Page 77 of Let It Be Me

“You went home with someone that night.” I grip her thighs with both hands and spread them, fiery with possessiveness at the memory. With jealousy.

“Yeah.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “But I thought of you, Lorenzo. I closed my eyes and thought of you.”

Fuck.I hook one finger through the crotch of her panties as this idea rips its way through me, the image of her thinking of me when another dude was inside her. I pull the fabric a few centimeters away from her bare skin. My chest fills as I take in the sight of her pussy.

“In my mind,” Ruby says, bringing me back to the game we’re playing, “it was my dress hiked up to my waist and my back pressed into the wall. My hands pushing your pants down your ass and my fingers clawing your back under that unbuttoned shirt.”

Oh god, this girl. My cock pulses, fucking begging for attention. Quickly, I reach a hand down and squeeze it through my pants. I don’t know why I thought leading her down this path was a good idea. It’s hot as sin, and I can’t go anywhere with it. To touch her pussy and listen to her talk about getting herself off by pretending to fuck me and to not be able to sink my cock inside her is torture.

Her panties still in my grip, I curl my finger against her, my knuckle meeting the wetness at her center. Her hips jerk, and she pulls in a sharp breath.

“Keep going,” I order her, because why not? I’m already in over my head. “I want to know what I did to you when your fingers were on your pussy.”

She lets out a low moan as I work my knuckle against her, dipping slowly inside, then massaging her clit before circling back again. “You—you pushed me against the wall.” Her voice wavers, telling me she’s not completely in control of what she’s saying. “I wasn’t wearing panties, and you ripped my dress when you pulled it up. But it only turned me on more.” She breaks off with a little cry when my finger hits her clit just right. I deepen the pressure. “You pushed inside me and fucked me,” she says between breaths. “Hard and fast. As deep as I could take it.”

My body strains, almost shaking with pent-up desire. But I try to channel it straight into her, all that energy for her pleasure only. I push the panties aside. Then I drop my head and part her with my tongue, getting my first taste of her. The sound that comes out of her is soft and gentle but so full of relief I almost smile, realizing how long she’s wanted me to do this.

“You held me against the wall with just your hands,” Ruby continues. She wants to keep talking. I glance at her face and the way her eyes are squeezed shut. She’s picturing it right now. “Your hands squeezed my thighs so tight it hurt. So tight you left bruises. It was perfect.” I return my mouth to her body, licking straight up her center. She clenches her fingers and scoots her hips down to bring me deeper, but still the truth keeps spilling out of her. “You kept biting my shoulder so no one would hear us. But I couldn’t keep quiet. And then it was all over.” She exhales hard. “I came so hard on your cock. That was everything.”

I work the tip of my tongue hard against her clit, but when she starts to moan, I let my fingers take over, because I need to look at her. “So do it, Ruby.” I can’t keep my eyes off her face as her eyebrows draw together and her lips part, every tiny flicker in her expression a direct result of my touch. “Come hard on me.” I slide two fingers inside her and let my other hand work her clit just the way her shaking thighs tell me she wants it. With a final sharp inhale, she comes on my fingers, her hips rolling, her walls contracting around me, and her lips releasing a quivery wail. It’s a feeling I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Her hand clamps around mine, holding me in place as she rocks against me, moaning, drawing every last bit of pleasure from my touch. I’m frozen and staring at her, so fucking turned on I could come if she so much as breathed on my dick. But in this moment she’s out for only herself, and it couldn’t be hotter.

When she finally loosens her grip and her body relaxes, I slide out and lie down next to her. She tips her head back, eyes still closed, and lets out a little laugh.

Then she turns to look at me, grinning, and in all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never seen that grin, because it’s so quintessentially I’ve-just-been-fucked. “All this time, Lorenzo.” She’s still breathing hard. “All this time you could dothatwithyour hands. And the best I thought you could do was catch a football.”

I tilt her head toward me with one finger and kiss her. “We should have started playing truth or dare a long time ago.”

TWENTY-NINE

lorenzo

The squawkof seagulls wakes me, reminding me before I open my eyes I’m at my parents’ house. I fumble for my phone and squint at the screen. Almost 11:00 a.m. Shit, I can’t remember the last time I slept this late.

The air seeping through the open window has all the flavor of summer on the lake—crisp water and sunbaked rocks and memories of sunscreen and beer and campfires. I look out at Ruby’s house beyond a row of pine trees and wonder what she’s doing back on campus. Being in Lakeside without her always feels wrong.

My eyes drop to the backyard, where our old pinewood deck sits half torn up, and I feel a tug of disappointment. Before I knew about the surgery, I’d planned to spend weekends up here with my dad, my uncle, and Anthony, ripping out the deck and building a new one. That’s obviously off the table, which sucks because I love working with my hands. And with my dad spending extra time with his mother to ease the transition to assisted living, he hasn’t had time to get the work done. Hence why I’m waking up alone here on a Saturday morning: My parents are off helping my grandmother get settled, leaving me to meet two contractors and get estimates for the deck project.

I head downstairs to make coffee. At the bottom of the steps, I freeze at the sound of movement in the kitchen. My parents back early? No, they’d have called. A chair skids loudly across the floor. Obviously not a cat burglar. I take a quick inventory of makeshift weapons that lie between me and whoever is in there, then lean around the banister to get a good line of sight into the kitchen.

“Ant?”

My cousin spins around, his dark eyes wide with alarm. “Jesus, man! I didn’t know you were here.”

I approach him, my heartbeat still not back to normal. “Didn’t you see my car?”

“Guess not. The fuck are you doing here?”

“It’s my house, remember? The fuck areyoudoing here?”

“Where are your parents? I came to ...” He makes a vague gesture. “Drop something off.”

“Leave it with me. They’re helping my grandma this weekend. What are you dropping off?”

He glances out the front window toward his car like he’s considering making a break for it. What the fuck is he doing here? I don’t like the places my imagination goes, thinking about his reasons for letting himself into my parents’ empty house.

“Forget it, I’ll bring it back later. So you hanging out all weekend or what?”

“Might,” I say tightly, then immediately regret it because he stiffens; he knows I don’t trust him. “You want to kick it?” I turn and open the fridge, trying to seem casual. I almost reach for two beers, even though the idea of booze right out of bed sickens me, then remember Ant’s sober. Supposedly. I take a sparkling water for myself, then hold open the fridge for him. “Grab something.”

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