Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“I’ve got more ratty stuff, if you want to wear it,” he offered, patting the cushion beside him.
I sat next to him and curled my legs up, resting my head on his shoulder. I’d never realized how important touch was to me until we were together again. All the phone sex had been fun, but it had been building a hunger for closeness in me. There was a real possibility that I would spend the next two weeks hanging off him like a baby monkey.
“Pizza is on the way,” he said, looping an arm around my waist and dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “How was the trip?”
“Long.” I felt it in every part of my body, now that my momentum had slowed. “Although I was surprised. First class? Not a whole private jet?”
“Carbon footprint,” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t do the jet thing. Except after my surgery, but that wasn’t my jet. It belonged to my mom.”
“I thought billionaires were going to wreck the planet and head off into space,” I teased.
“Sadly, I’m one of the sensible ones who realized that there’s no place for my dick-shaped rocket to land.” He turned toward the sound of the doorbell. “Ah, they’re here.”
“I’ll get it.” I bounded to my feet before he had to and skipped over to the door. Outside, two uniformed resort staff members waited with a swanky mahogany room service cart bearing a comically large pizza box and a variety of sodas.
“Push it in here, thanks,” Matt called, and I held the door while the staff brought the cart in. They left swiftly; this was clearly a place where guests didn’t waste a lot of time on service aspects.
I grabbed the pizza and a can of Diet Coke for myself, calling, “What do you want to drink?”
“Something orange,” he called back. When I headed his way with an Orange Crush in the pocket of my robe, he grumbled, “I could have gotten the door.”
“And I could have swum here, but luckily there was a boat.” I jutted my hip toward him and he reached into my robe pocket for his soda before I sat down and dropped the pizza box on the large, square coffee table. “You got attacked by a bear and your own veins. Give yourself a tiny bit of grace.”
“You’re not disgusted by your geriatric fuck buddy?”
It was a half-joke.
I answered it with a full one. “That dick ain’t geriatric.”
A shocked laugh burst from him.
Please, like you didn’t know I was quick. “No more self-pity. Not on my time.”
“Your time?” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re here for my birthday.”
“Yeah. Your fortieth. Not your seventieth.” I leaned forward and popped open the pizza box. “Shit, I forgot the plates.”
Like I ever used plates for pizza. Like I ever shared pizza.
Matt grabbed the box and pulled it onto his lap. “Let’s not pretend there are going to be leftovers. Not after the energy we expended today.”
“Um, I have been awake for like twenty hours now, jumping from plane to plane to yacht to boat to the orgasm denial massage parlor—”
“It’s a legitimate spa,” he argued. “You got the deluxe treatment. And I expended a lot of energy resisting the urge to jack off while I watched that.”
A little thrill went through me. I hadn’t done anything, but hearing Matt talk about watching? Made me feel like I’d put on a naughty performance.
“You get me.” I hadn’t intended to say it out loud but if I was thinking it, I might as well voice it. “You totally knew that would get me off.”
“It didn’t get you off, though,” he reminded me. “I specifically asked for that.”
I gave him a little push.
He turned serious. “I’m glad you feel like I ‘get’ you. I think you get me. As much as anyone can.”
It was a strange thing to say, loaded with something unspoken that I worried he hadn’t intended to reveal. Maybe he never would.
Being here wasn’t about secrets, though. It was about having casual fun with a guy who’d become a good friend.
I took a slice of pizza and gave him a wink. “Here’s to getting to know each other even better.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
(Charlotte)
I woke in Matt’s huge bed without much memory of anything past the episode of Naked and Afraid XL that I’d dozed off during. Sunlight trickled through the closed plantation shutters, and I leaned up on one elbow, squinting around the room. Still half asleep, I stumbled to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and did a quick sniff test to make sure I was presentable.
I smelled like...whatever made Matt smell so damn good all the time. Cologne? Deodorant? I resisted the urge to test all his toiletries, pulled on my robe, and shuffled out into the rest of the house. The big doors in the living room were open to the balcony, where what could only be described as a breakfast buffet crowded a big glass table. Matthew sat at one end, gloriously naked and smoking the fattest joint I’d ever seen.