Unexpected Gifts

"Fuck, fuck fuck, Jake!" she screamed as her orgasm took her over.

"Shit," I roared as her tight spasming milked me over the edge.

As soon as the deed was done, my mind warred between absolute elation and dread. I pulled out of K and stood, needing space between us. Laying face down on my bed, K sprawled out, spent and exhausted, with two very angry-looking hand prints on her ass.

What the fuck have I done? Again. Without a condom, no less like a moron. I didn't trust K. For all I knew, she was trying to get pregnant by me or some shit.

"Go piss," I told her unceremoniously.

"Huh?" she questioned in a post-orgasmic haze, lifting her face to squint at me. I walked over to my closet and threw a towel at her.

"Go piss. I came in you like a jackass. Maybe you'll piss some of it back out."

Her face plopped back against the mattress as she dismissed me with a hand. "I'm on birth control, Jake. I'm not an idiot. Besides, it stings to pee right after you fuck me hard like this," she complained.

"I don't care, go," I demanded.

"Fine, fine," she replied as she stood uncoordinatedly and quickly wiped. "You know that's just an old wives tale, right?" she said as she walked to me on sore legs.

"It'll still make me feel better about it," I told her, making her huff.

"Kiss me for my troubles," K said as she batted her eyelashes at me. I leaned down and devoured her lips, nibbling her lower lip before I slapped her ass.

"Go," I told her. She beamed a satisfied smile before she turned and exited the door.

The second K left the room, my body sagged in sheer disappointment. How the hell did I find myself in this situation again? How fucked up was I that I couldn't just say no to her? I needed a drink.

My phone buzzed, and I walked over to my bag to fish it out. A text from Collins had come through, but my blood ran cold at the time. The clock read seven-fifty. "Fuck," I cried in frustration. There was no way I'd make it to the library in time.

After dealing with K's bullshit and realizing I might have lost my one shot at keeping my scholarship, I was about to rip my hair out.

K walked back into the room to find me in a panic as I rushed to get my clothes back on.

"What's going on," she asked, puzzled.

"I'm fucking late. That's what's going on. I swear to fucking God, K, if this ruins my scholarship, I'm calling Uncle Robert personally to come to get your ass," I told her in pure fury.

She paled at mentioning her father, having no doubts I'd make good on my promise no matter the shit I'd get in with him.

"Jake, I'm sorry," I heard her cry as I charged out the door with my bag.

Running as fast as I could across campus and dashing around students in the library who gave me angry scowls, I managed to make it to Ms. William's door at 8:15 pm. The door was shut, so I knocked on it, but there was no answer. So I knocked on it again with more intensity. Finally, after a moment, I heard the door unlock.

"Mr. Miller," Ava greeted me coldly as she peered at her watch when she opened the door. "Do you happen to understand what eight o'clock sharp means?" Her voice dripped thickly with disdain.

"I'm so sorry, Ms. Williams. Someone surprised me at home. I wasn't expecting them. I just lost track of time, but I'm here now. We still have 45 minutes," I pleaded.

Ms. Williams opened the door to show me she had another student in her office. Then, in a surprise move, she ran a thumb over my bottom lip, causing me to jerk back. Pulling her hand away, she revealed a red lipstick smudge against her thumb.

"I told you to take my time seriously, Mr. Miller. Maybe in the future, you'll think with your head," she told me as she shut the door in my face. The lock slicked into place, shutting out my best chance at keeping my scholarship.

Trudging back to my room with heavy steps, defeat radiated from my every move as I climbed the stairs. Opening my bedroom door, I silently prayed K was gone. Every muscle in my body sagged when I saw her sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Is everything ok? Did everything work out?" she asked with her thumb between her teeth, nervously biting her nail.

"Don't, K. Why are you still here?" I asked her, without energy left for this drama.

"I'm here because I wanted to make sure you were ok," she said softly, making me scoff.

"No. No, I'm really not, K. Pretty sure you just ruined my best shot at keeping my scholarship," I sighed. She flinched at my words, and the gravity of the situation hit home. She pulled up her knees to hug herself.

"This isn't high school. Shit matters now," I told K as I flung my bag against the wall and pulled a chair around to face her before flopping down in the seat.

"Jake, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to cause you trouble. I just... I just missed you. And... it was my birthday, and you didn't even text. I panicked. I guess I thought you forgot all about me, and I didn't want to be forgotten. "

Heart strings pulled at her sudden vulnerability, and I walked over to sit on the bed next to her. I had forgotten that having to split up wasn't easy on her either. Pulling her into my side, I kissed her forehead as her tiny arms wrapped around my waist tightly.

"Jake?" she questioned softly.

"Hmm," I hummed in acknowledgment.

"I really am sorry. Is there anything I can do?" K asked in broken honesty.

"No, Angel, there's nothing you can do," I breathed against her hair as she tucked her head under my chin.

It had been so long since I'd held her. It felt like a miracle now but would hurt twice as much when she had to leave again. Yet, as fucked up as everything was, I was still grateful for this moment.

"You have to go back tomorrow, K. You can't stay here," I broke the silence, making her sigh. "Seriously, K. You can't be here. I can't let people find out about this. I lost... everything. I lost my best friend, my family, and my entire hometown. I can't even show my face back home, and I can't go through all that again, K. The stakes are higher now," I told her, pleading with her to let me go. For once, just let me go; I silently prayed.

"I know," she whispered sadly.

"I don't even know why you're here, K. It's been two years. Why couldn't you just let it go?" I asked her, my voice cracking with emotion. Biting her lip, she tucked closer into my side as if I was slipping through her grasp. But I'd already been gone for years. She lost me a long time ago.

"I don't get it, K. I really don't," I challenged. "I was moving on, finding myself here, and you waltz back in and rip this shit right back open," my emotions were evident in my voice, even if she couldn't see my face.

"I'm sorry, Jake. I just panicked," she replied solemnly.

"You need to move on too, girl," I admonished her, hugging her closer. "We were dumb-ass kids doing dumb-ass shit. You don't need to stay hung up on me."

"I know," she conceded. "You're hard to get over, though, Jake."

"So, I have been told," I snickered. I took a deep breath. "You're going to have to get over me, K. We don't have a future together. We can't be together. We can't get married. It's against the law. We have too much DNA in common." She jerked back to look into my eyes, searching.

"You looked into that?" she asked in astonishment. Hand slipping into her silky black hair, I rubbed my thumb against her cheek. Then, without hesitation, she nestled her devious, sweet face into my palm.

"Of course, I looked into that, K. You were the fucking love of my life. If there was a way for us to be together, I would have done it." A breath spanned between us before I continued. "I plan to get drafted by the NFL. I hope I get drafted if I can just keep my shit straight. It's going to make me a celebrity. The world's going to know about everything that I do. Do you really think I could hide that I'm fucking my cousin?"

She sobered and shook her head no. Then, she smiled and leaned forward to kiss me. Fireworks lit up my heart, and I pressed her into me, wishing I could keep her forever.

Breaking away to stare into my eyes, K smiled gently. "Jake, just the fact that you looked means everything to me. I thought... I knew... I thought I knew how you felt. But when you just disappeared, I thought maybe you didn't care about me at all."

I snickered darkly. "No, K. I don't think there's anyone I care about more. There's just not a damn thing I can do about it," I told her honestly. Her small hand moved to brush my cheek in a tender caress.

"Thank you, Jake," she said sweetly. Kissing her palm in reply, I hoped she believed walking away wasn't because I didn't care about her. On the contrary, I was trying to save us from the heartbreak of trying to make this work.

"Can I ask a favor, just for two days for my birthday?" her tiny voice pleaded.

"Hmm?" I questioned hesitantly.

"Can I be your girl for just two days? Then I'll go home and leave you alone," she bargained. Sighing in frustration, I pulled my hand from her cheek to run it through my hair. She really was going to be the death of me.

Those beautiful green eyes, those messy, ruby lips that I smudged. I really couldn't deny this girl anything. She was my undoing.

"Yeah," I breathed, "Yeah, Angel, you can be my girl for two days. But you have to go home after that. This will be the last time you see me outside of a family capacity. I can't let this shit blow up again, you know."

"I know. I'll stay out of the way," she agreed, and I nodded.

"Alright. Alright yeah, you can stay for two days. I'm a fuck boy anyways. No one's going to believe I have a girlfriend. They'll think you're some hot little thing I dropped when I got bored."

Perking a brow, she smirked at me. "I'm a hot little thing, am I?"

"Bitch don't play. You know you're hot," I told her as I smacked her ass, making her giggle before snuggling back under my chin.

CHAPTER 4

This is how I ended up taking K to Braxton's party. Was it smart? No. Was it fun? Oh, fuck yeah, it was! I missed this girl with a fierceness that I didn't realize had been breaking my soul these past two years.

Yeah, she took me to my edge and made me want to pull my hair out or punch the wall, but when she wasn't being a brat, she was the one person in this world that I knew truly had my back.

K wasn't just a piece of ass to me; she never was. She was my best friend long before she seduced me. My dad was a nasty piece of work. While everyone around town thought he was the perfect man with the ideal job, wife, and kid, he was beating the shit out of mom and me.

No one knew, but somehow K did. It was never brought up, but after dad would go off on me, K would appear and cheer me up every time.

The hatred I had for Dad was indescribable. When news broke about me and K, he didn't beat me because of K, incest, or anything else. Instead, he nearly killed me because I'd tarnished his good name. His name.

It took me three days in the hospital to recover, and no one cared. Everyone thought I was this monster who manipulated my innocent little cousin and deserved the beating I got.

The reality was quite the other way around. I fought K off for three months before I finally fell into her trap, but who would believe the town playboy who had it all?

Never once had I looked at K sexually. K was family and my best friend, so why would I? But that girl had a devious streak that would make you swear she was the devil. What started as a joke became a conquest for her the more I told her to fuck off.

When she cornered me in the pool house and forced my cock down her throat to the hilt, she literally had me by balls. No one had ever been able to take me like that, and it became my kryptonite. Quickly, K became my obsession, and she couldn't get enough of me either.

What started as sexual curiosity eventually morphed into us falling in love. Neither of us expected it. Neither of us was the fall-in-love type.

That made it all the more painful when I had to leave for college and leave her behind. I meant what I told her, there was no future for us. So, K and I would spend the next two days wrapped in each other, playing the dream we'd never get to have.

Across Braxton's kitchen island, I watched K beam brightly as she grabbed two water bottles and walked back to me. She was staying sober since she had to drive out early tomorrow. We'd already put her bags in the car, wanting to spend every second tomorrow together rather than packing.

"Here you go, handsome," she said as she passed a bottle to me. Gazing into her sparkling eyes behind a bright blonde wig and dark-rimmed glasses, I drank her in. Deciding we were going to play lovers this weekend, she dressed in disguise so no one could match us in family photos if they ever thought to look. Can't be too careful.

I set the bottle aside for a moment and pulled her to me. "You okay?" I asked as I rubbed my thumb over a split in her lip. Her tongue dashed out to lick the wound as she giggled. "Yeah, I know you didn't have time to be gentle," she winked.

We'd given the party a show in the downstairs bathroom earlier as I fucked the hell out of her. We'd been quick about it, but everyone knew what we were doing in there. I was proud they knew how loud I could make my girl scream.

Suddenly her phone rang, startling us apart so she could pull her phone out of her pocket.

"Shit! Its dad. I have to take this," K said before she headed out to the back door to take the call.

K explained earlier that she'd told Uncle Robert she and her friend Clarity had gone to look at some new college dorms with Clarity's mom this weekend. Hence, he was none the wiser about where she really was.

Just as I had grabbed my water bottle and settled by the back door to wait for K, a dark-skinned woman walked into the kitchen. "I got you, boo! Lemme get some glasses of wine, and I'll meet you by the pool table!" the woman hollered at someone on the other side of the doorway. Gracefully walking in high heels, her steady gait telling me she hadn't started partying yet.

She was dressed in a tight black bodycon dress that hugged her fit curves, looking ready to party the night away. It would have been stripper-level sexy if not for the bright leopard print tights. It was still sexy but in more a punk rocker way than slutty.

She walked into the kitchen with confident fierceness as she reached the fridge for something, keeping her face just out of my view. I watched the tight dress strain over her amazing ass when she bent to look at a lower shelf.

Still yet to notice me, I watched from the dim corner of the room as she brought a bottle of wine out of the fridge to the island top. Her face was downturned, causing her messy, short hair of waves and spikes to hide her face as she worked the cork. The dress she wore was long-sleeved, but the front dipped very low, letting ample cleavage spill out as she fought the bottle's cork loose.

Now we were talking. Being a boob guy, I took advantage of my quiet corner to enjoy the show. This woman had a top-tier rack, the kind a guy wanted to run his dick between.

Black women weren't usually my thing, but this woman had an unexplainable air and fit body that I couldn't look away from. I didn't have anything against black women, they were just so different from what I was used to back home, and I struggled to relate to them.

Black women didn't seem particularly interested in me, so I never paid them much attention sexually. It wasn't a habit of mine to chase women who had no interest in me. I already had more fish in my sea than I could manage.

But this woman. This woman you couldn't deny was captivating. It was more than just physical; it was like she commanded the entire room, and no one was even there. Definitely not like the girls back home.

Raising my water bottle to my lips to take a sip, the movement caught the woman's eye.

"Shit! You scared me!" she stammered back on her high heels, causing her hair to fall forward.

"Sorry, just waiting on a friend to get back," I stepped out of the dim corner and into the light as I approached the island. It was subtle, but I could tell the woman's demeanor turned from happy party goer to guarded.

"Oh, Mr. Miller. I would say it's a surprise to see you here, but given this is the QB's party, that would be silly," her satin voice stated neutrally as she shook her hair out of her face. Then, I was met with fiery amber eyes that made me pause.

"Ms. Williams?" I asked, puzzled. It wasn't believable that this party minx was the same posh, prissy, arrogant know-it-all woman from the library.

"Ava. I ain't cha tutor no more, kiddo," she said sarcastically as she focused on getting the cork the rest of the way out and ignoring me. Then, her eyes flashed back to mine.

"What?" Ava questioned before looking over her body to see what I was staring at. Then, realization dawned on her that I was taking in her party dress. "I do have a life outside of the office, you know," she sassed.

With that, she popped the cork and turned to find glasses to pour the wine into.

"Sure. I mean, yeah. I just didn't recognize you, is all," I attempted to recover as I pulled out a stool and sat down.

"I get that a lot. I'm not as boring as everyone thinks I am. I just know the difference between professional time and my time," she grunted as she struggled to reach for glasses on the top shelf. Realizing she wasn't going to reach, I walked to her and reached over to grab one.

"How many do you need?" I asked, peering down at her with my arm stretched high.

"Two is good enough, thanks," she replied.

"Hmm," I hummed dismissively.

Ava took the glasses from my hands to walk back to the open bottle while I took a seat on the stool again. She peeked up at me as she poured a glass.

"Don't give me those wounded puppy dog eyes. You knew the rules. You screwed it up. You live with it," Ava said dismissively. I straightened a bit; I hadn't known I was giving her a sad look.

Dueling emotions coursed through my veins. One was annoyed that Ava was still being a bitch about this even though I hadn't said shit. The other part was intrigued by how different she acted when she wasn't in the office, making my brain struggle to rectify the two personas.

"I really do need help with this paper. Isn't there some code among the teachers about not abandoning students," I asked her dryly, not wanting to put up with her shit.

"Nothing requires a T.A. to put up with lost causes," she said, satisfied with herself. She put her hands on the counter to square up her shoulders and stare me down.

"Why are you so damn convinced I'm a lost cause?" I challenged, letting more than a little of my annoyance through.

"Please, your type is all the same. First, you think your sports career with the school will save you, so you do the bare minimum. Then, when you realize it won't, you expect people like me to carry your weight," she snarked as she rolled her eyes.

"How fucking judgmental of you. You don't know me. I've worked my ass off. I have perfect grades in all my courses while maintaining practice schedules, dealing with injuries, and all the social pumping for the school. I just happen to suck at creative writing. I've never once asked for help. I pull my own fucking weight," I slapped my chest in anger, driving home that I've done this all on my own.

"So no, miss stuck up bitch that has a problem with people she doesn't know, I do not expect anyone to pull my weight. I just needed help and had one perfectly fucked up day. I wasn't trying to disrespect your precious time. Sometimes shit really does happen outside of our control," I said as I pushed up from my stool, the adrenaline from my anger making me need to move.

Ava clacked her nails against the countertop as she thought over what I'd said. Then, after a moment, she pushed off the counter to walk and stand in front of me. She was so short compared to me that she had to crane her neck to look at me.