Page 105 of Play With Me

I lost count of how many times we came or how many hours we fucked, over and over.

In the shower, we just soaped each other up and washed off all the salt from sweat and tears. Blew raspberries on each other’s wet skin. Laughed it off together. And when we finally crawled into bed as the sun peeked out over the desert, I wrapped myself around her and fell asleep immediately. If she didn’t know how I felt at this point, she didn’t want to know yet, and that was okay with me. I was a patient man.

Louisa

When we woke up a few hours later, he slid into me easily, his nose in my hair, and I savored the lazy and soft morning sex that still felt so new to me. We laid together talking for another hour before his reminder dinged on his phone.

“Close your eyes,” he said. I closed them and listened to the sounds of him getting dressed and tossing his things in his bag. “Keep them closed until I’m gone, Louisa.”

Neither of us felt like we could handle another goodbye. We’d agreed to this the day I found out I was coming, but now that it was here, I wanted to take it back.

He kissed my lips and my eyelids and my tears, but I kept my promise.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” I said.

“I know you will, Iz. Call me when you get in tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

I held his face to mine for one last kiss, and then he was gone.

The door closed behind him, and I kept my eyes shut. I turned my face into his pillow and breathed him in, pulling the blankets over my head.

I spread out under the covers, my fingers brushing against a lace bra, part of a matching set, and I smiled to myself remembering his reaction.

He’d slipped a finger under the lavender lace on my hip and tugged, eyes pinging between the bra and panties. “You buy these for me, baby?”

My cheeks probably flushed. “They were on sale.”

I’d felt the callouses on his hands, rough from training, as he stroked my thighs.

“And you thought of me? You wanted me to see you in them?”

“Yes.”

He’d paused, just drinking me in. “I love them. You look fucking beautiful.”

I didn’t know if what we had was love the way other people described it, but it was ours. I hadn’t felt it before, and I wasn’t afraid.

When I finally pushed the blankets back and opened my eyes, he’d left me the answer to what came next: a folded-up piece of notebook paper on the nightstand.

I didn’t have to open it to know what it said.

Play with me.

I smiled.

Foreplay.

Epilogue

Will

It was raining.

Not hard—just enough to make the light soft and blurry. The kind of rain that didn’t demand attention. Louisa called it sleeping weather.

She stood at the counter with her back to me, one hip braced against it while she twisted the lid onto the blender. She was just wearing a t-shirt, and her hair was pulled up messily, one of her tools still stuck in there like she might have slept that way.