Page 25 of The Best Worst Thing

The Note

The next morning, Nicole was barely awake when she rolled over in her mess of a bed and reached for her phone. Which was about to die and roughly three inches from her face.

It had been one of those nights.

Your next assignment is the Colin Firth Pride oh god, his hands were crawling up her bare ribs; oh god, he was hard, he was already so hard, and her shorts were so thin, and it felt so good, he felt so good, and his hands were so strong and so sure and so steady, and she was just pulling him into her, closer and closer and closer until finally, her forehead found his, his nose found hers, and her half-open mouth lingered a quarter inch from his parted lips.

She slipped her arms around his neck. He dragged his thumb across her bottom lip and looked right at her.

“Nicole,” he said.

She nodded, and that was it. That was all it took.

He pulled her face into his, and they were kissing.

They were kissing.

Everything was spinning: the car, the sky, the two of them, fumbling for each other, rough and impatient and reckless.

Nicole couldn’t breathe; she didn’t care.

She just kept pushing herself onto him, pulling him into her; their bodies, pressed against each other’s, tongues and teeth and skin and hair; his hands, flying up her legs, her ass, the bare skin of her back; her hands, racing up his jeans, his stomach, his chest—rushing to feel him, to touch him; every inch of him, somehow, exactly what she’d hoped, and it just went on forever.

They kissed for an eternity.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes.

Logan had a flight to catch.

They both knew it. Nobody cared.

Nobody stopped.

They just kept going. Their hands and lips and fingertips, everywhere.

They were everywhere. It was sloppy, almost—learning each other.

A bit of a mess. Moans and groans and the occasional clunk, always followed by a laugh and a look and another kiss, harder and dumber and more desperate than the last. And then, after a few minutes more of that—of making out like teenagers, damp and noisy and stupid—Nicole sunk her teeth into Logan’s bottom lip, curled a finger into his belt loop, and looked him right in the eye.

“Now you wanna tell me what you wrote down?”

He gulped. “You’re not ready.”

She kissed him again. “Maybe I’ll surprise you.”

Logan pulled back—it took a while, and he kept stopping himself to groan or grab Nicole by the neck or bury his face into her ear or her throat or the palm of her hand, anywhere he could get his mouth or teeth or tongue on—but eventually, he did retreat.

“Not like this,” he said.

Nicole raked her fingernails down his forearms. He quivered.

“Please?”

Logan laughed, then tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Saturday,” he said, after a long exhale. Nicole was still moving her hips, still pulling him into her, and his hands were cupping her ass, helping her do it. “Dinner. You, me. Anywhere you’d like. And then, after that, if you still want me to, I’ll kiss you again. Probably for hours.”

Nicole interlocked their fingers.

“I hate you,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, before kissing her one last time. “I can tell.”

And then off he went, leaving a breathless, disheveled, and dazed Nicole Speyer in her driveway with nothing to do but watch his completely unremarkable car—which she’d decided, this morning, she liked quite a bit—disappear.

And once it did, Nicole just stood there a minute longer, trying not to think too hard about Mari’s little litmus test. Because she’d just begged Logan Milgram to take her upstairs and screw her six ways from Sunday, and he’d flat-out refused. He’d turned her down.

Oh, and the kiss? Very good.

The kind you don’t forget.

Maybe ever.