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I increase my pace again, building us both back up. Biting down the urgent need for relief.

“Sunny,” Della says, fighting to free her hands before planting them on either side of my face. “Oh, God.”

We’re tethered together in a way I’ve never experienced while having sex with anyone else. I can’t explain it.

I watch her go over. The intense look, then wide-mouthed surprise that it happened again, that it happened so soon. I see Dr. Della Hart let go of who she is, for a second, and show me who she really is.

And I can’t help but join her.

12

DELLA

Irarely have feelings of wanting to stay somewhere forever, but lying here with my back pressed up against Sunny’s chest and the slow puffs of his breath against my shoulder, I feel as though I want to.

If it weren’t for the raging thirst caused by one drink too many, I wouldn’t even be moving right now. After we made love a second time, Sunny tugged on some jeans and his boots and went in search of sustenance for us. He returned with pizza and chips, two beers, two ciders, both sealed, and a bottle of sparkling water tucked under his arm.

When he walked back into the bedroom, he looked like a rock god.

I could see him onstage with a guitar, singing into a microphone. Might have told him, and he teased me mercilessly until we had sex a third time in the shower. Which means, that’s the last time I’ll be sharing a thought like that with anybody.

His muscled arm rests over my waist, but I manage to extract myself from beneath it. Every man I have ever slept with has been of perfectly average build. Perhaps a little taller than me. Sometimes scrawnier. To be honest, their bodies were much less interesting than their minds. I much preferred discussion to sex.

I have never run my fingertips over such a well-defined bank of abs, ever. And I certainly haven’t been hauled around or held up against a wall or…fucked…quite the way Sunny did it.

Having experienced a man built like Sunny, I know it’s going to be hard to return to being indifferent.

Oh, and I feel my cheeks heat when I think about his penis. Because it was so huge, I can still feel the tingles from it this morning. So, now that I have a whole new appreciation for what sex is supposed to feel like, I’m not certain I even want to go back to how it was before.

Once out of the bed, I look down at Sunny. He’s sleeping like the dead, which, given how late the party went, doesn’t surprise me. I disappear into his bathroom, for a minute, before pulling on my underwear, followed by one of his huge hoodies. It fits like a dress, skimming my mid-thighs. Normally, I wouldn’t be seen dead dressed like this, but sleeping with Sunny has me feeling decidedly…sexual. So what if someone sees my thighs; they’re strong and functional, and Sunny made them hot in the way he revered them.

There is a tattered and well-read pile of books on his dresser with titles that look like science-fiction or fantasy. Who’d have thought Sunny would be a reader? I glance back to the sleeping biker. Maybe we have more in common than I thought.

I slip on my sneakers, then I step out of his room, pulling the door until it’s just shy of closed behind me, so I can get back in without waking him. I need coffee, and then somewhere I can plug in my laptop and get some work done before Sunny wakes up.

But as I near a bedroom door, I hear laughter.

“…unlike Sunny who’s stuck with that pity fuck.”

It’s a feminine voice. Maybe one of those awful club girls.

“Meh, who knows why Sunny does what he does.” A masculine voice, not one I recognize. “But I wouldn’t have chased her chubby ass.”

“Sunny probably felt sorry for her.”

“Or it was a dare. Probably had a bet with Ridge on how many times he could make her come. Remember the last time he did that?”

The sound of feminine laughter fills the corridor. “Wasn’t it five by the time he kicked her out?”

Now, the guy laughs. “Bet the girl in his room right now creamed more than she has in her life. Bet she had fucking cobwebs down there.”

I freeze so hard, I forget how to breathe. The words carve through me like a surgical knife, and I hate that I let my guard down long enough for them to hurt me. I wonder if Sunny will feel the same as these jerks in the cold light of day. When the room isn’t dark, and there is no alcohol involved.

What if I am a bet? It’s never made sense why Sunny stuck around me like he did.

Put me in a room full of academics, and I can hold my own, but I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t really know how to belong anywhere other than a classroom, and I have enough dignity and self-respect to know this isn’t the place that’ll change that.

The door yanks open, and the most perfect-looking woman in just panties and a bra sees me. Her mouth opens, and then she quickly closes the door again.