Page 88 of Catching Feeling

“Oh my god, you even got her a little purple collar,” she breathes, fingering the thin, bedazzled collar around her neck that has a little bell attached to it.

I mean, she should know by now that I’m going to spoil the fuck out of my girls. And Boo is now basically our love child.

Grant was talking shit, but I am a cat daddy now.

When her eyes lift to mine, she gently sets Boo to the floor, and we watch her hesitantly pad around the living room, her little tail swishing as she takes in her surroundings. It’s a new place, so it’ll take her a bit to warm up.

“Thank you. This might be the best thing that anyone has ever gotten me, Reese,” Viv says, stepping into me, her lips tilting up into a smile as her arms slide around my neck and tangle into the hair in my nape. “I missed you.”

Two days was too fucking long.

“Missed you too, Sweet Tart,” I respond before dragging my knuckle along her cheek. “Never wanted to be back home so bad while on the road. It was a fucking killer.”

She nods while rising on her tiptoes to pull my head down to meet her mouth, gently pressing her lips against mine.

It’s chaste. Innocent almost.

Yet every nerve ending in my body comes alive as I kiss her, a live wire of current pulsing through my body.

This is what we do best. Communicate through touching, kissing, fucking.

Her fingers fist into the front of my T-shirt when I angle her mouth, deepening the kiss and slipping my tongue inside, tasting her for the first time in two days.

It’s like coming home.

Her whimper rocks through me, and our kiss turns hungry, frantic even as our tongues tangle together, and my hands splay across her waist, anchoring her against me.

Not close enough.

“Fuck, I missed you,” I murmur against her mouth, sliding my hands along her jaw and cradling it as I drop my forehead against hers. “Missed this.”

How can kissing someone feel so… intimate? I could kiss her forever.

She gazes up at me, her lips swollen from our kiss, cheeks flushed, and eyes unfocused with arousal.

“You’re so fucking pretty, baby.”

“Stop being so sweet. You know it makes me want to climb you like a tree.” Her voice is raspy, heavy with the same need that I feel. “I’m trying to have self-control.”

A laugh rumbles from my chest. “How about we order Jack’s for dinner? And then I can have dessert on the kitchen table and make up for lost time.”

“It was two days, Reese,” she says, giggling so fucking adorably. “You couldn’t have missed me that much.”

“You’re sincerely underestimating how much I want to live between your thighs.”

“Caveman.”

We order our usual from Jack’s Pizza and sit in the middle of the living room floor with the box between us as we eat, discussing her upcoming podcast episode and how her book is coming along. She asks me about how my training is going and what it’s going to be like once I’m drafted to the minors and if I’m nervous. Boo, tired from all her exploring, lies curled up sleeping between our legs the entire time.

Once we’re done, Viv walks over to the drawer in the kitchen and pulls out a card game and, with that cute little fucking smirk, challenges me to it like she’s throwing down the gauntlet.

Except it turns out that my girl is a really sore loser.

“God, you are such a cheater!” Viv accuses, tossing her cards onto the floor between us, narrowing her eyes at me as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Admit it, you totally cheated.”

Boo scampers out of the living room at Viv’s sudden fit, and I chuckle. “Babe. It’s UNO. How the fuck do you cheat at UNO?”

“I don’t know, but you did. There’s no way you won four times in a freakin’ row, Reese Landry. I’m calling bullshit. You’ve got a stack of draw four cards hidden over there somewhere, I know it.” She crawls over the cards to where I’m sitting and peeks around my back like I’m actually hiding something, and I take the opportunity to pull her into my lap. I capture her lips, swallowing her protests and replacing them with her moan. When I pull back, her eyes are heavy-lidded and unfocused.

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