Rookie Move (Playing for Keeps #1)(29)

Still, I didn’t want to be a dick. “You from around here?” I asked.

“Yep. Hence why I know I haven’t seen you here before.”

Shit. That was a dumb question. “What do you do?”

Bailey started rambling about tech stuff I had zero interest in, and I couldn’t help spinning my stool around and scanning the crowd for Garrett. Where the fuck had he gone?

Bailey did the same, the two of us drinking slowly, him rambling and not seeming to notice I wasn’t interested. It was a good thing he excelled at talking about himself so I didn’t need to add much input— “What the fuck?” I said softly.

“What’s wrong?”

Garrett was dancing…with a guy, who had his ass against Garrett’s groin, feeling the dick that had been against me just a little while ago. And Garrett was running his hands up and down the guy’s chest like his lip wasn’t swollen from my bite.

Discomfort pooled in my gut before turning into thick lava that rose until it filled my chest. The guy turned and kissed Garrett’s neck, and G’s hands were on his hips like they had been on mine, and…oh God. Was I jealous? I was going to kick his fucking ass. I couldn’t believe I wanted him that much, but I did.

“I gotta go,” I told Brandon…Bailey…whatever the fuck his name was. I set my drink down, then handed him some cash so I wasn’t a complete asshole.

Garrett’s gaze landed on me as I worked my way through the crowd. He was still touching the guy, rubbing him and tilting his head so the guy could make out with his neck. But the whole time, that feeling in my chest was mirrored in his eyes.

“Let’s go,” I said the second I reached him.

“Say please.”

“You’re such a brat. Let’s go. Please.” I was too annoyed to even argue with him.

Garrett kissed the guy on the cheek, and then the two of us made our way to the door. We were silent like we had been when we came in, me leading, Garrett following. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, or where I was going, or why I suddenly wanted him so much, it was hard to breathe. Yeah, I’d always been attracted to him. He amused the shit out of me. I loved how he never stopped giving me hell, but this craving for him was different.

The second we were around the backside of the building, alone in an alley that, unfortunately, stank like trash, I pushed him against the wall and took his mouth with mine.





8





GARRETT





There I was, straggling after Ramsey out of the club and trying to suss out his sudden desire to bail—had the guy he was talking to pissed him off? Been a prick? Been pushy?—when he whirled around on me, a feverish intensity in his eyes.

For one brief second, I thought he was about to yell at me.

Next thing I knew, my back slammed into a wall for the second time that night.

This time with more force.

And this time with the addition of Ramsey’s mouth sealing over mine. Not in a bite, but a kiss that short-circuited every thought zipping through my head.

Full of heat and need, his kiss simultaneously crashed over me like a wave and shot through me like lightning. The warring sensations left me light-headed, and I gasped for breath as my lips parted beneath his. His tongue slid over mine, smooth as silk, and I tasted him for the first time.

Long-term crushes were weird. I’d gotten so used to the unrequited part, at first I didn’t know what the fuck to do with the fact that it was now being requited, at least physically.

In my fantasies, I’d touched Ramsey a hundred times, grasped him firmly, confidently, plundered his mouth, tugged him closer, pushed him away, yanked his pants down, his shirt off, his socks, shoes. A hundred imaginary articles of his clothing had been destroyed, ripped, or torn off in my daydreams, and now that this moment was actually happening, the tremor that’d run through me earlier returned. My stomach went all jittery, alive with bone-deep desire that spread outward, seeking an outlet that finally came in the form of a moan that rumbled through my chest.

Then instinct kicked in, reminding me what I was supposed to be doing: enjoying the hell out of this, saturating myself in it. Later I could question motivation. Right now? I just needed to give in to the primal urge that always came alive around Ramsey.

I needed to take.

The jittery feeling subsided, hunger surging in its wake as my fists unclenched and I sank into the kiss. When Ramsey’s grip on me slackened, as if he might pull away, I snaked a hand into the waistband of his jeans and hauled him around the side of the building where the darkness was thicker, and then shoved him against the wall the same way he had me.

He let out a short, sharp grunt as he smacked into the bricks, and before he could get a word out, I closed my mouth over his again, determined to savor this singular event down to its marrow.

He tasted like whiskey and the bite of pepper, and the kiss morphed from fervent savagery to a more exploratory tempo, like he was enjoying the taste of me too. A minute shift of his hips sent a torturous, tempting pleasure corkscrewing through me.

Just to see what would happen, I rolled my hips once, my aching dick gliding firmly against his in one long, slow slide. Ramsey let out a groan that made me want to reach deeper behind his waistband, wrap a hand around his shaft, and get him off right there in the alley, but I resisted, just barely. This being Ramsey’s first guy-on-guy kiss, it might’ve been overkill, and fuck knew, I didn’t want to overwhelm him. Too much.