating those qualities to them again isn’t going to get you thrown out of the NFL.”

The smile that Tyler tried on was a little tired, but it was a real one this time. He looked up at Coach Anderson. “Thank you,” he said. “I really mean that, Coach. You've helped me so much over the course of my time here, and I really can say that I wouldn’t be anywhere near what I am today without you and your help. You took an awkward freshman and made him into a star athlete with a hundred options for the future, and I can’t thank you enough for that. You’re really wonderful.”

For the first time, Aileen saw Coach Anderson look anything but confident and good-humored. He looked like he might be blinking back the urge to get a little teary-eyed. Aileen was feeling a little touched herself, but that wasn’t anything out of the unusual. Watching their hard-ass coach have an emotional moment was a whole lot stranger. She almost couldn't believe it. Coach Anderson with a sentimental side?

“Just doing my job,” he said and coughed to clear his throat.

Aileen exchanged a glance with Tyler, who shrugged, but his expression said that he was hiding a smile. He was just as amused as she was by the suddenly revealed softer side of the man who trained all of them.

Coach Anderson cleared his throat again. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll be over there.”

They didn’t have time to say anything before he turned and walked away. Aileen watched him go, wondering what other hidden sides he had.

“A softer, gentler coach?” Tyler suggested from behind her.

Aileen giggled. “I don’t really think so. Maybe just one who isn’t quite sure how to respond to the amount of praise you heaped on him. Although you think he would have heard something like that before, considering how many star athletes he’s coached.”

“Well, you know athletes. A surprisingly ungrateful bunch.” Tyler gave her a grin, and Aileen shook her head, a smile curving up the corners of her lips.

She didn’t know yet whether Tyler would run in the championship or not, and she doubted that he did either, but Coach Anderson had been right. It was his decision and not anyone else’s. Only he could make the best choice for himself.