Page 69 of The Midseason Fakeout

I’d wanted to woo her with the movie and the candles and the floats. It took us a long time to break everything down and put it in my car, and even though we worked quickly, we worked quietly. As if our thoughts were consumed with the same thing. For me, I still feel the lingering tension from when she sat on my lap and kissed me. It’s a tightness in my chest that I’m not sure I want to ever go away.

“So, what do you want to do?” she asks, closing the door behind us. “I have some movies. A deck of cards.”

I stare at her. She keeps her face a mask of innocence until she bursts out laughing. “The look on your face.”

I mimic her, but it’s all for show. I’m too consumed with her to tease.

“I was joking,” she says, edging nearer. She blinks, her eyes slow to open. When they capture mine, it’s as if my own never want to leave. “Aidan?”

“Yes?”

“I want you to be my first. In case it wasn’t clear.” She studies my lips, then moves up again. “But I want to know if this jersey is a symbol for something real. If what you said back at the pool is true. Is this really what you want?”

“You’re my angel.”

She sucks in a breath, her lashes fanning over pink-tinted cheeks. It takes several moments for her to respond. “I’m nervous.”

“Should we go back to the river? You didn’t seem nervous there.”

“I was pumped full of hormones then.”

A smirk pulls my lips apart. “I’m pretty sure I can pump you up with some more hormones.”

“I don’t know,” she teases, gaze twinkling. “Now that I know you’re fallible, maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

I shake my head. “Now you really shouldn’t have said that.”

“I thought you liked a challenge?”

“You’re my favorite challenge yet.”

She walks her fingers up my chest. “Trying to act like I wasn’t affecting you? Like you weren’t falling for me every moment of every day?”

I clasp her hands over my heart. “That wasn’t a challenge. That was stupid.”

She wiggles out of my grip then reaches down to grab the hem of my wet shirt. “At least you’re pretty,” she says, eyeing my muscles once she drops the shirt on the floor.

“I’ve got nothing on you,” I growl, backing her toward the bed. Her nipples press against her shirt, and I need them in my mouth. I need my body on hers. There’s this voice in my head that says to take it slow, but we’ve been working up to this since she showed up in my room that night. Since that first time she kissed me.

I fall onto her, her legs spreading wide. I maneuver my knee between her thighs and lean over, teasing her breast through her shirt. I nip at her, and she sighs. The memory of her fake fucking me at the party surrounds me. I started to see then. My eyes have opened wider and wider since. She’s the person I laugh with. The person I’m the most real with. What we thought we were faking turned into an inevitability.

“Hey,” she rasps, grabbing my cheeks. “You okay?”

“Just wondering how I didn’t see you for so long.”

“You know, I’ve wondered that myself. I should have left you sinking on that floaty.”

“You wouldn’t. You like my dick too much.”

“I likeyoutoo much,” she whispers, immediately peering away, cheeks turning red.

I kiss her collarbone, my lips traveling up her neck in feather light touches. She shifts against me, just tentative hip movements at first, her core sliding over my thigh.

I move my hand down, pressing the pad of my thumb into her clit. She throws her head back, working up into me. “I’m so glad you like leggings,” I growl. I can feel everything: her hard nub, her soft flesh, the way she’s soaking through her panties. “But I need to see you.”

Reaching to her waistband, I tug her leggings down, revealing her stomach, then her hips, then her upper thighs, my jersey lifting up to her belly button. I can’t help but sit back when I discard her bottoms, pushing her knees to the bed, exposing her. If this isn’t the sweetest picture. The perfect girl wearing my number in one of the sexiest positions.

“You’re not going to make me wear this the whole time, are you?”

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