Page 115 of Not in My Book

I nodded, desperate for him to keep talking. He was right about how much I enjoyed his words; my thighs squeezed together to relieve the ache he created.

“What a good girl,” he gritted out as he began to thrust into my face. “You’re doing such a good job, baby, just like that.”

I swirled my tongue, knowing it would bring him closer to edge. He hissed as I did it, his grip in my hair tightening. “I’m close, baby.” I moved faster, sucking him in deeper until he hit the back of my throat. He groaned as he spilled into my mouth. He leaned down, cupping my jaw before taking his thumb and pressing down on my lip.

“Show me,” he whispered and I obeyed, opening my mouth with him still in it. His gaze darkened at the sight. “Swallow for me, baby.”

I did, opening my mouth again to show him. He reached for me, pulling me back up on the bed. His thumb and index finger grasped my chin. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered. “Do you want me on my knees, too?” I nodded, breathless. “Or do you want me to fuck you?”

I nodded to that too. “I just wantyou, Aiden.” I pressed a kiss to his mouth. “All I want is you.”

Three words I wished I could say but wasn’t ready to yet. Three words I thought every single time I saw her. Three words that repeated in my mind over and over and over again, as I tried to gather courage to repeat them out loud.

—Excerpt fromUntitledby Aiden Huntington and Rosie Maxwell

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Aiden and I were rapidly approaching the end of the semester—and our manuscript. Our characters werethisclose to confessing their love to each other, but I wanted it to be perfect. We had been writing together nonstop—and now that we could lay nearly everything we felt for each other out in the open, it felt like magic was pouring out of my fingers.

But the big love confession was our only hiccup. The right words couldn’t come to us, no matter how many times we tried to write the scene. Aiden suggested moving on and coming back to that paragraph when we had the chance, but I was hell-bent on making it perfect.

I was so focused on this class and our assignment that I oftendreamtof it. I’d see Max and Hunter in my dreams and try to make sense of it all for a scene, but rarely did anything usable come to fruition.

Until one night, my eyes flashed open. Aiden’s arm was snug around my waist, my back to his chest. The words were moving around in my head, and I was desperate to get them out. We were in my apartment this time. I slapped around my nightstand until I found my phone and slipped out of Aiden’s grip. Propped up on my elbow, my hair fanning over my face, I quickly typed into my notes app.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” Aiden whispered, his voice thick. He tried to pull my shoulder back down to him, but I wouldn’t let him.

“I think I finally have it figured out,” I said.

The sheets rustled behind me and Aiden’s chin landed on my shoulder as he read what I had written. “What do you think?” I asked.

“I like it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, what do youreallythink?”

He hesitated before reaching for my phone. “Can I?”

I nodded, and he read through the lines again, changing a few words, refocusing a few sentences.

We went back and forth like this, revising the small paragraphs on my phone, passing it between us as our backs rested against the headboard.

“She can’t say that,” I fussed at him. “She’d never say that.”

“I’m sorry, but Maxine is theexacttype of person to say, ‘I’ve loved you from the very beginning.’ ”

“Max would use details. She’d say what made her fall in love.”

“Fine, then you fix it.”

He passed the phone to me, and just like we had been doing all semester, I wrote what I felt about Aiden. I wrote what I wished I had the courage to say if my heart wasn’t so fragile and worried about its next break.

“I loved you before I even knew I did. I loved when someone said something funny and your eyes would find mine across the table just to watch me laugh. Or when you’d frown at something particularly sappy I’d written, even though I know now you liked it. I loved you the whole time, but I love you the most now.”

I handed the phone back to Aiden with shaky hands. He read the words, slowly and carefully, before typing his own. He handed it back to me, the sound of my heartbeat creating music in the room.

“I’m not good at romance like you are. I don’t have the right words to make you understand how completely wrapped around your finger I am. I didn’t believe in soulmates, and for the longest time I didn’t believe in love at all—until I met you. But I do love you. The shoot for the stars, shout on rooftops kind. I accepted my fate a long time ago. I don’t think I could ever love anyone else but you.”

After I read it, tears shone in my eyes. But neither of us said anything. We didn’t need to. These words probably wouldn’t ever make it into our manuscript. They were hard enough to write, let alone say, so we had to keep them tucked between the pages of a book. But we both knew it wasn’t Max and Hunter talking.

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