Chapter 4: Spin Cycle Seduction
The dread was a low, constant hum, like bad wiring. For three days, Jaxon watched the front door of Emerson Hall, his easy smile feeling plastered on. Every unfamiliar face made his shoulders tense. He’d asked Maya for a name. She’d just shaken her head, that brittle look returning. “Forget it. He’s just blowing smoke.”
He couldn’t forget. It flavored everything. The memory of her on his bed, under him, was now braided with a sharp, protective anxiety. It made him reckless.
He found himself in the basement laundry room on a Tuesday afternoon, dumping a load of towels he didn’t need to wash into a machine just to have something to do with his hands. The air was thick with the scent of cheap floral detergent and damp concrete. A single bulb flickered, casting jumpy shadows across the aging washers. The thump and slosh of a cycle somewhere was the only sound.
He felt her before he saw her. A shift in the air, a subtle, spicy hint of her perfume cutting through the chemical clean.
“Stalking me, Cole?”
He turned. She leaned against the doorframe, wearing tight black leggings and an oversized grey sweatshirt that slipped off one shoulder. Her eyes were challenging, but he saw the shadows under them.
“Doing laundry,” he said, his voice flat.
“Liar.” She pushed off the frame and walked toward him, her steps silent on the linoleum. The room felt smaller, hotter. She stopped just behind him, her body not touching his, but he could feel the heat radiating from her. “You’ve been pacing this dorm like a guard dog since I told you.”
“You gave me a problem with no solution. I hate that.”
Her laugh was soft, close to his ear. “I’m the problem, Jaxon. Not him.”
He turned then, and she was right there, her amber eyes wide and dark. The fear he saw in them, quickly masked, shattered his last pretense of control. He saw the lonely, sharp-edged girl hiding behind the bravado, the one who left her old life and maybe brought some of its ghosts with her.
She must have read the shift in his face. Her playful smirk faded. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. Her hand came up, her fingers tracing the tense line of his jaw. “Stop thinking,” she whispered. “Just for five minutes. Please.”
Her touch was a lit match dropped in gasoline. He grabbed her wrist, not hard, but with a firmness that made her breath catch. He backed her up until the cool, vibrating metal of a running washing machine pressed against her lower back.
“Here?” she breathed, her eyes flickering with excitement and something like relief.
He didn’t answer with words. He kissed her, a raw, consuming kiss that was all tongue and teeth and bottled-up fear. She kissed him back just as hungrily, her hands fisting in his shirt. When he broke away, they were both panting.
“I need you inside me,” she whispered against his lips, her voice ragged with want. “Right now.”
Her hands dropped between them, fumbling with the button of his jeans. He helped her, yanking the zipper down. She pushed her own leggings and the scrap of black lace beneath them down to her ankles in one urgent move. He lifted her, his hands under her thighs, and hoisted her onto the lid of the humming washing machine. The metal was warm, vibrating through her body into his palms.
She was already wet. He felt the slick heat against his fingers as he positioned himself. He guided his cock, thick and aching, to her entrance and pushed in with one deep, unyielding thrust.
A sharp, guttural cry tore from her throat. Her head fell back, banging softly against the concrete wall behind the machines. She was incredibly tight, her cunt clutching him in a velvety, wet fist. The machine beneath her shuddered and chugged, its rhythm syncing with the pounding of his blood.
He set a brutal pace from the start, each thrust jolting her body, making the machine rock against the wall with a metallic groan. There was no finesse, only a desperate, driving need to be as deep inside her as possible, to obliterate the fear for both of them. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her ankles locking at the small of his back, pulling him deeper with a strength that surprised him.
“Fuck, yes,” she gasped, her nails digging through the fabric of his shirt into the skin of his shoulders. “Just like that. Don’t fucking stop.”
The vibrations from the washer traveled up through her, into him, a constant, electric buzz that amplified every sensation. He could feel her internal muscles fluttering around his shaft with each tremor of the machine. It was obscenely good. He hooked his hands under her knees, pushing them up and apart, spreading her wider, changing the angle. He drove into her, hitting a spot that made her eyes fly open, blind with pleasure.
“There! Oh, god, right there, Jaxon, please—” Her words dissolved into incoherent moans.
He pistoned into her, the slapping sound of their bodies meeting mixing with the mechanical hum. Sweat dripped from his brow onto her chest. The vibrations were relentless, making her thighs quiver, ratcheting her pleasure higher, faster. He watched her face contort, her lips parted, her gaze locked on his with a fierce, vulnerable intensity.
“I’m gonna come,” she warned, her voice a broken rasp. “I’m gonna come all over your fucking cock.”
Her orgasm hit her like a seizure. Her body arched violently, her cunt clamping down on him in rhythmic, pulsing spasms so intense he saw stars. A raw, shattered scream echoed off the concrete walls, swallowed by the noise of the machinery.
The vise-like grip of her climax tore his own release from him. With a choked roar, he buried himself to the hilt and came, jets of hot cum erupting deep inside her as his hips jerked through the last, desperate thrusts. The world narrowed to the feel of her contracting around him and the steady, juddering vibration of the machine beneath them.
He collapsed forward, bracing his hands on the wall on either side of her head, his forehead resting against the cool concrete. They stayed like that, joined, breathing in ragged unison, as the washer clicked and shifted into a final spin cycle, the vibrations becoming a frantic whirl.
Slowly, he softened, slipping out of her. A mix of their fluids slicked her inner thighs. He helped her off the machine, her legs wobbling. She leaned against him as she pulled her leggings up, her movements slow, dazed.
He tucked himself away, zipped his jeans. The mundane act felt surreal. The washer finished its cycle and fell silent with a definitive clunk. The sudden quiet was deafening.
Maya smoothed her sweatshirt, not meeting his eyes. A faint blush painted her cheeks. “So,” she said, her voice still hoarse. “That was… a thing.”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. The anxiety was still there, but it was quieter now, submerged under a bone-deep satiation and a deeper, more confusing current of feeling.
She looked at him then, and the vulnerability was back, naked and unmistakable. “He texted again this morning. A picture. Of the quad.”
The cold dread flooded back, instant and paralyzing. “Maya—”
“I know.” She held up a hand, cutting him off. “I’m handling it.” She walked to the door, then paused. “Thanks for the distraction. It was… effective.”
She left him alone in the sterile, smelly room, the only evidence of what happened the faint, rocking motion of the now-still washing machine and the ache in his body that felt a lot like the beginning of a fall.