Chapter 134

I shook with anger and shame. Why did Asher have these photos of me on his phone that Coach had taken during that horrible photo shoot?

“I forgot all about those,” Asher said.

“Asher.” That wasn’t a good enough answer. I reached for the door handle. I couldn’t stand to be in the same car as someone who would keep these photos. “Let me out.”

“Cynthia, calm down,” Asher said. Panic rose in his voice when he saw what I was doing.

“Let me out of this car, Asher, so help me –”

He pulled the car to the side of the road as I fiddled with the lock. Once I managed to open it, I popped open the door and exited the car.

We’d stopped at the quiet edge of a park. No one was around to hear us.

Asher hurried around the car and approached me. When I glared at him, he stopped a few feet away.

He held up both hands, palms forward.

“Why do you have those pictures, Asher?” I asked.

“They’re on my phone because I moved them off the memory cards so no one would see you when I made the complaint about your coach.”

“Why didn’t you just delete them?”

“I wasn’t sure if the investigators would need them. I planned on deleting them once the deed was done, but I swear I just forgot.” He stepped closer to me. “Please believe me.”

I was so embarrassed, I struggled to separate my feelings of righteous anger from the burn of shame.

I hated the girl I was in those photos, who went along with everything, too scared to act. That Asher might enjoy looking at me like that…

“Cynthia,” Asher said, voice soft. “I vow to you that I had no untoward intentions regarding these photos. You have to know how upset it makes me to see you as afraid as you are in them.”

He retrieved his phone from his back pocket and held it out for me. “Delete them. Please. I don’t want to look at them even to remove them.”

I accepted the phone and returned to the gallery. One by one, I selected and deleted the images.

“Please tell me you know that I don’t like when you are scared,” he said.

I wanted to, but this whole thing had shaken me to my core. In time, I’d likely come to realize he was telling the truth. But right now, I had trouble thinking straight.

He stepped closer. “One of the things that drew me to you in the first place was how you held your ground against me. You never cowered in front of me.”

With the last of the photos deleted, I returned his phone.

“When we are… together,” he said, and his pause made me blush. “I love how into everything we do you are. Like you can’t get enough of me, or my touch.”

I was slowly starting to warm to the things he was saying. Yes, there was truth in those words. And when I looked up into his eyes, they were earnest, imploring. He was cutting himself open by telling me these things, and laying himself bare.

It was an olive branch… but also something more.

An… invitation?

He lifted his hand to cup my cheek, and I leaned into him.

Asher was still Asher. He’d made a mistake keeping those photos, but I could trust him. After everything he had done for me, I could believe what he was saying now.

“Tell me more,” I said. With this rift mending, I wanted to be close to him. I wanted to feel him under my hands, as we stitched ourselves back together.

He inched even closer still, until he was mere inches away. It still felt like a canyon between us.

“I love the way your body responds to mine,” Asher said. A cold blaze burned in his eyes now. “It drives me wild. All I want to do is make you feel good.”

Fire ignited under my skin. I licked my lips, noticing how he tracked the movement.

Feeling bold under his attention, I said, “Prove it.”

Immediately, Asher lowered his hand to mine, and tugged me back toward the car. I was confused at first, thinking maybe he wanted to drive us somewhere more private, although there seemed a fair amount of privacy here.

But then he opened the door to the backseat. I lifted a brow at him as he motioned me inside.

As I slid onto the seat, he said, “Take your pants off.”

I wasn’t sure what he was up to, but with the whispered promise behind those words, I shimmied out of my pants and tossed them aside.

Then he was in the car with me. Before I could fully understand what was happening, he gripped my thighs and placed them on his shoulders. He tugged me forward until my back rested along the length of the seat.

He knelt on the floor, with my legs draped over him, his mouth closing in on the apex of my thighs.

I still wore my panties, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He pressed his tongue against me and with a long, sensual lick, mapped out my most sensitive parts. When I bucked against him, he smiled.

“Found you,” he whispered, then leaned in and gave that tender little spot the most attention.

Between the damp warmth, the incessant press of his tongue, and the friction of my panties in between, I was a writhing, begging mess in an almost-embarrassingly short amount of time.

The fact that we were in the open, and anyone could stop and see us at any time, only added to my excitement.

“O-oh, Asher… Yes!”

When I couldn’t control my movements, turning wild with lust, Asher gripped one of my thighs, while his other arm pinned me down by the hips.

It didn’t matter how many times I’d had sex in the past, this was the hottest thing I had ever experienced – ever seen, when I lifted my head enough to see Asher buried between my thighs. His eyes were closed. He was fully focused on his task of making me lose my mind.

And he was succeeding.

I buried my fingers in his hair and he hummed against me.

He was a master with his tongue, encircling my clit, then pressing flat over it. Occasionally, he would flit down to lap at my entrance, but with the panties in the way, it wasn’t much more than a tease.

What I would give to be naked right now.

“A-Ah-Asher!”

The rumors had been right. He was a generous lover. I didn’t know how much time had passed so far, but he showed no signs of fatigue. I wondered how long he would go, if we were back in his dorm room and naked. I doubted he would stop at one orgasm before he had his fill.

I grabbed my breasts with my hands, giving myself even more points of stimulation. I wasn’t going to last much longer. I was too-quickly reaching the crest of pleasure.

Asher hummed once more, mouth closed around my clit, and I was lost.

I tried to buck but he held me down. There was no escaping the wave after wave of pleasure that washed over me, one after the next, until I was shaking and sweating and totally blissed out.

“Asher…” I whispered. In that moment, all I could think of was his name.

He pressed one soft kiss to my clit before lifting himself from between my thighs. He lowered my legs back down onto the seat, and then crawled up my body to kiss me on the cheek.

“How do you feel?” he asked, and I made a noise somewhere between a moan and a groan in response. He chuckled, and my chest filled with butterflies.

He held me as best he could in the backseat of his car, as I slowly came back into awareness from my bliss-filled daze.

My heart recovered well before my mind, and by the time I could think again, I knew without doubt that my body and my heart were united. All of me loved Asher. I belonged so thoroughly to him that his name might as well have been written onto my very bones.

With that clarity came a deep sadness. Someday, he’d want to be free of me.

And I had no idea how I would let him go.