Page 74 of The Love Losers

She makes a beautiful, guttural sound, her lips parting, and I kiss her as she pulses around me. The magical sensation of her falling apart around me, squeezing me, brings me over with her. I follow her down the ledge and out of sight, into the place where there’s just pleasure and no thoughts of what dangers might come in its wake.

Until the bed cracks loudly beneath us and immediately starts to sag.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ROSIE

I’m engaged to a rich sex god.

I’mengagedto arich sex god,and we broke his bed.

Maybe I’ll believe it if I repeat it enough that it builds a new pathway in my brain.

I can still feel the brush of Anthony’s beard teasing against my thighs when he hooked my legs over his shoulders. The delicious ache of him inside of me. The push and pull of him. If I’m lucky, the memories won’t fade, and if I’m very lucky, they’ll be reinforced by many similar memories.

But a voice in the back of my head insists my good luck isn’t going to last. Because I should have at least waited to hear from Nicole before I plunged into this situation without looking over my shoulder. The voice is convinced I’ve screwed everything up, for both Anthony and for me, and it won’t shut up.

There’s also a feeling of disquiet about what I felt on his back. I never got a good look at it, but there was a raised line with smaller lines to either side of it. What kind of an accident would cause an injury like that?

But after we broke his bed, Anthony immediately pulled on an undershirt and his boxer briefs so he could examine the damage. He pronounced it unsalvageable, sounding prettyproud of it. Then I reminded him that I was famished, and we went downstairs to make sandwiches.

The kitchen is so enormous I wouldn’t be surprised if Hansel and Gretel were hiding in the oven. It looks like it’s hardly ever used, and Anthony admits that his mother’s cook usually makes food in her own kitchen and brings in individual servings. This feels sad to me—what’s the point of a mammoth, kickass kitchen that goes unused? It’s like a gorgeous man with big hands being stuck in a platonic marriage. I can’t stand the waste.

I may not be a baker like Claire, who’s as married to it as she’s about to be to my brother, but Idolove to bake. All the better if I can rope someone into doing it with me.

“We have to make Christmas cookies,” I announce after we finish our sandwiches, consumed standing up at the island. “I won’t be satisfied if I don’t make a mess in this kitchen. Every kitchen deserves at least one mess in its lifetime.”

He grins at me. “I have some ideas for how we can accomplish that.”

“Good. We’re going to do all of it. But the cookies are non-negotiable.”

Anthony smiles. “Unless you want salami and cheese cookies, too, I guess we should go to the grocery store.”

I gesture grandly toward the door. “To the grocery store!”

He gives me an easy smile, all of his Nina-angst gone. “Your wish is my command.”

So we leave for the store, and I spend the car ride making a shopping list on my phone.

When we’re roaming the aisles, he gives me a sidelong glance and asks, “You have a thing about lists, don’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s a surprising quality in someone like me, isn’t it?” I add a few cookie cutters to the cart. Rudolph, a candy cane, Santa’s ass coming down the chimney.Yes, please.

“Someone like you?” he asks, watching me closely.

“Disorganized, a chaos tornado.”

He catches my hand and kisses it, sending warmth pulsing through me, especially when he glances at me over my knuckles—one of my favorite Anthony-isms. “Don’t talk about my fiancée that way.”

Worry about Nicole’s mission is still making me dizzy with anxiety, but I smile back at him and soak in the moment.

A few minutes later, Anthony catches me leaning my foot on the back of the cart. He grins and says, “You want to use it as a skateboard, don’t you? Don’t stop on my account.”

So I give him a mischievous look and do it, then say, “It’s your turn. It’s fun, Anthony. You have to try.”

He does, only to get reprimanded by an elderly security guard. Anthony answers him so seriously, so contritely, that I burst out laughing.

“She doesn’t mean it, sir,” he tells the man. “She has a medical condition that makes her laugh at inappropriate moments.”

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