Page 30 of One Bet

“Oh, you know me,” I answered. It probably wasn’t what she was talking about, but I spun her around to face me. “You know I like being with you and touching you, holding you, and sleeping with you tucked in beside me.”

She pulled away from me. Far enough that I couldn’t use my lips, my breath, my hands to distract her.

“Avery, I love talking to you, hearing you go on about books you love and movies that make you cry or laugh. I love just being in the same room as you because you might smile, and if I’m in the same place, I get to see it. I might not know who Billy Pruett is, although I can say, he sounds like an asshole, but we don’t have to know everything about each other right away for us to know how we feel about each other.”

“It’s not right away, we’ve known each other for years now and I know what I’ve read about you in the papers over the years and what you told me a long time ago. But that’s it.” She cleared her throat and took two beers out of the refrigerator. As she opened mine, I smiled even though I could feel the end coming. She handed me my beer then opened hers and took a long drink. A very long drink before she swiped her hand over her mouth and breathed out through her nose. “Alex is in love with me.”

I sat down. “Now I know something.” Alex? The same guy who was sleeping with Jameson’s wife? The guy who’d been her friend in college? My stomach tightened. When did Alex Rhodes become the guy all the girls wanted? “Do you love him?”

“I should. I know everything about him.” She sat down and folded her hands on the table. “He’s a good person. My best friend.”

“But do you love him?” I held my breath as I waited for her answer. This one could hurt.

She shook her head.

“No.” She closed her eyes. “Not like he wants me to.”

Now I sat across from her because when the answer to my next question came, I would probably need to be sitting. “Do you need time to figure out…what you want?”

She took a minute longer than was good for my ego then blew out another slow breath and stood to hold out her hand to me. “I think so. Thank you.”

My heart thudded to a stop, and I breathed out slowly against the pain in my gut. “Okay. I’ll just uh…”

I nodded to the door. “And you can…”

My throat was thick, and I couldn’t finish. Instead, I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door.

She let me go to the door and open it, walk out and onto the porch then down the steps to come around the driver’s side of my car when she rushed outside.

“Keaton, wait! Don’t go, I should want Alex and I don’t. We should hate each other but we don’t and I have to think that all means something.” With each word, she’d moved closer and now stood on the passenger side of my car. She came around the hood and leaned her forehead against my chest.

“We have two days left to homecoming before you leave again and I want those two days.” She cleared her throat. “With you.”

I could’ve told her then about the job and what I wanted for our future, but she pressed her lips against mine and nothing mattered more than touching her and loving her. Some things never changed.

One Decade Ago

Every muscle and bone in my body ached. Practice was killing me and sleeping/not sleeping with Avery was about to finish the job. I loved holding her, loved when she turned toward me and held me, but she had no idea what just sleeping beside her was doing to me. I wanted her so bad, also didn’t want to push her into anything she wasn’t ready for. But oh God. I wanted her and it was killing me.

But as soon as I walked onto the boat, all my aches and pains subsided. And it was because of the rose petals. Red candles and the flower petals lined the path from the deck to the cabin and I followed. Because there was no force of nature or God strong enough to keep me from finding out what Avery had planned and if it was even close to what I hoped, I definitely wanted to see it with my own eyes.

When I walked into the cabin, she turned from the mirror and smiled. I, on the other hand, almost swallowed my tongue. Between the body, the lingerie, the candlelight flickering away the shadows on her skin, I was already hard and panting. But she looked so…beautiful, and I’d been dreaming of her for longer than we’d even been talking.

I couldn’t move. I wanted to, I wanted to cross the room, lift her into my arms and take her to bed. But I couldn’t. All communication between brain and body had ceased.

I stared at her. Took in the black nylons and garters. The red panties. And oh my, the red lace bra I could see through. I groaned I couldn’t hold it in. But it was okay because I wanted her to know what she did to me, how much I wanted her, how beautiful she looked. I couldn’t form a word to tell her, but I could groan, so I did.

“Cat got your tongue?” She had so much confidence as she walked toward me. “Naughty kitty. I’m gonna want you to have that back.”

She traced the vein in my throat with her fingernail, scratching just enough to make my eyelids flutter and my breath hitch. If that wasn’t enough, she pushed my shirt up and kissed my chest, paying special attention to each of my nipples and because I needed to hang onto something, I put a hand on each of her hips and aligned them with mine, drawing her close, grinding my needy body against hers.

Her gasp and the tension in her spine that made her straighten told me as much as anything she could’ve said. She needed to be in control. To set the pace and if it killed me, I would let her because I didn’t want to stop this time. I didn’t want to have to spend another night in a cold shower after she fell asleep.

She ran her hands down my arms then lifted them and stripped my shirt off. This woman had moves. Now our bodies were skin to skin, and I moaned when she rubbed against me and hitched her leg over my hips. I stayed still as long as I could, but there was too much Avery in the room for me to not react. I picked her up with a hand on each of her ass cheeks and her pussy cradled my dick, then carried her to the bed. As I laid her down, she kept her ankles locked around me and I covered her body with mine for a second, until I had to see her again, had to taste her skin.

The bra wasn’t much more than two triangles of lace and a couple of strings with a tiny little satin tie in front. And since I was using my hands to hold myself up, I lowered my head to take the string between my teeth. I needed to shave and the hair of my face rasped against her skin as she used her leg strength to lift her hips and grind against my cock.

“Keaton…”