Page 43 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

“We have to finish this before we go get Ethel,” she said, breaking my focus.

Her voice was breathy, but I could still feel the vibrations of it in her throat.

“But we have a few minutes, I suppose.” She grinned up at me wickedly, bringing a hand between us, and it was everything I could do not to come undone at just the suggestion of her touch.

But I didn’t want just a few minutes. I wanted to take my time with her. I wanted to stretch out every second of the next quarter of an hour we had together. I wanted to turn every heartbeat into an eternity.

I kissed her again, deeply this time. A moan escaped from between us, and I honestly wasn’t sure if it was her or me. But either way, I decided it was my mission to make as many of them as possible before the oven timer went off.

I reached behind me and tugged the café-style curtains closed across the window.

Then I dipped down and wrapped my arms snugly around Amy, lifting her up so her legs wrapped around my middle.

She squealed as I spun her around, swiping Ethel’s binder out of the way and propping Amy up on the worktop next to the pile of drying dishes.

She watched as I reached over my shoulders to grab my T-shirt, pulling it off over my head and letting it fall to the floor between us.

Her eyes roved over me, reaching out to run a hand over my chest, tangling her fingers in the hair there like she always did, her eyes wide with pleasure.

It could have been amusement, but honestly, I was perfectly happy being ogled by Amy Evans.

I was just over the moon that she was so obviously happy to be there.

Speaking of which, my own happiness to be there was growing noticeably as Amy’s hands began to roam, unbuttoning my jeans when she reached them.

She tucked her fingers into the waistband of my pants and pulled everything down at once, and I sprang free as she did.

She smirked up at me, clearly pleased with her own ability to turn me on so thoroughly, then ran a hand over my hip bone and inward.

But I reached down and pulled her hand away before she could spoil the fun too soon.

I pulled her forward off the worktop so she was leaning against it instead and knelt in front of her.

She wore denim cutoffs, short and loose enough that I could reach my arms around her and run my hands over her ass beneath them.

I grabbed hard at the flesh there, pulling her apart with my fingers, letting them just skirt the next layer of fabric between her legs.

She spread them further apart as she sighed.

She slowly untied the corset top she wore– it was probably unnecessary for the purposes of getting it off her, but it was mesmerising to watch.

My eyes were glued to her chest as the top got looser and the swell of her breasts released, and it was all I could do not to stand up and bury my face in them.

Instead I gulped as she finally tugged the top off over her head, her tits bouncing free from the fabric, and then I really couldn’t help myself, tilting up and taking one of them in my mouth, earning another moan and her fingers in my hair.

I closed my mouth around the tight bud of her nipple, sucking hard as I swirled my tongue around the tip, making her arch her back in response, her hair long enough to tickle my wrists where they disappeared beneath her shorts.

I moved them to start unbuttoning the front, kissing the underside of her breast, then the pale skin just below it, then down her stomach.

I reached her waistband just as my fingers tugged down the zip, exposing the pale pink cotton thong she wore beneath.

But instead of tugging them down immediately, I grabbed her by the hips and spun her around so her front was pressed into the worktop. Only then did I remove her shorts and her thong, letting them pool at her ankles.

“Shit,” she sighed, trying to straighten, her hand reaching back for me. But I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me.

“Forward,” I said, then put a hand firmly on her back between her shoulder blades, pushing her away from me until her forearms found the worktop. I felt her shiver as her bare skin met the cold tile, and I leaned to the side to see that she was smiling in anticipation.

I put my hands back on her hips and pulled them back into me, and she gasped as she felt my hard length press against her.

I moved her forwards and backwards a couple of times, ever so slowly, spreading her with my hands as I did, her breath hitching as the air hit her wetness.

I smiled at how turned on I could see she was.

“Tell me what you want,” I said, my voice almost as strained as my dick, which was so taut that it tapped against her entrance with no help from me.

“I want you inside me,” she said, reaching down for me, but I swatted her hand away.

“You sure?” I asked. “Because I feel like you could want it a bit more.”

A perfunctory laugh burst out of her. “I beg to differ.”

I smirked. “Oh, you beg, do you?”

She shook her head, even as she pressed back into me more. “Not a chance in hell.”

I brought my right foot to the inside of hers, nudging her legs open even wider. She gasped as my hand found her clit right away.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”

* * *

I may not have understood why Amy still felt anything but hatred for her Manchester friends, but I was determined to be supportive, especially when Amy told me a few days later that she wanted to get them a passive-aggressive wedding present regardless of whether we went or not.

We were sat in the lounge during Ethel’s afternoon nap, and she’d convinced me to do a Korean skincare mask with her.

It had dried completely on my face, making my skin feel tight and pinched.

“You’ve never been more sexy to me than you are right now,” I said, referring half to the green mask covering her face and half to the scheming she was doing, producing one bad gift idea after another.

Maybe it was horrible, enjoying her bitchy side, but after the way they’d treated her– and the way they were still treating her, by trying to pretend nothing had happened– it was nice to see her stand up for herself, even if only in subtle ways.

Eventually, we landed on a tacky farmhouse-style wood carving with a chicken on it that could be personalised. Amy typed in “The Arden’s, est. 2024.”

I cringed. “You know there’s no apostrophe, right? It should just be an S.”

She smiled wickedly up at me. “I do know that,” she said. “And Niamh does too. And it’ll wind her up every time she looks at it.”

I bit back a smile as she placed the order. “You’re diabolical. Remind me to never get on your bad side.”

Amy laughed. “You’ve been on my shit list more than anyone else I know,” she said. “If I haven’t put you off yet, you’re probably safe.”

I grabbed her legs and pulled them around to drape over my lap. She kept looking at her computer like nothing had happened. I loved how casually intimate we were.

“We’ll be sixty,” I said, “and you’ll be filling our house with grammatically incorrect signage every time I piss you off, and I’ll still be besotted.”

She kept the rest of her face completely neutral, but I saw the moment of recognition when her eyes stopped flitting across her screen, widening slightly. It was only then that I realised what I’d said.

Every time in the past few years that I’d tried to think about my future, even casually, it had felt impossible to plan more than a few months in advance.

If I’d stopped to think about what life looked like years down the road, I would have had to confront the fact that Ethel probably wouldn’t be there, at least not in the same way. And I couldn’t do it.

But since Amy and I had gotten together– for real, at least– I’d been getting glimpses of what life could look like years down the road.

It was usually inspired by the things already happening around me, which I was letting myself appreciate.

Starting a veg garden out back like Patricia, getting a dog like Morgan, going on holidays and road trips, maybe going on a course like Anil or back to school like Jack…

it didn’t faze me the way it always had.

But this was the first time my brain had jumped that far into the future, and it was the first time I was saying it out loud.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Part of me felt panicked and instantly regretted putting it out there, but another part of me felt almost relieved at my newfound ability to dream.

Amy didn’t respond– though, was it just me, or was that a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth?

– and we went back to our conversation as if nothing had happened.

But I didn’t forget about it. And later that night, when Amy was home and I was alone in my bed, my brain spun with all the unleashed visions of what a future together could look like.

I could hardly picture one before my brain would skip to the next.

It wasn’t real yet; I knew that. No matter what Grey said, no matter how much history we had as friends, the love I felt for her now was still too new for me to be latching onto the fantasies of domestic bliss playing out in my mind.

But my imagination got carried away when I was alone, and I needed an outlet for it.

I took out my phone and tapped on my Notes App, scrolling past recent shopping lists and now completed costume to-do lists to Our Lore.

I opened it and scrolled up– neither of us had edited it in over a month.

And I figured that if she still looked at it, if she still liked reading through the life we concocted between us, maybe she’d like reading a bit more.

So I started typing.