Chapter 57: Present

I think I love you.

The room was silent, but Skylar’s last words still echoed in my ears. My arms were still around her and I felt tension throughout her body, tension that only grew worse the longer I remained silent. So I was quick to shove my brain back into gear, take a deep breath, and start rubbing her leg while I said softly, “Thank you.”

She glanced back at me over her shoulder, her right hand still holding my ass to keep me close, and she gave me an appraising look. “‘Thank you’?” she quoted back to me.

“Would you rather I said, ‘I love you too’?”

“Well when you put it that way...” she muttered, letting go of my ass and rolling forward, starting to disengage herself from me. Although I still had my right arm across her midsection, clutching her close, I relaxed my grip enough to allow her to separate our two bodies at will, but maintained the barest hint of benign pressure as a silent plea to stay. In the end, she hesitated just short of pulling herself free, and instead allowed me to gently reverse her course and welcome her back into my embrace.

“Sky...” I soothed. “Sky ... You know I care a lot about you. A lot. I don’t want you to feel scared. I would never hurt you, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re my friend, and now you’re my lover, and you know I’m committed to being whatever you need me to be.”

“And what if I need you to be my boyfriend?”

I took a deep breath, once again cuddling her close. And after exhaling slowly, I asked, “Is that really what you want from me?”

“Well clearly it’s not what you want from me,” she muttered defensively, trying to roll herself away from me once again.

“Sky ... Sky...” I sighed, once again relaxing my grip to let her go. I would never hold a girl with me against her will.

And yet ... every instinct told me not to let her out of my arms. Call me a slow learner, but I knew that this was a moment for disobedience. Let her pull her pussy off my dick? Of course. But somehow I felt that letting her pull away from me completely would be catastrophic for our relationship. I had to fight for her, and to make clear she understood that I would fight for her.

So in a fierce voice, I urged, “Please ... Stay with me.”

Once again, she stopped just short of pulling herself free and gave me a cold look over her shoulder. “You just wanna keep your dick wet.”

I frowned. “You know me better than that.” And only then did I completely let go of her, spreading my arms apart.

She could’ve rolled away from me. She could’ve disengaged our loins. But instead she once again pushed herself back to fully engage our loins. Further, she grabbed my arm back and pulled it back into its previous position across her midsection. A moment later, she thought better of it and grabbed the back of my hand, guiding it upwards until I was once again cupping her bare breast.

I took that as a good sign and went ahead to fondle said breast while Skylar’s palm remained against the back of my hand, and I also leaned forward to nibble on her shoulder while molding my legs against the backs of hers.

She sighed and stretched a bit. “I suppose I should be grateful you’re not the kind of bloke who would say the L-word just to get my knickers off.”

“I think your knickers came off a long time ago.”

“I think they came off two days ago. And it almost feels like you’ve been buried inside me more often than not since then.” Skylar chuckled and clenched her inner muscles around my cock still embedded deep inside her.

“It feels amazing to be buried inside you like this. I don’t ever wanna leave,” I murmured with a little extra heat in my voice while mauling her breast and gyrating my hips a bit to carve my cock within her cuntal walls. I craned my head over her shoulder, she turned her face to meet me, and for a minute we kissed with lustful passion while our loins undulated in harmony for both her pleasure and mine.

But after a minute, she separated our lips, sighed, and set her head back down on the pillow, facing away from me. I continued to fondle her breast but otherwise stopped my thrusting and waited her out.

“I’m supposed to be the mature, older one,” she muttered ruefully into the middle distance. “I’m the one who should know better than to lose my head after a bonkers day of sex, sex, and more sex, and then confuse the emotions that I’m feeling right now with... ‘love’.”

“It has been a pretty bonkers day,” I agreed. “And I take it as a compliment that you feel the way you do.”

“Yes, by all means, feel complimented.” She glanced at me over her shoulder again. “Bloody hell, Matty, you’re as good as advertised. I thought all the shite Neevie said about your prowess was overly enthusiastic exaggeration, but feeling is believing. I never realized sex could be so good, which is probably why I keep wanting it again and again and again.”

“And again,” I added, grinding myself within her once again.

“I feel like a teenager, overflowing with hormones,” she sighed. “I can’t get enough of you. I just want more and more and more.”

Now Skylar did disengage us, pushing back on my hip to get me to roll over and withdraw my wet dick from her saturated snatch. But she quickly rolled after me, swinging a knee over my waist, aiming my erection with her hand, and swiftly sitting herself back down on my big dick with a wet squelching sound. I closed my eyes and groaned at the exquisite sensations shooting through my brain as inch after inch of my throbbing tool slid into her slice of heaven like a hot knife through warm butter. And when I opened my eyes again, it was just in time to see her massive melons pillow themselves on my chest just before her mouth mashed into mine.

Neither of us spoke for the next several minutes. The midnight air was chilly, and Skylar paused for a moment to yank my duvet over her head to cocoon us within its shield to trap in our combined body heat. But as she started to athletically ride me, her pendulous boobs smacking me in the face every now and again, the blanket slipped down to her shoulders. The room was quite dark, but there was enough illumination for me to see her toss her golden mane free, eyes wild with little flashes of reflected moonlight.

I didn’t try to overly delay my ejaculation. I knew she’d already be feeling sore in the morning and didn’t want to add to her future misery. But I still focused on getting her off first, suckling on her nipples and holding her hips to help grind her clit down against my pelvic bone. And it didn’t take long for her to tighten up and squeal her satisfaction.

Then it was my turn. I rolled us back over, unfolding the taco shell duvet. We’d started to get hot and sweaty, and the cool air was quite refreshing on my back as I separated her thighs, guided my dick back into place, and slammed myself home. I humped her hard and heavy, laser-focused on my goal.

She whined and crooned into my ear before biting down on the lobe, her hands roaming up and down my spine. And when I thundered down the final stretch, she spoke for the first time in a long time, hissing, “Fill meeeee. Fill meeeee!”

I filled her.

And then once again we were slumped together, two interconnected individuals joined as one. Our sweaty bodies cooled in the aftermath, and she held me on top of her while we softly kissed, enjoying our post-orgasmic afterglow for the ... Fuck, I’d completely lost track of how many times we’d had sex today.

But it wasn’t until I rolled off of her and flopped onto my back that I realized I’d never asked Skylar a very important question.

Mother would be very disappointed in me.

“Um, I realize I’m a little late for this, but are you protected?”

Skylar’s eyes flew open wide and she gasped in horror. “Oh, shit.”

There was that record scratch sound again, and MY eyes flew open wide as my jaw dropped. “Wait, you’re not!?!”

Skylar could NOT stop laughing, at least until she started crying, “The look on your face! The look on your face!”

My jaw flapped open and closed a couple of times in utter shock, my brain going into vapor lock from the mental whiplash of being made to believe Skylar wasn’t protected followed by the realization that she was just messing with me. But eventually I managed to get my brain into gear.

“It’s not funny, Sky,” I muttered with a scowl, and then repeated, “It’s not funny...”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she gasped with tears rolling down her cheeks, looking anything but apologetic. “Serves you right [giggle] for sperming a girl [giggle] all weekend and never [full-on laughter] and never asking if she was on birth control.”

And then she couldn’t stop laughing again.

I rolled my eyes, sighed, and waited her out.

Eventually, Skylar wiped the tears from her eyes and exhaled slowly.

“You finished?” I griped.

“Sorry,” she apologized again, not sounding particularly sorry. “You’re not angry, are you?”

“Mildly miffed, and I won’t even be miffed anymore so long as you assure me you’re on birth control.”

“Yes, yes. I’m on birth control,” she wheezed, still wiping her tears.

“Thank goodness. Does that mean you’ve been planning to seduce me for a while now?”

“It’s not something I was planning, but I never stopped taking my pills,” she explained, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly to calm herself. “Force of habit, I suppose. My parents certainly drilled into me that my body was my own responsibility, and that I couldn’t depend on a guy to always be prepared. Thank you for proving their point.”

“I’m sorry. You trusted me, and I could’ve very nearly let you down.”

“There’s no need to apologize. It’s like I said: I’m protected. The only thing that could make my family situation even worse would be if I turned up pregnant out of wedlock, and I have no interest in doing that.”

“One scandal in your life was bad enough,” I muttered apologetically. “And that’s a big reason why you could never allow yourself to let anything happen between you and me while you were still T.A.’ing E10.”

“I’m like ... traumatized with fear over getting caught up in another scandal. You can’t know what it was like for me, ostracized by everyone and walking around like I had the scarlet letter sewn onto my clothing.” Skylar sighed. “I couldn’t go through that again.”

“I totally understand.”

“So no matter how attracted to you I felt, I couldn’t shake my feelings of guilt over getting involved with someone I shouldn’t get involved with.” Skylar frowned at me. “You said there aren’t any school regulations forbidding it, but I still know it would’ve been scandalous for you and me to hook up while you were still my student. Cripes, there were plenty of rumors flying around about you and me being involved even though we weren’t doing anything more than talking, but at least I could deny them with a clear conscience. It was such a relief when Isabela started crawling all over you, and I could point out to anyone who asked, ‘Me? No, there’s nothing going on between me and Matt. He’s shacking up with Isabela. Just look at them!’ I actually did that, twice.”

I blinked and waggled my head. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Thank goodness for Isabela.”

“Not a sentence I thought I’d hear from you tonight, but alright,” I said with a chuckle.

Skylar chuckled as well.

“I have to ask though,” I continued, “Come next semester, you won’t be my T.A. anymore. But if we’re going to continue like this, do the optics of the situation give you any reason for concern?”

“You mean with me still being a grad student and you a freshman?”

“Yes.”

Skylar snorted. “If I was a male grad student, and you were a freshwoman, nobody would bat an eyelash. Life is so sexist.”

“Probably.”

“But the answer is ‘no’. The optics don’t concern me anymore. So long as you’re no longer my student, if anyone realizes you and I are shagging, they’ll probably just give you a high-five. Instead...” Skylar paused, took a deep breath, and sighed.

I waited her out to let her collect her thoughts, and in the meantime reached over to turn on the table lamp, grabbed several tissues from the box on my nightstand, and handed them over to her.

In the new illumination, Skylar stared pensively at nothing in particular, almost idly blotting up my spending from between her thighs while still lost in thought. She started to shiver as her skin cooled, so I made her get up so I could tuck us both properly under the big duvet, flipping it upside down so that the warm side would be facing our skin, but the sheets beneath were still pretty cold, and she continued shivering. So I rolled myself directly on top of her again, face-to-face and chest-to-chest, although I was careful to support my own weight on my forearms and knees and not smother her.

Skylar hummed happily within my warm, protective embrace, and soon her shivers stopped. I held my face above hers, studying the features of her gorgeous face. She still looked different to me without her glasses: softer, a little younger. In this position, and with the current expression on her face, she looked less like the wise, older woman I’d come to trust as a confidante and more like one of The BTC girls with her own doubts, foibles, and insecurities like everyone else.

And she looked like she could use a kiss.

So I kissed her.

And I kissed her.

And I kissed her.

When we finally separated, she stared up at me with liquid eyes, murmuring, “You’re making me feel like I’m falling in love with you again.”

I gave her a sideways smirk. “And this is a bad thing?”

“I told you I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Scared of getting my heart broken. Again.”

I took a deep breath and sighed. One thing that had been made clear to me during Skylar’s confession of her scandalous, ill-fated romance with her father’s business partner was that she well and truly couldn’t help herself. She’d fallen in love with the man. She’d been young, impetuous, and unrealistically irrational about the whole thing, but she’d truly loved the man. It didn’t matter to her that he was married. It didn’t matter that there would be a scandal once everyone found out.

It didn’t matter that what she was doing was an outright betrayal to a beloved family member.

Their affair might’ve gone undiscovered, if only she’d been willing to walk away.

But she’d been in love.

So she didn’t walk away.

And then he broke her heart.

And that wasn’t the only time she’d gotten her heart broken.

Peter had been the latest boyfriend to break up with Skylar instead of the other way around. I’d expressed incredulity on Saturday morning when Skylar told me the guy had been the one to call it off, insisting my belief that no human male in his right mind would ever break up with a gorgeous creature like her. But Skylar had given me a kindly smile and explained that her situation wasn’t so very different from Sam’s: one with very little time for a relationship.

And I knew Skylar was worried about the same happening again.

“If you’re worried about me leaving you over lack of quality time,” I pointed out. “I’m uniquely suited to never demanding more of a girl’s time than she has available to give, assuming she’s willing to put up with me splitting my own attention four or five different ways.”

“Would I be your fourth girlfriend? Or number five?” she asked with a teasing smirk. “Does Eva count now?”

“I still don’t know if you count.”

“I both want to count and don’t.” Skylar let her gaze drift past my left shoulder. “The lonely girl inside me wants to love and be loved. The realist who’s gotten burned too many times rationalizes that if we’re not ‘together’, we can never break up.”

“I don’t want to pressure you into a relationship you’re not ready for.”

“What if I want you to pressure me because it’ll make me feel like you really want me?”

I sighed and thought back on Mari, Holly, and Lily. The last one made me stop and sigh, muttering, “I do want you, but Kipona aloha takes time.”

“Kipo-what?”

“Lily’s ‘deep love’ thing,” I explained. “But ‘deep love’ takes time. Everyone has to go through the shallow water first before getting out into the deep blue ocean.”

“Now I remember the conversation. It was right after Lily left you, but while you were trying to decide whether or not you and Isabela could ever develop into something more instead of just going through the motions.”

I nodded in confirmation.

Skylar’s eyebrows went up. “Am I nothing more to you than a Pokémon to add to your collection? Tell me now, Matty, before I let my heart get even more vulnerable than it already is.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not a Pokémon. You’re Skylar. You’re my friend, my confidante. I’ve been coming to you for advice all semester, and I’ve cherished every single one of our conversations.”

“While surreptitiously ogling my big boobs, bubble butt, and pouty lips. Fantasizing about ramming your dick into all three of my holes and yet pretending to be a respectful gentleman about it.”

I frowned. “I wasn’t pretending to--”

“Well you finally did it, Mr. Big-Dick Hotshot. You’ve shagged the sexy blonde. You’ve cum in her, on her, and covered your T.A.’s T&A with your sticky sperm.”

I rolled my eyes at her mocking tone and muttered, “Covered my T.A.’s T&A? I haven’t cum on your ass yet, actually. We should do that first before I dump you.”

“Matty!” Skylar admonished, slapping my upper arms.

I gave her a patient look and said, “If it makes you feel better to denigrate me into a boorish college frat boy out to add notches to his bedpost in order to walk away and feel better about yourself, then by all means go right ahead. I promised I’d be whatever you needed me to be, and if that’s what it takes so you can walk out of this house with a clear conscience, I can do that for you. But I’m pretty sure that’s not what you really want.”

“Then what do I really want?”

“You don’t really know what you want, and to be honest, neither do I,” I admitted. “What I DO know is that we both very desperately want this friendship to survive. We both want me to visit your apartment between classes and just hang out and chat for an hour. We both want me to continue seeing you as a trusted confidante. Neither of us wants you to feel alone and isolated ever again. And when it really comes down to it, if making sure all that happens meant you and me never having sex again, we’d accept that, wouldn’t we?”

“Easy for you to say, Mr. I-haven’t-gone-a-day-without-getting-laid-in-over-a-year.”

I blinked and then paused to think back over the past several months, trying to think of the last time I’d gone a full day without having sex.

“Thanks for proving my point,” Skylar sighed before I could even think back more than a few months.

“Well the girls did pull a sex boycott on me ... Oh, and there was this day after Thanksgiving...” I caught Skylar rolling her eyes, gave her a sheepish grin, and finished lamely, “ ... but that’s not important.”

“We’re keeping the friendship, and I’m NOT turning down more hookups with that big dick,” Skylar insisted. “Understood?”

I grinned. “Understood. But as for your girlfriend status?”

Skylar took a deep breath. “I’m still feeling wounded from my past. My life is too crazy busy for me to seriously consider the future. All I have right now is the present. So let’s start with ‘just friends’ and see how it goes.”

I nodded. “Works for me.”

Skylar grinned, and after glancing at the clock, she winked at me. “It’s after midnight, Matty. Do you know what day it is?”

I blinked and thought about that. “Why, it’s Christmas Day.”

“It’s Christmas Day, and you’re my present.”

“Merry Christmas, Skylar. Merry Christmas.”

“If you’d told me at the start of school that I’d wake up Christmas morning with a naked Skylar Sutcliffe in my arms, I wouldn’t have believed you, and yet there I was,” I stated with a wry shake of my head.

“Was it everything you’d dreamed about?” Belle asked with a gleam in her eyes, sitting cross-legged at the foot of her childhood bed. It was mid-morning Christmas Day, and I’d driven down to Belle’s house to spend the holiday with my ‘family’.

I thought back to those first moments of consciousness. The morning air had been cold against both of my cheeks, and as I slowly blinked my eyelids awake, I realized that I was flat on my back. Skylar was curled up against my side with my left arm around her: her head pillowed on my chest, her left arm hugging my midsection, and her left leg thrown over mine. Even slack-jawed and drooling just a bit on my bare chest, she was still unquestionably beautiful. But even more than her physical attractiveness, I found myself eminently pleased to see her looking so completely at peace.

I still remembered Skylar’s disheveled appearance in the middle of Finals Week: limp hair, dark circles beneath her eyes, slumping posture. There had been tension in her jaw. Every sentence she spoke seemed to require a great deal of energy from her. And her shoulders sagged from carrying the weight of so much responsibility. But now the semester was over, and she’d slept like a babe within my embrace. A lock of honey-blonde hair fell across her forehead, obscuring my view of her pretty face, so I reached up and gently brushed it back with my fingertips so I could admire her better.

Belle was waiting for me to finish my ruminations, and she smiled when I refocused my eyes on her.

“I can’t say it was everything I dreamed about, because I never really dreamed about it,” I explained. “The idea of having that kind of quiet intimacy with Skylar wasn’t something I ever thought would really happen.”

“Until it did.”

I nodded.

“Well, was the sex everything you’d fantasized about?” Belle continued with a teasing grin.

I waggled my head. “You know I won’t talk about that stuff.”

“I’m not asking you to reveal any secrets about her,” Belle argued. “I’m asking about your experience. Did her tits feel firm and supple in your hands or limp and squishy? Did her pussy taste sweet or spicy? Was she tight around your thick cock or stretched out and flabby like an old lady?”

“How would I even know the answer to that last one?”

“Use your imagination.”

“I’d rather not,” I scowled, looking mildly disgusted. “First of all, Skylar’s not ‘old’. Second of all, each of those questions was about her.”

“Whatever. Details. I need details!”

“I thought Zofi gave you all the details?”

“Pssht. Zofi wouldn’t have enough time on Christmas Day to give me all the details AND give Neevie all the details and Mari and Alice and--”

“I get it, I get it.”

“Theoretically, I have an advantage because I can get all the details from you first-hand instead of playing a game of Telephone with everyone else. Seems fair since Neevie somehow failed to tell me that she’d arranged for Zofi to come take care of you over the weekend instead of doing the Christmas Eve group thing we’d originally talked about and let me freak out about leaving you without a bed partner,” she muttered. “But that aside, for your own self-interest, you should understand that the more you tell me, the more I can tell everyone else, so that they’ll stop calling and texting you.”

As if to punctuate that statement, my phone chimed with another incoming text message. It was the fifth one I’d received since arriving at Belle’s house, and I hadn’t bothered yet to read any of them.

A second later, Belle’s cell phone rang, but she hit the End button to send the call to voicemail and kept her attention on me.

I sighed. I’d already spoken to all of the girls this morning after Skylar left, calling up each of them to say “Merry Christmas” and that I was looking forward to seeing them soon. Zofi had been the last, and that was also when I’d given her the green light to go ahead and tell the others about Skylar. The explosion of texts and phone calls from the girls had started rolling in within minutes.

But I hadn’t answered any of them yet. I wasn’t ready to deal with all those questions, and instead chose to think about how it felt to kiss Skylar goodbye and then watch her drive away.

After waking up this morning, I’d lain there for ten minutes or so, just watching Skylar sleep on my chest, unwilling to move and potentially disturb her slumber. She eventually woke up on her own, blinking slowly, slurping up the drool leaking from the corner of her mouth, and then wiping at the puddle while giving me an apologetic wince. I smiled and extended my arm to grab a tissue from the box on the nightstand, cleaning up myself as well as giving Skylar another tissue so she could wipe up her face. And then she settled in for a pleasant morning makeout session.

Although I’d woken up with morning wood, that had deflated over the previous ten minutes of watching Skylar sleep, replaced by an urgent need to pee. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and when I returned, I found her sitting up feeling groggy and instinctively covering her nudity with the blankets. I knew it wasn’t in her nature to show off her figure, and I felt glad she’d been happy enough to go without clothes for the entire previous day. And when I sat on the bed and drew her into my arms for another kiss, she readily let go of the blankets and let me lower her back down to the mattress, where I let my hands do a little roaming and fondling and tickling her teats.

But she’d stopped me when I slid my hand down between her thighs, grimacing and saying she was sore. I went over to Belle’s room to retrieve a tube of the topical cream she used to help manage her pain in those sensitive areas and offered it to Skylar. The blonde blushed and tried to say that she’d be fine without it, but I insisted for her sake. And then she shooed me out of the room rather than let me see her rub the cream onto her reddened, raw, overused genitalia.

I’d wound up making breakfast for both of us. Skylar had packed a change of clothes for one night, not two, but it worked out since we’d gone completely nude all day on Sunday. She dressed, made herself reasonably presentable, if not all dolled-up like Saturday night, and then came downstairs to join me. I tried to talk her into joining me in driving down to Belle’s house for Christmas, arguing that it wasn’t so different from joining me for Thanksgiving. But Eva wouldn’t be with us this time and Skylar didn’t want to feel awkward about crashing by herself. And when she started complaining that I’d kept her from finishing her technical writing contract work all weekend as it was, I’d finally acquiesced and let her go.

“Give Zofi a little credit,” Belle argued after her cell phone pinged with an additional text message. “She could’ve told us all what happened the instant she left your house yesterday, and then your phone would’ve been blowing up then.”

I nodded. “I should thank Zofi for sitting on that bit of gossip for almost a full twenty-four hours before telling the rest of you.”

“Exactly. And unless you want all of the girls pestering both of us looking for information, you gotta give me something I can share with the rest of them.”

My cell phone chimed again.

I exhaled slowly and nodded, thinking it over. “The sex stuff is out of the question. Everybody knows it happened, and none of you need the details of how often or in what positions or any of that stuff.”

“Fine,” Belle griped.

“I think the most important thing to say is that Skylar said she wants to have friends again. She wants to come hang out with The BTC: calling dibs for backrubs, making meals together, and hanging around the living room and having study breaks.”

Belle grinned. “She does know what happens during study breaks, right?”

I smirked, knowing exactly what Belle would want to hear. “She said she wants to try everything, including letting Matty’s Little Cumslut slurp out a creampie and snowball it back to her.”

Belle’s eyes glittered. “Oh, she’s gonna fit right in.”

I smiled. “I hope so, B. I really hope so.”

“Are you two finally ready to open presents?” Mr. K called up the stairs as Belle and I emerged from her bedroom and started our descent, our footsteps thumping on each stair tread.

“Yes, Dad,” Belle called back. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I should’ve known the very first thing you’d do when Matt showed up would be to drag him up to your bedroom and ... Huh...”

Belle’s dad gave us both a puzzled look as he looked up from his spot on the La-Z-Boy, his voice trailing off while Belle and I walked into the living room.