“Mmmhmm.” So much satisfaction in my buddy’s voice as he pulled the pizza bagels out the oven. “Little Miss Perfect nowhere in sight. Wonder if she ain’t doing it for him?”
To which I say, the guy was either batting for another team or crazy, Billie with fucking curves for days and a mouth on her that would look real good around my cock. The fact her mother was a straight MILF was only a bonus, a snapshot of what the beauty queen would look like when she was older. Despite her sweater sets and Sperry loafers, Billie Coventry had the most supple and suckable looking tits I’d ever seen, had seen through that see-through-ass top she’d worn that night to our party. Niko later told me a couple of my friends had spilled alcohol all over her, accidentally but it happened, and I’d have to thank my friends. She’d stood out to me that night, made me want to kiss her despite wanting to strangle her for giving me lip.
My cock clearly thinking about that now, I adjusted myself before lacing my fingers on the counter. I jerked my chin at Niko. “Invite her guy to one of our parties. Let him have his good time here.”
If he was looking for a visual feast outside the beauty queen we could definitely help him out. Celebrities came to my parties, video girls and the like despite us being in the Midwest. People heard about my and Niko’s parties all over this country, obviously needing to see what the fuss was about, and we always delivered. Every time.
Niko’s gleam in his eyes so obviously matched mine, his brow jumping as he got a spatula and plates for the pizza bagels. “I swear, you are a new kind of evil.”
“Eh,” I told him, then grinned. “I mean, you’re not wrong.”
Niko smirked. “And only too proud too. You sick fuck.”
Grabbing a handful of chips, I threw them at him, and the dude lost his fucking mind by tossing a pizza bagel at me. I dodged it, launching off the barstool like a samurai. And with our height difference, I easily got him under my arm. “Take that shit back.”
“Okay. Okay. Shit!” He raised hands in surrender, the guy messing with his hair like he wasn’t already a sweaty fucking mess from his workout, and I chuckled, tossing him a wink before propping up on a barstool at the island.
“And what you doing at the strip club anyway?” I asked him, curious now when I got serious. I crunched a chip. “You know all the strip clubs in town are Marvelli territory.”
Aka the mafia, the real live mafia like something out of The Sopranos. Niko and I dealt with the Marvellis. Obviously the drugs supplied to the hungry market at Woodcreek University had to come from somewhere. The Marvellis took care of that, and after they got their cut, they were out of the picture as far as Niko and I were concerned. Neither of us were dumb enough to get any deeper than that, an understanding between us. All this shit, drugs, parties, and women, were a means to an end for us both. I didn’t intend to be doing this shit forever, and Niko didn’t either. Both of us came to Woodcreek-U for actual educations, ones we intended to use upon getting out of here.
Niko’s shrug was casual when he came around the island. He set the pizza bagels between us. “Just doing a cash drop. You know, for our stuff.”
He popped a pizza bagel in his mouth, like the whole fucking thing, which showed how big this guy’s mouth actually was.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to do it there.” Usually, the Marvellis came to us, part of our deal. We didn’t cross their territory unless we had to, smarter and easier that way when it was on our turf. I frowned. “That’s all you were doing?”
“That’s all I was doing, Jay. Jesus.” His statement made it seem like what I said was obvious, but it never was. A guy could be real fucking tempted sometimes. Especially when other men in positions of power dangled all kinds of shit in front of him. It’d been done to both Niko and me, a life even finer than the ones we already lived presented to us on a silver platter. The Marvellis had a lot of power in this town. Fuck, this whole region. But anything that tended to come from them usually turned out to be rotten fruit and wound a guy even tighter to them than he wanted to be. That was a big reason why I personally was getting out of the game as soon as I felt secure enough to let go. Niko shrugged. “I’m not stupid.”
He wasn’t, but the best of us could be tempted, easily him. I jerked my chin. “How’s your mom doing?”
A sensitive topic, and though he passed it off with humor most days, the stress in the guy’s eyes couldn’t be ignored. His mom was sick, breast cancer, and where I sent money back home for my sisters and an easier life for my mom, his went toward his mother’s medical bills. He took up a barstool. “Latest clinical trial is doing well for her. She seems stronger.”
In the short time I’d known the guy, I knew the woman had been through the ringer. When we were originally assigned as roommates our freshman year, he’d had to miss a lot of school to go back home just to take care of her. He had a younger sister too, just the three of them, and because Kate was older now, she was able to step in while he was here. The guy barely made up what he missed over the summer just to be a junior now like me.
Reaching over, I gripped his arm. “Just stay strong with it. I got a buddy whose mom woke up from a coma after like twelve years. She’s not only awake but doing real well.” Though my friend Knight’s situation was a little more complicated than that, the fact of the matter was, his mom was okay. “Don’t give up. You do, and it’s even harder for her.”
“You’re right. You’re right.” And standing up, he stretched his long body. “Now, enough with this serious shit. I’m about to fucking own you on the real court.”
A real funny guy, but after eating, he really thought he could challenge me on our basketball court. We played well into the afternoon, even missing our final classes of the day, but I had no problem doing that. This guy had become my closest friend outside of the ones from my hometown, and anything I could do to take his mind off his current situation with his mom I would.
I knew he’d do the same for me.
Chapter Seven
Billie
A tap at my door, and my stomach twisted, but I shut that crap down. “Come in.”
The door creaked open, and LJ actually had to dip his head to come into my office, the TA office door frames sized to accommodate most people.
Lance Johnson wasn’t most people.
He sauntered in during my office hours, black jeans sagging low and university hoodie pulled up over his head. He tugged the hood down, a wash of restless blond hair he fingered through. “Sup? You wanted to see me?”
Not really, but considering I didn’t have a choice, I approached him with a paper in my hand. It had his extra credit assignment on it.
An assignment I’d been forced to give him.
Honestly, I thought Professor Douglas had been joking this morning when he’d approached me about needing to come up with a way to allow LJ to make up for his, quite frankly, piss-poor job on his midterm examination. It’d been like he hadn’t attended class at all, let alone watched the films there. I’d seen him in lecture, but since he hadn’t really come to recitation all term, aka my class, he hadn’t been able to expand on any of the conceptions. He couldn’t answer why the class was watching the films assigned, so therefore, that bled into the performance on his midterm examination. A C grade had been generous and add to the fact that he basically wasn’t coming to a third of his classes by not attending mine, his grade had tanked. This was of no fault but his own, but for whatever reason, I got to hear about it this morning.