Grove. Drove. My car.” Dammit. I stop, pat my bag, and manage to dig into it to grab my keychain with a rubber Thrusty hanging off of it, and dangle it in front of his face. “My conda.”
His lips are twitching because I can’t say car or Honda.
Screw this talking baloney.
I go up on my tiptoes and press my mouth to his.
Nothing else matters. I’m kissing Tyler. He’s holding me so tight against his body that if I were a little less solid mass and a little more actual putty, we’d be melding into one goopy mass of overheated slime.
And I mean that in the sexy way. I swear that could be sexy.
It would still be a shame, though, because I wouldn’t want anything to lessen that solid bulge pressing into my belly.
“My car,” I say on a gasp as I break the kiss. “Drive. Broken.”
His breath is coming unevenly too. “Your car’s broken?”
“No. Me.”
That earns me another grin, and then I’m being tossed over his shoulder. My car alarm goes off three rows over, and I realize he’s using my fob’s panic button to find it.
Smart, smart man.
I kiss him when he puts me down and tries to open the passenger door for me. He kisses me back as he tries to make me sit so we can leave.
I squeeze his ass.
He squeezes my breast.
I am no longer a woman with insecurities and complexities and a cat.
I am one flaming ball of hormones about to strip in a parking lot so I can have sex with my boyfriend in public.
“Back seat,” Tyler says.
“Oh, god, yes. I can’t wait until home.”
“Back seat so I can’t touch you while I drive.”
“I don’t like that plan.”
“Cross my heart, Muffy, I’ll get arrested with you for public indecency, but not until after the season.”
“You clearly don’t want me badly enough.”
He growls, shoves me into the back seat, and shuts the door.
I’m fogging up my own window before he makes it to the driver’s seat.
“Tyler?” I pant.
His gaze flicks to mine in the rearview mirror.
“I’m going to masturbate in the back seat while you drive.”
My keys hit the floorboard, and he bangs his head on the steering wheel when he bends to pick them up. “No more talking. And if you don’t save that pussy for me, I’m locking you out of the house.”
“Spoilsport.” God, I want to touch myself so bad.
“Keely’s meatloaf. Staci’s feet. Allie’s hairbrush…”
“What are you talking about?”
“Things that don’t make me too hard to drive. I need my brain so I don’t drive us into a lamppost. West’s gym socks. Brit’s poetry. Dad loves liverwurst.”
“We both just saw my mother.”
“No good. I saw your mother and then I kissed you. Fuck, I missed you.”
If my panties weren’t already soaked, they would be now. But they’re joined by a glow in my chest that’s so unfamiliar it hurts. “That goal you scored last night? The one where you sent the puck between your legs? That was so hot.”
His beard is twitching like he’s clenching his jaw again, and I want to lean forward and run my hands through his hair.
I don’t, because he’s right.
We need to get home and get naked.
“Dirty diapers,” he mutters. “Episiotomies. Allie’s morning breath…”
He’s hilarious and sexy and wrong all at the same time. I squirm in my seat, letting my hand fall between my legs and telling myself it doesn’t count if I’m only pressing on my clit through my jeans. “Litter boxes,” I offer.
“Losing.”
“Grease traps.”
“Atomic wedgies.”
“Banana-flavored pudding.”
He shudders. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Banana flavoring is too far?”
“Bananas.”
“You hate bananas?”
“They smell like my grandfather.”
Oh my god, I love this man.
I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t. He’s smart and athletic and kind and everything a guy should be to have his pick of any woman in the entire world.
There’s no way this can last.
But I can’t cut myself off of him. Not when being with him feels so damn good.
And if there’s any chance he’d be hurt simply because I’m afraid—nope.
Won’t do it.
Seize the day. It’s what I tell my clients. Even knowing I basically learned it from my mother and have always used it wrong, I still tell people that, and I should take my own bad advice.
Not bad though?
All the lessons from therapy.
You are worthy, and any man lucky enough to get the opportunity to know you had better recognize what he has.
With Tyler, I feel like he knows what he has. The bad and the good.
He’s seen me at my worst. He’s seen