Page 160 of Ecstasy
She trails her fingers over my shoulder, eyeing my bare chest, a smirk on her lips. “And I think…no, I hope you’re still here.” She meets my gaze, her fingers still against my skin. “I hope you don’t leave. I hope you still find me fun a year from now. I hope you don’t mind that I’m really awkward and I’m kind of boring, and I don’t really do shit when I’m not high and I actually kind of hate parties and also…” She bites her lip, laughing a little. “Also football.”
I grab her hand, press it to my mouth. “I already knew that,” I tell her. “About the football. The rest?” I suck on her index finger, and then the next one, and the next one. I love the way she wiggles underneath me, like she just can’t wait for me to fuck her.
Yeah, neither can I, but I’m going to, just for a minute.
“I love you for who you are. I’m getting too old for parties,” I tease her, “and it’s a shame you got over them before you even turned twenty-one, but,” I shrug, “less boys to flirt with you so fuck it. I don’t care.”
I drop her hand and she runs it through my hair.
“Who knew you could be so damn romantic?” she asks me, grinning.
I lean down and kiss her, her lips parting for me, her hands going around my neck. “I’m not. I just really, really like you.”
She drops one hand, and reaches between us, grabbing my aching cock. “I like you, too. And this. A lot. It’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”
I’m not sure, exactly, what to make of that or how to feel about it, but I just laugh anyway and she guides me inside of her and it might make me sound like a fucking idiot, but when I’m inside of her it feels like home.
Later that night,she’s curled up beside me, her mouth open as she drools on my chest. It’s actually pretty sexy, especially the way her spine feels beneath my fingers as I draw circles down her back, staring up at the dark ceiling.
But Eli’s words come back to me, and although I hate thinking his name, although I hate thinking of him, and although sometimes the way he felt bucking against my hands makes my skin crawl when it passes through my mind, I can’t help but smile as these words:And you can’t breathe for her, too. She’ll pull you down in that grave and bury you with her.
He was a fucking psychopath, playing me as well as he played her.
But I buried him.
I fucking buried him, and it’s Zara I want. Zara that wants me.
And when I imagine my future, she’s in it.
Because this girl? The one whose head is against my chest? Yeah. I didn’t save her. That girl saved me.
Epilogue
Three YearsLater
Zara
“I’m closing this fucking place.”
“No, you can’t, someone is coming right—”
He flips the switch for the closed sign on the gym, pulls down the blackout shade and steps back, retreating into the shadows.
I clamp my hand over my mouth, trying to stifle my laughter as there’s a polite knock on the door.
We’re supposed to be open 24/7.
Alex looks at me, his dark eyes gleaming, and then he scoops me up, twirling me around and when a little giggle slips past my lips because I’ve got my hands on his bare shoulders, he clamps his hand over my mouth, lowers me down to whisper in my ear, “Shh, princess. We don’t want to get a bad review, yeah?”
I slap his chest, but we can see through the wall of tinted windows the person walking away, glancing over their shoulder and shaking their head, irritated.
“That was horrible business!” I chide him, smacking his chest again as he sets me down on my feet.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he tells me, keeping his arms locked behind me. “I want to spend the weekend with my wife.”
I try to bite back my smile because it seriously is horrible business and weekends are a great time for us. “You could’ve called Dwight. He’s been dying to take some of his clients here.” I grip my husband’s arms as I turn to take in our gym. We’ve got ninety feet of professional grade turf, for football, soccer, sled pulling. Olympic bar cages, a café, a yoga studio, a fucking sauna.
Whatever anyone fucking wants, we’ve got it.
