She furrows her brow, glancing down at our clasped hands, then back up. “Regret is not what I’m feeling now.”
I laugh lightly. “Me neither. But I don’t want you to feel it later.”
Funny, how telling Nadia how I feel is so much easier than anything I’ve ever done with any other woman, light-years easier than talking to anyone else has ever been.
“I want to do everything with you, for you, to you. I want it to be spectacular for you. You deserve that. You deserve to feel incredible,” I say.
Her eyes shine with lust and a warm kind of happiness. The sort of happiness that comes from within, from someone knowing you, understanding you.
“I’d like to feel that way,” she says in a tempting whisper.
My God, she is my undoing—so sweet and still so bold.
I run a hand down her arm, savoring the way she shivers. My other hand squeezes her fingers more tightly, and I don’t want to stop touching her. I don’t want to break this connection. “You deserve to feel like a queen being adored. A goddess being worshipped. A woman being consumed.”
Her eyes float closed, and her breath catches. When she opens those big chocolate eyes again, they’re glittering with desire. She parts her lips, her voice a little softer, innocent and hopeful, as she asks, “Will you consume me, Crosby?”
“Will I? That’s not even a question,” I rasp out.
Every inch of me is burning up with a lust so strong, so powerful, it feels like madness.
I gaze at the sensual curve of her mouth, at the inviting skin of her sensual shoulders, at the tops of her soft and wondrous breasts. I want to touch her, taste her, please her. But we should talk about expectations.
I trail a finger down the top of her hand. “Let’s just set the rules first.”
She waggles a brow. “We’re both in sports. Rules are good.”
My grin goes crooked. “We’ll call this the Virgin Rule Book.”
“Can rule number one be we have sex?”
I laugh hard. “Yes, woman. But let’s set the less obvious ones. Look, we’re friends, right?”
“Obviously.”
“You want to stay friends?”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course. And you aren’t interested in dating, so we’re just friends with benefits. I’m down with that. Is that the second rule? We stay friends?”
“Yes. Let’s make that rule number two.”
She makes a check mark. “Friends with benefits now. Friends always.”
“Good. I like that rule a lot.” It means I won’t lose her.
I won’t fuck this up. Because I can’t fuck this up. I won’t let someone in too fast, because she’s already in. Ergo, this thing brewing between us doesn’t count as a relapse. This isn’t me cheating on my cleanse.
This is the opposite. This is safe. This is fine. This is so much more than fine. This is a call to service.
To service her. And I can’t deny my duty.
“This is part of the whole plus-one thing,” I say.
“Is that a rule, though, or more of an addendum?”
“It’s an addendum.”
“The Friends with Benefits clause.” Her expression is confident, professional. Probably the same way she looks when she’s negotiating deals.
Reluctantly, I tell her, “But rule number three is no sex tonight.”
She pushes out her bottom lip, giving me a big ol’ frown. “Why not?”
Damn, this is hard.
Pun intended. I glance down at my crotch. My dick is as hard as granite. Yeah, this is rock-fucking-hard. But there can be no wavering on this.
She matters to me. In ten years, I’ll still be her first. And in ten years, I still want to be her friend.
“I care too much about you. You’re so damn important to me. I want nothing more than to fuck you right this very second and to make love to you later tonight, but I want to make sure that you’ll have no regrets. And I want it to be special for you,” I say, my hand roaming over her shoulder and down her back.
She trembles in its wake, then nods. “I get that. But I kind of hate you for being right, because I’m so ridiculously turned on right now.” Her fingers thread through mine even tighter, her grip getting needier. Desperate, even. The look in her eyes is completely wild.
A groan works its way up my throat. “Maybe I could do something about that so you won’t hate me.”
“What do you have in mind?”
I dip my face, kissing her bare shoulder. “Rule number four. I get to make you come. A lot.”
Shuddering, she gasps. Her voice is smoky, full of longing. “Like, right now?”
I growl a yes.
Then I heed the call to action, tugging on the skirt of her dress, yanking it up higher, then higher still. There. Perfect. “Why don’t you climb onto my lap and rock that beautiful body against my cock while I play with your pussy?”
She bites her lip, grinning like she won two tickets for a trip to the moon.
That’s exactly what I intend to give her.
18
Crosby
With her dress bunched up by her waist and her legs straddling mine, I savor my first glimpse of the woman’s panties.
Let the record reflect that Nadia could wear granny underwear, boring gray ones that go all the way above her belly button, and I’d still want her.
But instead, the lace matches her dress. Burgundy. They’re lace, tiny, and the color of desire, as enticing as the rest of her.
Every inch of her.
With one hand gripping her hip, I slide my other hand between her legs, the pad of my thumb touching that delicious wet spot on the cotton panel.
A throaty gasp rewards me.
“Ohhhh.”
Her hands fly to my shoulders. She steadies herself, curling her fingers around them, gripping more tightly.
A grin breaks across my face. I love that she’s holding on for dear life. That she’s taking charge already, rocking against me, rubbing her sweet, hot center against the ridge of my cock.
The only issue is . . . my pants.
“Gimme one second,” I say, unzipping my tux pants, since, well, I don’t want to walk into the event with a wet spot on them. I push them down but leave my boxer briefs on, thinking it’s a little presumptuous to just whip out my cock for her riding pleasure.
Besides, it’s hotter like this anyway.
I tug her hips back down on the outline of my dick, rubbing her against my erection.
She groans when we make contact again, then swivels her hips.
“You feel so fucking good,” I growl as we work in tandem, rocking, rubbing, thrusting.
My hand coils more tightly around her hip. She tilts her pelvis, seeking the friction that she needs, using the outline of my erection as her pleasure device.
Fine by me.
“Use me, Wild Girl. Use my cock to get off. It’s all for you.”
She nods wildly, panting, letting her face fall into the crook of my neck as she whispers, “Please touch me now.”
“Touch you where?” I ask, teasing. “I’m waiting.”
But Nadia doesn’t hesitate. “My pussy,” she whispers.
My skin sizzles. My dick hardens impossibly more. “God, it’s so fucking sexy when you say dirty words.” I dip my fingers below the lace, pushing it to the side and touching her flesh for the very first time.
My fingers travel over tufts of soft hair, finding her hard clit.
I shudder with lust.
She trembles with desire.
This is bliss, perfect fucking bliss, this evidence of her arousal in the delicious rise of her clit.
She’s so wet, so slick. Her moans are like jolts of electricity as I stroke her, traveling along her soft, wet folds.
She pants and moans. “Yes, do that. I’ve never . . .” But she doesn’t finish the thought.
My ears perk up, hearing what’s unsaid.
Never.
Does that mean what I think
it does?
Her pace riding my cock quickens, as her breath comes faster, her groans and moans more frenzied.
With one hand still gripping her hip, my other hand delights in the paradise of her sweet, wet pussy. I follow her noises, touching her clit exactly the way she seems to want.
A way that makes her murmur and sigh, moan and writhe.
She’s a sight to behold as she chases her pleasure.
An absolute sensual beauty rocking on me.
My dick is a steel rod in my boxer briefs. Hell, it’s her fucking dildo right now, and as horny as I am, as turned on as I am, I’m so fucking happy she’s using me like this, like a horse she wants to ride. May she gallop away on me into the sunset of a massive orgasm.
“Use me for whatever you need, baby,” I say, urging her on as she grinds and dips and fucks. I kiss my way up to her ear. “Love the noises you make. Love the way you ride me.”
She gasps, words seeming out of reach as she treats me like her bucking bronco.
I’m a furnace, but I don’t care if I overheat—all I want is for her to shatter. She lifts her face from my shoulder. Her jaw is tight, her eyes squeezed shut. When she opens them, they’re glazed over with lust.
Pushing harder against my dick, she drops her lips onto mine, kissing me savagely, then so damn sloppily. “Yes, oh God, I’m coming.”
With another stroke of my fingers, another rub over her diamond clit, she trembles and shakes, crying out her release.
Her whole body seems to flush with pleasure. And God knows mine is too. She raises her face and meets my eyes, looking so damn happy.
She smiles the most wonderful smile I’ve ever seen, and God, I’m horny as a lion in heat. I grit my teeth because we’ll be at the gala soon and I need to rein this in.
Time to picture baby animals.
Ducklings floating across the pond, kittens nursing on their mamas, anything to forget that all my blood has rushed south of the border.
But then Nadia slides off me, drops between my legs, and gets to her knees.
I barely have time to think.
Hell, I don’t want to think.
She looks up at me as she sets a hand on the steel outline of my cock in my boxer briefs. “Can I?”
Well, I’m not saying no.
I’m saying, “Fuck yes.”
I shove my briefs down, freeing my cock.
Her eyes widen, and her grin turns fully wicked. “I like your cock.”
I pump a fist. “I knew you’d say ‘cock.’”
“I can say ‘cock,’ and I can suck your cock,” she says. My dick twitches its thanks.
She draws the head between her lips, then I groan as she takes me in farther. My hips jerk up. My muscles tense with pleasure. She wraps a hand around the base and licks a long teasing stripe up my shaft.
“Yes,” I rasp.
And then everything becomes a blur of lips and heat.
Of pleasure and lust.
I thread my fingers through her curls, careful with her hair. I wrap my other hand around the back of her neck, letting her set the pace. I won’t need much. I’m already on the edge. I’m already primed, ready to shoot.
She doesn’t need to deep throat me. Her mouth covering most of me is all I need, and she gives me that as she sucks and kisses and licks. Sensations sizzle down my spine like an electrical wire snapping with a burst of sparks.
I hit the edge in seconds, my orgasm blasting through me at breakneck speed, and I grunt, “Coming.”
My friend, my plus-one, the virgin on her knees, sucks me down, drinks my come, then lets me fall from her lips with a loud, wet pop as she runs a tongue over her bottom lip.
I bring my hand to the bridge of my nose, pinching it in delicious disbelief.
She’s a woman who knows her mind and her body. She’s the sexiest innocent vixen ever, and I want to experience all of her.
I reach for her hand, pull her up next to me, wrap my arms around her, then press a kiss to her lips. “You’re stunning, and now I want you even more.”
“Funny how that works. I want you too.”
I swipe her hair away from her face, helping to straighten it. “Question for you though. You said ‘never’ when I was touching you. Have you never come like that before?”
She grins, then gives an impish little shrug. “Others have tried. Others have failed. This was another first.”
Pride suffuses me. But it’s more than pride.
It’s something else entirely.
Delight?
No.
Happiness?
That seems too obvious.
Maybe I’m simply happy to give this woman so many firsts.
She deserves them, yes. But I love, too, that she’s experiencing them with me.
She finds some mouthwash in the limo—props to the driver for being well stocked—and we straighten up thoroughly then step out of the limo, put together once more.
On the street, she eyes me up and down. “Looking good, twenty-two. No one would suspect we’ve been up to anything.”
“Exactly. Just that we’ve been following all the rules.”
She chuckles like we have a private joke, and we do. “We have definitely been following our rules,” she whispers.
“Our rules are important,” I add.
She turns to head into the hotel then spins around again, her gaze roaming over my face.
“Wait,” she says, stopping to neaten an errant strand of hair on my forehead. Her fingers brush lightly over my skin. Her soft touch feels unexpectedly familiar, like we do this when we go out, like she fixes my tie or smooths my hair, and like I’d do the same for her.
So I do, tucking a chestnut curl behind her ear.
She raises her chin, her eyes meeting mine. A charge rushes through the air, but it’s not buzzing with lust this time.
It’s humming with . . . something else entirely.
She flashes me a soft smile. “You look good, Crosby,” she says, and her words send an unexpected tingle down my spine.
That tingle—it doesn’t feel sexual. It feels . . . warm, and I don’t know what to make of that either.
So, I offer her my arm, and she takes it. As we enter the gala together, my heart beats a little faster. A little harder.
A rhythm that’s less like we’re friends with benefits and more like that other thing.
The thing I don’t know how to name.
But it feels hopeful.
And it feels dangerous.
19
Nadia
An attendant scurries up, asking to take my wrap.
A private thrill rushes through me—my wrap.
My gift from Crosby.
“Thank you.” I hand it to her as she gives me a ticket, which I drop into my purse.
Next, a woman in a silver dress and cute red glasses strides over to us, an iPad in her hand.
She can only be a publicist.
“Hello, Ms. Harlowe and Mr. Cash. We’d love to take your photo on the red carpet.”
Crosby shoots her a smile, then me. “Of course.”
“That would be great,” I echo, though my shoulders tense briefly.
How will we look together with lights flashing?
In many ways, this picture is no different than the wedding photos from last weekend.
And at the same time, it’s a universe apart.
We just came together in the car.
Mouthwash and neatened hair aside, do I have an orgasm aura about me?
I want to lean in close to Crosby, to whisper, “Do I look . . . obvious?”
But then, I’m not sure I want to let on to him, either, that I’m still floating on a cloud of climax dust.
Just smile for the camera.
The silver-sequined, no-nonsense publicist guides us along the red carpet to a backdrop splashed with the Sports Network Awards logo.
A young photographer with a Russell Wilson charm greets us with a quick hello then lifts his Nikon. �
��Let’s get one of the woman who’s going to bring us a Super Bowl victory.”
I grin. “That’s the goal.”
He snaps a few shots of me. “Fantastic. And now one of the Cougars best known for . . .” He stops, flashes an evil grin at Crosby, and continues, “His long ball.”
Crosby rolls his eyes. “Thanks, Leo.”
The photographer shrugs. “I call it like I see it. But then, no one saw it. Such a shame.”
“Ah, you’re so sweet, Leo. Missed you so much,” Crosby says, smiling for the guy he clearly knows.
“And now how about a few of beauty and the beast together?”
Crosby points to Leo. “He’s a regular Seinfeld.”
“Hey, what’s the deal with dick pics?” the photographer asks, imitating the famous comic.
“I don’t know. Why don’t I send you one later?” Crosby fires back, and the barbs delight me, the way they juggle them like lit torches.
“Let the countdown begin,” Leo says, then gestures for us to move closer together. “There. Pretend you like him, Ms. Harlowe. Act like you can stand him.”
Laughing, I inch even closer.
He has no idea that I’m not playing make-believe at all.
Snap, snap, snap.
“Perfect. Just one more. Put your arm around her waist, Crosby. Sorry, Ms. Harlowe. I promise this will only hurt for a second.”
“No pain, no gain,” I say as we smile for the camera.
When he’s done, Leo waves us on. “Next season, I need you to go long more often. It’d help my fantasy stats,” he says to Crosby.
“Fantasy and you, Leo. The two go hand in hand,” Crosby says, then returns the guy’s wave.
As we enter the reception area, I say, “You two were friendly. How do you know him?”
“He’s a freelance photog. He snapped our team headshots last year. Leo’s a good guy. Takes the time to actually get to know everyone, which is why I can rib him like that,” he says.
I hum then nudge his elbow, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Hate to break it to you, but I think he did the ribbing, Crosby. And well too.”
He smiles in acknowledgment. “He did. But guess what? I got the last word. Or the last laugh, rather, since those pictures gave me another chance to get my hands on you.”
The Virgin Rule Book (Rules of Love 1) Page 13
