Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(62)

I’m still twitching and spasming around him, and here I am, laughing. “My sneeze?”

“Fuck, yeah.” He drops his head into my shoulder, panting. “Was that it? I could take another sneeze. Christ.”

I laugh, and another tingle of pleasure lights up my clit. “You’re crazy.”

“Crazy for you.” He kisses my shoulder, my neck, up to my lips, where he lingers, lazily kissing me and letting me trace his jaw and stroke his short, soft hair. “I think I’ve wanted you my entire life. I was just too blind to realize it.”

“Too scared,” I whisper.

“That too.”

“Are you still scared?”

He lifts his head, and serious Wyatt is back. “Depends. Were you serious about surprising me in Georgia with a blow job?”

I gape at him for half a second.

He cracks a grin.

“You—” I start, but he swallows my tirade with another kiss, and truly, kissing Wyatt is better than strawberry daiquiris on a beach.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

But I know one thing.

It will be the first day of the rest of my life with Wyatt.





Twenty-Six





Wyatt



Ellie and I are fooling around in the master bathtub when the text comes in that the Ryders are on their way back with Tucker. She goes pink in the cheeks. “My parents know what we’re doing,” she whispers.

I kiss her forehead before I reach for a towel. “And they approve, because I’m awesome.”

Her lips twitch. “Or maybe because they know I can keep you in line.”

“Nah.”

I’m smiling as I disentangle my legs from hers and climb out of the tub, and not just because her eyes go dark and smoky again as her gaze wanders down my dripping wet body.

No, it’s because of the peace.

The utter contentment.

I never wanted to get married because I didn’t think it was in my genes, in my bloodline, to be capable of being a good husband and father. Fate proved me wrong on fatherhood.

And this sensation that I’ve found a missing piece of myself, and that she’s sitting right there in the bubble bath, turning down the music and tucking her hair behind her ear. “Did you grab my dress from downstairs?”

“It’s on the bed.”

“I didn’t mean you had to. I could’ve gotten it. I just—”

I silence her with a kiss, which might be my new favorite hobby.

Kissing Ellie Ryder.

Who knew?

“I left your shoes for you to get yourself,” I tell her. “But I’ll probably go get them anyway because you’ll get mad and insist you’re perfectly capable, and then we’ll have some silly little fight that’ll end with me needing to stroke your pussy, so—”

“Yep. Same old obnoxious Wyatt,” she says with a grin.

“Same old stubborn Ellie.”

She rests her hands on the edge of the tub and leans her chin on them, watching me dry off. “Provided we don’t die, we’re never going to be bored, are we?”

“I might be.”

She gets me with a surprise slap to the ass, then shrieks as she slips under the water.

I give her to the count of one-half before I’m grabbing her arm and pulling her up.

“Okay?” I ask.

She blows and spits at the bubbles around her mouth. I grab my phone and angle it toward her like I’m going to snap a picture, and she rolls her eyes with a laugh. “Go ahead.”

“Nah, I don’t—”

“Oh, no. I want you to remember this for the rest of your life. Get in here. Selfie with me.”

When I get down on my knee, she scoops bubbles onto my head and dribbles them on my nose.

And we’re both smiling in the picture.

“Crazy woman.” I wipe her face with the towel and set out another on the floor for her when she gets out. “You hungry?”

“You know what sounds good?”

“Banana pudding?”

“Tea. I have chamomile sometimes to help me fall asleep when I’m achy.”

“With banana pudding?”

“We’re out.”

I put a hand to my heart and stagger. “You’re right. We can’t be together. We’ll run out of banana pudding and die.”

She throws the towel at me with a laugh. “Shush and go heat me some water, powder monkey.”

“Yes, ma’am, Calamity Ellie.”

While she takes her time getting out, I toss on sweatpants and a T-shirt, fill a tea kettle and turn on the burner, then head downstairs to get her shoes. Tucker’s left his security blanket down here again, so I take it upstairs too, all the way to his bedroom, and pull out pajamas for him since he’ll probably be dead on his feet at this hour.

Hope he had fun.

I’m on my way back downstairs when I smell it.

Smoke.

“Wyatt?” Ellie calls, and there’s no mistaking the panic in her voice.

Nor the blare of the smoke alarms that suddenly explode in the house.

I tear down the stairs and land in a cloud of smoke just outside the kitchen. Ellie’s in here, coughing, and flames are erupting from the stove. “The towel!” she shrieks, then coughs again.