Page 70 of Love Expert

Ramone.

Ramone whistles.

“You’re both horrible. Horrible, horrible boys.” She unsnaps her skirt and shoves the denim down her legs. Slipping her shoes off, she sets everything in a pile, then she comes back and studies the tub. “Is there a ladder or something?”

I click my tongue, and since Jeremy makes himself busy celebrating his win, I inch closer to the edge of the tub and peek around at her backside. Fucking delicious, and wrapped in one of those not-quite-a-thong, but not-really-much-more-than-a-thong bottom halves.

“Billy!”

“Guess you’re just gonna have to climb in.” If her happiness depends on the absence of my smug grin, then I’d say we’re pretty well doomed, because I can’t help the curve of my lips any more than I can stop thinking about fucking her again.

And again.

And again.

“But…” She peeks over her shoulder at the not-so-subtle stare of Ramone’s guests, then back to me. To Jeremy. To me. “Billy,” she hisses. “I can’t climb up.”

“You really should hurry,” I whisper. “I can see my handprint on your ass.”

Stunned, her eyes flare wide.

“Which means everyone else is gonna see it too. It’s dark out, so that’ll shield you for a minute. But are you really willing to risk all those folks knowing your business?”

Grunting, she sets her hands on the edge of the tub and hoists herself up. Her shoulders bulge, and her tits become a feast for my eyes.

But, like, a subtle feast, since Jeremy splashes just four feet away.

“Need a hand?” I scoop her up with one arm under her thighs and the other around her back, earning a squeak of surprise from the depths of her chest, then I lift her over the tub and set her down again.

It’s pure accident that I sit her on my lap before she scurries off again. Total mishap that my hand falls to her thigh under the water’s surface. That my pinky brushes across her core and her breath comes to a standstill.

I’m just an innocent man of the law. A single dad. A respectable human being currently broiling in a massive pot of human soup. And because I’m a gentleman who respects boundaries, I allow Maggie to skitterallthe way across the tub so she sits facing me.

And because I’m just so unbelievably selfless, I find her leg beneath the water, drag it up to settle between my thighs, and then I dig my thumb into the arch of her foot and turn her fidgeting to mind-numbing bliss as she lays her head back and sighs.

“Feels good, huh?”

She grunts.

ROUND TWENTY-SEVEN

BILLY

After climbing out of Ramone’s hot tub on Saturday night and shivering all the way home, I dropped Maggie off with nothing more than a murmured goodbye.

I didn’t get to touch. Didn’t get to kiss.

For as long as Jeremy was in the backseat, warming my skull with his beady stare, I couldn’t even reach across and stroke her fidgeting hand.

I simply got to watch her climb out of my car and collect her things, her long hair soaking into her sweater, her toned legs covered in goosebumps as the late-year weather chills the air.

The snow will come soon. The idiots on the road, too. The fires, probably, when folks light one to keep warm and the flames get out of control. Work will ramp up, like it always does as the holidays approach, and school will let out for Thanksgiving. Then Christmas.

It’s really fuckin’ hard juggling single fatherhood, being a cop, and getting through the weeks when school is out and my kid needs extra supervision.

I especially don’t have time to obsess over a woman who can hardly stand to be around me.

I didn’t see her at all on Sunday, although I stayed outside all damn day hoping to lay eyes on her beautiful face. I didn’t see her on Monday either. Or Tuesday. For three nights in a row, I woke at one o’clock in the morning and peeked out my windows, only to discover her carnotin her driveway.