“You’re being a troublemaker,” he says, holding still, keeping us in place like he doesn’t want me to move.
“I’ll stop,” I say, and I should stop rubbing my ass against his hard-on, but maybe he should stop too.
And he’s not. He’s going. He’s pressing back. Grinding against my butt, gripping my wrists harder.
“I shouldn’t,” he whispers.
“I know. We said,” I murmur.
“It was a one-time thing,” he continues, a soft plea against the skin on my neck to help him say no to this.
“I’ll stop,” I say, drawing a steadying breath. I can do this. I can stop. I will myself to inch away.
But once there’s a sliver of space between us, he growls in protest. Ropes his arm around my waist. Yanks me close in a vise. “Don’t stop.”
I sway against him. He rocks back, then dusts his mouth to my neck. He’s always been obsessed with my neck.
And here on the pickleball court on a mid-December afternoon, he leaves a trail of open-mouthed kisses from my ear down to my collarbone, each one a little harder, a little more desperate than the last, like he wants to mark me.
I flash back to what he said the night we fucked in the bakery.Try since I met you, Mabel. Since I met you.
He’s been so vulnerable with me about all this longing. He was even vulnerable in a way when he asked me if I was on the apps.If I can’t have you, I don’t want anyone else to. The more he shares, the more it cracks something open in me. Makes me want to give him the same. “I wanted you too. The day I met you,” I confess.
His breath comes out ragged, stuttered. “Yeah?”
“When you were helping me clean up after the llamas. I kept thinkingthis guy is fine,” I say, remembering how handsome he was then.
“You have no idea what that does to me,” he says with a groan as he tugs me tighter against him.
Well, I think I do know. It excites me.
He kisses me more urgently now, like my confession revved him up another level. Like he can’t hold back anymore today. I’ve been terrible at holding back too. Restraint, evidently, is for other people. Corbin’s still gripping my wrists and the paddle, and that seems wholly unimportant so I drop it to the court.
“I wanted to, Mabel. So badly. Then I learned you were?—”
I know where that’s going. He learned I’m his best friend’s sister. I learned he was forbidden too, in lots of ways back then. “Same. You were off-limits to me too,” I say, my eyes fluttering closed, my body melting like butter on a warm day.
“But now.” His hand reaches for mine, and he threads our fingers together. “Now I just…” He sounds as lost to whatever this is as I am.
And I am utterly lost, so I wiggle free, spin around, cup his shoulders, and say, “My turn.”
“For what?” he asks.
I glance around, making sure it’s still just us, then I push him toward the edge of the court, near the hedges. A few strands have fallen out of my ponytail, so I undo it, then redo it, giving him a sly smile when it’s fixed. “My turn to apologize. Good thing I have this scrunchie to hold my hair back.”
His eyes widen. A thrill flickers in them. Then dirty, filthy hope as I drop down to my knees.
“Wait,” he snaps.
I arch a brow in question, but he’s already stripping off his T-shirt—of course—and setting it down on the court for me to kneel on.
“The filthy gentleman,” I muse, as I settle in on the gray cotton.
“I am. And now I’ll ask you the question like a gentleman. You going to apologize with that pretty mouth of yours?”
“I am. It’ll be a very deep, full-throated apology.”
He grabs the side of my face, stares hotly at me, then ropes his fingers through my hair once more. “Open wide, then.”
