“Fuck, you’re right.” He pinches his temple, but then adds quietly, “The best?” He’s still looking out the window, but I catch the little smirk he’s trying to hide.
I wait for him to look back at me before confirming with a tip of my chin. And the look on Liam’s face—half sheepish grin and half cocky pride—does something low in my belly. “Just sex, no strings, no one else.” I hold out my hand for him to shake. “And we don’t tell Cal.”
Chapter 13
Liam
When I get back from my run, Sophie’s gone.
And so is the heap of art supplies by the door.
The past three days have been a masterclass in sexual tension. We’ve been circling each other, both waiting for the other to make a move. Yesterday, we both froze after her hip brushed my thigh in the kitchen. The day before, I walked out of the shower in just a towel and caught her staring at my chest like she wanted to taste the water running down. But neither of us goes further. We made this deal, but neither of us seems to know how to start it—and now I’m afraid she’s gotten sick of the awkwardness and left.
I panic and dart into Cal’s room, but her duffel bag remains on the chair in the corner, her shoes are sitting at the foot of the bed, and her toiletries are a jumble on the dresser. I exhale. Thank fuck, she didn’t leave.
This morning, when she caught me staring at her legs while she did yoga in the living room, her sly little smile made my dick hard, but did she want to have sex right then? Part of me wanted to throw her over my shoulder and carry her into Cal’s room to finish what we’d started three nights ago. But I opted to burn off some steam the old-fashioned way, by pounding out five miles through Golden Gate Park.
But I thought of Sophie the entire run.
I thought about her sharp tongue and those dangerous curves I want to get lost in, and the best breathy moans when I make her come.
Something I’ve apparently now agreed to do “on demand,” and I’m not even a little bit mad about it. As much as I hate keeping secrets from Cal—he’s the only one I told before Sophie about getting cut from the Iron Cats—Sophie’s right. This is just for a few weeks, a casual convenience, and Cal doesn’t need to know all my business, especially if it will be over before he even gets home. Sophie was clear she didn’t want anything more, and eventually, I’ll have to find a real job and a place to live. This is like the summer after your senior year of college—a last chance to enjoy yourself before entering the real world. Apparently, only my version involves sleeping with my incredibly hot roommate.
Who is now gone.
While I’m relatively certain she didn’t change her mind and move out, I still wonder where she is. Not that she has to tell me where she’s going. That wasn’t part of the agreement, right?Dude, get it together. She does not owe you anything.
I take a shower, and when I get out, there’s a message on my phone.
Sophie:not sure if you’re back, but I’m on the roof
I didn’t even know this building had roof access, but suddenly I’m heading for the door. I pull it open with more force than necessary.
“Oh!” the woman across the hall gasps. “What the fuck?”
“Sorry,” I apologize sheepishly to Harper, Cal’s workaholic neighbor. The one who caught Sophie and me almost kissing that night. “I was rushing to meet someone.”
“Do you plan on bringing another random woman back to your friend’s apartment?” Harper asks, clutching a glass food container as she heads toward the stairs.
“She wasn’t random,” I say, following her up. I stop short of adding that it was Cal’s sister—who knows what he’s told her, or what she’d report back. “If you’ll excuse me.” I nod and slip past her up the stairs.
I step onto the rooftop deck, expecting to find Sophie curled up on the lounger with the smutty paperback I always see her reading, eating straight from a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, sipping a Diet Coke. What I don’t expect is what I find her doing instead.
She’s painting.
She has her easel set up near the wall facing the city skyline, wild curls catching in the afternoon breeze. Her paints spill out of her antique-looking tackle box, tubes and little jars scattered everywhere. I can see her in profile, paint flecked across her full cheeks and the bridge of her pert nose. Her brush races across the canvas. She doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hear me. She’s completely lost to the world. For a second, I don’t breathe.
She’s stunning like this. Not just her—though, hell, yes, her—but the confidence in her movements. The way the colors burst across her canvas with such wild, unrestrained passion. Her hands move so quickly, I can’t believe there’s any method to her madness, but I can also clearly see how the San Francisco skyline transforms from reality in front of her onto her canvas. Not a realistic recreation, but an almost otherworldly interpretation of…the feeling of the skyline. All done in shades of blue and teal, along with other colors I don’t have the vocabulary to describe.
This isn’t just talent. It’s fucking magic.
She’s wearing an oversized men’s dress shirt as a well-used paint smock, and the metallic taste of jealousycoats my tongue at the thought of whoever wore it before her. Of whomever she stole it from, maybe after it was discarded on a bedroom floor.
Something shifts deep in my chest.
When she finally glances over, surprised, I lift a hand, a little sheepish.
“Don’t stop,” I say softly. “I like watching you work.”
