Tease (Cloverleigh Farms #8)(41)

“Well, I think Zlatka is into women too,” I told her, “so if you’d like to date her, I’m sure she’d be glad to tell you exactly why you suck at relationships. Although, she’s not likely to tell you she loves you—at least, she never said that to me—so maybe things would work out with you guys.”

Laughing, she slapped my shoulder. “No, thanks. I don’t need Zlatka in my life pointing out all my flaws.”

“You have no flaws.”

“Ha! I’ve got plenty. But I’m actually sort of glad for one of them tonight.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, if I had better impulse control, I might not have told Mimi we were engaged, and then I would not have just experienced the best two orgasms of my life.”

My chest puffed up with pride.

She snuggled closer to me. “Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know.”

“Like what?”

“Something from before we met.”

I thought for a second. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player.”

“You did? I didn’t even know you played baseball.”

“I quit right before we moved up here.”

“Why?”

“I had a really bad game. Struck out three times in a row and cost my team the league championship.” It was a memory I hated, so I tried never to go back there.

“Oh.” Felicity rubbed my shoulder. “I’m sorry. That had to feel terrible.”

“It did. I never played again. But it’s not like I was going to play professionally anyway. I was talented, but I wasn’t that good.”

“Well, I’m glad you told me. The childhood baseball dream seems like something a fiancée would know.”

“What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

“A hundred different things. A scientist. An astronaut. A pastry chef. A school librarian. I thought it would be cool to spend my days around kids and books.”

“You’d be great at that, Miss MacAllister.” Immediately I indulged in a hot fantasy about her. “Would you be a naughty librarian?”

She giggled. “Only for you. Hey, this is what we should do every night.”

I reached down to her ass and squeezed it, pulling her against me. “I could not agree more.”

“I don’t mean that,” she said, laughing. “I mean—yes, that too—but what I meant was that every night we should tell each other one secret. So that we know each other better than anybody else.”

“You already know me better than anybody else.”

“I do?” she asked, her voice rising.

“Are you surprised?”

“Kind of. I mean, I know we’re close now, and we were close then, but there were a lot of years in between.”

Turned on all over again by her skin on mine, I shifted her beneath me and settled my hips between her legs. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve never been close with anyone the way I am with you.”

She put her arms around my neck. “Are you saying that right now because you want to have more sex?”

“Yes.” I kissed her lips. “But I also mean it. What looks like a six to you might appear as a nine to me. It’s just a different perspective. Both things can be true.”

“You’re such a math nerd,” she teased.

“I also like the numbers six and nine.”

She laughed as I kissed my way down her neck. “I suppose both things can be true.”





NINE





FELICITY





When I opened my eyes, I was naked and alone in Hutton’s bed. Instinctively, I reached for my glasses on the nightstand, but they weren’t there, and I remembered I hadn’t worn them when I set out on my errand of seduction last night.

Smiling, I fell back against the pillow and pulled the sheets up to my chin. We’d had so much fun—the kind of fun I’d always imagined having in bed with someone, but had never experienced. Sex was always so fraught with nerves and expectations—what if I was a disappointment? What if he was clueless? What did this mean for the relationship? How could I sneak out fairly quickly afterward because I liked to sleep in my own bed, or worse, how could I get him to leave so that I could have my bed to myself?

But there had been none of that with Hutton.

He’d made me feel sexy and beautiful, and he was the hottest, most skilled, most attentive guy I’d ever been with. I didn’t have to worry about what this meant for the relationship, because there wasn’t one, we were just pretending. And I didn’t have to invent excuses for why I had to leave or come up with reasons why it was a bad idea for him to stay the night . . . I’d wanted to sleep next to him.

The bathroom door opened and Hutton appeared, dressed in running clothes. “Hey.”

“Hi.” I sat up and smiled, covers gathered in front of my chest. “Heading out?”

“Yeah. Want to come with me?”

I thought about it, but decided I didn’t really feel like jumping out of bed and exerting myself right this moment. Mostly I just wanted to roll around in his sheets and relish last night’s delight. “Nah, you go ahead. I might take a jog later or something.”