“Fine, you win,” I huff, extricating my leg from my pants and crawling back into bed like the pitiful, spineless worm I am.
“I knew I would,” he says, smug and satisfied. His hand ventures under the soft cotton of my shirt and rests flat on my abdomen—curls of excitement spiral from my head to my toes with the brief contact. On instinct, I wrap my feet around his. “That’s a good girl,” he murmurs into my hair.
Slowly, Seth lifts his hand, trailing a finger up my sternum, and cups one of my breasts, running the pad of his thumb across my nipple.
Oh.
Warmth pools in between my thighs, and I steady my breaths, eager not to turn around and show how much a simple graze of his thumb is affecting me.
A tiny, imperceptible whimper escapes my lips, and my feet move up and down his calf.
I’m not proud, but I also don’t have control of whatever feelings his touch is eliciting. I need more.
“Just let me sleep a little longer, and I’ll take care of you. I’m sorry, I’m still on West Coast time after that game,” he trails off. His chest rises and falls with the heavy cadence of slumber, and I cling to the rhythm of his breaths to literally calm my tits.
In his dormant state, I take stock of every sensation—magnified in a way I never experienced with Connor. Pine swirls around me, calling to me like it’s claimed me. Embers spark along my skin at every point of contact. For the first time, my body relaxes into someone else’s embrace. It feels like coming home with a surrendering sigh after a long day away or the feel of a hot cup of tea on a rainy day.
A quiet, glorious comfort.
It should terrify me. And oh, it does. My brain is that dog GIF with the surrounding fire drinking coffee and going, “this is fine.” But my body is charged with some euphoric, divine, incandescent feeling. Like I swallowed the moon, and now moonbeams are going to shoot out of my fingers and toes.
Shit. I’ve heard about this feeling. This Maddie is in love.
Chapter seven
Trading Places
Seth
Thereisapebblednipple under the pad of my thumb.
I don’t know who it belongs to, how I came to share a bed with them, or even when this happened. But I know without a doubt that my hand is now cupping the world’s most perfect breast.How did Adam Carlsen get his mouth around one of these?Never mind that, right now. My thumb draws circles around the sensitive peak, and the tiny whimper accompanying each swirl is the sweetest fucking music to my ears.
Even if I can’t remember who it is.
WhatdoI remember about last night?
Drinking?
I got coffee with Jenny at the diner.
Is this Jenny?
My gut’s telling me no, whatever she was morphing into wouldn’t lower herself to plain old boring Seth Aarons.
After the diner, I went to the bookstore.
And some old lady blew powder into my face.
Did she drug me?
Reluctantly, I lift my fingers from the gorgeous breast and roll to the side of the bed to sit up. A frigid floor freezes the soles of my feet when I press them to the ground. This isn’t my dorm room since that floor’s carpeted. I grind the heels of my palms into my eyelids to clear the haze of sleep and wince, waiting for the pain that rubbing my black eye should elicit, but it never comes.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, blinking my eyes open and squinting through a blinding light. The room I’m in, with its white walls and old, hardwood floors, doesn’t match the Ephron University 1990s vibes for off-campus housing or anything else around this area, but it’s still familiar, just not in any logical sense. With the weight bench in the corner, and the athletic shorts flung everywhere, there’s a nostalgic feel of my former life hanging heavy in the chilly air.
What the hell is this? My brain and processing system remain murky, held hostage by a thick sludge.
“Hey, you okay?” A soft voice wraps me in a velvety cocoon, drawing small circles on my back, and I tense at the surprise contact.
