Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 39338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 197(@200wpm)___ 157(@250wpm)___ 131(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 197(@200wpm)___ 157(@250wpm)___ 131(@300wpm)
He gives me a dark look. “I said, that wasn’t always the case.”
It takes me a moment to decipher his meaning, but when I do, the events of the last twenty-one months come flying back in a series of moving frames. “Wait . . . yeah. A couple of them did ask me out a while back, but I said no.”
“Why did you say no?”
“Uh-uh. You tell me why they stopped asking me out.”
“I’m guessing because they wanted to keep their nut sacks attached to their bodies.”
The pieces are coming together quickly. “Sumner, what did you do?”
He has the nerve to look proud of himself. “Made you off limits, Britta. It’s a rule that is rarely invoked among the group. But once it’s done, it’s fucking done.” He leans over until our foreheads are a breath apart. “If you don’t like it, then stop being my dream girl.”
His mouth is warm and parted, our lips stroking sideways in the barest of touches, but it’s enough to shoot a zing down to my navel. “I should be angry at you. Calling dibs on me like I’m the last french fry.”
“You’re more like filet mignon, sweetheart.”
“The metaphor isn’t the issue. It’s the tactic. Toxic, macho—”
“I didn’t make you off limits because I was feeling competitive. Off the ice, I don’t care if I outdo anyone. I wasn’t in control of myself at all. We were in the locker room. I’d been thinking about you all fucking day with your big beautiful eyes and the way you treat customers like they’re family. The way you mother some people and give tough love to others. How protective you are of the other women, how they look up to you. How your laugh is better than any music. And the words just came out of me. ‘Touch her, and I will end your life.’ Simple.”
I’ve never actually felt the pupils expand in my eyes before.
Or my heart ripple.
But that’s what happens while his words hang in the air like big marshmallow clouds.
“There was nothing simple about that,” I whisper.
His mouth presses more firmly to mine. “Don’t I know it.”
He’s waiting for me to make the first move. I can sense it. Feel it. He’s offering me a kiss, and all I have to do is take it. I want to take it.
Maybe even need. Desperately.
“You want to kiss me, Britta. Do it.”
“I . . . but . . . we . . . It’ll just be a kiss. You can’t read anything into it.”
He grinds his jaw. “Done. Fine.”
SUMNER
I’m going to regret conceding in the morning.
You can’t read anything into it, she warns me, while stuttering and blushing and all but climbing into my lap, her heart in her eyes. This girl feels something for me. She’s lying to me and herself if she believes otherwise. I shouldn’t let this kiss happen, because she is slapping a disclaimer on it, which will allow her to deny it meant something afterward, but dear God, I am weak when it comes to her. My body is starved; my heart is sick over her—and I can’t pull away.
“Done. Fine.”
The lights go out in the arena, and the crowd begins to scream for the opening act. The first few guitar strains of a song emerge from the darkness, and the volume of the cheers increases, but we’re looking at each other. Like adversaries who want badly to be on the same side. And Britta, my wife, she finally sips at my mouth, lets out a shuddering breath, then suctions onto me, drawing on my upper lip first, then my lower one, before easing her tongue into my mouth and stroking mine. Whispers my name like she’s scared.
Someone sticks my heart in a blender and hits the puree button.
Any remaining desire I have for self-preservation goes speeding away on a go-kart, and I kiss my wife like I was born to do. I sink my fingers into her hair, tilting her head for me while I ride her mouth with my own, circling our tongues, reeling from the sweet taste of her. She explores me with increasing enthusiasm, her fingers twisting in the front of my shirt, our teeth nipping, tugging, mouths surging back together. A moan comes from deep in the pit of my stomach, and she answers it without shyness. And speaking of my stomach, my erection is mashed up against it, trapped in my jeans, but it feels kind of incredible because it’s the pressure I haven’t been able to apply for the last few days.
God, I would give anything in the world to stand her up and walk her forward to the waist-high mezzanine wall, flip up her dress, jerk her panties to the left, and bury myself in her cunt. It’s a good thing we’re surrounded by an audience, because I wouldn’t last three seconds in there. I am an athlete in peak physical condition, and I need to jack off at least twice a day. Right now, the backup down there isn’t a joke. Like even thinking about her pussy is triggering my balls, squeezing them up into my stomach. They’ve never been so stiff.