Page 16 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

Soft-core porn you could watch on cable if you were willing to stay up late enough on Friday or Saturday nights. And if you were lucky enough not to get caught.

Suddenly, the TV is integral to what is going on beneath the blanket.

The building tension on screen is mirrored in every touch, every quiet question and pleading demand.

Soon, my hand is caught in his hair behind me, his leg levering one of my own so I’m spread wide for him on the couch.

His pants are pushed lower, the elastic of his underwear caught like a vise around his knees.

His cock leaves a wet kiss at the base of my spine with every jerky thrust.

“Stop,” he whispers. “Stop.” He keeps me pinned to him with one hand, clumsily batting at my hand in his hair with the other. “You keep pulling like that and I’m gonna blow faster than the first time you sucked me off.”

I laugh. A sharp, loud cackle, because the first time I sucked him off— in my car, parked behind an elementary school, no less— he came upon contact, for so long that I finally had to pull away, afraid I would choke.

It was my first time tasting come. I liked it, though.

After some clumsy fingering in the back seat, he finally got his first— also clumsy— blow job.

He shushes me, laughing too, the sound physical against my back as much as in my ear, but before either of us can contain ourselves, the door at the top of the stairs opens.

“Dean?” a male voice, his father, calls.

We freeze. Thank god the TV is on mute and the only light is the lamp. Thank god he can’t see us from the top of the stairs, the couches set too far back in the room.

“Yeah,” he says after an awkward moment. His voice is rough. “Sorry, did we wake you?”

“We?” The floor above us creaks, and the shadow his dad casts in the light upstairs moves with the sound.

Dean’s heart hammers against me. “Just watching some movies with a friend.” The wince in his voice is audible, to me at least.

“Oh,” his dad says. “Okay.” And he blessedly shuts the door. We track his movement around the kitchen by his footsteps until, finally, it’s quiet again .

“Holy shit,” Dean whispers into the back of my neck.

I start to laugh again, this time quietly, shaking against his body. He pulls me closer as he laughs, too. Laughing and shaking turns to rubbing, though, and then it’s like there was no interruption at all. “Is this weird for you?” I ask, not wanting to mention his parents outright.

“I mean, yeah, but…” His shoulders shrug against me. “Are you okay?” he asks. “To keep going?”

I turn my head enough to look at him. “I really want you to come, Dean.”

He lowers his mouth to mine, another rough, graceless kiss made all the better because it’s uncomfortable. “Okay.” He rests his forehead on my temple. “I’ll come for you.”

I reach for him, but he stops me again. “Is it okay if I rub on you?” he asks.

“Without a condom?” From this angle, in this light, it’s hard to see much of him, other than his eye, closed, lashes a fan over his skin.

“I know we haven’t talked about…protection, but I don’t have anything that could…

” His throat bobs as he swallows. “I won’t hurt you. ”

I touch my fingertips to his cheekbone, the shell of his ear.

“I won’t hurt you either,” I say, and I wish he was looking at me.

I wish he could hear that I mean more than in this moment, that I have nothing that could hurt him, that I won’t hurt him.

Not again. If it’s up to me, I won’t let him get hurt.

“I have an IUD, too.” I present the option, like an offer, one that I’ve considered more and more seriously the more he’s touched me tonight.

But he shakes his head. “Is this okay?” he asks, guiding his cock between my thighs where my skin is slick and wet. He releases a breath, a wordless, punctuated umph , as he glides against my opening, my vulva, his cockhead rubbing my clit. “Is it?” he asks again.

“Yeah.” I nod, already anticipating the next slide, the next bump, pressing my ass back into him when it comes. Our movements are measured in inches, millimeters, hips limited by the surface area of the couch and the scant amount of space between my legs.

Every time he slips past my hole, I hope, the littlest bit, that he might accidentally slip inside me. That this pretend sex, so much like the kind being done on screen, might turn into the real thing. Like once he’s inside me, he might as well stay there, finish there.

The thought of it, that it could happen, makes me wetter, until I have to reach my hand down to rub my clit in a stuttering rhythm in time with his cock.

“Come for me.” It comes out like a question, an appeal.

“Come like this,” I breathe. “Come with me,” I say, panicked because I feel all of it now, too much, every brush of skin against skin, between my legs.

I don’t want to go without him.

“I’m coming for you baby,” he says, and that makes me come, my body rigid, my fingers and his dick clamped between my thighs.

I press my face into the pillow, my voice into the stuffing, as he rubs himself one last time across my empty hole, against my slick skin, and comes, too, on my hand, between my legs, into my pubic hair, and on the couch.

“Okay,” I say, wincing in the harsh light of my phone screen.

“Jasmine wrote an essay, but she confirms: cold water.” I look at Dean, standing in the doorway of his parents’ laundry room, a single yellow bulb glowing behind him, lending an interrogatory feeling to an already illicit activity.

“She wants to stress that it cannot be hot. It must be cold.”

He nods and disappears into the laundry room. A moment later, I hear a tap running.

“We’ll blot the stain gently.” I read her instructions aloud as he comes back with a bleach-stained towel. “And if that doesn’t work, we use a weak detergent…what makes it weak?”

He shakes his head, crouched over the offended couch cushion. “I have no idea. Dilute it?”

“Or an upholstery cleaning spray—”

“I have that,” he says excitedly .

“But Jasmine says detergent is better because spray cleaners are very harsh on fibers. ”

Dean’s shoulders slump. “It’s not coming out.” He doesn’t sound panicked, though. More resigned.

I come up behind him, place a gentling hand on his back. I’m still not wearing any underwear. My dress feels too loose, stretched out around me, a combination of sweat and the fabric actually stretching.

“The couch is old, right? Want to try the upholstery cleaning spray anyway?”

He straightens, huffs out a long sigh. “Nah.” In one swift movement, he lifts the cushion, flips it over, and stuffs it back down into the couch. “There. Fixed.”

I nod. Crumbs cling to the former underside of Dean’s basement couch, another stain— unidentifiable— marks the upper left corner, but it’s definitely an improvement from what we left there.

I hold up my hand, waiting for him to smack it.

He frowns, gazing between me and my open palm.

“Tappe-la.” French for high five. Though from the way he grins, slapping his palm to mine but threading our fingers together, a quiet laugh escaping his lips, my attempt to speak French again has more than adequately demonstrated my continued need for his tutoring services.

“My parents are going to wake up soon,” he says. He squeezes my fingers.

I tap my free thumb on the phone screen. “Holy shit.” It’s almost two in the morning.

“Their flight leaves at like ten a.m., so, obviously, my dad wants to be at the airport at like four.”

“Obviously.” I nod, but mostly to hide my flush.

I’m not sure what I was thinking. It’s not like we could sleep here on Dean’s parents’ basement couch.

Not like we could have an easy weekend morning.

One where I’d be more than willing to forgo my usual long run for coffee and maybe a dip in his pool.

None of that’s actually possible, not just because Dean lives at home with his parents right now, but because we aren’t a couple, and those are obviously Couple Things .

I don’t even want Couple Things, I remind myself.

What we are is business partners— its own can of unprofessional worms— and former friends with benefits and, I guess, current friends with benefits, as well.

I squeeze his hand back. I can take comfort in that, at least. There was a time, not so long ago, when I wouldn’t have been able to consider Dean a friend at all.

“Right. Totally.” I turn to gather my things. What things, I do not know. I can’t remember what I brought with me, if anything. “I’ll get going.”

He tugs me back to him, his hand still clasped firmly around mine. “You could stay, though. If that’s not weird?”

He holds me to him, one arm wrapped around my hip. “I’m just saying, we’ve already gotten caught by the cops for public indecency, messed up my mom’s furniture, and lied by omission to my dad. That’s like the maturity regression hat trick.” He shrugs. “Why not sneak a girl into my room, too?”

“Are you sure?” I ask. I’m scared that I’m overstepping, even if he invited me himself. And more than that, sleeping here maybe won’t help me separate what we just did with the professional relationship we’re supposed to be cultivating.

“Am I sure I want a hot girl to wake up in bed with me in the morning?” He looks up to the ceiling, pretending to think about it, and in this moment, I know it doesn’t really matter what I’m supposed to be cultivating; I’m going to say yes.

“Yeah. I’m pretty fucking sure.”