Page 75 of Allured By Her

Somehow, I had a feeling those would be her choices. Tenley loved lots of bright colors, but she had a special affinity for pink.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

“You’d make it for me?” she asked.

I huffed out a breath. “Yes, I was planning to surprise you, but you just ruined it.”

Tenley let out a delighted laugh and threw her arms around me.

“You’re the best girlfriend ever,” she said, smacking a kiss on my cheek as she rocked us back and forth. Her exuberance was contagious.

“I don’t know about that. You’re pretty great at it,” I said, pulling back so I could gaze into her face. She was so beautiful and so fun and so sweet and she was all mine.

“I didn’t know I could be a good girlfriend until someone showed me how,” she said. “I mean you, in case you were wondering.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I assumed it was me.” Shane couldn’t teach someone to find their way out of a paper bag. Tenley had opened up more about their relationship and told me that when we’d been fake dating, Shane had demanded that we join him for a threesome. He was a complete and utter pig, and if I saw him at the grocery store, I was going to throw a can of soup at him or something.

Tenley had been right that most of her friends had “chosen” to stay friends with Shane and her invites to barn parties had dried up. That just meant I had swept her into my group, and I could tell she was a whole lot happier. Being around kind people who weren’t judgmental bores with nothing interesting to say was doing wonders for her social life. Then there was Karissa, who had come to hang out with us a few times and visited Common Grounds a few times a week to get coffee and chat. It was nice to have yet another new person in my orbit, and Tenley and I were working on getting her to join book club.

Life with Tenley was bright and happy and full of laughs and sex and cupcakes and books and I was so fucking grateful that I’d gotten over that high school bullshit and seen her for the wonderful person that she was. If I hadn’t, I would have missed out on everything.

Tenley was everything and she was mine.

“Let’s go to my house,” she said, keeping her hand in mine as we went back into the house to say goodnight to Ingrid.

“Why yours?” I asked. “Mine has all the fun stuff.” I wiggled my eyebrows so she would know what I meant.

“Yes, but mine has all the books,” she said in my ear before nipping at my earlobe.

“What could be better than sex and books?” I asked her in a whisper. There were always little ears listening in this house, so you had to be careful what you said at a normal volume.

“You,” Tenley said, placing a soft kiss on my mouth. “You’re the best out of all of them.”

“No, I think that’s you,” I said back, and we argued all the way to my apartment to grab the sex toys we’d need for the evening before going back over to Tenley’s.

We eventually agreed to disagree.

Epilogue

“I’m nervous!” Tenley said as we sat together staring at her laptop screen. Her latest sapphic erotic romance was ready to publish, and all she had to do was press the button to send it to the online retailers, but she was dragging her feet. This was the second time she’d done this while we’d been together and I got the feeling she had a little breakdown every single time, even though she’d done this before.

It was adorable.

“Do you want me to do it?” I asked as she gnawed at her lip.

“No, I can do it,” she said. “I just…what if I screwed it all up? What if it’s completely unreadable? What if they all hate it?” She dropped her head into her hands and let out a wail.

“They’re not going to hate it. Your readers love your work. They tell you all the time. You’ve been through edits. Your editor is a professional that you pay to make sure your books are the best they can be. Tenley, you are an incredible author. Just do it.”

I lifted her face so she could look into my eyes and see the truth there.

“You’re so fucking talented it scares me,” I said, kissing her. “Now hit the button and I’ll fuck you with your favorite toy as a reward.”

She slammed the pad on her keyboard and a message came up that her book was in process and would be live soon.

Tenley let out a shaky breath. “Fuck, that never gets easier.” She pushed away from the table and stood up, pacing around her office.

As much as I loved my little apartment, Tenley’s house was bigger and nicer, so we spent the majority of our time here. I’d been a little reluctant to give up my place, but my lease was up in two months, and I would be officially moving in with Tenley. She had already given me the run of the entire basement to expand my toy business, which was booming, thanks to the new space, and thanks to my second product tester. Tenley had excellent instincts about toys, and even helped me package everything up on weekends when she didn’t have a writing deadline.

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