Page 203 of The Friends and Rivals Collection

I let go of her hand and thread my fingers through her hair. “Get on me.”

Then I grab her hips and move her so she’s straddling my lap. She gasps, a sexy noise that turns into a moan as she sinks down on my hard-on.

I hiss because it feels so fucking good.

“I wanted to come over the other night. After dinner. After the elevator,” she blurts out.

“Yeah?”

She nods. “Dinner ran late, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“What were you thinking?”

“That we didn’t get to kiss, and I wanted to so badly.”

“I can fix that problem right now.”

I take her face in my hands and bring her to me. Then the world spirals away as I kiss Mia Summers for the very first time.

It’s extraordinary. Her lips brush against mine, and she wastes no time. She slides closer, rubbing on my dick as she presses her chest to me. It’s as if she’s climbing me, and God, how I want this. How I want her like this.

I thread my fingers through her hair, pulling her closer, kissing her deeper. Tasting her. Her mouth is soft and sweet, and she makes these little sounds—whimpers, sighs, gasps—that make me nearly lose my mind.

I’m kissing Mia. I’ve been crazy for her for so damn long, and she’s on my lap, rubbing against my erection, kissing me as if her every last breath depends on it.

Her tongue tangles with mine, and in a hot second, the kiss become furious.

Greedy. Like two people who are mad about each other.

I curl my hands around her head, wanting to get as close as I can, but she bats them away.

I break contact for a moment and raise a questioning eyebrow.

“My turn.” She lifts her hands, cups my cheeks, and then she strokes my jaw. Reverently. Hungrily. And I know what she’s doing. She’s feeling my beard. She’s touching my stubbled jaw with eager fingers, as if she’s wanted to get her hands on me for as long as I’ve wanted to touch her.

I don’t stop her. I drop my hands to her hips, and I guide her along, moving her so she grinds against my cock, and she’s gasping and murmuring as she kisses me.

We consume each other. We are ravenous. My brain turns to static, firing pleasure signal after pleasure signal to every nerve in my body. I want to live in this moment for the rest of the night. I don’t ever want to forget how good it feels not only to kiss her, but to be kissed by her.

She rocks harder, goes faster, murmurs louder, then she separates and looks at me with desperate eyes. “You have no idea.”

I shake my head. “I do. I have every idea.”

And when I pull her back to me, ready to kiss the breath out of her once more, my phone rings.

I groan.

“Ignore it,” she whispers.

“It’s the diner, probably. Burgers.”

She wiggles her eyebrows. “Well, in that case . . .”

She rolls off me as I answer the phone.

“Good evening, Mr. Milligan. We have a delivery from Wendy’s Diner.”

“Send him up, please, Trevor.”

“No problem. Also, sir, you have a few packages that arrived this week. Do you want me to bring them up, too?”

That must be some new gear I ordered—goodies I wanted to test before we add them to the lineup. “Sure. The more the merrier.”

“And finally,” he says. “I have a plant delivery for a Mister Zeus.”

I furrow my brow. “Plant delivery?” Then I shrug. “Bring it all up. We’ll make it a party.”

When I end the call, I notice my erection has had the courtesy to subside. Shame, since it was a particularly good one.

I stand. “I should get dressed.”

“Undressed worked for me,” Mia says with a little twitch in her lips, but she’s not looking at me. She’s tapping away on her phone. “Hold on. I need to deal with something from Lisa.”

“Who’s Lisa?” I ask as I head to my bedroom, since I don’t want to be the douche who answers the door nearly free-range for anyone but Mia.

“My VP of products.”

When I return a minute later, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her head is crooked to the side, and she’s talking on the phone.

“Right. But what if we move up that date, too?” she asks then holds up her finger to let me know she’ll be done soon.

I nod, scoop up the two empty beer bottles, and put them in the recycling bin in my kitchen.

“So it looks like that would work then? Can Felicia do it, too?” Mia asks, as someone knocks on the door.

I open it and take the food from the diner delivery guy, thanking him and giving him a tip from the app. After I put the food on the counter, Trevor’s at the door, laden with boxes from REI and a small potted plant with a silvery bow around the terra-cotta.

I give it the side-eye, but there’s a card on it.

“Here you go,” Trevor says, and I tip him, place the boxes on the floor, and hold up the plant quizzically.

When Mia sees it, her eyes widen, and she mouths that’s from me .

Then into the phone, she says, “Hey, can I call you back in two minutes?”

And that tells me all I need to know. The evening activity is over.

She hangs up and gestures to the plant. “I ordered a little gift for Zeus. To thank him for being such a good companion. Want to let him sniff it?”

And I can’t be annoyed. “You got him catnip?”

She crinkles her nose, her dimples in full force. “I did. Is that okay? He’s not allergic to catnip, is he?”

I laugh. “He’s not allergic to anything. He’s very manly,” I say, glancing to the sleeping king, who’s chosen the TV stand as his evening nap spot.

She presses her hands together. “I feel terrible, but I really have to deal with this call. It’s only five on the West Coast.”

“Go,” I say with a smile, picking up the box with her veggie burger and handing it to her. “Cat beauty calls.”

She smiles. “It does.” She takes a deep breath. “I’ll see . . .”

“I’ll see you at the wedding,” I say, finishing for her. I’ve just spent the last four days putting Mia back in the friend zone, and now I’ve gladly jumped back to elevator land with her in mere minutes.

But I need to figure out what the hell to do with the big problem. The problem I can’t fix. The miles. I need the time to process what the hell all this means.

Other than the obvious.

She’s trying to get my cat high.