Page 66 of Let’s Be Real

“You okay?” I asked, stroking her damp hair.

Her laugh was a puff of a thing. “Pussy broken, but otherwise, I’m great.”

My hand froze. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not in a way I didn’t like.” She nuzzled her face into my throat. “That was perfect.”

“I thought you liked it.” I continued stroking her hair, my eyes growing heavy. “You make me crazy sometimes. I was waiting for you to get here. Couldn’t help myself when I finally saw you.”

“Mmm…I don’t mind being used like that. It’s been a fantasy of mine for a while.” She drew a line along my jaw and traced my bottom lip. “I’m not sure that was all about me, though. Do you want to talk about it?”

It was an opening. One I knew she meant. If I could have summoned the words, I might have taken it. But how did I explain I’d visited Louise again and listened to her memories of being our mother until I couldn’t stand another second of it? How did I explain the unwieldy ball of preemptive grief mixed with anger I carried every day?

I spit it out. “I went to see Louise again.”

She hummed, her fingers exploring their tender trail along my face. “Yeah. That would do it.”

Turned out, I didn’t need to explain at all.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

So, I patted her ass. “Come on, you. Let me take you to bed before we fall asleep right here.”

She nuzzled closer. “Would that be so bad?”

“Maybe not.”

Then again, not much was bad when Samantha was around.

“You’re going to hit your head on the ceiling.”

Samantha kept jumping, ignoring my concern. “I’m not going to stop until you get up here with me.”

I folded my arms over my chest, though I wasn’t mad in the least. If anything, I was bemused, which happened often around this woman. It’d been nearly two months since our weekend in Silver Springs, and she still managed to confuse me in a really delightful way.

“So we can both put our heads through the ceiling?” I asked.

Laughing, she raised her arms over her head, her fingers grazing the ceiling above her. “That’s not going to happen. Come on, Natey.” She reached out to me. “Don’t be so square.”

“I’m square, Sam. Face it.”

“No, you’re not.” Her teeth dug into her bottom lip as she gave me a long once-over. “You’re hot and sexy and fun.”

Laughing, I let her tug my hand, but I didn’t climb on the bed with her. “I’m not sure those words mean what you think they do.”

She stopped jumping to glare at me. “Nathan Wells, it’s tradition to jump on a brand-new mattress. If you don’t do it, you’ll be cursed to a hundred years of bad sex, and since I’m the person you’re currently having sex with, I refuse to let that happen. Unless…” She let go of her hand to twirl the end of her hair as she batted her eyes. “Unless you don’t want to have sex with me ever again.”

“Samantha,” I warned, not liking where this was going.

She stepped to the edge of the bed. “I’ll just go find someone else to—”

I was on the bed before she could think about finishing the sentence, trapping her against my chest. “Shut up.”

We were having sex. Frequent, regular, unprotected sex. It wasn’t a relationship, by any means, but that didn’t mean I’d be fine with her screwing someone else—which she knew and was most assuredly using against me.

She tipped her head back as she giggled, high and floaty. “Oh, look, you’re on the bed.”

“Has anyone ever told you how manipulative you are?”