One Night Stand-In (Boyfriend Material #3) - Lauren Blakely Page 0,35

fuck did you learn to do that?”

She grins wickedly. “I give good crocodile tears, don’t I?”

“Yeah. Scary good. You manipulative feline, you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says, stretching, arching her back proudly.

“Cat is not a compliment.”

“You said you liked my fierce feline.”

She has me on that. “Fine. I did say that. And you’re definitely fierce.”

“And to answer your question, I learned that on my own. My friend Peyton has this theory that everyone needs a party trick, so I decided mine would be crying on cue.”

“And how did you teach yourself? Slicing onions?”

“Slicing onions is child’s play. All you have to do is read Charlotte’s Web. Never fails to elicit geysers from the eyes. So I think of Charlotte, and waterworks ensue.”

“You are fierce, brilliant, and evil. And you deserve to have the tables turned.” I run my finger down her hip. “What would you do if you had six months to live? Would you hit the open road?” I ask, curious to hear her answer.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe sex changes nothing.

Perhaps we can do this whole get-sex-out-of-our-systems-and-be-friends thing.

Because this? Right here, right now? Feels like friendship. Feels like everything we both foolishly cut off at the knees years ago.

She sighs thoughtfully, then stares up at the ceiling. I follow her gaze, noticing the outline of a few stars there.

“I’d travel,” she answers. “Maybe that seems so ordinary, like what everyone else would say to that question. But I do think that traveling, seeing the world—that’s the kind of thing you should do if time is running out. You’d go anywhere. You’d go everywhere.”

“You’d soak in everything the world has to offer,” I say. “Live each day like it’s your last. I don’t think you can do that if you stay in place.”

She sweeps her arm out wide, like she’s pointing to the door, to the road, to the other side of the world. “You’d have to go. Take off. Leave the mundane behind. Shed it all.”

“Live each day to the limit. Devour every second on the clock like they’re those soul-selling fries,” I say.

She laughs lightly then meets my gaze, her brown eyes soft. “I guess the cover was indeed evocative, like the ones I’ve seen of yours. I’m proud of you, Lucas. I loved watching you create back in school, and once we stopped talking, it was even harder going up against you in contests and for jobs, because your eye was so sharp, so fine. You always saw the details and the emotions in a design. It’s kind of nice to just talk like this. Like we used to.”

She was dead-on that sex changes nothing.

We are older, wiser.

“We used to talk about everything. Nothing was off-limits,” I say, then point to the ceiling. “Speaking of, what’s all that about?”

Sighing dreamily, she hops out of bed, walking to the door. “I’ll show you.”

But I’m distracted now by the sight of her naked ass. “Damn, woman. You have a spectacular ass. And trust me, I’ve been ogling it all night, but watching you walk away like that is my new favorite sport. Can you do that again? Like, all night, please?”

Wiggling her luscious rear, she says, “Here’s your encore.” Then she shimmies that ass a few more times, and my body temperature shoots to the sky.

I am on fire. “Do it again. And again. And again.”

She rewards me with one more shake, and I groan in appreciation. “Gluteus perfectus.”

Blowing me a kiss, she shuts off the light and rejoins me in bed, nodding to the ceiling. It’s not spangled in stars like a kid’s. Instead, she’s detailed a few constellations. That’s all. It’s tasteful, thoughtful.

She points at the stars. “When I was in middle school and I moved from Miami to New York, what I missed most was lying on the beach at night and staring up at the sky. You could see so many stars there. Even though it was a big city, there was still a lavish sky. And Luna and I used to go to the beach and watch the stars at night and whisper our dreams to the constellations.”

I smile at that image. “I can picture that perfectly.”

“When I moved to New York, there was no more starlight, so we chose to make it ourselves. We put stars on our ceilings and shared our hopes with them. We told the sky about art and music, about love and passion. She whispered of songs she wanted to write, and I told stories of how