Page 89 of Changing the Playbook
“Which is?” The question vibrates against my neck where she’s pressed her lips.
I lean close enough that my words brush her ear. “It starts with getting you out of these clothes and ends with you forgetting your own name.”
She shivers hard enough that I feel it, then pulls back to study my face. “Remember what I said earlier? About coffee?”
“Vaguely.” I’m distracted by the way she hasn’t actually stopped moving against me, these tiny restless shifts that are destroying my sanity.
“I lied.” A grin tugs at her mouth. “I don’t even have coffee upstairs at all, Mike…”
“Shocking betrayal. What kind of monster lures someone up for nonexistent coffee?”
“The kind who’s been trying to figure out how to get you in her bed without actually having to say ‘please come upstairs and fuck me senseless.’”
My brain flatlines. Full stop. Sophie Pearson just said those words while sitting in my lap, and I’m pretty sure I’ve died.
“Well,” I manage, “coffee’s overrated anyway. I hear it keeps you up all night.”
“Lucky for you, that’s exactly what I had in mind.”
With obvious reluctance, she climbs off my lap. I immediately miss her weight, her warmth, the perfect pressure of her against me. And as I watch, she straightens her clothes with hands that shake slightly, that tiny tell makes me want her even more.
This composed, brilliant woman is trembling because of me.
Because she wants this as badly as I do.
“Are you coming?” she asks, challenge bright in her eyes.
“Give me thirty seconds upstairs and we both will be.”
She laughs—a bright, surprised sound. “That’s terrible.”
“And yet you’re still inviting me up.”
“Yeah.”
We both exit the car, and her fingers lace through mine as we head inside, a simple touch that makes my heart hammer like overtime sudden death. And, as she leads me toward her building, I catch her glancing back with this mix of determination and desire that mirrors everything rioting through my system.
Whatever this means for us tomorrow be damned.
Right now, I’m following Sophie Pearson anywhere she wants to take me.
Wild Berry Pop Tarts.
Sweet.
As I follow Sophie through her apartment, every detail I’d missed during our first encounter months ago demands attention. Back then, I’d been too focused on getting her naked to notice the life scattered across her countertops. Now, my brain catalogs evidence of something precious I’m being allowed to witness.
The coffee mug in the sink that could double as a soup bowl.
The nursing textbooks arranged in perfect right angles on her coffee table.
Hazel’s artwork covering the fridge alongside appointment cards.
Each detail slots into place, building a picture of the woman.
A wonderful, stressed, tired, beautiful, overwhelmed, scared woman.
“Bathroom?” I say when she bypasses her bedroom door.
