Page 98 of Fake Shot

A minute later, he pulls back, looking at me in awe and saying, “Holy shit, Tink. You kiss like you’re ravenous.”

“I am,” I say with a small shrug, “for you.” And then I’m holding on tightly with my legs and pulling my shirt over my head.

He looks down at the sheer lace bra and hisses out his appreciation. “Look at you,” he says, gazing down at me as my chest heaves with heavy breaths. A small, private smile graces his lips. It’s nothing like the one he flashes for everyone else, and it makes me wonder if anyone but me has gotten to see it.

Before I can ask, he’s turning and striding across the entryway to the kitchen. He glances at the table, then turns toward the countertop instead and sets me right on the edge. It’s the perfect height, because I’m still wrapped around hiswaist exactly where he wants me, but now his hands are free to explore.

“This bras is...” He looks down at me and shakes his head slightly, like he’s forgotten how to speak.

“Thanks. I made it myself.”

“Really?” His eyebrows raise as he trails his fingers lightly across the lace, like he forgot that I told him this about the thong he kept.

“Yep. The underwear too.”

“This I have to see.” He hooks his thumbs into the open waistband of my jeans. “Lift,” he commands, and I press up on the countertop to lift my ass off it so he can slide my jeans down over my hips. He pulls them gently down my legs, kneels to remove my shoes and pull the jeans over my feet, then tosses them to the side before standing back up.

My legs are spread on either side of his hips, my heels resting on the drawer pulls below. He stands there staring at me, his eyes raking up and down my body before he finally looks up and meets my gaze. “You are so fucking beautiful.”

“Is that why you like me so much, now?” My tone is teasing, but I need to hear from him how he feels. He said he was falling in love, but why?

Stepping forward so that he’s between my open legs, he grips my hip bones and leans in to say, “Fuck no. You’ve always been beautiful, but I never really knew you until recently. It’s who you are—your generosity, your honesty, the way you always take care of others, the way you turn prickly when you’re hurt, and the way you’ll open up to me even when you won’t with others—that has me truly falling for you. Now I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

His admission seems to suck all the oxygen from theroom. It’s so cliché, and yet it must be true, because I’m having a hard time breathing.

“I feel like you’re freaking out internally right now. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way yet,” he says.

“I do.” The words barely make it past the lump in my throat, and I can feel my nose heating up the way it does when I cry.

I should be happy—this is what I always dreamed of having with him. But instead, I feel raw. I’m on the verge of tears because he’s peeled back all the layers, seen who I really am, and...it’s made him like memore? It’s made him love me, even? I didn’t know this type of vulnerability with another person was something I could ever let myself experience.

“I don’t know what the future looks like for us, Jules,” he says as he leans down and rests his forehead on mine. “I just know that my only path forward is with you.”

“Yes.” It’s a whispered plea coming off my lips, both because that’s what I want with him, and because he’s reached out and is running his thumb along the damp lace of my thong, then stroking upward to my clit. And as he teases me, I undo his tie and unbutton his shirt, until I’m sliding it off and pulling his undershirt up and over his head.

I want him naked, but for now, this view—the hard ridges and planes of his abdomen and chest, his strong arms, his muscular shoulders and neck—will do. This man ismine, and I will enjoy him.

When he brings both his hands to my shoulders and hooks his thumbs under the straps of my bra, dragging them down my biceps, I hook my legs around his waist and pull him flush against me. I already miss the feel of him, and as Itilt my hips up, grinding myself along his hard length, he frees my breasts from the lace. His thumbs toy with my nipples as he watches me writhe against him.

“Goddamn, Jules. You keep grinding yourself against me like that and we’re not going to make it to the bedroom.”

In response, I tighten my hold on his hips and press myself against him even harder. “Ineedyou, and only you. Whether you knew it or not, it’s always been you. And right now, I need to know what you feel like inside me.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

COLT

Iscoop her up and set her on the ground in front of me, and she practically shrieks when her feet meet the cold tile of the floor. Dragging the stretchy lace of her sexy-as-hell bra down her waist and over her hips, I let it drop to the ground. And then I turn her toward the entryway and give her ass a light smack, saying, “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going, exactly?” she asks, her feet remaining planted in place.

“Upstairs.” Stepping up behind her, I drop my voice when I say, “because the first time we have sex, it’s not going to be on the kitchen counter.”

“But another time?” she asks, her voice hopeful.

“There’s pretty much no surface in this house where I haven’t already imagined you spread out before me. I’ll take you wherever you want, whenever you want. But not this first time.”

“Such a gentleman,” she teases as she reaches behind her and grasps my belt buckle, pulling me along as she walks across her entryway in nothing but her thong.

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