Billy's Baby - Annie J. Rose Page 0,39

guess I was straight for life. Because after I was done with him, I chose a career-focused life of fun with friends and personal ambition and long stretches of celibacy. I hadn’t figured I was missing much on the celibacy end of things if you considered what my sex life had been like with the man I loved and planned to marry. On my back, making encouraging and mostly fake noises, wishing it was over already. Sure, I’d hooked up a few times since then, but no one had ever made me want to go back for seconds, that was for sure. Until Billy O’Shea, I’d never come with a man in the room. Sex was about the relationship, making him feel needed and desired. It was about maybe some pleasure but not quite enough to get me there. Lying awake afterward pulsing with frustration or sneaking off to the bathroom and hoping he didn’t hear my battery-operated tech support.

Billy was the opposite of that. I couldn’t disengage from sex with him because it was like being dragged into a whirlpool and being unable to escape, not wanting to escape because the whirlpool was made of blinding ecstasy. Maggie always joked about being addicted to those Real Housewives shows. I laughed, thinking you couldn’t be addicted to anything but drugs or alcohol. Orgasms apparently could become addictive, and the kind of wild connection I felt with Billy was intense and consuming. He was all I could think about, like he was in my blood now. And I had no desire to detox. I just wanted another fix, and then another after that.

That soft kiss, the reminder that he couldn’t wait to see me tonight was all I needed to get my pulse going, my cheeks flushed. I knew how I looked without even a mirror—I had to look lit up from within, joyous and horny in equal measure. I was so damn excited to see him that I had a giddy feeling, like I wanted to jump up from my chair and twirl around the room. I was not a twirler. I was the least likely woman in the world to even consider twirling around barefoot like some stupid starry-eyed girl in a movie. Yet here I was, taking another break from my article draft to moon over the cute guy.

What if it were Maggie? I asked myself sternly. Would I shame her for over-the-top happiness? Never. I’d tell her to have as much fun as possible and that I was thrilled for her. So I had to stop harshing on myself for ‘knowing better’. My jaded attitude could ruin this. Just because Scott had been a cheating piece of crap didn’t mean everyone was. And just because I’d been lucky enough to find out before I signed on the dotted line didn’t mean that everyone was out to trick me or take advantage of me. I was a hell of a lot less trusting than I’d been a few years ago, but being smart didn’t mean I couldn’t be happy as well.

So I leaned back, shut my eyes and just went over everything that had happened the night before. Every laugh, every touch and sigh and scream. It had been just as magical as I suspected. Everything I’d never admitted to wanting had been unleashed. Billy was incredible, and the way he was attuned to my body spoke of a wisdom and perception I appreciated. I didn’t want to think about the experience he must have had to learn so much about a woman’s body. I just wanted to reap the benefits. A man who looked like that, like he belonged in some very expensive porn, was bound to have gotten around. So all I could do was be thankful that he knew so much by the time he got in bed with me. That had been the most delicious night of my life, and even if I never saw him again, I’d be grateful for the perfect memory, the endless loop of satisfaction in my catalog of things to think about when I needed release, and just the way he’d made me feel. And free.

I blinked myself back to reality and decided to make a list of ways it would be acceptable to describe him in my article. I had already assigned descriptors to the other O’Sheas, but it was tricky to pin down Billy without making my attraction obvious. I was highlighting the family’s unique story, their