She’s heating me up with her sexy sighs, her soft skin, and the way she melts into my touch, her body liquid against mine.
When I break the kiss, she nibbles on the corner of her lips. “Hungry?”
“I am ravenous,” I tell her.
We head to the hostess stand, place an order for delivery, and then book it to my place a few blocks away.
Once inside my penthouse, I press her against the wall.
“Cuore mio,” I whisper. “Italian for my heart. I thought about you all day, cuore mio.”
“Not while you were on the mound in the ninth,” she says, grabbing at my shirt and tugging it over my head.
“Fine, not then. You caught me on a technicality,” I say, stripping off her skirt then pulling at her shirt. “But the rest of the day.”
“All day? That’s a long time to be thinking of me.”
I growl, reach for her wrists, and pin them over her head. I slam my pelvis against her, letting her feel the length of me, the truth of my desire for her. “Does it feel like I’m lying?”
She groans, shaking her head. “No, but you can show me the proof just to be sure.”
And I do just that. Unhooking her bra. Tugging off her panties.
Finding a condom and then fucking her.
Hard, beautifully, and passionately up against the wall.
“So fucking gorgeous,” I groan.
“Harder, more,” she urges.
“And so greedy, mi querida. So greedy when you want my cock . . . deep in you.”
“I do, oh God, I do,” she murmurs as I thrust deeper, stroke faster, and slide my fingers between her legs and over that delicious rise of her, where she wants me the most.
“Oh, yes you do, and you’ll get it. I’ll make you come so damn hard.”
A minute later, she’s crying out, shouting, babbling, groaning as she comes apart.
And I follow her there, shuddering, cursing as an orgasm wracks my body.
After we clean up, I take her in my arms and ask her to spend the night.
She says yes.
The next night, after Fitz’s wedding, she meets me here too, and we do it again and again and again.
As she curls up beside me in bed after midnight, she says, “I should tell my brother about us.”
“Yes, you should tell him you won me and had to have me. And now I have to have you over and over.”
“Is that what I should say?” she asks with a sassy lift of her brow.
“Maybe not all that,” I tease, running my fingers down her waist. “But we should let him know I’ll be seeing you as much as I possibly can—it seems I’m already addicted to you.”
“And you haven’t even had your official date with me yet,” she says.
I shrug happily, draw her close, and drop a kiss onto her forehead. “When you know, you know.”
And I know that there’s something between us.
A few days later, we go on a double date, of all things.
We take pictures for social media. We tag each other and offer cute write-ups about the auction and the charities, snapping pictures as we walk through the Museum of Natural History, then watch a sunset in the park and drink milkshakes.
At the end of the night, as the four of us wander through the park, I fall back with Ransom while Teagan and Tempest move ahead. “Don’t think for a second this changes anything between you and me.”
The hockey star scoffs. “It changes nothing, asshole.”
“Not a damn thing, you ugly bastard.”
Hearing us, Tempest shrugs, and Teagan laughs, saying, “Boys will be boys.”
And that’s fine by me.
Then I say to my buddy, “By the way, about that bet . . . I’m glad you won.”
He shoots me a look. “You are? Even though you had to pay up?”
“Crazy, I know. But I could tell you liked her. I could tell you wanted to be with her.” I shrug. “Maybe you needed a little competitive nudge.”
“Maybe I did,” he says. “Thanks for giving it to me. She’s pretty amazing.”
“She is, and don’t you ever lose sight of that.”
“I’ll do my best. Also, asshole, same for you with my sister.”
“Don’t worry, Puck Boy. I’ll take good care of the woman I’m already falling in love with.”
Ransom offers a fist for knocking, and I knock back.
Life is very, very good.
I’d like to tell that reporter that it’s only gotten better since the day he interviewed me.
Especially since later that night when we’re alone, she loops her arms around me, and asks if I can dirty talk to her in French too.
“Mais oui, mon cheri.”
And then I slide into that language, tell her all the filthy things I’ll do to her, then show her too.
Soon after that, I say something else. Something sweet, rather than dirty.
Tempest, je t’aime.
Which I plan on saying in every language.
Ransom
* * *
Look, all I’m saying is I had a feeling.
