Page 48 of Goalie Lessons

“Sorry,” I whisper, eyes moving back and forth between his. “But if you want to do this, I want to. So don’t try and talk me out of it. Unlessyouchangedyourmind.”

When he whispers, his lips move against my finger, and it sends a shiver through my entire body. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I parrot, then take a step back from him. “Okay, so…I’m just going to be brutally honest with you, okay? That’s what we want, right?”

He runs his hand through his hair again. “Yes. That’s what we want. Hit me with it, Dr. Foster.”

I pace back over to the bed, take a seat at the end. “Alright. So, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think the first problem with…us, that night, was foreplay.”

“Foreplay,” he repeats, toeing off his shoes and walking over to me slowly. There’s something about seeing him in his socks that makes my throat dry. Intimate. Domestic, almost.

“Yeah. That’s what I think. So, if we, like, approach the thing from beginning to end, we’ll focus on foreplay first.” I raise my eyes to him, trying to remind myself to be an adult here. “Foreplay is all about the long game. And it started out strong enough—the wholewill-they-won’t-theything during the wedding was hot.”

He raises an eyebrow. “It was?”

I ignore the flush on my cheeks, pick at something on my jeans. “Yes. And then, finding you outside my room—that was a risky move that could have been bad if I wasn’t interested. But I was, and confidence is sexy.”

“All that was foreplay?”

“Yes. Think about it—God, this is weird to say, but like, it’s all the story, right? It helps to build it up. It was…nice to know that you wanted me.” I think back to the research I did earlier, and say, “Foreplay ends the second you start doing anything that could make someone orgasm. So, touching a woman.” I pause, clear my throat, and again force myself to maintain eye contact. “Pleasuringa woman in any way ends the foreplay.”

He swallows again. “Okay. So you liked it when I showed up at your door.”

“Yes, that was good.”

“But I’m sensing that’s when things started going downhill?”

“Like I said before, the kissing was good—really good, actually—but it was over way too fast.”

“Okay. Stupid question, probably, but is there like…a standard goal? A threshold to try and hit?”

Forcing a laugh, I pat the bed next to me. “Come here and sit down. I can’t keep looking up at you like this.”

Grayson sits next to me, the mattress dipping under his weight. We’re quiet for a moment, nothing but the sound of the hotel room’s humming air conditioner in the background.

I realize Iwantto keep going, to tell him what I think about this, so I turn to him, bringing one of my legs up onto the bed.

“Do you enjoy kissing?” I ask.

“Well—yeah, of course.”

His eyes focus on my mouth, and my lips buzz like I can feel his gaze on me physically, tracing the movement when I lick my lips. The heightened sense of awareness is making everything feel ridiculously saturated—the pink on his cheeks, the blue of the curtains behind him.

“So, it wouldn’t bother you to kiss for a while?” I ask.

“No.”

I shift, think about it, then say, “Well, I think it’s important to acknowledge that every woman is different—everypersonis different in what turns them on. So the most important thing is asking, learning what they like. But it’s pretty across-the-board that if you have to choose too much foreplay, or not enough, it’s better to go with more rather than less.”

“So, more kissing.”

“Yeah. More kissing. You should…” I suck in a breath, meet his eyes, find them dark and intent, his cheeks flushed. This is, by far, the strangest and most sexually taut moment I’ve shared with another person. “You should wait until she’s asking for more. Draw it out as long as you can. Wait until she’s tugging on your clothes, touching you, or just verbally…begging.”

The last word comes out as a whisper, and Grayson lets out a sharp breath. “Alright.”

Time stretches out, languid and strange, and I shift again, repositioning myself, knowing I have to be the one to move this forward.

“Okay,” I manage. “If you were going to kiss me right now, how would you do it?”

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