Page 101 of Pick-Up
Thanking the gods, I turn back to Ethan, who is standing by the bed, a pained but hopeful look on his face.
“Are they there? Please tell me they’re there.”
I hold up the package like a winning ticket. And, in doing so, drop my towel. I don’t pick it up. He throws his head back and grins. And I’m on him before three.
Luckily, this time, the shades are drawn.
We topple onto the fluffy cloud bed and, in an instant, he flips me underneath him. He settles in like he’s my favorite weighted blanket. And I don’t ever want to get up. He leans down and nips my bottom lip. Then, pressing kisses against my overheated skin, he works his way from my jaw down. Neck. Collarbone. Breasts. Rib cage. Waist. Hip.
I feel like I’m about to burst I’m so impatient.
I close my eyes. Flash to all the times I’ve tried to push my feelings for him aside—stealing glances at his body in the park, the hotshock of his hand grazing mine in the schoolyard, his thigh between my legs on the hammock, his rum punch lips and tongue entangled with mine on the pitch-dark beach. His warm hand running slowly, appreciatively, down the side of my body, sending shivers through me. Every adorable smile and playful smirk. And I am overwhelmed with how much I want him.
It’s when he reaches my inner thigh, and stays for a while, that I call it.
I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t wait anymore. I need his bigger body between my legs. His chest to my chest. I need my hands on his back, him pressed into me. No air between us.
“It’s time,” I say.
“Time?”
I nod, holding up the condom. “To bang.”
He shakes his head, laughs. “Such a way with words.” But he doesn’t hesitate before he reaches for it.
I get to watch him, like a preview of what’s to come, as he rips the package open. The boyish angles of his face. His furrowed brow as he concentrates. His muscular forearms. He is a thing of beauty.
Then, not soon enough, he is hovering over me, his rapacious eyes fixed on mine. This man wants me too.
I wrap my legs around his hips and hold on tight; he is so hard against me.
“Sasha,” he says gruffly. Myname.
I am already undone.
“Ethan.Please.”
He shoots me one of those crooked half smiles, like he likes that I’m tortured for him.
“Since you asked nicely,” he says. Then he finally thrusts inside me—first slow, deep, then harder as I demand it.
And that’s when I lose all cogent thought, all hell breaking loose in the best possible way. The bestlaidplans. (God help me and the puns.)
34 | The DeedETHAN
Finally.
I swear I didn’t mean to walk in on her in the shower. I tried to work, barely ate lunch, then went back there looking to find relief, some distraction, from obsessing about her, about the hammock, about how good she looked in that goddam bathing suit. But I’m definitely not sorry about the mix-up.
Best mistake ever.
And then she told me to stay. Standing there, half naked, with water trailing down her insane body. Like a fucking reprieve.
I already thought Sasha was hot. Objectively, she is. But she’s so much more—she’s a supernova. And when she looks up at me from the bed, her green eyes blazing, hair tangled and wet against the white comforter, cheeks flushed, her naked body forcing me to admit that her three-mile runs are more than plenty, I wonder if there’s anything I don’t like about her.
I like when she’s throwing down over a hoodie, I like when she’s scowling at me, I like when she takes control on set, and I definitely like when she shoots me a wicked smile now on the heels of a stupid condom joke.
I like her ski jump nose. The birthmark on her hip. The fact that she’s ticklish around her ribs.
