Page 58 of Dirty Player

“Anyway, I’m just a girl from a rundown home, with a single mom who had two kids with two different dads and could barely afford to raise us.”

“That’s not you,” Oliver snapped. He was so serious.

I couldn’t pull my eyes off his tawny eyes.

“That’s not who you are.”

“It is, though.” I shrugged. I wasn’t ashamed of my past.

Compared to Patrick and his family, who hosted fundraisers for politicians and didn’t eat anywhere except a restaurant with valet parking—a rarity in Des Moines—we were common. Lower class.

I waved away his statement. “It’s not a big deal. Beaux and I came from nothing. I’m proud of my mom. She worked her whole life, paying for it in the end, and I didn’t mind taking care of her or helping Beaux succeed. I don’t even think Patrick wants me. He just doesn’t want to lose.”

“So how are you getting your stuff?”

“I’ve considered staying with Beaux until I can afford new stuff for my apartment above Stamped.”

“There’s an apartment there?” Oliver’s eyes lit with interest. “You mean, when I was there earlier, we were ten yards from a bed and didn’t end up in it?”

The teasing glint in his eyes relaxed me and I laughed, tilting my head against the back of the couch.

“Surprising, huh? But no, the bed is nasty and I could live there, but I want my own stuff. Patrick can afford to replace everything with the snap of his fingers. He’s only holding onto it to maintain some twisted sense of control.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“My best friend Melissa has a key. She’s going to meet the movers there next week, or as soon as I can get everything scheduled.”

She was ecstatic about the idea.

When we had talked earlier, she’d told me about a photo she’d seen online of Oliver and me leaving the game together. We’d laughed and over-analyzed everything that had changed for me in the short time I’d been here. When I told her I was happy, she’d reluctantly agreed not to cause potential problems with Patrick—even if she was gloomy about me making her promise not to slice and dice all of Patrick’s expensive suits like she’d mentioned.

While I had struggled with my frustration with Patrick all day today, I also realized something important.

I was over him long before our relationship was over. We’d been roommates mostly for six months before we broke up, before I caught him cheating. We’d drifted apart before he began cheating, bored and too placated with our lives after only a few years together. If a relationship could be that dull after such a short time, we had no business spending a lifetime together.

I wanted passion and excitement. I wanted friendship and respect. I wanted laughter and late night movies in bed and marathon, athletic sex sessions. I didn’t want those moments to dull before theI Dos were spoken, and with Patrick they had years prior.

It might have been my stubbornness that made me hold on for so long, something Melissa reminded me of when we spoke. I’d been unhappy for a long time and before I was unhappy, I’d been uncertain of the future.

I loved that she waited until she knew I could handle hearing the truth before stating it.

“Hey.” Oliver tapped my hand that was near him and when I pulled my gaze to his, he was smiling. “Where’d you go?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Sorry. I was thinking of Melissa. I miss her, I guess. We talk almost every day, but it’s not the same.”

His lips twisted, quirked up on one side. “What’d she say about me?”

The question threw me before I realized he was teasing. I teased back. “Said if you have a cock as big as I’m proclaiming you do, I’d be the biggest fool in the world not to ride it as long as it’s offered to me.”

The words flew unbidden from my lips. I blamed the wine I’d chugged. One glass before he’d even arrived. As the blush hit my cheeks, Oliver leaned forward to get close enough to wrap his hand around my wrist.

He tugged me to him, pulling me until I straddled him, careful of the leg he had propped on the coffee table.

“What exactly did you tell her about my big cock?” His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist and sent shocks up my arm to my chest.

I rolled my hips, unable to stop myself. Beneath me, his bulge hardened. “I told her everything. Everything you do to me. Everything you make me do. Everything you make me feel.”

His hands dropped to my hips as he groaned. He stilled me, held me against his hard length between us, and met my eyes. “And if I want more? If I think we could be more?”

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