The Decoy Girlfriend(74)
“Me too.” His voice is gravelly and muffled. “I’ve been thinking about sharing a bed with you for so long. It’s been hell on the couch, imagining you in my bed, wanting me as much as I wanted you.”
“More,” says Freya. “I wanted you more.”
His eyes turn molten.
“Honestly, though,” she says with a hint of a blush, “I like everything about you. Sometimes, with other people . . . I feel like I have to try? You know? Not like I’m trying to impress them or anything, but that I have to live up to my best self. Someone who I haven’t been in years. With you, I just have to exist. You take me as I am. You meet me where I am, who I am right now.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” he replies. “I’d like you even if we never played the ten-secrets game. I did, in fact. Like you, that is. When we first met in the bookshop, you were all I could think about. You were the first girl who made me regret my ‘relationship’ with Mandi, and it killed me when you recognized who I was . . . Because then the fantasy of being just some guy who could flirt with you was over. The truth is, until you, I always felt like a bedside book.”
She blinks. “A what?”
“You know. That book that sits on the nightstand of people who’ll take forever to read it, and that’s only because it’s one of those highbrow ones they think they’re supposed to read before they die, but they just keep putting it off? It’s just . . . there. Waiting to be picked.”
The laugh startles out of her. “Oh my god, are you kidding me?” She twists out of his arms, ignoring his whine of protest, to grab something from the nightstand. “A bedside book like this?”
She arches an eyebrow as she holds up a thick paperback, spine creased and corners decidedly not crisp, thoroughly tabbed with what looks like at least a hundred neon stickies. When she waves it in front of his face, he stares like he’s hypnotized.
“You’re the bedside book I would reach for a hundred times over. A five-star favorite I’d reread like I was visiting an old friend or long-lost lover.” Freya swallows, throat tight. “For the record, this reader loves a good bedside book.”
His mouth is on hers almost before she can finish the sentence.
The kiss is tender and bruising at the same time, and when he snakes a hand up her thigh, she moans into his mouth. Sensation skitters across her chest, stiffening her nipples into hard peaks, and strikes between her legs. The friction from the pads of his fingers is enormously pleasing, but it’s not enough.
“I’m not ready to get out of bed just yet,” Taft mumbles against her collarbone when the kiss breaks, both breathing heavily. The sensation tickles, making her toes curl the same way they did last night when he crooked his fingers inside her just right. “I don’t want you to leave me—my bed.”
He covers his slipup quickly, but Freya’s heart twinges all the same.
Truthfully, leaving their snuggly, cozy cocoon is the last thing she wants, too, but her manuscript deadline is looming, and she promised Stori she’d come by the store this afternoon. It’s just a little past 9:00 a.m. and if she tries, she can get a few hours of writing in first.
Freya’s not quite sure what kind of debauchery her aunt thinks they get up to when she’s with Taft, but since Stori thinks her shifts at Books & Brambles keep her writing on schedule, she doesn’t want to push it. Boss Stori won’t “fire” her, but Sister Stori will be worse, all I’m-not-mad-just-disappointed lecture and I-worry-about-you-when-you’re-not-here guilt.
“I can give you five minutes before I start writing,” she offers, nuzzling into his warmth.
His laugh makes his entire body shake. “Should I be insulted?”
She presses her lips against his pec and tries not to smile, but he can probably feel it, anyway. “Okay, ten.” He pokes her in the ribs. “Fifteen?” Another poke. “You are way too easy to tease, you know.”
“Mmm,” he hums. “I’ll remember that.”
She leans back to cock her head at him. “Why did that sound like you’re promising vengeance?”
No less than an hour later, after he’s brought her to the edge three times with just his fingers, he shows her exactly how he’s going to tease her.
“This is incredibly unfair,” she huffs, thrashing her legs. Her hair is matted to the back of her neck, her calves ache deliciously, and whoever invented edging is absolutely going to get a piece of her mind, except that they’ve probably perished by now from lack of orgasm.
His chuckle is entirely unapologetic, and there’s a hint of mischief in his eyes as he brings his middle and forefinger, slick with her wetness, to his mouth.
Freya groans and tosses him a condom to wear. “Okay, okay! You are an unselfish and mind-blowing lover. Your foreplay prowess is unsurpassed, and you have ruined me for all other men. And you definitely aren’t a five-minute wonder.”
“Was that so hard?” He nudges his painfully erect cock between her legs.
She glares at him. “Fucking finish me.”
“Well, since you asked so nicely.”
And within ten minutes, he takes them both stratospheric, though like the true gentleman he is, Taft makes sure she finishes first.
Later, while he showers, Freya makes breakfast. Cooking for a guy is a new thing for her, and while she’s nowhere near good enough to make a habit of it, the one thing she nails every time is her eggs Benedict. Even Stori, who’s picky about the doneness of her yolk, loves it.