Page 14 of The Christmas Playbook
RHYS
It’s probablystupid to pretend to be Mira’s boyfriend. I don’t date. Thorne has tried to cajole me into it, but the girls who surround me are all so fixated on football. They want to be the girlfriend of a football player. And if I make it pro, they want to be thewifeof a football player.
That sort of mentality creates some trust issues.
Thorne and Aaron got lucky. Jack, too. Their girls are down-to-earth. Briar is a bit too grumpy for my taste, but whatever. Thorne eats up her bullshit with a silver spoon. I don’t know the rest well enough to judge.
Mira, on the other hand…
Not grumpy.
Maybe a little sad? Frustrated, for some reason?
Seems like we’ll have more than a week to dig into it, since we’ll now be spending a decent amount of time together.
I went to dinner with my friends and couldn’t even muster up the story. I opened my mouth to tell them about it—the strange chain of events that led to Mira becoming my fake girlfriend—but no words came out.
Like a switch flipping, I went from wanting to laugh about it to feeling oddly protective. Mira doesn’t deserve to be poked at, not when her family clearly does it so well.
There’s a splash, and I open my eyes. Mira is climbing into the water, but?—
“Why are you naked?” Familiar words. But this time they come from me. Directed ather.
“No time to explain.” She practically falls into the water, submerging her body up to her shoulders. She throws herself in my direction. Her hands land on my shoulders.
I’mnaked.
“Is this you taking me up on the orgasms offer?”Damn, my voice is hopeful.
“No. Shut up.”
She scrambles against me, her smooth legs making contact with mine. She straddles my lap, and my hands automatically fall to her hips. My fingers find the strip of her panties, giving away that she’s nottotallynaked. Barely. Just topless.
“So, um, play along.” Her cheeks heat.
My eyebrows lift, and it takes everything in my power not to drop my gaze to her breasts. I don’t want to peek and get hard and ruin what feels like a tentative, desperate move on her part. Except, I can’t quite figure outwhyshe’s acting like this.
I keep my hands glued to her hips so they don’t go wandering, seeing as how she doesn’t actually seem to be into that right now.
Snow crunching nearby distracts me from her nipples.
Wait, maybe I should distracther.
“Kiss me.” Her voice comes out hoarse and raspy.
Fuck me, my dick has entered the chat. I drag her closer to me, and she smashes her chest to mine. My hands finally release her hips and wander up, one splayed across her back, the othertracing the side of her ribs, to the outer swell of her breast. I cup her cheek and draw her in, just as the voices reach me.
“She might be hiding out back,” a guy says. “We just need to bust her alone and then everyone can chill. She’s the type to run after a lie. Remember when she backed into that fire hydrant and told Dad it was a hit-and-run? We didn’t see her for a week.”
Someone else snorts. “True. If that’s the case, she might be in her cabin all week.”
Assholes.
Mira sucks in a breath, but it doesn’t matter. I pull her in and angle my head, pressing my lips to hers. For a second, neither of us move. Her nipples brush my chest, her thighs straddling mine—it all fades when her lips part. I take advantage, straightening up and sliding my fingers into her hair. I tilt her head with a tug and lick along her lower lip.
Just a taste.
My heart skips. Her fingers dig into my shoulders.
