Page 17 of The Challenger

She laughs and it sends a ripple of excitement up my spine. “I might need photo evidence of you being submissive.”

Hallelujah. This social disaster finally breaks in my favor. It is time to bust a move, except this is what happens when you've lost your mojo. A woman as ripe as the sweetest melon stands in front of me and I can’t even connect the dots.

Get with the program, hombre.

I shake off the cool air pressing on my shoulders. “Tell me if I’m out of line here Miss Flynn, but I really, really want to kiss you.”

A vein on the soft white of her throat pulses and her smile turns shy. “Sure.”

That front door of hers looks sturdy enough to take both of us crashing hard against it, but my instincts tell me to go slow even though she’s shivering in that scrap of a dress and I could warm her up big time. I cup her face in my hands. Feel her breath draw in. A light switches on in my brain when we connect and it’s like the night turns into day.

No need to pray, after all. Flynn is willing and eager and has the tempo dialled just right. Like playing on a new court for the first time, with kissing, I have to explore the lay of the land and get a sense of things, adjust, and feel out the new environment. The art of it is to build up to tongues and not get choked by some snake right out of the gate. She tastes like sweet tequila, and I’m behaving, or trying to. But when those arms of hers decide all that uptight shit is no longer necessary and can be wrapped around me instead, I’m all in. I plaster her against the door, and for a woman who was one step away from ditching my ass minutes ago, she’s now a destroying force.

Jesus.

My poor dick’s been on a yo-yo all night and it snaps back to attention with her body grinding hard against mine. I almost give in to her warm tongue, but I love how she whimpers and clutches me tighter when I pull back.

“You can…” She falters and catches her breath. “You don’t have to stop.”

I fist my hands into her soft mess of curls and bring our foreheads to touch. “I want to keep going,” I whisper. “That’s not the problem.”

“Problem?”

In those teetering heels, her eyes are level with mine and spooling across them is a story, something she’s trying to tell me without words. A vulnerability that makes my heart fold in on itself. Never mind she has glued herself to my hard-on. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

“You want me to lose my cool right here on your doorstep? I’m about fifteen seconds away. What are you doing tomorrow?”

She searches my face. “I thought you had practice?”

“I’ll be done at noon. Why don’t you swing by for lunch?”

“Where?”

“My house.”

“You have a tennis court?”

“And a pool. Bring your bikini. And your tennis gear.”

“You want to play with me?” she asks.

“If you don’t mind playing with fire.”

Her smile keeps going, and I am tempted again to cross over her threshold and dive headfirst into her all-night buffet, but my thoughts start to spin at an unsafe velocity. Smythe keeps telling me I need to be mindful of triggering moments. My dick so swollen it needs its own zip code is not a moment, technically, at least not in the scope of his world. Although I’m very mindful of what it does mean. And it’s times like these when pulling back the curtain is a necessity, so I’m not howling for the wrong pussy under the spotlight of a cold moon.

“You mind me asking how many guys you’ve slept with?”

She jerks her head in surprise. “Where did that come from?”

“More than a hundred?”

“God, no!”

“Less than fifty?”

She disconnects from my embrace and crosses her arms. “Sorry, but I am not having this conversation.”

“Okay. So more than fifty but less than a hundred. I’m at eighty-three, so you know.”

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