Page 8 of Best Man on Campus

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We drive in silence to her place five minutes away from campus. Tension pervades the air like the smell of old food. Sex with Jazzy, though momentarily appetizing, now doesn’t seem like a healthy choice. She’s trouble for my soul. I can feel it, feel the pull of need. My need to fix and her need to be fixed. I turn into the lot of an old apartment building that looks like a giant block of brick Legos interrupted by windows at regular intervals. Parking the car, I turn off the engine.

“You don’t have to—” I say.

“Chickening out already, Dr. Hockey?” She shoots me an evil smile, but her face looks pale in the moonlight, her brown eyes snapping at me with less gusto than before.

“We’re not in grade school, Jazzy. Calling me a chicken isn’t going to—”

“Fuck you. A bet is a bet. But if you want your friends to lose, what do I care?”

I heave a sigh. It’s not about the bet. Not really. It’s not even about the sex, although I can’t say I’m not enticed—or was.

It’s all about the trouble. The vulnerable girl is what entices me more than her beautifully sculpted face, fiery spirit, angelic voice, or man-slayer body. I’m a sucker for fixing broken people. It’s why I want to be a doctor. I’m more my father’s son than I want to be.

“I’m not sure why you care,” I say. “But you do. Maybe I should find out.”

She gives me a sharp look with a laugh made of bravado.

“Come on into my lair and you’ll find out a lot of things. You sure you’re not scared?” She leans in close now, invested in toying with me like the proverbial cat with a mouse. She reaches with her good hand, sliding it over my thigh to find the bulge of my cock under my jeans.

The pressure of her hand lights up my body’s signal for sex, sparking all the hormones back to life. As if they were never completely cool. No kidding. Jazzy oozes whatever that thing is, innate sensuality, some kind of universal driver for men to turn on the lust switch. And she knows it. Taking a deep breath, I put a hand over hers and remove it from my cock as I push my door open.

“Let’s go inside,” I say. Being Jazzy, she slides over and follows me out the driver’s door. The move is as disconcerting as it is exciting, having all that sexual energy aimed at me. We walk to the building, side-by-side, touching at the hip and shoulder. I don’t put an arm around her but she stays close.

The building’s door is unlocked and I follow her up the stairs to the second floor, watching the purposeful sway of her ass.

“See anything you like?” she says over her shoulder.

I give her a light swat for encouragement. Or maybe it’s to test my own conflicting motives. I’m not sure what I want to do with Jazzy or why I’m really here. For sex or something else, like rescuing her. That would be foolish, so I shut down the idea. The last thing I need to be is someone’s fool.

Then sex it is. That elusive night of carefree fun Kace insists I need.

She opens the door and struts inside a studio apartment with black walls covered in concert posters. A saggy old couch sits in the middle of the floor aimed at the window. It looks like a goth hippie decorated the place with cast-offs from the Salvation Army store. But I’ve seen worse. Jack Hunter’s room at BMOC House last year, for instance. The monk-style crib he had was a far cry from where he is now I’d guess, playing in the NFL.

“Nice,” I say, and she laughs at me. Suppressing a grin, I study her.

“I’m beginning to think you want to keep me around to have someone you can taunt,” I say. “Like you need a foil, always around to keep yourself from feeling bad.”

She opens her mouth and then shuts it, squints at me. I wait her out, not sure if she’ll end up amused or angry. She has hair-trigger insecurities and I can feel the emotional turmoil in the air, hanging like a dark gauzy curtain over everything. She makes me itch to pull the curtain aside and expose her demons, to find out what makes her tick so violently. My heart beats in a disturbingly irregular pattern. I slip my jacket off and toss it over the arm of the rust-colored couch.

“What the fuck is that comment all about? You going to med school to be a psychiatrist?”

“Maybe I will. But it hardly takes a pro to see you’re fighting your demons in just about every person you see.”

“Fucking shit. You have no clue unicorn boy, hockey star doctor. You wouldn’t know a demon if it crawled up your—”

“That’s enough, Jazzy.” I got my answer. It didn’t take much to pull her trigger. I pull her into my arms, to quiet her because she’s too worked up to listen or talk and that’s not what we’re here for anyway. Cupping the back of her head, sinking my hand into the lush waves of her dark chestnut hair, I press my mouth to her luscious, almost snarling lips. The need to taste her vibrates through me, conquering the real fear that she might bite my tongue off, literally. She’s like an untamed wildcat, a hissing snake, and a fallen angel combined in the person of a gloriously voluptuous beauty.

She doesn’t bite. She opens up and sucks me in, explores every corner of me like she’s braille-reading my soul with her tongue. The instant heat fires me up, burning away any residual hesitation I have about taking whatever this she-devil offers. If all she wants is to suck my cock, so be it. I’ve heard rumors that’s all she does, though I never gave the whispers much thought until now.

Panting and glowing with heat, she nips my lower lip and says, “Drop your drawers. I want that steel rod, I want a Ben-the-unicorn shooter down my throat.” She slips her hand inside my jeans and wraps her fingers around the tip of my hard cock while all I can do is groan and catch my breath.

“What do you get?” I push her backwards against the back of the couch. “What if I want Jazzy-the-she-devil cum juice on my tongue?” I fill my hands with her perfect round breasts, thumbing her nipples over her blouse. She squirms in my arms.

“Let’s take it one step at a time, big boy.” She squeezes the tip of my cock, punishingly hard, and I grit my teeth. I can hear the note of fear under the tease in her voice, see the reluctance in her eyes. No way do I want to be part of a one-sided conquest, so I step away from her, lifting her hand from my pants as my cock wants to disown me.

“Hey,” she says, momentarily confused. Then she regains her devilish glint and gives me a shove. “I guess your friend loses his bet then.”