His hands find my breasts, cupping and massaging them, and that low rumble becomes a moan.
His hands. They may be manicured, but they can be rough. And I love it.
He’s so hungry for me, and for just this moment it makes me want to give him everything I have to give.
I don’t care if it’s because he hasn’t been with a woman for a while or if it’s because this is me.
I don’t even care that this is Keaton Bridges.
Or that I may just be having some insane reaction to him because I haven’t been with anyone like this for a year.
I reach down to palm the hard-as-rock bulge in the front of his jeans.
“Fucking hell,” he exhales.
Fucking hell is right.
This is going to be quick and dirty, and then we will never speak of it again.
“You need to get inside me immediately.”
“Darlin’,” he says, as he begins to unbutton my blouse, “I respectfully disagree.”
He continues to carefully unbutton every button, so slowly it is agonizing, and then he pushes it down over my shoulders and kisses the bare skin on my right shoulder and slowly peppers kisses just below my collarbone all the way across to my left shoulder, pushing the sleeves down until I lift my hands out of them.
My hands go straight to his face for some reason, and I start kissing him like a crazy teenager. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I just really have to kiss him. He waits for me to calm the fuck down, and when I do, I lean back against the wall again, my hands tucked behind my tailbone.
He drags his fingertips down my chest, slowly, lightly, from my clavicle down to my cleavage, and then reaches behind my back to unhook my bikini top and swiftly reaches up behind my neck to untie the straps and lets it fall to the floor.
He stares at me. His jaw goes slack and his eyelashes flutter for a second, and then he regains control of himself. “Roxy fucking Carter,” he says, his voice so low and deep. “Goddamn.”
He takes one step to the side, slides one arm behind my shoulders and one behind my knees, and lifts me up to carry me to the bed. As soon as my back is on the mattress, his lips begin their delicious downhill journey. From my lips to my neck to my breasts to my belly and down, down, down.
“Fucking hell,” I whisper. I force my eyelids open and raise my head to see where he went.
He’s kneeling on the floor, looks up at me while reaching under my skirt and slowly pulling my bikini bottom down. He swiftly pushes my skirt up to my waist and hikes one of my legs over his shoulder. He massages my hips again—God, why does that feel so good—and then turns his head to kiss and nibble on my inner thigh, slowly, slowly moving closer to the part of me that is dying for him. When he’s close enough that he could kiss me there, he teases my clit with his warm breath and the tip of his tongue, and—dammit—the anticipation has me trembling.
“Goddammit, Keaton,” I whisper. I run my hands through his hair while his tongue circles and flicks and sweeps. The long, slow licks have me shuddering. The way he continues to stroke my hips and my ass and my thighs, my whole body feels attended to and worshipped. The way he’s moaning and humming while he performs tongue gymnastics, it creates vibrations that I feel everywhere. My hips move in rhythm with his tongue as it probes in and out, and then two fingers slide in and out and twist and curl, and just as I start to tense up, his fingers pull out and he sucks hard on my clit.
“Oh shit!” I cry out. I grab on to his shoulders near his neck and squeeze tight. He digs his fingernails into my ass and groans, and that’s when I remember the sunburn. “Oh shit! Sorry! Did I hurt you?”
“Nothing hurts right now,” he mutters, and then he goes back to sucking and stimulating my G spot until I’ve come so hard, I’m surprised I haven’t crushed his face and fingers.
Okay. Now let’s get this next part over with before it turns into a whole big thing.
He stands up and reaches into the pocket of his jeans, producing a condom package, and tears the wrapper with his teeth. Fucker. Has he been planning for this all night?
He steps out of his jeans, pulls down his boxers, palms his very erect whole big thing oh my God Keaton what the fuck, and then rolls the condom on. He climbs on top of me and positions himself, kissing me deeply while slowly pressing inside me and moaning. Jesus, he fills me up, but I’m so wet, my body’s just like yeah, get him in here.
My hips start rocking immediately, and my legs wrap around his waist. He groans once and thrusts slowly at first and then picks up the pace, and eventually he is drilling me and it feels so good and I’m on the brink of orgasm again and I clench around him and think this is it, here we go, he’s gonna come now.
But he doesn’t.
He drags me with him to the edge of the bed. I open my eyes and find him standing there. He lifts my bent legs up to rest my feet flat against his chest, slides his hands down to raise up my hips, and then he’s penetrating me from an amazing angle, and it’s like he’s launched a bottle rocket inside me that explodes in my brain. The quakes hit my entire body, and the aftershocks keep coming until I realize he’s still thrusting away and panting.
Surely he’s going to come now.
But he doesn’t.
He maneuvers me over to the corner of the bed, flips me over, and spreads my legs on either side of the corner of the mattress, and then he holds on to my hips and pulls me to him with each thrust.
Jesus Christ, it’s like when he kept tricking me into telling him about my family at dinner last night, but this time he’s tricking me into having orgasms.
Keaton fucking Bridges!
This time it’s the awareness of him and the sounds he’s making as he allows himself to get closer to the brink that make me come again. The way he’s grunting as he slams into me and says my name over and over, his deep voice getting higher and higher, and then finally he gets so tense and quiet, and there’s the slow emptying of his lungs and the heat of him emptying himself inside me, and the way he holds me so tight while he shakes and his voice goes deep again. I slowly lower myself to the mattress so I can feel the weight of him on my back.
We’re both covered in sweat, and it’s beautiful.
He worked so hard, and it was beautiful.
He lazily kisses the top of my shoulder, and it’s beautiful.
Our breaths are still fast and heavy and in sync, and it’s beautiful.
His hands find mine and he laces our fingers together, and it’s beautiful.
So much for quick and dirty.
When he finally slides off me and retreats to the bathroom, the skin on my back feels cold.
I crawl up to the head of the bed, remove the skirt that still somehow remains around my waist, and get under the covers.
Seriously—what just happened?
Goddammit, I want to do that again.
And that’s exactly why I can’t.
I guess I was fooling myself to think that I could just bone Keaton Bridges and not have it mean something.
It means something.
He may not be my friend exactly, but he’s in my circle of best friends, and he matters.
I may have had a lot of sex in my life, and what we just did may have been fun and amazing, and okay, it blew my mind, but this feels like something that could get real and serious—fast.
When I fall, I fall hard, and I’m afraid I’m too old to fall for someone it’s not going to work out with.
And it can’t possibly work out for Keaton and me.
I mean, it can’t possibly.
Right?
When he returns and gets into bed, he caresses my arm. I look over and smile at him—the sultry, warm, and appreciative smile that he deserves, except the words that come out are all wrong. I say, “That was amazing. Really amazing… I’m gonna sleep on my side. So I don’t snore and keep you awake.”
He pulls his hand away. “Great. Thanks. I agree, that was amazing.”
I turn over. When my back is to h
im, I whisper a friendly, “Good night!”
“Good night, Roxy Carter,” he grumbles.
I can hear him laugh quietly and scrub his face with his hands.
I know, Keaton. I know.
I’m the worst.
“I mean, you were really, really amazing,” I say. “Good job.”
Oh God, stop talking, Roxy, I’m begging you.
“Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback.”
“Okay, cool. Good night. Again. Keaton.”
“Good night again, Roxy Carter.”
I love how he says my name.
I’m screwed.
13
Keaton
I wake up alone in bed, with two words on my mind: Roxy and saudade.
Roxy is a word that used to mean “Aimee’s best friend,” and “hot” and “obnoxious,” and then five years ago it just became a word that had a question mark after it, but now all of a sudden, it means so many things to me I can’t even count them.
Saudade is a Portuguese word, one that has no English equivalent and is nearly impossible to translate. You just know it when you feel it. It was the first untranslatable word that my hot linguistics professor taught us, and it’s the one that intrigued me the most. The simplest way to describe it is “a melancholy or longing for someone or something that’s absent.” But it’s so much more than that. It brings happy and sad feelings. There’s wistfulness and hope there. It’s an emptiness that you believe can only be filled by the thing you feel saudade for—whether it’s something you’ve experienced before or something you dream of—but there’s a pleasant suffering in knowing that this thing is somehow out of reach.
It’s what Roxy and I were both feeling that night of Chase and Aimee’s wedding, although we never spoke of it. That yearning for the way things were back when we were all hanging out together all the time. That yearning for the thing that Chase and Aimee had found in one another.
That thing for me now is Roxy.
It’s her body and everything I saw and felt and heard last night and what I didn’t get to see and do or say.
It’s who she is deep down when she isn’t being the Roxy Carter she presents to the world.
It’s those moments when I sense that she gets me in ways that most people never will and those moments when I’m dying for her to want to know more.
It isn’t love yet, I know that, but I know what the potential for love feels like, and this is it. She’s the last woman I ever would have predicted I’d feel this for when I met her. But by now I know what it takes to keep me interested in someone, and she has what it takes to be the last woman I ever want to feel this for.
When I was in my teens and twenties, I loved the chase, but once I’d captured a girl’s heart or some other part of her, all I could think about were all the other doors that would be closing if I was with this one person for the rest of my life. But with Roxy, I just know that there will always be more doors to open and they’re all hers. I know it. In my heart and in my soul.
And yeah, okay, I also feel it in my balls, and I don’t know if I can go on living if I can’t have sex with her again, repeatedly, in every way possible.
Last night was great. It was great for me and I know it was great for her, but she was holding back. Maybe it was because I caught her off guard, or maybe it was because she wanted it to be a one-time thing. It was just like after we kissed five years ago, only she couldn’t walk away this time, so she just went to sleep.
I’m not saying I have a profound sense of bittersweet homesickness for Roxy’s pussy, but I’m not not saying it either.
There’s still so much I want from her.
I still haven’t seen her fully naked in broad daylight.
I still haven’t felt her mouth on my cock.
I still haven’t made her scream my name while she’s coming.
I’m staring up at the ceiling through the mosquito net, and I can hear her hushed, husky voice out on the veranda. It sounds like she’s talking to her assistant. It’s Sunday, I think, but they’re catching up on things from Friday and discussing the coming week. From what I gather, it sounds like there’s someone at work who’s competitive with her and trying to make some moves while she’s on vacation. I could help her with that. I could help her with anything if she’d let me. She’s friendly with her assistant in a way that I never have been with mine. She’s friendly with her assistant in a way that she never has been with me.
I hike myself up on my elbows. I don’t even know what time it is. I slept straight through the night. She didn’t snore at all, or if she did it didn’t wake me. It looks like she’s already showered and fully dressed. It looks like she is in no way feeling saudade or anything else for me or what we did last night, and it hurts just a little.
I’m going to have to play this right. I’m going to have to take it slow. I’m going to have to negotiate with her in such a way that she doesn’t realize we’re negotiating a deal, and then I’m going to build something beautiful for us, from the ground up.
I reach for my phone on the bedside table and lie back down.
When she ends the call with her assistant, I slide down under the covers and initiate a call with Roxy.
After two rings, she answers, “Seriously?”
“I’m just calling as a courtesy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with you last night.”
“Thank you, I also had a very nice time.” I can hear her smiling. “I appreciate the call and I am hanging up now.”
“My pleasure, and so am I.”
She hangs up, and I do the same. When I re-emerge from under the covers, I find her walking toward my side of the bed. I can see an animal-print bikini under her lightweight white dress, and I can smell the cocoa butter sunscreen, and it does all kinds of things to every part of me.
She gives me a little wave. “Morning.”
“What time is it?”
“About eight thirty.”
I nod and sit up, rake my fingers through my hair. It does not go unnoticed, the way her eyes slowly lower from my hands to my forearms to my bare chest. When she notices me noticing, she looks down at the floor.
“Everything okay at work?”
“Yeah, fine. Under control.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Because if there’s anything you want to talk about…” I point to myself with my thumbs.
“Everything’s fine at work,” she says, pointedly crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Under control.”
“Good. Cool.” We’ll revisit that later.
“So, last night was fun and everything, but…are we cool?”
“I mean, I’m cool. I don’t know about you. Are you cool?”
She rolls her eyes and smirks at me. “I mean, we don’t have to be weird about it and make a big deal, right? We had sex. That’s it.”
“We did have sex. And that is it.” I stretch my arms overhead and watch as she stares at my flexing muscles.
“Good. Great.”
“Fuckin’ A.” I scratch my pecs. They aren’t itchy, but I like watching her watch me.
She clearly hates that she can’t stop staring at me. Poor thing. You just go ahead and struggle with yourself, Roxy Carter. I’ll be here, ready when you are. She looks around, bites her lower lip, crosses one leg in front of the other, scratches her arm. She looks like an awkward teenager all of a sudden, and I love it. “Okay,” she says. “So I’m gonna go have breakfast and let you shower, because I have a feeling you’ll be beating off in there, and I don’t really want to be around when you do that.”
Well, that was pretty much the opposite of what I was expecting her to say, but she is absolutely right. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
“Did you want me to bring you back something, or do you want me to wait down there for you, or...”
Well well, what a girlfriend-y thing to ask, Miss Carter. “I think I’ll go for a run before I eat, actually. If that’s okay with y
ou.”
She looks surprised that I said that. I fucking love it when I surprise her. “It is okay with me. Of course.” She places both hands on the back of her hips. Not the fists on the hips thing that I’m used to. This particular stance straightens her posture and pushes her tits out and makes me want to die a little. “I’ll probably just hang out on the beach and at the pool for most of the day. If that’s okay with you.”
“Sounds good.”
She nods. “Okay, then. I’m gonna go.”
“Okay. See you around.”
“Okay, then.” She claps her hands together, loudly, and then makes a face like she wishes she hadn’t done that. Then she salutes me, slides into her flip-flops, grabs her bag and heads outside. She shuts the front door quietly, glancing back at me as she does, and I can’t stop smiling because I can tell—I have no doubt—that what she’s really doing is leaving a door cracked open for me.
An hour later, after I’ve FaceTimed the doggy hotel to confirm that Jackpot is still doing well and is still totally indifferent as to my whereabouts, after I’ve gone for a run, I grab a quick breakfast at the breakfast bar and text Aimee to see if she can come join me for a minute to chat.
AIMEE: Just me?
ME: If you can manage to get away from your husband without him coming after me with either a blunt or sharp object.
AIMEE: Everything okay?
ME: Is it that weird for me to want to hang out with my best friend’s wife for a brief amount of time?
AIMEE: Sort of?
ME: Just come get a cup of coffee or whatever.
AIMEE: On my way.
I wonder if she’s talked to Roxy. I wonder if she knows about last night. When she shows up, she’s looking at me like she’s expecting me to be bleeding from the head or something.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“I’m totally weirded out. Hi. Good morning. What’s up?”
“You getting coffee?”
“I think I’ve already had enough. What’s going on?” I search her face for clues, but she seems genuinely oblivious as to why I would want to have a chat with her.
The Brooklyn Book Boyfriends Page 71
