Page 35

TWENTY-EIGHT

lorenzo

Inside, Ruby drops her purse on the floor and turns for my arms. Her eyes are hazy as she tilts her head up to kiss me, and I think, Thank fucking god .

I can’t hold it together anymore. But just before our lips meet, she stops, pushing back so she can look at me.

It’s work to drag my gaze from her mouth to her eyes.

“Lorenzo,” she purrs. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Tonight. It was perfect.”

“I thought you said nothing is ever perfect.”

She cocks her head. “This time it was.” Then she finally lets me kiss her.

We drift toward her room, our bodies tangled and our mouths separating just long enough to look where we’re going. Her hands are experimental on my body, skimming my shoulder and biceps, gripping my back. But never for long enough.

I pull her into me, craving the feeling of skin on skin.

I need the weight of her body on mine. I lock her into a kiss, and together we move for her bed.

She falls on top of me without hesitation and spreads her knees on either side of my waist. My mind captures an image of her in that position, then instinctually alters it so she’s naked.

I groan. This isn’t what I meant when I said we should take it slow.

We’ve shot right past it, and I don’t think I give a shit.

If I’m lucky, we’re at the point of no return.

Ruby crushes her body against mine and finds my mouth again. Her tongue sweeps inside, a kiss so full of wanting that for an instant I forget the rest of my body. A kiss that builds so fast the only possible next step is clothes coming off. But she breaks the kiss, her smile smoldering.

“Are you okay?” I brush my thumb over her wet lips the way I’ve wanted to for years.

Her eyes flit down my body. “Yeah,” she whispers.

“Do you want to keep going?”

She hesitates; then her fingertips find my shirt and pull until it’s untucked.

I let out an involuntary grunt as my dick strains.

I want her hand on my cock so bad. But her fingers are moving slow, and they’re moving in the wrong direction.

I kiss her softly and try not to think about where I wish her hand was.

The fact that she’s touching me at all is fucking amazing.

She nudges my shirt up as her fingers graze my chest. But her kiss slows and cools.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I say, her mouth a breath away from mine.

“Yes.”

Her lips find mine again. The rest of my body is so jacked up with heat, dying for the same attention she’s giving my mouth.

I close my hand around hers and slide it down.

My cock hardens with every inch closer. But when we reach the front of my pants, Ruby pulls back. Her eyes find mine, uncertain.

“You want to stop?” I croak out with the scrap of fortitude I have left.

“It’s not that.” She looks down at my half-naked torso. “I was just thinking about what you said?”

I curse myself for ever having spoken. “What did I say?”

“About making this special. So we don’t ruin everything.”

There’s not much blood left in my brain, so the memory is vague. “That? I was being a moron. Sentimental. Forget it.”

“No, you were right.” Her eyes search mine. “We have to be careful. This isn’t like anything else.”

“But you said I needed to find your other tattoos.” I take her hand and put it back on my chest. “And everyone knows women are smarter than men.”

But I can’t draw her back in. She pulls her hand away like she wishes she didn’t have to.

The blood is moving slowly, painfully back to my head. I sigh and sit up. “Okay. I mean, you would choose this moment as the first and only instance of me being right in thirteen years, but okay.”

Ruby laughs. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m the asshole who had to go and say it.”

“It was sweet.”

I take her hand and focus on her face, wishing my dick would get the message that the party’s over. “Remember what you said earlier about how I always want things to be perfect and they never are?”

She nods, understanding.

“I don’t think we can ruin what we have, not with sex. We’re too solid.”

“And if it’s not perfect?”

“We can recover. Besides, a wise girl once told me: It’s always good anyway.”

Her shoulders relax, and I pull her into my chest, kissing her hair. She curls tight against me like she needs this. It’s painful how much I want her, but if taking it slow means easing her worries, we’ll do it. The last thing I want is for her to be afraid of getting close to me.

“So you’re okay with waiting?”

“It was my idea, wasn’t it? My brilliant idea to keep things strictly PG-13 with my beautiful, sexy friend I’ve wanted since puberty? Of course. I’m thrilled.”

She swats me playfully. “Who said it had to be strictly PG-13?”

I raise my eyebrows. “What’s this?”

“We’re adults.” She brushes her knuckles along my jawline, her eyes following. “We can have adult fun without having sex.”

The word sex coming off her lips is all it takes for my cock to spring back to life. “Yes. Yes, we can, can’t we?”

“So.” She smiles, nervous and excited. “What do you want to do?”

“You really want to open the floor for requests like that?” I move my hand down the ticklish part of her thigh. “Because the list of things I want to do to you would keep us sleepless for months.”

“I have an idea, but ... you’re going to think it’s weird.” Her hand covers mine, and I think she’s going to knock it away, but instead she moves it a few inches up her thigh.

“I’m gonna be honest, Ruby. With how hard my cock is right now, there’s no amount of freaky you could come up with that I wouldn’t do. As long as I get to do it to you.”

“Okay . . . truth or dare.”

My ears perk right up at this. “Really?” I pick my head up to look at her. “You go right for it, don’t you?”

“We’ll see. So—truth or dare?”

“Dare. Always dare.”

“I dare you to do whatever you want to my body.” She sits up on her knees. “While keeping your dick in your pants.”

Fuck. Even before I can imagine the possibilities, I’m raging with desire. “Whatever I want?”

“That’s what I said.”

I sit up so I’m in front of her and take a breath as I look her over. If only I hadn’t spent the last decade suppressing every fantasy I had about her, I’d know how to make the most of this unbelievably hot opportunity.

I pull her dress down, baring her tits. No bra.

The best. I cup the rounds of flesh in my palms, unable to resist, then push her onto her back.

She catches my eye, surprised to find me being anything but gentle; girls usually are.

But her surprise is gone in a blink, and she stretches her hands over her head and closes her eyes.

I love how ready she is to give herself over to me.

I straddle her waist and lean down to kiss her ears and suck at the delicate skin on her neck.

How the fuck am I going to play by her rules of taking it slow without losing my mind?

My cock is painfully stiff. He doesn’t give a damn this is my best friend and there are thirteen years of emotions wrapped up in what we’re doing.

But I was dared to do whatever I want with the girl of my dreams, and I’m not fucking blowing that opportunity by trying to remain the perfect gentleman. I’m going to get what I want.

“Truth or dare, Ruby,” I murmur into the curve of her neck.

“Don’t tell me your turn’s over.”

“Truth or dare.”

Her throat contracts as she swallows. “Truth.”

Even better. “Did you ever think about me when you touched yourself?”

Her eyes flare open. But her shock quickly melts into something warm. She bites her lip and nods. “Yes.”

“What was it like?”

“Which one?” she asks cheekily.

Fuck, that’s hot. “Tell me your favorite.” Her cheeks are flushed, and I can tell she’s wavering about going down this road. I lower my head to kiss her breasts. “Tell me,” I insist into the soft skin between her tits. “I want to know what turns you on.”

She inhales deeply. “Remember that girl you took to the Shafer Football Formal freshman year?”

I grunt in response, not wanting to bring another girl into this room. Freshman year I fucked around a little too much with girls. I roll my tongue around her nipples and move down to her stomach.

“You fucked her against the wall at the football house that night.”

Heat rips through my groin at the coarse way the word fucked rolls off her lips.

“I saw you,” she adds in a low voice.

I need to be inside her body. I yank the bottom of her dress up past her hips.

The sight of her pussy through sheer pink lace fucks with my senses and I stare, heat building like fire up my neck and down my groin.

“I asked about you and me, Ruby,” I say roughly, kissing the soft mound of her flesh through the fabric.

Then I see it, half hidden by neatly trimmed hair: a tiny tattoo.

I tug the panties aside to look closer—it’s fireworks in red, blue, and black ink.

Her hand finds the back of my head. “It was you and me in my mind. That night and a hundred after.”

“You went home with someone that night.” I grip her thighs with both hands and spread them, fiery with possessiveness at the memory. With jealousy.

“Yeah.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “But I thought of you, Lorenzo. I closed my eyes and thought of you.”

Fuck. I hook one finger through the crotch of her panties as this idea rips its way through me, the image of her thinking of me when another dude was inside her. I pull the fabric a few centimeters away from her bare skin. My chest fills as I take in the sight of her pussy.

“In my mind,” Ruby says, bringing me back to the game we’re playing, “it was my dress hiked up to my waist and my back pressed into the wall. My hands pushing your pants down your ass and my fingers clawing your back under that unbuttoned shirt.”

Oh god, this girl. My cock pulses, fucking begging for attention.

Quickly, I reach a hand down and squeeze it through my pants.

I don’t know why I thought leading her down this path was a good idea.

It’s hot as sin, and I can’t go anywhere with it.

To touch her pussy and listen to her talk about getting herself off by pretending to fuck me and to not be able to sink my cock inside her is torture.

Her panties still in my grip, I curl my finger against her, my knuckle meeting the wetness at her center. Her hips jerk, and she pulls in a sharp breath.

“Keep going,” I order her, because why not? I’m already in over my head. “I want to know what I did to you when your fingers were on your pussy.”

She lets out a low moan as I work my knuckle against her, dipping slowly inside, then massaging her clit before circling back again.

“You—you pushed me against the wall.” Her voice wavers, telling me she’s not completely in control of what she’s saying.

“I wasn’t wearing panties, and you ripped my dress when you pulled it up.

But it only turned me on more.” She breaks off with a little cry when my finger hits her clit just right.

I deepen the pressure. “You pushed inside me and fucked me,” she says between breaths.

“Hard and fast. As deep as I could take it.”

My body strains, almost shaking with pent-up desire.

But I try to channel it straight into her, all that energy for her pleasure only.

I push the panties aside. Then I drop my head and part her with my tongue, getting my first taste of her.

The sound that comes out of her is soft and gentle but so full of relief I almost smile, realizing how long she’s wanted me to do this.

“You held me against the wall with just your hands,” Ruby continues.

She wants to keep talking. I glance at her face and the way her eyes are squeezed shut.

She’s picturing it right now. “Your hands squeezed my thighs so tight it hurt. So tight you left bruises. It was perfect.” I return my mouth to her body, licking straight up her center.

She clenches her fingers and scoots her hips down to bring me deeper, but still the truth keeps spilling out of her.

“You kept biting my shoulder so no one would hear us. But I couldn’t keep quiet.

And then it was all over.” She exhales hard.

“I came so hard on your cock. That was everything.”

I work the tip of my tongue hard against her clit, but when she starts to moan, I let my fingers take over, because I need to look at her.

“So do it, Ruby.” I can’t keep my eyes off her face as her eyebrows draw together and her lips part, every tiny flicker in her expression a direct result of my touch.

“Come hard on me.” I slide two fingers inside her and let my other hand work her clit just the way her shaking thighs tell me she wants it.

With a final sharp inhale, she comes on my fingers, her hips rolling, her walls contracting around me, and her lips releasing a quivery wail.

It’s a feeling I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

Her hand clamps around mine, holding me in place as she rocks against me, moaning, drawing every last bit of pleasure from my touch.

I’m frozen and staring at her, so fucking turned on I could come if she so much as breathed on my dick.

But in this moment she’s out for only herself, and it couldn’t be hotter.

When she finally loosens her grip and her body relaxes, I slide out and lie down next to her. She tips her head back, eyes still closed, and lets out a little laugh.

Then she turns to look at me, grinning, and in all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never seen that grin, because it’s so quintessentially I’ve-just-been-fucked.

“All this time, Lorenzo.” She’s still breathing hard.

“All this time you could do that with your hands. And the best I thought you could do was catch a football.”

I tilt her head toward me with one finger and kiss her. “We should have started playing truth or dare a long time ago.”