by Carrie Quest
“You’ll get behind,” he whispers.
“Not really. I finished my degree really quickly, you know? I did summer school every year and internships on top of my course work. I could honestly use a break, I just never had a good reason to slow down. Not until you.”
“What about your parents?”
“My mom gave me her blessing, and they’re both psyched to have someplace warmer to visit in the winters. They’re fine with it.”
“I don’t know, Piper.”
“I do,” I tell him firmly. “You’ll be ready for Colorado someday, and we’ll go back then. Or we’ll go someplace else amazing. Whatever. We don’t need to know all the details yet. I feel free, for the first time in a long time. Like I’m finally taking charge of my own destiny.”
“Really?” His eyes search mine, probing, making sure I’m telling the truth.
I grin. “No poker face, remember? This is what I want, Adam. I promise.”
I stroke his hair and feel the tension leave his body as the smile takes over his face. His lips curve up and his eyes crinkle, little lines radiating from the corners until he’s beaming at me.
“So you’re taking charge of your own destiny?” He pulls me into his lap and kisses my neck. “What does that look like?”
I close my eyes and his lips reach my ear, shivering when he nibbles at my lobe. “So far I’ve got you and me waking up in a hotel room in Paris. How does that sound?”
“Like heaven,” he groans.
And then he pulls me down on top of him and we don’t talk again for hours.
Epilogue
“Come back to bed.”
I’m drinking in the dawn light spreading over the green roofs of Paris. The August sky is glowing hazy pink, warming the old stone buildings and glinting off the black metal rails on the balcony. The orange cat across the street lifts his head lazily, then curls up in a tighter ball in his chosen flowerpot. We’ve been here a week and I’ve seen the sunrise every single morning.
Well, I’ve almost seen it.
“Bed. Now.”
Adam’s voice is low, rough with sleep and desire, and I close my eyes, wanting to imprint this exact moment on my memory. Pre-dawn Paris outside my window and Adam in my bed. It’s perfect. There’s even a cat, which might be overkill, but as far as I’m concerned proves the universe is into cinematic happy endings.
“In a minute.”
I uncurl myself from the chair and stretch, smiling when I hear Adam’s intake of breath as the t-shirt I slept in creeps up to expose my ass.
The bed squeaks and suddenly he’s there, behind me, pulling me into his warm, solid chest and nuzzling my neck. “I can’t wait,” he tells me, kissing his way down the side of my throat.
“I want to see the actual sunrise. You’ve pulled me back into bed every morning so far.”
I feel his grin against my neck. “You complaining about that?”
His low chuckle turns into a groan when I reach back and palm his erection. “Not at all.”
“How long until this sunrise?” He presses against me. “I can do a lot in a few minutes.”
“Patience, grasshopper. Look.”
He raises his head and gazes out over the tile rooftops. The streetlights are still on, creating flickering circles of light on the river, and the Eiffel Tower is a dark shadow in the distance.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says softly, but when I turn around, he isn’t looking at Paris anymore. He’s looking straight at me.
“You’re going to miss the sunrise.”
“I’m not missing anything,” he says.
He kisses me softly and wraps his arms even tighter around me. “Okay, okay, I give in. First the sunrise, then the ravishing.”
“Deal.”
“What else do you want to for our last day?”
We’d hoped to have more time, but my boss extended my internship through July and now Nat needs me home. Her parents are coming to Boulder in a few weeks to throw her and Ben a huge engagement party, and Nat claims the future maid of honor must be present.
Ben claims the best man and the groom should be allowed to go on a camping trip in the mountains instead, but there’s no way he and Adam are winning that argument.
I’m looking forward to going home, honestly. Grandma is well enough to make the trip to Colorado for the party, and I haven’t seen my parents since Korea. It will be good to check in with everyone before we take off again.
“I want to wander around, eat pastries, and kiss you on all the bridges we cross,” I tell him. “There are thirty-seven on the Seine alone, so get ready.”
“I’ve been training for that challenge my whole life.” He nibbles my throat and I sigh.
“I missed you.”
He squeezes me closer. “I missed you too.”
I loved my internship but being away from Adam for those five months proved that I absolutely made the right decision in putting off grad school so we could move somewhere together. I learned a ton and made some great friends, but everything would have been just a little bit brighter and more fun if he’d been there. Still, I made the most of it. And it turned out my boss also knows someone at Duke, so she’s going to set me up with a killer recommendation letter.
In the meantime, we’ve got big travel plans. After Colorado we’re heading for South America, and then to Australia to meet Nat and Ben for Christmas at the beach. In January we’ll give New Hampshire a try—Adam calls it his winter immersion program—to visit his parents and see how the snow treats him.
“It’s coming,” he warns, pointing behind me.
I turn back to the window and lean back, trusting him to hold me up. The streetlights blink off and there it is, the sun, peeking up out of the rosy clouds on the horizon. The river changes, dark water glowing gold, and for one perfect second the world is fresh and new and magical.
Then I blink. The river isn’t gold anymore, but I have all the magic I need standing right behind me.
“Satisfied?”
“Not even close.” I grin as he pulls me back into the bed, pushing the rumpled blankets out of the way until I’m lying on my back on the soft white sheets.
“First the sunrise, then the ravishing,” he murmurs, pushing up my shirt so he can drag openmouthed kisses along my stomach. He’s working his way slowly down to where I’m wet and aching when his phone rings. The ringtone is an old reggae tune that he and Ben used to listen to when they were warming up in the pipe.
My brother has the worst timing.
Adam freezes.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say. The ringing stops but the stupid phone starts beeping as text after text comes through.
“Check and make sure it’s not an emergency?” he asks me.
I want to say no, but it seems rude to refuse the man who is currently exploring the crease of my thigh with his very talented tongue.
“Stay there,” I order. He hums his agreement and everything below my belly quivers.
I grab his phone off the bedside table, smiling at the screensaver photo: Ben and Adam embracing at the foot of the pipe in Korea right after the officials put the gold medal around my brother’s neck.
“It’s nothing,” I say, skimming through the texts. “Only his daily freak out about Nat’s mother.”
Adam stops—the bastard—and rests his chin on my thigh. “What does she want now?”
“She keeps sending him links to tuxedo places.”
“The wedding isn’t for at least a year,” Adam points out.
I shrug. “The Berensens are intensity personified. Nat is like a weird foundling child. Ben is just going to have to adjust.”
“I’m glad your mom won’t hassle me like that when we get hitched,” he says. “She’ll just cry every time she sees us for at least six months before and after. We’ll have to bulk order tissues.”
His voice is casual, like he didn’t just drop a huge b
omb into our sleepy conversation.
He glances up at me and grins at my wide eyes. “Oh, I’m not asking you yet.”
I clear my throat. “I’m not asking you yet either.”
“Soon, though,” he says, crawling up my body. “It’s definitely coming.”
I smile, the warm glow of happiness filling me, and lean up to kiss him. “Am I definitely coming, though? That’s the real question here.”
“As many times as you want,” he promises. “How many bridges did you say there are across the Seine?”
“Thirty-seven,” I gasp as he bites down on my earlobe.
“That’s a good number. Let’s start there: Thirty-seven orgasms before breakfast. Think you can handle it?”
“I do.”
I really, really do.
The End
Thank You!
Thank you for reading WIPING OUT! I hope you enjoyed Adam and Piper’s story. An author probably shouldn’t have favorites, but my heart belongs to Adam.
Book Three in the series, RIDING GOOFY, will be out in the summer of 2018 and will include a driven girl who kicks half-pipe ass, a laid back guy who gets big air, a secret crush, screaming orgasms, and an Instagram challenge gone wrong (or maybe very right). Join my mailing list to make sure you don’t miss Zeke and Autumn’s story!
Keep reading for a preview of DROPPING IN, Ben and Natalie’s story. It’s the first book in the series and available now!
Have you read BAILING OUT? It’s a free stand alone prequel novella in the Snow-Crossed Lovers series set in Sochi during the 2014 Olympic Games.
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Dropping In
Natalie Berensen has one short summer to ace her writing class and convince her parents she’s not a hopeless screw-up. No more changing her major once a month, taking time off to travel, or random friends-with-benefits. She doesn’t have time for distractions or hook-ups, not even if her longtime crush is in town for the summer and living in her basement. Who cares if he’s a snowboarding god with six pack abs and a hashtag devoted to his apparently magical penis? She’s not interested.
Until she is.
Ben Easton’s focus and self-discipline is legendary. He’s built a career as a professional snowboarder by training harder than anyone else on the mountain and steering clear of anything that doesn’t take him one step closer to his goal: Olympic gold. Then his best friend crashes in the half-pipe and Ben drops everything to take care of him. No more training. No more competitions. No more snowboarding. It’s over.
He’s back in Boulder to help with Adam’s rehab, not fool around with his little sister’s best friend, no matter how much he loves her laugh or the way her ass looks when she walks up the stairs. There’s no way in hell he’s going anywhere near Natalie.
Until he does.
Contains: a grumpy guard cat with a taste for blood, discussions of Ents as phallic symbols, and plenty of sexy times.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at DROPPING IN!
Prologue
Nine Months Ago
The earth moved sixty seconds after I grabbed the Australian surf god’s cock.
I mean, I was expecting it to be good. You don’t drag a twenty-five-year-old Australian surf god back to your shitty hostel room expecting the experience to suck, right? Shane had everything I was looking for on the last night of my New Zealand escape: abs flatter than his surfboard; a naughty glint in his eye; and a slow, deep drawl that made my toes curl. He was perfect.
We’d both been at the hostel in Christchurch for three days. On the first night, we chatted in the kitchen while our ramen noodles simmered. On the second night, we went out with a bunch of British students and ended up drunk and dirty dancing in a bar. I would have hooked up with him then, but he walked me back to the hostel at four a.m. and took off with his friends to surf. Waves before babes, I guess. Plus, we were both sleeping in the group dorm room and silent bunk-bed sex, while it can be kind of kinky, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
For my last night I upgraded to a double room (still had the bunk beds, but at least we’d be the only ones in there), dumped our cheap-ass noodles into the same pot, and we ate outside under the stars. I brought the wine and he brought the condoms. It was backpacker romance at its finest. We laughed, we drank, we stumbled back to my room in a lip lock, and at exactly 9:47 p.m. I snaked my hand down the front of his pants to find out what Shane the Australian surfer was packing down there.
The good news? It was like a sea serpent on steroids. (In a good way.)
The bad news? At 9:48 a massive earthquake rocked Christchurch. The earth moved, all right, but his dick never even made it out of his pants.
The sound came first. A deep rumbling, like a train passing by, which was weird since I knew damn well there were no trains anywhere near this hostel. So I noticed it, sort of, but then my fingers brushed the tip of Shane’s dick and he groaned in my ear, pushing out all other noises and thoughts.
Then the shaking started, just a little rocking at first, nothing serious. The cheap metal bunk bed hopped, like someone was bouncing on the top bunk, and scooted an inch or two across the floor.
“What the fuck?” Shane removed his lips from my neck and glanced up at me, his mouth hanging open. “Is that…?”
Then shit got serious. The bed jumped into the air, crashed down, and jumped again. The metal frame vibrated, and the rumbling noise was drowned out by glass smashing as the TV rocked off the table across the room and hit the floor. I tried to sit up, but Shane lost his balance and fell across me, trapping me on the bed as it bucked up and down. The windows shattered, sending slivers of glass flying, and he swore in my ear as they bit into his bare back. My face stung and I buried it in his shoulder, then screamed and grabbed onto the first thing I could find.
Which happened to be his rapidly shrinking penis.
“Fuck!” he screamed. “FUCK FUCK FUCK!”
He tried to roll off me, but the bed was rocking so hard it skidded all the way across the room, before slamming into the door, trapping us inside. The lights flickered a few times and went out, leaving us in total darkness. I let go of Shane’s mangled love stick and grabbed onto his shoulder instead, pulling him into me, needing to feel something solid, even if it was 220 pounds of surfer crushing the breath out of my lungs.
His back and shoulders were slippery, and it was too dark to tell if it was sweat or blood from the shattered windows. My hands slid over his skin, desperately searching for purchase, desperately hoping for at least the illusion of safety.
The ratty wooden dresser crashed to the floor, sending my books and toiletries flying. Shane grunted and tried to roll off me again, maybe to avoid squashing me, maybe to save what was left of his manhood, but the earth bucked underneath us, and he ended up right back where he started.
It was hopeless. We were totally helpless. We couldn’t move, couldn’t escape, couldn’t control anything at all.
Adrenaline flooded through me, hitting my system so fast I felt nauseous. My heart tried to punch its way out of my chest, and I swear I could hear the blood racing through me, swooshing in time with my insane heartbeat and drowning out the “shit shit shit” that Shane was chanting in my ear.
The building creaked and plaster from the ceiling crashed down around us. The bed slid back across the room, metal legs squealing across the floor, and we hit the wall so hard I heard a crack.
I was going to die. The building was ancient and neglected and there was no way it would hold up. It would collapse, crushing the flimsy bunk bed like a tin can, and I would die. They’d find me, half-naked and entwined with an Australian surfer. We’d probably be so flattened and deeply fused together they’d have to cut us apart and wouldn’t be able to tell which parts were his and which were mine. My parents would bury his arm in Boston and my legs would turn to dust
in the Australian outback, or wherever the fuck he was from.
I was going to die, and all I had to show for my life was a long line of fuck-ups. Classes I failed because I was too hungover to get my ass out of bed. Guys I dumped after one semester and then promptly erased from my phone and my mind. A closet full of half-finished craft projects at my parents’ house.
Hell, I was supposed to be on a plane home tomorrow to start the fall semester at the University of Colorado, but I’d decided sometime between the first pot of ramen noodles and Shane feeling me up in the bar that I was going to change my ticket at the airport and fly to Bali instead. I had enough money in my bank account to last another few months, and there wasn’t anything waiting for me at home except my roommate, Piper, and her psycho cat.
I was a college dropout on the fast track to sad cat lady, and it wasn’t even my fucking cat. And now I was going to die.
I closed my eyes, clutched Shane as hard as I could, and tried to block out the noise and the rocking and the fear. I tried to focus on something good: summer at the Cape with my sister when we were little, staying up way too late and laughing with Piper in the dorms our freshman year, sitting on a rooftop deck with a cold beer and watching the sun set over the Flatirons in Boulder. I held onto the vision, praying to whoever was listening that I’d be back there soon. That I’d get another chance to do things better.
And then, suddenly, there was silence. The earth stopped moving. One last clump of plaster hit the floor, and Shane stopped swearing in my ear. He lifted his head and looked around, still holding onto me, neither of us quite able to believe we might actually be back in control of our own bodies.
