Page 30 of Afterglow (Ottawa Regents #3)

Game’s Not Over Yet

Behraz

“I don’t like surprises.”

Scolding my boyfriend seems ungrateful, but I don’t mean to be. Whatever he’s done for me, everything he continues to do for me? It’s more than I could expect from anyone.

“Especially when I don’t know where I’m going,” I add, tapping on the smooth blindfold. “This thing is for the bedroom only.”

“There’s time for that yet, gorgeous.” The husky murmur sends electric excitement down my spine.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” he confirms, curling our pinkies together. Fletcher positions me in the opposite direction. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He loosens the secure knot tied over my ponytail, enough so the loop of fabric pools around my neck.

A rose gold Audi SUV topped with a giant matching bow sits in a parking spot next to Fletcher’s truck. My mouth parts. “You…bought me a car?”

“I saw it and thought of you.” His smile splits free as his hand captures mine. “You like it, right?”

The man bought me a fucking car. And a pricey one at that. “Fletcher, it’s too much.”

“Whaddya mean?” He cocoons me in his strong arms. “Too flashy? Too pink?”

“And too expensive. I won’t be able to pay you back for it.”

Fletcher clicks his tongue and pelts the end of my nose with a kiss. “That’s why it’s called a gift.”

I make a disapproving noise, vocalizing my grievances while he physically sways me, as if the motion will convince me to accept this lavish present.

“Come on, you need it.”

“I don’t.” Another car would have done just fine, but no. This man had to go and get a char char bangadi wali gadi, as my mom says. She would be thrilled with its luxury. I feel spoiled and unworthy. “You could’ve bought a new truck.”

“Mine works fine. You passed the bar, gorgeous. You deserve it.” His hands wind together at the small of my back, swishing around the chiffon fabric of my sundress.

“What, you were going to ride your bike to the office? Not on my watch,” he says with a finality.

“I can’t have the next big name in international law show up to court with some shoddy heap of junk.

” Fletcher hooks my hands around his neck, and I have to lift my feet until I’m on the tips of my toes.

“Plus, I won’t be around during the regular season to drive you, or else you know I would. ”

Funnily enough, I won’t be either.

“About that.” I draw my gaze up to his. It’s so molten and adoring, I hope what I divulge next doesn’t ruin it. “Remember the interview Dr. Ahmad set up for me? For the apprenticeship?”

“Mmhmm,” he replies hazily, distracting me with the taste of his lips.

The distraction is working. “I…got it.”

“Amazing,” Fletcher gushes, his sweet praise bittering the news.

“It starts” —I can hardly piece together the sentence from the way his mouth and tongue ravish a sensitive spot below my ear— “in January.”

“Perfect.”

I gasp when the delicate skin along my neck gets pulled between his teeth. “It’s in London.”

He freezes, then eases his hold on me. “London?”

I nod, swallowing a hesitant gulp, wholly unsure of how this will change us.

“Like, across the ocean, in a different country, London?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, Bea.” Our foreheads fall to one another as we puff out a synchronous breath. “I hate this.” My heart cracks at the disappointed whisper. “But you gotta go.”

“I do?”

His head moves up and down, forcing mine to nod, too. “You’ve worked too fucking hard.”

“What about…” The lump lodged in my throat robs me of any eloquence. “You…us?”

“I’ll be here,” he confirms. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“What if?—”

Fletcher places a finger over my mouth. “I’ve waited for you for six years, Behraz. What’s six months?”

Nothing makes sense but the weepy I love you’s I murmur into his skin.

“I love you, too.” Fletcher brushes tears from my cheeks with his thumbs, kissing my face all over.

“Let’s take your new car for a ride, hey?

” He hands over the keyless remote, unlocking it with a beep before tugging at the black knot around my throat until it steals my breath.

“Then we can take this blindfold for a ride.”

“Can we…record it?” I ask sweetly. “For days you’re on the road?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

I don’t think this is what he had in mind when he wanted to use the blindfold, but here we are. His agreement was, shall we say, enthusiastic .

You can do whatever you want to me , he said, anything and everything.

My attention switches between the makeshift phone camera on the tripod and the black silk ribbon cutting through the stunning red waves of hair atop his head. The sight of the rest of him? Goddamn.

Fletcher Donovan lies on his mattress, clothed in nothing but his bare, peachy skin and the network of freckles, wrists bound above his head with a shiny, self-sticking tape.

Both arms extend fully as they hang off a screwed-in hook atop the tufted headboard.

Similar hooks chained to leather straps attached to his ankles keep his bottom half spread-eagled.

Heavy desire heats me from the inside, throbbing low in my core until my pulse beats through every layer of my body. I strip, clammy skin already making it difficult to remove the lightweight dress.

“Bea?” he calls toward the window, in the opposite direction from where I stand in nothing but a sheer black bra and thong. “Where are you?”

I answer with a feathery touch to the soles of his feet. “Right here.” He tips up his chin with a short intake of air, his toes curling in response. “Can you see anything?”

His light pink tongue licks the seam of his lips, as if able to taste me. “Only you.”

There’s no physical response to me waving a hand in front of his covered eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t need my vision to see you, Bea. I see you all the time in my mind. Even when you’re not here. I close my eyes, and there you are. Feeling real as right now, the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

I suddenly get the appeal of all those romantasy books he loves. His praise wets the strip of thong on my pussy, leaking my arousal onto my inner thighs. “When do you think of me?”

“All the time. All the fucking time.” He breathes out the second sentence, seemingly pained and relieved at the same time. “Every time I touched myself…held my cock for the past six years.”

Heat courses downward. Being nearly naked isn’t helping after all. I free my chest from the cage of the bra, then tuck my fingers below the strings of fabric on each hip, stretching them. “Can you see me now?”

“Yes,” he gasps, perking an ear. “You’re…

taking off your…clothes.” Fletcher’s body tenses, skin staked with goosebumps, his pink nipples pebbling into hard peaks when my thong pools to the floor.

My palms cover my breasts with a harsh squeeze.

He hisses. “You’re touching your…tits.” I strum my fingers over my nipples in a few circles, relishing the combined attention from his words and my own touch. “Fuck.”

One of my hands descends further down my midsection, skimming past my belly button, two fingers dipping into the slick cleft of my pussy. The other hand stays on my chest, gently pinching the nipple’s piercing. “And now?”

His hips jolt up, swollen cock slapping against his defined abs as he tightens.

“Oh, my fuck ,” he strangles out a tortured noise when I swipe through my cunt, needy and pulsing. “I can hear…how wet you are.” Pre-cum streaks across the muscles of his stomach and drips through his happy trail.

I raise my arousal-coated fingers to my line of sight, smirking at a fresh idea. “Wanna play a game with me, Fletcher?”

Fletcher nods, rapid and overeager. “Yes.”

My knees hike up to join him on the mattress, climbing until I straddle his toned torso. “I’m gonna put something in your mouth.” His cock bounces. “You have to guess what it is.” The broad squares of his chest heave.

“If you guess right, you get to taste the next thing.”

“Okay.”

I stifle laughter by puffing my mouth, leaning forward to offer my elbow to Fletcher’s parted lips. He accepts with a hungry suck, and I break with a giggle.

“Elbow.”

My face angles to his, inhaling the humid air from his ragged breaths. I offer my lips next, lightly pressing them over his. He latches on with a wince, swiping his tongue against mine in quick lashes. I pull away with a wide smile.

“Your perfect fucking mouth.”

“Stick out your tongue,” I direct. He does. Both glazed fingers land on the flattened muscle, and he draws them in, suctioning and licking them clean, releasing a heady moan when I retract them. I tsk. “That’s not an answer.”

“You,” he chokes, “your wetness.”

“Good boy.”

While he stammers nonsense at the simple praise, I savor the control, the feeling of power over him. Retrieving more of the fluid from between my legs, I bite back a pleasured sound when spreading it over my nipple, then bend to hover over his open, waiting mouth.

He suckles, even hungrier, needier than before, his deep grumble vibrating deliciously through my breast as the hairs of his beard tickle its delicate skin.

I gasp. “Fletcher.”

“ Fuck , you’re killing me,” he groans, words mashing together in a desperate mumble. “Sit on my fucking face already.”

“Ah, ah, ah.” The admonishment has his chin quivering.

“Game’s not over yet.” My gaze reaches the chef’s knife resting on the nightstand, and my hand follows.

The metallic hiss from a sole finger sliding across the broad blade’s spine seems to have the same effect on Fletcher.

I rest it against his lips, silencing him for a moment before commanding him further.

“Taste.” I scrape it gently across his bearded jaw and down his pretty, blushing throat. “What is it?”

A knot of raised tendon glides up and down the column of his neck. The pink tinting his skin reddens. “A knife.”

“Should I keep going?”

“ Please .”

My heart thumps manically, measuring each reaction to the back of the blade dragging down his chest. A line across his collarbone has his nostrils flaring.