The Real Deal

That’s how he kisses me.

Then he slows down, and the kiss takes on a new tempo. It feels important. Like this kiss is the start of something. In the way his lips slide over mine, in how he threads his hands into my hair, curling them around my skull, it feels like a new beginning.

At some point, I know we should talk about what’s happening between us. Give voice to the way our fiction has spun into a bizarre and wonderful reality. We’ve vaulted over all the lines, and we’re crossing the final one now, but in some ways, we were never truly playing pretend. We were real from the start.

I kiss him deeper, trying to convey all these strange and new thoughts in the press of my mouth. In this kiss, I try to tell him that I want more than this weekend. My lips press harder, and I turn more demanding, saying be mine, be mine, be mine.

I want him to know that there can be so much more to us.

Gently, he falls back on the blanket, pulling me down with him. His hands slide over my sides, along my hips, down to my short skirt. He pushes it up, his hands grabbing my ass.

He plucks at the hem of my tank. “What do you say we take this off?”

I rise back up and pinch the fabric of his shirt. “Ditto.”

Then we kneel, because standing up is near impossible in a tree house. He tugs off his shirt, and I pull off my tank, and soon we’re down to boxers and panties, and my entire body is a live wire. One touch, and I’ll spark. He grabs me by the hips and maneuvers me. “Lie down, cupcake.” He presses a palm to my naked belly and pushes me down. “I want to look at you.”

I lie on the blanket, resting on my elbows, watching him watching me. He runs his palms down my body, stopping at my breasts, cupping them. A burst of heat flares inside me, and my back bows.

He moves down, his fingers mapping my body, and his lips follow as he brushes kisses in the valley between my breasts, down to my navel. My skin sizzles, and my bones hum. A pulse beats between my legs. He hasn’t even touched me there yet, and I long for him—his fingers, his mouth, his hands. His touch.

He presses a kiss to the cotton panel of my panties, and I ignite.

I moan. I gasp. I writhe.

“I think it’s safe to say I’m a little turned on,” I whisper, since my panties are soaked.

“A lot,” he corrects. He brings my panties down, revealing me, and he groans as he takes them off. He drops them at the edge of the blanket and returns to me, pressing his hands on the inside of my thighs.

“So pretty naked,” he murmurs, then settles between my legs, staring at me like he’s ravenous. “God, I’ve wanted to go down on you for days. You smell so incredibly good all over, and every time I got near you, I thought about how you’d taste. Right here.” He drags a finger through my wetness, and I arch into him, unleashing a moan that sounds feral even to my own ears.

“How did you think I’d taste?”

“Delicious,” he murmurs, whispering kisses on the soft inside of my thighs, teasing me with how close he is. “I bet you’ll taste delicious all over my tongue.” He moves to my other leg, driving me wild with whispery little kisses on my thigh, until I’m practically bucking against him, begging him to touch me.

“Please,” I whisper, my voice jagged with need. I spread my legs wider.

The sight of me opening to him destroys his need to tease, because he presses his lips to me, and I cry out. Loud like I promised.

I sound anguished. I feel amazing. He wraps his arms around my thighs, and he covers me with his tongue. I push my hands through his thick hair, and he moans against me as he licks and sucks and kisses. I open my legs wider, letting them fall apart at the knees, giving him complete and utter access to me. I lift my hips, finding a perfect rhythm against his tongue.

Pressure builds in my body, climbing up my legs.

I know I’ll come soon, but I know, too, what I need. “I want your fingers,” I whisper, and he flashes me a smile that says, Thanks for telling me what you want, because I’m about to give it to you.

He rubs one finger across all that slick wetness as he sucks on me; then he pushes in.

The sounds I make are criminal. They’re the only noises echoing across the hot afternoon air, and they’re pornographic. But I don’t care. I am free here. Free to let go. Free to let him have me.

He adds another finger, twisting them inside me, and I reach the point of inevitability. Pressure builds low in my belly, radiates to my legs, and nearly swallows me whole. I ache for him to make me come. It’s an exquisite ache, hovering on the precipice of torment and bliss as it builds and builds and then I shatter. I rock into him, grabbing at his hair, calling his name, letting the pure bliss obliterate my hold on the world.

I’m white hot and bursting with pleasure so deep, it spreads to my toes, it ripples all through my bones, like an earthquake.

A minute later—maybe it’s an hour, who knows since I lose track of time—Theo’s above me. He runs a finger down my cheek, and I lean into him. I smile dopily. Is there any other way to smile after an orgasm like that?

“I think you just wrecked me with the greatest orgasm ever,” I murmur.

He grins. He looks pleased, and he looks like a hungry wolf, too. “So the tree house was a good choice, then.”

“I can’t believe I’m naked and sweaty and you just made me scream high up in a tree,” I say, covering my face with my hand as if I’m truly mortified.

But I’m not. I’m amazed that this is my life. That I went on a dating diet to focus on work, and I hired a guy from an ad to play a platonic part of my buffer, and now this man—this actor—just gave me the best orgasm of my life in a tree house.

Maybe it’s because I’m bathing in endorphins, but I’m pretty sure I’m falling for him.

The thought floors me. It rattles my foundation. I blink, trying to process what this means. Where we go from here. How the hell I fit this unexpected twist into my crazy career-centric days and nights in New York.

But even though this new awareness should scare the living hell out of me, it doesn’t knock me down. Yes, somewhere in the far corners of my mind, I’m terrified. I’ve worked so hard to get to a place where work is solid and steady.

I don’t want to mess that up.

But I don’t want to mess this up either.

I cup his cheeks and meet his eyes. “Get inside me.”





Chapter Thirty-four

Theo

There are no better words than those. Get inside me.

I push off my boxer briefs and grab a condom from the packet I brought. She pushes up to her elbows. “Can I put it on you?” Her green eyes are wide and eager.

I grow harder just from her question. “Hell yeah.”

I hand her the condom, and she tears open the wrapper. “Just curious. Did you bring these along for the trip?”

“You want to know when I procured them?”

Her lips quirk into a smile. “I do.”

“I picked them up at the drugstore after fishing yesterday.”

Her eyes sparkle. “Presumptuous.”

I lower my gaze to her hands, removing the condom from the packet. “And yet, you’re about to put one on my dick. So perhaps I’m both presumptuous and right.”

“Cocky, too,” she says, a flirty tone to her voice.

“Says the woman who just called my name to the heavens.”

She rolls her eyes. “You love teasing me, don’t you.”

I nod. “I do.”

She wraps her hand around my length and strokes down, head to base. I shudder.

“Are you sure you want this?” she goads, running her hand back up, gliding it over the tip so perfectly that I swear I could come if she does that just a little more, a little longer.

“Please.” My voice is hoarse. “Put. It. On. Me.”

Her eyes twinkle with satisfaction. She sits up higher and rolls the condom down my length. I watch her every move. It’s erotic. It’s intense. It makes me feel even more connected to her as she readies me to be inside her. I swallow as she finishes, pinching the tip of the condom. Once she’s done, she raises her face and meets my gaze.