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He licked her cheek like he knew.

“I love you sweet boy,” she said to him, scratching him behind the ears.

She stood back up and walked up the steps, looking so small with her backpack behind her, and the door swung shut. Fletcher put his arm around me as we watched her taking a seat toward the front and sitting at the window. As the bus drove down the dirt road, she waved goodbye.

Graham whined and pranced beside me, and I picked him up. My eyes watered, watching the bus disappear in the distance, and I tried not to let Fletcher see.

“Oh my gosh, are you crying?” he asked.

“No,” I said too quickly. “Shut up.”

He laughed.

I hit his chest. “I’m sad! She’s been my bestie for the last three months, and now I’m all alone! I feel like a puppy dog waiting for her to come home.”

He took Graham, setting him down, and then gave me a hug. “Can I tell you a secret?”

I nodded, wiping at my eyes. I swore the tears just kept coming thinking of Maya being all on her own. Of being away from her all day and not knowing who she was sitting next to at lunch or when she’d get picked for teams in gym class or how her teacher would treat her.

He walked beside me toward the front door of the house. “I had to cancel all my appointments Maya’s first day of preschool. I couldn’t stop crying.”

“Really?” I asked, stepping through the open door. The second I took off Graham’s leash, he ran to Maya’s room, disappearing through her doorway.

Fletcher nodded. “I was a mess every morning for a month.”

I let out a groan. “You mean it’s going to take amonthfor this feeling to go away?”

“It never goes away,” he said, wiping my eyes with the pads of his thumbs. “But it does get more bearable.”

I nodded, taking a breath.

“You know, there is one benefit to having Maya in school.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

He bit his lip, eyes tracking my body. “We can have sex anywhere in this house, as loud as we want.”

The thought, the heat behind his words, had my thighs clenching. “But you have to go to work,” I whispered.

He was already on me, dropping kisses on my jaw, my neck, his short facial hair scraping as he went. “I had Brenda schedule my first appointment late. We have time.”

I let my head fall back, giving him better access. “Are we going to your bedroom? Because I don’t want to waste a second.”

“Fuck no. I’m taking you right here in the picture window.”

My jaw dropped. “What if someone drives by?”

“Then they’re getting one hell of a view,” he said, reaching for my shirt and pulling it over my head.

“Naked?” I breathed.

“Like I’d have you any other way.” He reached for my shorts, pulling them over my hips and leaving me bare in his living room, the sun shining through the massive front window.

Normally I’d be nervous at the risk of getting caught, but Fletcher was so into me and wanting to show me off that it was turning me on even more.

If sixteen-year-old Liv could see me now...

He walked me back to the window, practically prowling with fire in his eyes as he stripped out of his shirt in one swift movement and then took off his pants. Fletcher Madigan, broad shoulders, short hair trailing down his abs, his long, thick cock growing harder by the second... he was sheer perfection.