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I exhale, forcing myself to relax. I’ve waited for this, and I don’t want it to be over before it starts. I know my body isn’t just out of use, it’s carrying all that baggage Ethan left me with.

“That’s better,” he says, as my muscles loosen. His hand pushes the hair off my face. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

No one has ever told me that, outside my parents. Ethan couldn’t compliment me, and the way Reese says it, the dark intensity spreads warmth through my body.

Slowly, the cords of his neck taut, he moves. The tiniest rock of his hips. He kisses my jaw, and collar bone, taking care to stay away from my throat. His massive hand pushes at my inner thigh, spreading my legs wider, and he sinks in, filling me even more than before.

I moan, loving the way he’s inside of me, and when he punches his hips again, this time he doesn’t stop. His mouth latches to my breast and he sucks, sending fire straight to my clit. I meet him, thrust for thrust, until my breath quickens, and his strokes move faster. The orgasm hits me like a detonated bomb.

For a split second, it’s just me and Reese. There’s no outside world, no pain and suffering, just our bodies in sync. When he plunges into me one last time, his forehead buries into the crook of my neck, and I feel the groan that follows deep in my core.

Kissing me, he rolls off, taking his heat and strength with him to clean up. When he returns, he wraps his arms around me, dragging me against him.

This whole thing may have started out fake, but it sure as hell is starting to feel very real.

* * *

“When are we going to talk about Reese Cain?”

My neck heats and I take a sip of iced coffee hoping it’ll cool me off. One look at Nadia’s questioning face, and I know it’s pointless. Still, I try.

“What about him?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “I know he almost beat Ethan to a pulp the other night. And I know he came back to our place and spent the night. I’m pretty sure I heard him sneak out before daylight—you know, because the hinge on the front door squeaks.” Her eyebrow rises, giving me a chance to deny any of it, but I stay quiet. That only propels her to keep talking, “But I am absolutely positive that I saw a used condom wrapper in the bathroom trash can that wasn’t put there by me.”

“Oh.” Well, shit. Looking around I see a pack of sorority girls. Two guys that are so tall they have to be on the basketball team, and various other individuals waiting to cross the street. If we’re going to talk about this, it can’t be here. “Follow me.”

I hope she’s going to tell me no, that she needs to get to class, but I know better. Nadia will happily show up late or skip an entire class for good gossip. I take her down a small walkway between two buildings and sit on a brick wall.

“Okay, Twy, spill. What’s going on?”

“Remember how I told you that Reese and I broke up?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the truth is that we were never dating in the first place. We agreed to pretend see each other until Shanna got off his back and in return, he helped me gain a little confidence with guys.”

She blinks, like she’s trying to process everything I just said and is failing spectacularly. “I’m so confused right now.”

“It started off fake.” I tell her how at first this was just a charade. A stupid deal we made with one another and how we both benefited from the arrangement.

“But then…” she prompts.

“But then Coach Green called me into this office and gave me the warning. That did happen. He caught us hanging out as friends and thought it meant more. We called it off to protect my job.” I pick at a thread on my jeans. “Except by then we’d started to like hanging out together, and instead of stopping, everything escalated.”

“So you went from fake dating Reese Cain to for real fucking him.”

It’s more than that, I want to say, but this is Nadia, queen of the one-night stand. I don’t feel the need to justify anything to her. “Pretty much.”

She crosses her legs. “Does that mean he’s your boyfriend now?”

I think back to how he said he was in boyfriend mode last night. He’d also just called himself the team dad. I’m not staking a claim on the overuse of hyperbole.

“We haven’t had that talk yet, but part of our deal was not seeing other people.”

“Youroriginaldeal,” she says.

“Right.” It’s true we hadn’t updated that part, but it didn’t feel necessary. We like each other and I’m willing to see where this goes without putting a label on it. This way, I don’t feel like I’m lying as much to Coach Green.