“I do.”

  “Say it,” I demand.

  “Fill me with your cock.”

  “Beg for it,” I encourage her.

  “Please, fill me with your big dick,” she begs.

  “That’s my dirty girl,” I say, then I let go so I can sit back on my heels. After reaching for a condom, I cover my dick, then get on my knees behind her, angling her up. “Look at you. So fucking wet you’re dripping,” I say, then I smack the head of my cock against her clit. She moans, a keening sound, carnal and inviting.

  I do it again till she’s writhing, pushing her body back, asking for more and more.

  I give it to her, slapping the tip against her clit till I’m raw nerve endings and she’s nothing but a chorus of please, please, please.

  I angle up her cheeks, giving me more room to slide my cock into the warm, welcoming home of her pussy. The second, the very second I’m sliding in, my mind snaps. Wires fry. Circuits blow. This is so damn good. The heat, the friction, the tightness.

  The way she wants me.

  The way I want her.

  The way she’s asked for it. She’s perfect for me. Here, in my white dress shirt, on her hands and knees, she cranes her neck back to watch me as I fuck her deep.

  “Like the view?” I ask dryly as I sink into her.

  “I do,” she moans.

  “How about this?” I ease out, leaving her empty, making her beg for more.

  I slam back in, and we set a pace like that—a little relentless, a lot hungry as she swivels her hips, taking me deeper.

  The room fills with grunts and groans, then a demand from Josie. “Smack my ass again.”

  My dick gets even harder. Feels like granite now as I lift a palm and smack.

  She cries out.

  I soothe the red mark with my hand—a gentle caress that doesn’t last too long. I lift it again.

  “Harder,” she begs.

  I smack her, and she yells an oh god but clenches around my cock at the same time. She’s so tight and wet and eager, and now she’s fucking back onto me with ruthless abandon as she chases her pleasure. I thrust deep inside, then ease out, making her wait till I slap that cheek with my hand, leaving a beautiful red mark.

  She’s panting, moaning, and seemingly lost to the moment. It’s perfect. So perfect, how my wild girl gives herself to me. As I fuck her, my hand travels up the smooth flesh of her back then into her hair. I curl a fist around her chestnut strands as I cover her with my body. “You like it like this, baby?”

  “I do,” she says, then my other hand slips between her thighs and finds her eager clit, and I pinch it.

  Her scream is the stuff of my filthy dreams. It’s erotic and carnal and all mine.

  I pinch again, then caress her clit. Josie’s back is arching, her tits are swinging, and her face is twisted. “I want to come,” she whispers in a needy plea.

  “I know you do, baby,” I say, then I repeat the motions—fuck, pinch, soothe. I rinse, lather, repeat till she’s bowing her back and chanting yes, yes, yes.

  Only thing left for me to do is not break her rhythm. I fuck her hard as she curls her fingers into the sheets, clawing at them. Her whole body tenses beautifully, gripping my cock as she comes with a groan that lasts forever and not nearly long enough.

  Her arms slide out from under her. She lets her face fall to the mattress, but her ass is still high up in the air. So hot it’s almost all I need. It occurs to me that I could finish like this. It’d be so damn easy to fuck her for thirty more seconds till I tense and spill. But I want more.

  I want to look at her. I want to see her. I want to experience her. All at once, it hits me—I don’t just want hard, rough, dirty sex with her.

  I pull out. “Josie. I gotta see your face,” I say, desperation coloring my tone.

  “Yeah?”

  “I do,” I say urgently, then I loop an arm around her waist and shift her to her back. She lifts her arms above her head, stretching out languidly, an invitation to take her tenderly. The shirt is open. She pulls up her knees, giving me room. Beautiful and aroused.

  My heart catches in my chest, stops, then speeds up again. “You’re stunning in my shirt,” I tell her as I slide in.

  “Does it make you feel possessive?”

  “Yes. You look so fucking hot in my clothes,” I say, filling her all the way, then pulling back. “Want to see you in my jersey.”

  “That so, Number Sixteen?”

  The image is too much. I shudder, lust shooting down my back in punishing waves.

  “Want it so badly,” I say, then I slow the pace, take my time easing in, out. Pushing up, bracing myself, watching those blue eyes sparkle beneath me. “Want you so much. Want you more every day. More than the night I met you.”

  “Same,” she whispers, the playfulness slinking off.

  We turn quiet, the sex slower, the mood more tender.

  She wraps her arms around my neck, then loops her ankles around my ass. I follow her lead, slow-fucking her for a few mind-bending minutes. It feels like the room is spinning, or maybe it’s my heart in my chest that’s spinning out.

  “You’re fucking me like you respect me now,” she says, her throat catching. The sound goes straight to my chest, squeezing it.

  “Is that a problem?” Say no. Say fucking no.

  She shakes her head. “I like this too.”

  “Good. Same here, baby.”

  I move in her till she’s panting again, then I rise up to my knees, grab her hips, and drive in deep, rubbing her clit with my fingers till she’s shuddering and grasping at the sheets.

  But she doesn’t seem to want to hold on to the covers. Instead, she reaches for me—grabbing at my hair as she comes again.

  It’s so sexy I can’t stand it, and pleasure barrels into me, blurring out the night, the city, the whole damn world.

  My thighs shake and my body tenses.

  I come so hard, my mind blanks out for a long minute or more.

  When it comes back online, I’m sure we broke our roomie rule, but sure, too, we’re on a collision course to smash others. Maybe ones we didn’t even set. Unwritten rules like don’t fall for your roommate.

  Though I’m pretty sure I broke that one a while ago.

  The rest is just details.

  31

  NO GHOST HERE

  Josie

  The Internet can prepare you for a lot of things—orbit-shattering orgasms among them. But can it truly prepare you for the back-to-earth moments after the O? Like when you need to, well, clean up? It’s all so terribly awkward once the penis slips out.

  “Excuse me,” I say a minute later, then hop out of bed and dart into the en suite bathroom as quickly as I can, leaving Wes to dispose of the condom.

  I straighten up, pee, wash my hands, and re-emerge into his bedroom. Wesley must have ditched the protection quickly. He’s now lying on top of the covers, arms parked behind his head, skin sweat-slicked, looking entirely too sexy and sated.

  The moment’s still weird though.

  Because…do I go home?

  As in, downstairs?

  Do I stay here?

  No research prepared me for this truth of modern sex—banging your hot-as-hell roomie is great until you have to figure out who’s kicking who out of bed.

  My stomach flips with fresh nerves as I take tentative steps in my birthday suit into the bedroom. But I stop near the doorway, the entrance to the stairs just beyond.

  “Sooooo,” I begin.

  Translation: what’s next?

  Wes rolls his eyes. “Get the hell over here, Winters,” he says, patting the bed.

  My body throws a parade, confetti and ticker tape raining down inside me. Feeling wanted, I hustle my naked booty back to bed and flop next to him. I grab my glasses and slide them back on.

  He props himself on his side, parks his head in his hand. “Were you going to sneak out?” He sounds playful as he calls me on it.

  “Is it sneaking out if I live here too?” I counter, even though I’m still uncertain. How do you go from having great sex to not knowing what to do next? Why didn’t I do my homework on that?

  “Yes, it’s sneaking out, so don’t do it,” he says.

  “Still so bossy,” I say, but I think I love his bossy side. It settles me. Makes me feel comforted. My chest is warm, and my cells are a little fizzy.

  He tugs me closer, buries his nose in my hair. “The hotel pillow smelled like cinnamon that morning when you were gone. Your lotion, right?”

  My heart sprints. He remembered what I told him at the ice cream shop the night we met. “Yes. Good memory.”

  “I was hoping you were going to still be there. At the hotel in the morning,” he murmurs, sounding lost in time as he absently strokes my hair while revisiting our first night together.

  I feel lost in time too, but in this heady moment. “I was hoping you’d find me,” I say, admitting something I hadn’t fully processed that morning. Something I didn’t truly realize till I bought a cactus to get his last name.

  “I’d thought it might be a clue. A line in your letter.”

  “Which line?”

  There’s no hesitation as he says: “Maybe I’ll see you around the city. It’s big, but it’s small too. You never know…”

  “You memorized it?” Each word lands with space between them.

  “I did,” he says easily, like that’s all there is to it. But it’s a big deal for anyone to memorize three lines. Only, I don’t make too huge a thing of it. I hold on to this nugget for safekeeping in a drawer full of special memories.

  “Maybe it was a clue. I think I was hoping I’d see you again,” I say, admitting that now too.

  “Then I found your scarf, Cinderella,” he says, recounting more of that morning as he nuzzles my hair again. “I had it all packed up to return to you the morning after our first game. I’d even written you a letter, asking you out.”

  My heart is a pinwheel, fluttering in a spring breeze. “You told me you wrote me a letter too.” He said as much the morning we baked. “Do you still have it?”

  “I do.”

  “I want the letter,” I say, impulsively. “No one has ever asked me out in a letter.”

  His smile is smug as he rustles around in the bed, reaching for the nightstand drawer, then he slides it open. He removes a sheet of paper and hands it to me.

  My heart is beating loudly in my ears as I open it. Then wildly in my throat as I read.

  Hey Josie,

  You left this behind, and I’m honestly glad you did. I’m returning it since it’s yours. But also because I’d really like to see you again. Can I show you around San Francisco sometime soon?

  Wesley Bryant

  It’s so simple and so perfect. I clutch it to my chest, closing my eyes, my cells flooding with sunshine. His lips sweep over my shoulder once more. “Guess it was just a matter of timing,” he murmurs against my skin.

  Timing.

  That’s always been the challenge for us. I open my eyes and meet his—they’re full of longing and want. “Our timing hasn’t always been right, has it?”

  He shakes his head, his tone sad as he says, “No, it hasn’t.”

  And it still isn’t. Timing is the reason I’ll have to move home far too soon.

  And I don’t want to push anything now. I don’t want to define this. But I do want—I’m just realizing it this very second—more of him. I’m scared to ask for it though. Scared to figure out what this new thing with us is. What if this moment is just pillow talk?

  “Hey. What’s going on?” Wes asks.

  If I went to improv, I can do this. It’s okay to be afraid. “I like you. A lot,” I say.

  He laughs, smiles, and then covers my mouth with a kiss before he says, “It’s sooo mutual.” He reaches for my hand and slides his fingers through mine. “Was that hard to say?”

  “I had one serious boyfriend in college and then after college we dated too,” I say, then quickly backpedal. “I’m not suggesting this…or that we’re having a…or anything. But just that a lot of this is…new to me. I haven’t been with anyone in a while.”

  He understands what I haven’t said out loud, since he nods, then says, “I haven’t been with anyone in a while. Not since New York. I dated a woman there. Anna,” he says, and I remember what he said about her—that she said he didn’t like anything but hockey. She was the one who wanted him to debate philosophical issues with her.

  He drops another kiss to my shoulder. “It’s different with you, Josie.”

  The world halts, slowing to this moment, to that admission, to the thing every person longs to hear—that we’re special to someone else.

  I touch his cheek, tracing a line along his jaw. “It’s different with you too.”

  I don’t entirely know what that means or where we’re going or what we’re doing. But I’m sure tonight isn’t a one-time thing.

  I settle into the crook of his arm, then run my fingers over the ink covering his right arm. “I think I’ve figured them out. Your tattoos.”

  “Decipher me, then.”

  I trace the dog. “You’re into dogs. You want one. So the dog is like a goal.”

  “Yes.”

  I run a finger along the music notes. “The music is your love for songs and lyrics. It’s your present—but also your purest interest.”

  “You’re too observant,” he says, sounding ridiculously pleased.

  “And then you have these sunbursts,” I say, traveling along the thick black lines that curve and bend near his shoulder. “What are they for?”

  “Passion, desire, bravery,” he says simply.

  I sit with that for a minute, considering the meaning behind them. “Who you want to be? In your job and in life?”

  Wesley’s gaze catches mine, and he holds it for a long, potent moment. His eyes are dark brown pools, and it feels like the air is shimmering between us. “You know me,” he says easily, but that can’t have been easy to say.

  “I think I do,” I whisper.

  “You do.” He cups my face and presses a gentle kiss to my lips. “Stay the night.”

  I had a feeling he was going to say that. But I needed to hear it.

  I curl up next to him, terribly unsure of what will happen in the morning—but incredibly okay with the uncertainty.

  His eyes flutter closed as he coasts a finger along the scar on my chin, then kisses it before he falls fast asleep.

  32

  MONSTER-SIZE

  Wesley

  I wake up to a note from my dad blinking at me on my phone.

  Dad: What’s the verdict? Lunch today? We can go to a new bowl place by the Marina. And I’ve been thinking, if Frieda’s artwork isn’t your style, I can take you shopping for…something else for the walls. Before your session with Domingo this afternoon

  .

  As I drag a hand through my bedhead hair, I snort a laugh—the dude is relentless, but I guess I did say I’d connect with him today.

  Josie rustles. Shit, I didn’t want to wake her. She turns to me, eyes fluttering open, question marks in them.

  I waggle the phone. “It’s my dad. I think he acknowledged that Frieda’s art is horrifying. But of course it’s wrapped around reminders of what he wants me to do today.”

  “Sounds like a new version of a sandwich compliment—a sandwich admission,” she says sleepily, then stretches.

  Damn, she looks good in my bed, her hair fanning out on the pillow, her cheeks flush.

  “That’s him for you,” I say, debating whether to reply to my dad right now or not.

  “You and he have a complicated relationship,” she says, an observation rather than a question.

  “We do. He’s intense. A little controlling,” I say in an obvious understatement. But she’s seen the fridge, she knows my schedule, and she’s aware I work out after games, too, and that Dad hired a personal coach for me as well. “He wants the best for me though. Always has.”

  “That probably makes it even more complicated,” she says, with a sympathetic smile.

  “Yeah. It really does. He’s a great agent though. The deals he’s landed for me have been top-notch. Both with the teams and endorsements.”

  “Maybe because you’re a great player.”

  I glance over at her, all soft and morning sexy. “Maybe,” I say absently, then what the fuck? Why the hell am I talking about my agent-slash-dad while I’m in bed with this woman? I toss the phone on the nightstand, far away, then slink a hand around her stomach. “Play hooky with me today.”

  “What?” She asks it like she’s never heard of the concept.

  I pinch her side. “Did you ever skip class?”

  Her jaw drops. She swats my chest. “Wesley Bryant!”

  I laugh. “Is that a no?”

  She narrows her brow at me, all stern. Librarian stern, come to think of it. And I don’t mind. “Of course I never skipped a class. Why would I?”

  “To have fun,” I counter with a smirk.

  She lifts her chin primly. “Class is fun.”

  This woman. She’s the total opposite of me, yet that doesn’t seem to matter. I drop a kiss to her nose. “You’re such a hot nerd.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she growls at me. “And you’re such a sensitive jock. So there.”

  “Then you should understand why I need to play hooky with you. It will help my sensitive side,” I say, laying it on thick.

  She rolls her eyes. “Right. Sure.” She takes a beat. “Also, I don’t have work today, so there’s no hooky to play.”

  “But I bet you were going to do errands, or read a book, or research something. So play hooky from that.” I refuse to give up.

  She winces. “I signed up for a walking tour of the Marina this morning. With a local city guides group.”

  Damn. That means she’s taking off soon, even though I’m intrigued. “That sounds like fun actually.”

  “See? This is why I don’t play hooky. Because other things are fun.”

  “When is it? The tour?”