when more would arrive for the tournaments.”
“Fresh blood.” She smirks. “Smart choice.”
“Right. But I didn’t feel the fizz with a single one of them.”
One perfectly arched brow wings up. “The fizz?”
“Mm. You know how you can take a Mento and Coke, put them together, and they fizz?”
“I’m following you.” Her voice is so serious, so fake, when we both know she wants to giggle.
“Well, that very first day when you walked into my gym, I got a look at you, one single look, and my heart just…”
She grins. “Fizzed. And no one else did that for you?”
“Nope. Not one, which means you basically fucked me over for life. Just call me a gray wolf, because I guess I only get one mate for life.”
“You would pick the wolf,” she snickers. “Beavers also mate for life.”
“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t sound as manly.”
She laughs. “Emperor penguins, too. And seahorses.” She leans forward, and presses her lips to mine until I swallow her giggles. “You could have been a manly seahorse. Or there are some birds. Oh, and swans. You could have been a swan!”
“I choose the wolf,” I growl and nip at her bottom lip. “If I’m gonna be a fuckin’ monk for the rest of my life, the least you can give me is a badass animal to relate to.”
“So the wolf…” She peppers tiny kisses to my chin, my jaw, my neck.
“What about you? Boyfriends?”
“Nah. This one guy was nice to me. He used to frequent the club, and he was like…” Alcohol runs through her veins as she pulls back and grins. “Like, he didn’t ask me out or anything. But he was nice. He was in a club, but he was a gentleman, and I feel like, maybe if anyone ever tried to hurt me, he would have kept me safe.”
“A gentleman…” I drawl. “In a titty club.”
“Oxymoron?” She snickers. “I don’t even know his name, but I’ll never forget him. He was a kind of friend when the rest of the world sucked.”
“Did you kiss him?”
“No. Not even close.”
“You kissed Evan.”
“Nuh uh.” Tired of the space between us, she snags our plates and drinks, and plops them on the coffee table, then she crawls into my lap.
Neither of us are drunk. We’re just… relaxed, and smiling about it.
Settling herself on my lap, and straddling my thighs, she nurses that shoulder of hers, and takes extra care not to hurt mine. “He kissed me,” she murmurs and presses her lips to my jaw, “but it was one of those situations where, if I said no, I’d possibly end up dead. So… you know… doesn’t count.”
“Counts a little bit,” I warn. “Like, a fuckin’ lot.”
“As much as this?” She slides her tongue against my lips, and dives in when I open up to her. “Does it count as much as when your cock is inside me?” She grinds down over my lap, and draws a pained growl from my throat. “Because there isn’t a single man on this planet who has done that…” She cruises her lips along my jawbone, and up to the warm skin behind my ear. “Except you,” she whispers. “You, and you alone. You have a part of me, Jamie, that no one else ever will.”
“Do you promise?” I slide a hand under her shirt and up to her tit. Instantly, I rip her bra down, and cup her bare skin. “Do you promise to never give yourself to another man?”
“Yes.”
Instead of wrestling beneath clothes, she sits up tall, and tears her shirt over her head. She tosses it aside, then reaches back with one arm to unsnap her bra. She lets the material fall, then she cups the back of my head, and draws me forward until I take a pebbled nipple between my teeth.
“Fuck.” She arches up and groans. “Nobody can take control of my body the way you do.” She grinds over my cock. Over and over and over again, until it turns to dry sex instead of something a little more innocent. “Jesus, Jamie. For four years, I wondered if I imagined that chemistry. If the things you could do to my body were merely a part of my imagination. I worried that what we had was gone, and that I would never again be able to look at a man and not compare him to you.”
“And?” I switch breasts, and add teeth. “Do you compare men to me?”
“Yes.” She whimpers and arches back to give me room to taste,