Page 42 of A Real Goode Time

“You got a bucket list, Torie?” I asked.

“A bucket list?” she repeated.

“Yeah, like a list of things you haven’t ever done that you really want to do before you die.”

She mused thoughtfully. “I mean, yeah. Sure. A lot of stuff.”

“Like what?”

She laughed. “Some of them are embarrassing.”

“So?”

She eyed me. “You can’t laugh at me.”

I laughed anyway. “How about I promise if I do laugh, it won’t be out of meanness, and I won’t make fun of you.”

“Fair enough.” She took a deep breath; held it, let it out; her words coming out in a rush, toppling over each other. “I want to go skinny-dipping. I want to drive a car more than a hundred miles per hour. I want to be kissed in the rain like Noah and Ally fromThe Notebook.” She hesitated. “I want…I want to have sex in the bed of a pickup truck under the stars. I want to give a man a blowjob for no reason at all, surprise him with it. Maybe in a car while he’s driving, I haven’t decided. I want a guy to…to go down on me for no reason, and want nothing in return. I want to get a mani-pedi and a massage and a facial all in the same day. I want to go to a fancy steakhouse and order the most expensive thing on the menu. I want to stay in bed all day, watching movies and having crazy hot monkey sex and smoking copious amounts of marijuana. I want…I want to fall in love and have the man I love tell me I’m his everything. Because I’ve never felt like anyone’s everything and I want to know what that feels like.” She exhaled sharply, glanced at me. “There. The list, which no one else on the planet, even Jillie and Leighton, has ever heard. Now you tell me yours.”

I hesitated. “I gotta be honest, then, since you were.” I spent a moment in silence, considering. “I want to restore a classic pickup, one of the really valuable ones, like a ’48 Dodge Power Wagon, and do it without sparing any expense, and I want to sell it at Mecum. I want to make a million dollars before I’m forty. I want a big family, someday. Like, way in the future someday, but I do. I was lonely as a kid, and I just…yeah. I want a big family. I want…I want to be with someone, someday, who I can wake up with and have lazy morning sex with. I want to sell a car I’ve restored to someone famous. Stupid, I know, but whatever. I want to be woken up by a blowjob. I want to see the Grand Canyon. I want to fly an airplane. I want to see a whale. Stupidest one yet, but I want a big surprise birthday party. I’ve never had a birthday party. Folks were too poor. Mom’d make me a cupcake and put one candle in it, and Dad would give me whatever cash he had left from paying bills that month.”

We looked at one another and a million things passed unsaid between us. “Seems like some of those things sorta match mine,” she said.

I cleared my throat. “I noticed that, too.” I laughed. “Never thought I’d tell anyone any of that.”

“Me either.”

Silence.

“I’m gonna try to sleep, now,” I said, eventually.

“Me too.”

I finally managed to fall asleep, but my dreams were of Torie.

Of doing the things on our lists…together.

7

Torie

When I woke up, Rhys had already made coffee, and had bacon frying. Good lord, I could get used to waking up to the smell of coffee and bacon.

He was shirtless, in nothing but a pair of gym shorts. They were a little too big for him, hanging low on his hips. Facing away from me, he had his phone in his pocket and earbuds trailing by the cord, and he was dancing. God, it was freaking adorable. He was shaking his hips, waving his hands around, a pair of tongs in one hand. Head bobbing side to side.

The shorts revealed just a hint of his buttocks, the dip of the crack and upper swell of each firm cheek. His back was broad yet lean, rippling with muscle.

I pretended I was sleeping so I could watch him.

He did a spin, faced me and, holy shitballs, his abs were absurd. Ripped. Hard. The baggy shorts hung down past his hips, revealed those sharp lines leading in a V down to his groin, and as he shook his hips to whatever music he was listening to, I could see his cock swaying against the front of the shorts, pushing and pressing.

My thighs pressed together, and my belly tightened, and my core heated. Liquid heat pooled in my center, and my nipples ached. My breasts felt heavy, tight. The way he moved, the way he danced…god, I wanted to move with him. Press up against him, slide against his hard body, touch his bare skin, feel the muscles of his back shifting under his skin, slide my hand under the waist of his shorts and cup that hard ass, feel it move under my palm. Slide my touch around and grasp him…

I closed my eyes and turned over, as if rolling over in my sleep.

Need pounded in me.

He was right there.