Page 37 of Rafferty's Rules
The off the chart’s kind of steamy, and I’m super happy to know that this girl can orgasm by someone else’s hand. Take that, William, you jerk because the man had the audacity to throw the fact that he’d never made me come back in my face—like I was the reason he’d been caught paying for sex.
Next time, maybe I should take a picture to show him what real satisfaction looks like. If there happens to be a next time. Because, oh the shame and mortification. I’d gone to sleep immediately after, and I’m plenty sure that’s not the way men like these things to work.Quid pro quo and all that.
I stretch out along the bed, my arms above my head as I make like a contented cat. Can I just say that awesome orgasms rock! There would be much less hate in this world, I’m sure, if people regularly experienced that kind of euphoria. I’m in this position—arms above my head, back arched, and the duvet around my waist—when the door bursts open, and Rafferty bounces happily in. He looks like he’s been out for a run if the dark patches on the front of his T-shirt are anything to go by. His fair hair fans haphazardly over his head and just looking at it causes my toes to curl and insides to contract in a very pleasurable sort of sensory memory. I had that man’s hair in my fingers as he lay between my legs. As he praised me for being wet for him. As he called me his girl. What would it be like to really behisgirl? Like playing with fire if last night is anything to go by.
‘Mornin’, bite-sized.’
My arms retract like the snap of a rubber band, and I quickly pull the quilt up to my chin. ‘There’s no need to laugh,’ I answer a little tartly.
‘I’m not laughing at you,’ Rafferty says, though he doesn’t do much to prove his point. He carries on chuckling, though now those chuckles take on a different tenor. They seem darker. Not sardonic exactly, but something like it. ‘This was only ever gonna go one of two ways, and it looks like I guessed the direction.’
‘What am I missing?’ Even I can hear the suspicion in my tone.
‘From where I’m standing? A case of buyer’s remorse.’ He slides a hand between his shoulder blades, grasping his T-shirt and pulling it over his head. It hits the floorboard with a slap before he toes off his runners, his socks joining his T-shirt. Then he strides to the window, pulling back the sheer drapes to look out into the street.
‘I haven’t bought anything,’ I answer with a frown. Except maybe last night, I bought a whole lot of trouble because last night is on me. Maybe he was just trying to comfort my sleepy grasping’s that had started as a dream, warm and ethereal. A dream that had yet to become a chance to have him touch me.
‘I mean, I get you’re having regrets about last night.’ He’s right. I regret not exploring him with my mouth and hands. ‘You wanted to punish him.’ I regret not being able to stay awake long enough to straddle him and—wait,what?
‘I get it,’ he says, turning the key in the old-fashioned French door to unlock it and stepping out. ‘I was a revenge fuck,’ he calls stridently from out on the balcony. I don’t know what’s worse—that he would think that, or he’s standing half naked looking down into the street, or that he’s chosen to have this conversation through an open fluffing door! But then he steps inside again, sending a bland smile my way. ‘It’s only natural this morning that you’re feeling regret and have misgivings. But I suppose it depends on the way you play it, the way you feel about it ’cause, technically, you weren’t unfaithful. It was just a little kissing. Nothing to get overwrought about.’
If that was just a kiss, then William has been doing it wrong. Very, very wrong.
‘You have got to befuckingjoking.’
My tone—my daylight curse—seems to stop him in his tracks. The drape is lowered as he turns to face me, his face an inscrutable mask. I pull myself up to sit and swing my legs out of bed, all while keeping a death grip on the duvet at my chest.
‘Did you not hear me when I said my fiancé was arrested for engaging the services of ahooker? The week before our wedding?’ With each spoken word, my voice becomes louder and shriller. ‘Do you think because he wasn’t caught with his dick in her mouth thattechnicallyhe wasn’t unfaithful!’
‘No,’ he answers immediately, adamantly, even. ‘I think he’s the lowest kind of fucking scum there is. He should be shot with shit, and I’d load the gun. I was just trying to make you feel better.’
‘Are you high? Did your run this morning fill you with so many endorphins that it screwed with your brain chemistry?’
Rafferty folds his arms across his broad chest, his expression unamused.
‘Look, about last night,’ he begins gruffly.
‘I instigated last night!’
‘And I took it too far. You said you wanted to be touched, not—’
‘Listen, buddy, if I hadn’t had the best orgasm of my life—though I’m not completely sure if it was one long orgasm or a million tiny explosive ones but whatever—I might get out of this bed and kick your ass. The only thing I regret is that I immediately passed out. If I hadn’t, there would have been more for you to regret this morning. More touching, more amazing kissing, more licking, and more sucking and—’ And that’s probably a little TMI. I sound like a kid who’s been denied cake all her life only to have suddenly raided the cake shop and gotten the mother lode of sugar highs.
By this time, I’m standing with one hand balled at my side and the other clutching the edges of the duvet edges tightly at my heaving chest. In other words, I look completely undignified. And there’s no way I’d kick anyone’s ass without falling flat on my face.
‘I can’t believe I woke up feeling so blissed out, and now we’re shouting,’ I say rather than yell this time.
‘Who knew you were such a firecracker.’ His mouth hitches in the corner, his eyes gleaming as he stalks toward me with the prowess of a large jungle cat. I think I kind of know what it feels like to be an antelope in the path of a panther. Though maybe not; I’m sure a poor antelope wouldn’t bethisexcited at the prospect of being breakfast.
As he reaches me, his hands grip my shoulders.
‘I don’t like it when people try to make decisions for me,’ I grumble, finding it hard to hold his blue gaze. And that is the understatement of the year. ‘Because I most certainly don’t have any regrets,’ I continue primly while wondering how this sunburn is holding out.
‘I’m sorry,’ he answers sincerely. ‘I didn’t mean to make you shout.’
‘Apology accepted. Because it isyour faultI was shouting. But I’ll let you make it up to me.’ Incredulous brows almost hit his hairline. ‘You can make space for a little one in the shower.’
‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’ His hands fall away, and he turns his back on me.
