Chapter 1: Struck Out, Hooked Up
The dorm corridor smelled of stale beer and industrial cleaner, a fluorescent hum drilling into Gavin’s skull as he followed the sharp click of Raven’s boots on the linoleum. “Bit of a tip, this,” she muttered over her shoulder, the smoky laziness of her voice bouncing off the cinderblock walls, not bothering to see if he was still there.
He was. “I’ve seen worse,” Gavin said, his Australian cadence soft, and he meant it; there was no game in the statement, just a simple acknowledgment of her space.
Her nose scrunched at the faint, sour tang of old coffee, toeing a tangled pair of fishnets aside with practiced indifference. When she peered up from the gesture, her pale eyes sad in the neon gloom, he closed the distance and kissed her—a quiet, testing pressure that cut through the chatter still buzzing in their veins.
Raven obliged, mouth parting as if it was simply expected of her, playing the role of someone else. After the kiss broke, Gavin's lips brushed her ear, his breath hot as he muttered something short and crude. "Your mouth..." was all she heard. I don't even like men, she thought, but the heat in her gut was a traitorous pulse. He burrowed into the curve of her neck. "Like that, dontchu?"
“Dunno,” Raven muttered, the word catching in her throat, not quite answering.
He started kissing at her ear, starting to get more direct in his lustful whispers. “Tell me what you want,” he breathed, the words blunt and hot against her skin.
She tasted the ghost of his beer, felt the slight scratch of his stubble, a catalog of sensations that felt disconnected from the person experiencing them.
"Um," she mutters, a weak protest against the physical reality of the mess she’d made of her own bed.
His hands were already on her hips, one roaming up to her tits, turning her, his breath coming faster. “God, you feel so good,” he mumbled into her hair, his voice thick and low. "Fuck, you feel it?"
The words soft landed like a physical blow, a generic blanket statement for a body he wasn’t even seeing. She closed her eyes, let her head fall back against his shoulder, and pictured someone else: a girl with curves, with give, the kind of woman a bloke like him actually meant when he said that.
She went pliant, a conduit, the anonymous warm shape for the straight-girl fantasy he would fuck into her mattress.
He thrusted against her clothed rear, groaning in need, pulling her tank top over her head with a rough, hurried tug. The cold dorm air hit her skin, raising goosebumps.
“You’re on the pill, yeah?” he breathed into the space between her shoulder blades, his hands already fumbling with the button of her denim shorts.
Raven almost snorted; the pill was a straight girl’s problem, a ludicrous concept in her world. “No,” she said, a dry chuckle in her throat, the answer obvious and flat.
He withdrew one hand, the other still on her hip, and tugged his wallet from his back pocket, dropping it onto the wobble-legged nightstand with a deliberate softness. The worn leather lay there like a contract, its presence a cold, practical anchor in the murky light.
His fingers returned to her button, popping it open with a deft click that echoed in the quiet room. He pushed her shorts and underwear down in one rough, efficient motion, the denim scraping against her knees before pooling on the floor. She stepped out of them, a shiver running through her that had nothing to do with the cold, and listened to the rustle of fabric as he stripped behind her.
The mattress dipped under his weight as he guided her onto the bed, his hands on her hips positioning her on her knees. His mouth was warm and wet, a shock of sensation that made her grip the tangled sheets, her forehead pressing into the pillow as she thought, This is the part where I’m supposed to feel something.
Gavin groaned behind her, a low, strained sound that vibrated through her. She blocked it out, squeezing her eyes shut tighter, and conjured the soft weight of a woman’s body, the gentle press of breasts against her spine, the familiar scent of perfume instead of cheap body spray.
His mouth left her skin, a cold spot blooming where his warmth had been, and then his tongue pressed flat and hot against her in a place that made her whole body jolt. “Fucking hell,” Raven gasped into the pillow, her fingers twisting in the sheets, the profanity a raw, startled sound ripped from her throat.
“You like that, don’t you?” he murmured, the words a low vibration against her skin, a rhetorical question meant to narrate his own performance. He didn’t wait for an answer, his hands tightening on her hips. “Bet you’ve wanted this...”
Raven said nothing, her jaw clenched tight, eyes wide open now and staring blindly at the neon-lit wall, her earlier fantasy evaporated into the stark, purple glare of the LED strip.
The sound of a foil packet tearing was obscenely loud in the quiet room. She heard the soft, slick rustle as he rolled it on, a functional, antiseptic sound that made her stomach tighten. His hands returned to her hips, his grip firmer now, proprietary, as he guided himself into her with a single, practiced thrust.
A sharp gasp escaped her, less from pleasure than from the sheer, clinical shock of the intrusion. The cold rhythm began, her cheek pressed against the pillow.
The rhythm was methodical, a hollow metronome in the purple dark. His breathing hitched into a predictable pattern against her back. Raven stared at the peeling paint on the wall, her mind clear and cold. “Moan a different name,” she said, her voice flat and instructional, cutting through the damp sound of skin.
He faltered, his hips stuttering to a halt. “What?” he breathed, the word thick with confusion and a sting of insult. “Just do it,” she muttered into the pillow, her tone leaving no room for debate. There was a long, awkward beat of silence, the only sound their ragged breathing. “Chloe,” he finally groaned, the name forced and foreign, crumbling any last pretense.
“No,” she muttered, the word a blunt correction against the pillow. "Sam," she said, the name cheap and sharp like broken glass. He laughed, a low, guttural sound of pure relief, and obeyed.
The slap of skin turned persistent, a rhythmic piston driven by the permission she’d given. He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, his breath hot and ragged, utterly satisfied in this agreed-upon fiction.
He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, his breath hot and ragged, utterly satisfied in this agreed-upon fiction. “You like that, don’t you, Sam?” he grunted, the question a wet rasp against her skin, needing the echo.
“It’ll do,” Raven breathed, the words a flat, bored exhale into the pillow.
A softer, different sound escaped her then, a low moan that wasn’t for him. “God, her hands were softer,” she mumbled, the confession lazy and stark.
Gavin froze, a sharp, silent gasp locking in his chest. A frantic, electric jolt shot through him, a desperate scramble for control as his body betrayed him, surging violently towards a finish that was now humiliatingly, inevitably early.