Flirty Thirty (Nerdy Thirties Book 1)

by Cassie Mae

  “In a hurry?” he asks, the blue in his eyes bright with the sunlight streaming through the balcony.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I say with gusto, pushing out my bosom to emphasize my point. The dimple in his cheek makes its first appearance of the day, and it’s so adorable that I feel my heart leap from my chest momentarily.

  A flash of amusement crosses his expression, and then he flattens himself on top of me, my body molding to his like we’re two pieces from different puzzles that surprisingly fit one another. He strokes my wild bed hair away from my face, gazing at me with a playful smile set on his kissed lips.

  “You, my dear, are a bed hog.”

  I wrinkle my nose at him. “Well, you dearie, need a breathe-right strip.”

  “We ran the ad for the last campaign of those.” He juts a finger over his shoulder. “I gave a bunch of samples to my buddy, actually.”

  “Do they work?”

  He shrugs. “Don’t know. Maybe we can test one out on you tonight. I wasn’t the only one sawing logs.”

  I playfully smack his shoulder, our laughter moving against each other in ways that has us both swapping our smiles for gasps of pleasure.

  My hips attempt another roll up against him, and he hangs his head, the blond ends of his hair tickling the bridge of my nose.

  “Maya? I’m… I’m falling for you,” he blurts out in frustration. My heart goes from passionate throbbing to thick, heavy thumping. His eyes turn apologetic, as if he knows just how fragile I am about the particular subject. “I know I joked about it when you agreed to come here, but I in no way thought it would happen this fast.”

  “Really?” I say, hoping my voice stays light and flirtatious. “Given what I already know of you, I think this confession is actually coming a little late.”

  A rare rush of pink tints his cheeks, and he groans, burying his face into the pillow by my head. The weight of his body should be killing me, but it actually feels so good that I’m having a hard time finding enough brain cells to talk to him about this. Most of them are working overtime in the hypothalamus department.

  “I’m sorry,” he muffles into the feathers, and I nudge him back up to look him in the eye. If I’m being honest with myself, he’s the closest anyone’s ever come to being part of any future I could imagine. The fact still remains though that I don’t want children. I don’t want a settled life. This game we’re playing is far more dangerous than I thought, and the smart part of me knows that I should wriggle myself free. I should pack my bags, take my cats back home, and find Cooper a place to live so that we can both move on from this nonsense experiment. My mind and heart knows it’s the right thing to do, but my body aches with the thought. My body wants so much to be right here, underneath him, feeling his taut muscles against my soft curves. It’s so unfair to have this conversation in bed, because my heart and mind just have no chance of winning.

  “Please,” I whisper. “Don’t fall for me.”

  His eyes search mine, and while I can sense his disappointment I can also see the flirtatious side of him, that hungry male who has a ready and willing female at his disposal.

  “It’s not fair to have this conversation with you underneath me.”

  We finally have a shared thought. “You started it.”

  He brings his lips down on mine, cupping my face again to hold me in place. The kiss is more urgent, more frantic than his slow build, and I drown in it, let it erase our dialogue, erase my guilt and allow me to focus on only the sensations he causes under my skin.

  His thumb strokes down the side of my face, making me shiver with anticipation. It’s so incredibly titillating to have such a simple caress cause such havoc in my body. My nipples harden under the weight of his chest, and the small amount of uncovered skin on my stomach burns against his abdominals. I feel as if there is another version of me trying to claw her way out. I roll my hips, faster and faster, getting closer to my eminent release.

  “Maya,” Cooper grunts between our lips, distracting me for a moment. “Not that I want you to stop, but… could you please move your cat?”

  Shocking me out of the moment, I lift my head to find Kat rubbing up against Cooper’s leg. A giggle slips from my lips, shaking my stomach against his heated skin.

  “Of all the times to cuddle,” I mutter, pushing the ball of my foot into the kitten’s fur and nudging her off my man. “It’s never this one,” I tell Cooper, my chest bumping up against his as I try to give us some privacy. “It’s the fat one you gotta watch out for.”

  “You mean the one who looks like he’s capable of murder?” Cooper nods up above my head to Tom “innocently” strolling across the pillows and leveling Cooper with a possessive stare. He plops on his hind legs and sets a paw atop my head.

  I cover my face with my hand, closing my eyes as I giggle against Cooper’s hard, hot body.

  “Why’d you want them here?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “You do realize that this is what you should expect with children.” I tilt my head in an arrogant know-it-all fashion that is probably not the most attractive thing. “Why do you think my brother needed a babysitter?”

  He silently chuckles at my point. “There will be a lock on my bedroom door.”

  “And that will stop little fingers from appearing through the crack by the floor?”

  “I’ll kick a pillow over there.” He flattens against me, eyes flicking to the cat for a brief second before he rests his head on the heel of his hand. “Kids don’t prevent moments like these.” His finger taps the tip of my nose. “That’s how people have more than one.”

  It takes everything in me to bite back my retort. Moments like these don’t happen to longtime couples. I can’t think of a time that was drawn out and savored after the first month or so, even with those I considered steady boyfriends. My sister, who is all too eager to hand out details about her sex life, has yet to describe a moment like this one. It’s all quickies and interrupted orgasms. Even Holland with zero little distractions running around—yet—says her love life has lost its luster.

  I blink up to his beautiful blue eyes swimming in hope and happiness—a surprising childlike quality to a man who is such stable ground. A wave rushes over me, and I catch myself before tipping over. I could easily fall into him without thinking twice.

  Tom shifts above me, and I reach up and gently shove him over, ignoring his low mewls. With both my fur babies on the floor, I run a hand over the scruff on Cooper’s chin, goosebumps cascading across my ribs at the coarse, manliness of it. He watches me in quiet reverence, fingers clenching into the sheets by my hip, and I grin at the restraint he’s showing. This feeling is the one I don’t want to lose: feeling sexy, desirable, in control and losing control all at once. It’s the primal urges, the fun and animalistic desire to lose yourself in intense pleasure from someone new. It’s the curiosity, the mystery… it’s reading a book for the first time, jumping at a surprise you didn’t see coming, hopping on a rollercoaster and not realizing it has a an upside-down loop.

  For all that adventure and anticipation buzzing under my skin, there’s a trace of trepidation with Cooper that throws me off balance for a moment. Will sleeping with him ruin the excitement I have whenever I see his face, hear his voice, touch his skin? Will it ruin it like it ruined all the others? The thought is far more devastating than I expected, and my fingers still against his jaw as I let it all process.

  His eyes swivel between mine, sensing that I’m having an overthinking moment. He grins, his dimple creasing underneath my touch, and reaches up to twine his fingers with mine. He presses light kisses to each one of my knuckles before letting go to smooth my hair away from my face.

  “How long’s it been?” he asks.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  He shakes his head. “Two years for me.”

  I choke on the air between our lips, and he chuckles.

  “Don’t act so surprised.”

  “But you’re… you’re…” I gesture
to him as if that’s explanation enough.

  “Painfully awkward?” he offers, throwing me for a loop.

  “Huh?”

  He sighs, his breath surprisingly still minty from last night’s brush. He trails a lazy hand up my side, nearly making me forget the conversation as my eyes roll back.

  “Not everyone can tolerate my blurting problem.” He looks down in amusement when I shiver in his arms at his light touch. “The last time I…” He waves over our intertwined bodies, a rush of red painting his cheeks. I notice for the first time that the mark Claire drew on him has faded. “She told me in not so many words that I was good to look at, but a pain to listen to.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It was fine,” he says with a laugh. “Nothing I hadn’t heard before.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  His face contorts into something that I can only describe as skepticism laced with constipation. “You can’t tell me that you weren’t put off by it.”

  “By your no nonsense, skip the small talk conversations?” I playfully pinch the skin near his elbow. “If I was put off by it, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Oh you got the full blast of it,” he says. “My damn tongue ran away with me during that brunch.”

  “That’s not normal for you?”

  He shakes his head. “Not after she said that. I tried to back off, not come on so strong, but everything felt so… on the surface. Dates never led into more than a goodnight kiss because I never felt like I could get to know the girl. I like deeper conversations. I like knowing where she stands, what she sees for her future. I like peeling away at the layers that really mean something. I told myself that if I was going to be with a woman, I wanted to know more than just the surface.”

  “Funny coming from the man who kissed a woman after she only spoke two words to him.” I give him a look, and he tosses his head back and laughs. With a playful growl, he curls back into me and hides his face into the pillow I’m resting in.

  “I didn’t say I was a purest.” His voice muffles next to my ear. “Every man meets a woman who is the exception to his self-imposed rules.”

  A rush of warm butterflies soar through my midsection, and I blink at the ceiling, wondering if I’ve heard him correctly. Never have I been the exception. Never have I been anything but just another girl.

  I coax him back up above me. “Please keep saying everything on your mind.”

  “It’s not painfully awkward for you?”

  “You have no idea how much your blurting problem turns me on.”

  “Well… damn. Maya, I think my tongue is about to run away from me again.”

  He lowers his mouth over mine, his tongue slipping between my lips. I sink into his kiss, my body already willing to take control over my thoughts. The fingers he was so gently caressing my skin with curl into my ribs, causing a harsh shiver to run up my spine and a gasp to fly out between our mouths. He gives me a satisfied grin before delving back into the kiss, tasting every corner of my mouth as I sink more and more into the sensations of his body, his touch, his skilled hands that I have a hard time believing are two years out of practice.

  He moves suddenly, taking me with him as he sits us up. His touch is gentle against my face, yet aggressive on my waist, telling me he’s skilled in both areas of physical expression. I can’t stop the giddy, anxious giggle that sneaks out between our kisses.

  As tentative as I am, I’m by far more eager to jump into the unknown waters of this complicated relationship. My fingers curl into the hem of his t-shirt, pulling at the material to get it up and over his head. It gets caught at all the right spots—abdominals, pectorals, biceps… yum, yum, yum. Laughter escapes us both as I get frustrated and turned on all at once by his muscular torso.

  The cotton flumps against the floor, the static making his blond hair stand up. I smile and run my fingers through the strands, giddy from the conditioned softness. My teenage fantasy about doing it with a beach blond is about to come true.

  His eyes wander over my face as I trail my hand down his cheek, scrunching my nose at the adorable lines in the corners of his eyes. There are tiny grays sprinkled through the hair just above his ears, and I bite away a grin at them. My first gray hair was responsible for the Hershey massacre a year ago. His grays, however, cause my stomach to dive into another round of jitters.

  My fingers fall to his collarbone, over his strong shoulders, squeeze his pectorals and scratch through his hairy chest. An uncontrollable squeal escapes me, effectively ruining any composure I may have been possessing.

  His lips turn up, and he says, “Your turn,” and a torrent of nerves rush through my midsection. My body is not something one ogles and gawks at. I’m a “do it in the dark” kind of person, and as the sun streams in from the windows, I get an electric shot of hesitancy that I’m not sure I’ll recover from.

  Cooper’s fingers dip under my top, and I clamp my eyes shut, terrified of the expression I’ll see on his face when he notices just how many rolls cover my stomach, or how low my bosom droops without the support of a push-up.

  My knees bend out of habit, and I fold myself up hoping to cover what so many people view as flaws. The rush of cold air hits my back as it’s exposed, and the sound of my shirt joining his on the floor floats past my ears.

  “Mmm,” Cooper moans, the sound coming from deep in his throat before his lips are on mine once again. His hands which have been so focused on my face are now everywhere else. My shoulders, my elbows, my ribs, over my love handles, across my plush belly. He snakes them up between my breasts, catching my chin, holding me to him, and I can’t seem to breathe. My worries have been chased away with his touch, his aggression, with his sweet and powerful kisses.

  My back hits the soft cushion of the bed sheets, the coolness a welcome contrast to the heat that is spreading throughout my body. Cooper takes a hold of my bottom lip, pulling it out and eliciting a moan from the back of my throat. His hands are at my bottoms, and his voice is as anxious and heady as my heart as he says, “Help me out, Maya,” and I push off the bed, allowing him to undress me in a way we haven’t yet together. Everything joins the growing pile on the floor, and my eager hands go for his bottoms, and when I can no longer reach, I use my toes to push them down his toned legs. He laughs when they get stuck on his ankles, and I join him in his hormone-laced amusement as he fights with his clothing.

  “You’re covered, right?” I ask when he’s back to kissing a path down the length of my neck. I fight the urge to thrust my hips against his before knowing if he brought a raincoat for the hot summer storm.

  “Probably,” he says, unconcerned. I push against the surge of pleasure striking at my core as his lips press to my hardened nipple.

  “I’m… I don’t have anything,” I say breathlessly, gulping hard to keep my head. “No kids. No kids, Cooper. We need something.”

  He chuckles into my cleavage before pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses on the unattended breast. “Relax, Maya. I’m not trying to trap you into a long term relationship with me.” He winks before going back to giving me scorching pleasure.

  “I… you… it’s working, though,” I try to tease, but I can’t find the flirtatious voice in me anywhere. He’s already trapping me with his tongue, his hands, his body, and I blink against the stars popping in my eyes, desperate to find some sort of ground to stand on so I can convey how very serious I am about birth control, but then his mouth is on my lower belly, and it feels too good to worry about anything. What was I thinking, anyway?

  “Do you mind?” he asks, and I mutter something unintelligible which must’ve been a yes because his mouth is on me within the next second, and I jerk and buck against him. My head is up on a cloud and my heart is in a drum line, and I touch his hair, attempt to control my expletives, but they come out despite my best efforts to keep the cursing at bay. His tongue is a magician, and I’m a rabbit at his disposal. He’s a cup of hot coffee in the morning and I am a drunken fool from the night
before. My nails dig into the soft strands, and I hold on to the only anchor keeping me from floating off into the heavens.

  “Up,” I say, the only word that I can find after plummeting back to earth. “Up here.”

  He grins, holding a single finger to me before putting way too much distance between us. My foggy vision is somewhat cleared as I watch his perfect, toned glutes disappear into the bathroom. My fuzzy hearing makes out the sound of his hands fishing around in a drawer, a box tearing open, a thunk of something hitting the bottom of a trashcan. He’s back before I get a grip on myself, and a grateful smile plays on my lips when I notice the condom.

  “No baby,” he assures me, a glint settling in his dark blue eyes before he settles between my legs. Too anxious to wait for him, I grasp his taut rear-end and thrust myself up. If he planned on going slow, that plan is shot out the window the moment we’re together.

  He rocks into me, slamming harder and harder, faster and faster, and I’m gone yet again, starry-eyed and screaming out into a pillow I press over my face to muffle the sounds of the purest pleasure I’ve ever experienced. A cool wave of air rushes over me when Cooper rips the pillow away, tossing it into the unknown space around us. He presses his slick forehead to mine, groaning naughty words in my ear, pushing kisses to my lips.

  Ten seconds, ten minutes, ten years later, he stiffens above me, and I reach up and push away his sweat-sprinkled hair, mind drifting down and floating into a moment of pure shock that this gorgeous man has just had sex with me.

  He smiles around his panting, opening his eyes to mine. I blink, double-taking to make sure I’m not imagining the stars settled in his blue irises.

  “Thank you,” he says, withdrawing his hips. An unexpected pout pulls at my bottom lip as we separate. He smirks and playfully tugs at it before leaning back on his knees. “That was fun.”