Chapter 153
Leslie
I stared at the grade on my screen. It had to be a mistake. There was no way I failed the exam.
“You okay?” Riley asked.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled before returning to my room.
But I wasn’t fine. I was in denial. I had never failed a test in my life-at least not since struggling with my cursive letters in elementary school, and that hardly counted. I couldn’t even remember the last time I got as low as a D in the past six years.
I created a post on the student forum asking if anyone else had a grading discrepancy. Nobody responded. I slept furtively, constantly waking up and remembering that I had failed the test.
The problem was that, in college, we didn’t have a lot of grading assignments. My grade in astronomy came down to four major tests: a final exam, a midterm, and two other exams in between. Failing a single exam meant I had a deep hole to climb out of, and I only had three more opportunities to do so.
While lying awake in bed, I started calculating what I needed to get on the other exams. Based on the weight of each exam, the highest grade I could get in the class was an 89%-and that was if I got a perfect 100% on the remaining three exams.
If I got a 90% on the remaining exams, a difficult yet possible scenario, I would finish the class with an 81%.
If I only managed to get an 80% on the three exams, I would end the class with a 73%.
I woke up early the next morning so I could visit my professor during her office hours. The walls of her cramped office were covered with star charts and posters of various constellations, but the desk was clean and spartan, holding only a single laptop and mouse.
“Sorry to bother you so early,” I began.
“Not a bother at all!” she replied brightly. “That’s why we have office hours. Now, how can I help you?”
“I wanted to discuss my grade on the test.”
She smiled apologetically at me. “I teach five classes and have over three hundred students. You’ll have to refresh my memory, dear.”
“Sorry! I’m Leslie Grimes, in your Introduction to Astronomy class.”
“Ah yes, we just had our first test yesterday. I have the graded exams right here.” She patted a stack of papers three inches thick. “We will be going over these in class tomorrow, if you would prefer to wait until then.”
“Actually, I wanted to discuss it now, in private,” I replied. “I saw my grade posted online, and I think there must have been a mistake.”
“My TAs have been known to make a mistake from time to time,” she admitted while rifling through the stack of tests. “Let’s see, Grimes, Grimes… here you are.” She removed my stapled test from the stack and set it down in front of her. The smile that had begun on her face devolved into a frown. “Oh. I see.”
“It’s much lower than I expected,” I said. “I just want to make sure I wasn’t… graded too harshly?”
My professor flipped to the next page, then back to the first. “I’m afraid you were graded fairly. Perhaps even too leniently, if anything.”
I gave a start. “Really?”
“You named all four of Jupiter’s largest moons correctly, but the order of size is incorrect. Europa is the smallest, not Io. You also wrote that Earth’s moon is the largest moon in the solar system, when the correct answer should have been Ganymede. Then there’s question six, where you were supposed to list three dwarf planets. You of course listed Pluto correctly, but failed to name any of the others.” “Oh,” I said.
“Question seven,” she continued. “Name all the planets with rings. You listed Saturn only.”
“Saturn is the only planet with rings,” I said, feeling my confidence shrinking with every passing second.
My professor stifled an impatient sigh. “All four gas giants have rings. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have faint ring systems that are typically not visible to the naked eye. This may be considered a trick question, but anyone who was paying attention in my lecture last week would know this. I made a point of emphasizing it to the class.”
I tried not to wince. I had been daydreaming about one of my roommates during that lecture last week.
“That was the first page.” She flipped to the next one. “On question ten, regarding the two small moons of Mars…”
“I think I have heard enough,” I said meekly. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, professor.”
“That’s quite all right,” she said in a bland tone. “I’ll look forward to your results on the midterm, Ms. Grimes.”
I tried to focus during my classes that day, but my confidence was shaken. For the first three years at the Triple-C, I had been able to delegate my time perfectly between the classes that mattered, and those that were less important. Spending the majority of my time preparing for my psychology classes while doing just enough work to coast along in all my other general education classes. That strategy had worked fine.
Until now.
When I got home, I found Avery relaxing on the couch with a textbook in his lap. He smiled over at me and then resumed reading.
“Hey Harper, you home?” I called out. Silence answered me.
“Why do you need Harper?” Avery asked with a puzzled look on his face.
“I don’t,” I said, rounding the couch and straddling him. “I need his absence so I can do this.”
I dove into Avery so eagerly that his textbook slid to the ground with a thud. He recovered quickly, his hands finding all the right places to squeeze while I ground myself into his lap. I was so desperate for him, to feel his hard body against mine. I needed a distraction.
“Riley might get home from practice early,” Avery said between kisses.
“Then we’d better move this to your room.”
He smiled up at me, waiting. “Are you going to let me get up?”
I smirked at him and shook my head. Avery realized what I wanted a moment later.
With easy strength, he wrapped his arms around me and rose from the couch, holding me in the air like I weighed nothing. I kissed his neck as he carried me down the hall and into his room, savoring the soft sighs it drew from his throat.
He placed me on the bed with care, then rose up to strip his shirt. I glanced around the room for a moment-he had several band posters on his wall, including Wu Tang Clan, Gorillaz, and Foo Fighters. His bed was neatly made, and the room was tidy. Not what I would have expected.
I stopped caring about his room as he tore my pants off, then panties, and ran his hands up the inside of my thighs. I spread my legs for him, surrendering to his touch.
“Oh Avery,” I managed to get out as he buried his face in my sex. There was no teasing or slow build-up here; he dove into me with animal-like vigor, nose pressing against my clit while his tongue thrust deep inside my lips. I leaned back and put my hands on the bed as he wiggled his tongue up and down, as deep inside me as he could.
Oh my God how could a man have a tongue so long? It felt like it was halfway inside me, licking every inch, painting my walls up and down.
He moaned into my pussy, a wonderful masculine vibration, and I couldn’t stop myself from moaning with him.
Avery’s tongue moved up and down, and then he made it go rigid, a hard wedge three inches long. He moved his head back and forth, fucking me with his tongue, the bristles on his cheek rubbing my inner thigh and lips with each thrust.
Soon I was rocking my hips on the bed, pushing my hot sex into his face. It wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wanted Avery to take me, to use me, to have his way with me.
And no sooner had I thought it, he thrust one final time, as deep and hard inside me as he could, and then pulled out for good. He leaned forward and kissed me, allowing me to taste myself, then scrambled out of his pants. He squeezed my ass again, pulling it close to him, my wetness spreading on his right thigh while we kissed.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he knelt over me in the bed.
“Teasing you,” he replied while sliding his cock up and down my pussy. I was slick with desire, and his tip was like a fireball of pleasure as it rubbed against me, taunting my entrance without ever coming inside. “This isn’t sex.”
“No, it’s not,” I groaned.
If it were foreplay, it would have been perfect. But Avery was still bound by the agreement he and his roommates had made. I hated the rules that were binding him, as much as I hated them when they were holding Riley back.
Riley. He had broken his rule for me. If Avery knew that, he wouldn’t hold back. Yet I couldn’t tell him. It wasn’t my secret to tell. Not when the two of them had known each other much longer than I had.
“I want you so badly,” I purred at him, rubbing my clit while he continued teasing my entrance with his crown.
“I want you too,” he said. “I’ve wanted you since I first laid eyes on you.”
“Forget your rule,” I said. “Take me.”
His dark eyes sparkled with thought. “But rules are rules.”
“Rules are made to be broken,” I replied, taking hold of his shaft and trying to pull it in. “Someone smart once said that.”
Avery bit his lip. “Fuck, you have no idea how badly I want to.”
“I do,” I replied. “Because I want you just as badly.”
I was rubbing a fire into my clit by this point. The edge was close, and I needed him to push me over it. All of him, not just the way he was rubbing my entrance.
“Maybe just the tip,” he said, pushing his crown into my swollen lips. Even that amount, barely more than an inch, sent a shudder of pleasure through my body. Based on the way he sighed, he felt it too.
“It’s so hard,” he gritted out.
“I’ll say.”
“I mean holding back,” he replied. “It’s so hard to keep myself from going all the way.”
“I bet it is,” I said, rubbing myself faster. I let my other hand wrap around his shaft, stroking him gently. “But if you don’t want to break the rules, this is good.” I closed my eyes and leaned back. “Ohh, this is good.”
I was moaning loudly now, letting my whole body respond to the waves of pleasure I felt. But they were still inadequate. I wanted more. I needed all of Avery, every throbbing inch.
His eyes raked over me hungrily. And then I saw him make a decision.
“Fuck the rules,” he said, echoing what his roommate had said weeks before.
I practically screamed with pleasure as he buried the rest of his cock inside of me, all the way to the base. He filled me completely, in both length and width, stretching my inner walls with the wonderful ache of a man. I had already been nearing the edge of my climax, and taking the entirety of his cock was like being thrown over the cliff. My back arched and I sucked in a breath, rubbing myself furiously as I came, and came, and came.
I barely remember the next few moments. Wave after wave of orgasm struck me, or perhaps it was the same gargantuan one that never really ended, only ebbed like the water against a shore. Avery covered me with his body and shoved his tongue in my mouth, wriggling against mine the way it had moved against my pussy, a reminder that added fuel to the fire that was my orgasm. His arms wrapped around me, holding me in a bear hug on the bed, and in that embrace I felt truly safe.
His cry was almost painful, his eyes clenching shut as his forehead rested against mine. I squeezed his ass with both hands, holding him inside me as he erupted, quivering for what felt like eternity before finally going still.
We lay on the bed after, side by side, his fingers idly caressing my little tuft of pubic hair. I was supremely satisfied, likely due to the way we had drawn things out before actually having penetrative sex. But as the seconds ticked by, my satisfaction turned into guilt.
“Do you regret giving in?” I asked. “Finally breaking the rule and doing it?”
He chuckled softly. “I feel a lot of things right now. Regret isn’t one of them.”
I let my fingers trace the lines of muscle on his arm. “What would your roommates think if they found out?”
“Honestly? I don’t care,” he replied. “Harper is my best friend, but I can’t let him dictate my life. If he’s still messed up from Jess, then that’s on him.”
There was that ex-girlfriend again. I hadn’t realized Harper took the whole thing worse than the rest of them. I tucked the information away for later.
“And Riley?”
Avery frowned up at the ceiling. “I think Riley would be okay. He might be jealous that I hooked up with you first, but he would understand.
I smiled to myself. You have no idea.Content © NôvelDrama.Org.