“Fuck, Lauren,” I bellowed.
I didn’t move. I wanted to remember every hot, clenching ounce of her. Thinking about baseball would buy me a few more minutes. It always worked under the condom regime. The wearing a raincoat in the shower regime. “Goddamn it, sweetness, you feel so tight and hot and wet, and perfect, and unbelievable, and if you behave, I might let you come soon.”
She drove her fingers through my hair, scraping her nails along my scalp until I shivered under her hands. I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t know how to handle the dizzy sensation wrapping around my brain. I wasn’t even sure I could stay standing.
“I don’t think I can behave, Mr. Walsh.”
I heard everything she wasn’t saying—her desire for something raw and real, something that didn’t require definition—and I swallowed it all. I pulled all the way out before spearing into her, her breath catching as I filled her. Our eyes met, and I repeated the motion, wanting her gasps and moans, wanting to own them.
“You’re right,” I said, my teeth clenched and jaw rigid. “And you’d rather have it this way, wouldn’t you?”
Lauren nodded, a shy, devious smile dancing on the corners of her lips. She held my gaze while her orgasm vibrated around me and I exploded inside her, her hums and shrieking whimpers filling the space between us in concert with my guttural rumbles.
Her hands traced my spine up to my neck and into my scalp and back down, and we stayed calmly entwined as our bodies quaked with aftershocks. From the crook of her neck, I inhaled the sweet scent of Lauren laced with sex and sweat, and wondered if she could feel my heart hammering against my chest.
I attacked her mouth and dug my fingers into the supple skin of her ass. The kiss started with teeth and lips and tongues warring, but it mellowed and ended with Lauren’s forehead pressed to mine and our lips barely touching. “You were saying something about me getting dressed?”
A sated, drowsy smile filled Lauren’s face. “In a couple of minutes,” she murmured.
Chapter Eleven
LAUREN
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
Shit.
How did I go wrong with the ‘croissant for breakfast, no dirty sex with Matthew’ plan? It wasn’t even a small cheat, like grabbing a few chocolate-covered almonds in the name of late afternoon protein. No, this was ordering lo mein, kung pao chicken, and beef with broccoli, and letting the delivery guy believe I had four friends hiding in my apartment.
I was really racking up points in the Didn’t Think This One Through category, but it wasn’t just the sex. No, I had other issues on my hands while we walked to the party.
First, it was too cold to be wearing this dress without tights, and the chilly evening air left my nipples painfully, awkwardly hard. Instead of honoring any after-sex customs like speaking or hand-holding, my arms were crossed over my chest while I stared at the pavement. I felt Matthew’s gaze on me, his raised eyebrows and expectant glances begging for some indication of why I’d shut down but I couldn’t tell him about my chilly nips, or that I shouldn’t have dragged him along to this party. Inviting him meant seeing my friends, and that meant they’d wantallthe details, and I could barely explain this situation to myself. Beyond that, going away parties were the territory of couples, not fucked-up ‘drinks but I actually mean sex’ arrangements.
And I needed a nap.
Specifically, a naked nap with Matthew as my blanket, and maybe some more wall sex.
“You ready?” he asked, his hand holding the door to the venue, Tia’s, open.
I eyed his dark jeans, white Oxford open at the collar, and charcoal suit coat with a pouty shrug.
“What the fuck does that mean, sweetness?”
It means my friends are going to want to know who you are and where you came from and why they’ve never heard of you.
It means they’ll ask questions about you next week, next month—when this little game is over—and they’ll want to know what happened.
It means my work is overwhelming, my friends are moving on, I don’t want my one-night stand to end, and my world is sliding into barely controlled chaos.
“Nothing,” I said, and ducked under Matthew’s arm into the restaurant.
Looking around at the floral arrangements and photo slideshow projected on the wall, I was relieved Steph, Amanda, and I made time last week for dinner together at Sonsie. This party was for everyone else, and it never would have given us the quiet moments we needed.
In reality, the past four months were our long farewell. Their announcements both landed in June, and from that point onward we arranged dinners, long beach weekends, and plenty of packing parties.
I was also thrilled I handed off the planning of this event to Elsie Moor. She organized parties by trade, and she approached every backyard barbeque with the same level of preparation she would for a massive charity ball. In fact,Coastal Livingmagazine photographed her Fourth of July party on Cape Cod. She’d worked that morsel into every conversation in recent memory.
