Page 25 of How Good It Was (Excess All Areas 3)

“Guess I passed out hard.” He pushed up so he was sitting, fluffing the duvet to avoid obvious tenting. “Let me just get a shower and we can be on our way.”

When she didn’t move, he noticed she was fixated on his chest, and yeah, while it did wonders for his ego, it did very little for the problem he had going on beneath the covers. He tipped his chin towards the door because there was no way he was getting out of bed in his boxers with a boner that could cut glass. “Willow?”

“Oh, right, sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll be in the living room. Do you want a quick bite to eat before we go?”

“No, I’ll grab something while we’re out.”

He waited until he heard her footsteps disappear down the corridor before he jumped out of bed and pulled on some joggers to make the one-minute hike to the bathroom. It took another minute to lock the door, get the shower going, and strip. He groaned as he stepped under the steaming hot water that eased the muscles in his shoulders.

Without wasting a moment, he fisted his dick. His abs flinched at how good it felt. He squeezed it firmly, a slow and steady stroke from root to tip, a slight twisting at the end. His other palm hit the shower wall, and he leaned his body beneath the spray and continued to pump. The water battered his scalp, bounced off his arms, and flowed down his face as he put himself back in his dream.

Willow, arching beneath him. The way she’d gasped and told him she had no idea it could feel that good. How she’d whispered against his ear that nobody had filled her like he did. Soft breath against his cheek, her fingernails dragging along his skin.

Nothing had felt that good before or since.

He sped up, his hips pumping into his hand, and he caught sight of himself in the glass shower screen. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give to have her in front of him now, like they had in her hotel room. How good it would be to have something soft and warm to thrust into, to lose himself for a few minutes.

He imagined his palms pressed up against his shower wall as he bent his knees and slid into Willow.

The visual sent the telltale tightening to his balls, that electric spark that shot down his spine and tightened his abs to the point of cramps. “Fuck,” he hissed as he violently came.

“Shit,” he muttered, easing himself down again. Squeezing the last of his cum out of his dick as his heart rate finally lowered.

If this was to be Day One of their agreement, he couldn’t think of her like that again. She was a roommate. Nothing more.

She’s the mother of your kid.

Okay, so she was more than a roommate. But if they were to survive the year, that was all she could be. And he’d need to cut down on the partying. Certainly, it couldn’t happen here in his home. The thought of quitting coke hovered between a good idea and an almost immediate need to do a line.

But bringing things like that home would not only be disrespectful to her, but potentially harmful.

He washed and conditioned his hair, soaped the rest of himself and rinsed off. The nap and wank helped take the edge off how he felt when he’d walked in and seen her smiling and drinking her coffee.

In another fifteen minutes, he was dry and dressed in a black shirt and jeans. Dressy considering they were going to a paint store, but he knew Willow was just itching to get on with their subterfuge.

“Ready when you are.”

Willow was on her laptop. “One second. Just finishing building the content calendar for this month for each of the platforms. I took a bunch of photographs of each of your rooms for before and after images. I came up with an idea that we just moved in here, so it’s a renovation project, rather than me moving in and making you decorate, if that’s okay. And then, I’ve got a theme for each week. So, this one is ‘travel’ right up to our reunion. Would it be too much of a pain in the ass to go back to Manchester Airport so I can create a video of me arriving and you being there to pick me up?”

Luke shook his head. “But you’re already here.”

Willow stood. “I know, but I have this cool video for Shamaze. Watch.”

Luke looked down at her phone. Some song he wasn’t familiar with was playing about coming home to you. Willow, packing in a huge bright white room. A spin on a balcony capturing a beautiful white and glass house and an expanse of beach. Willow grinning and waving goodbye. Footsteps with a passport and ticket, a time lapse of a plane going into the air. The same of one landing.

“I need a clip of you at the end. It would just be better, more romantic if you were at the airport. I mean, if it’s a pain, I could always turn it into a video about me surprising you, and we could film me knocking on your door.”

Luke shook his head. “I’m not sure my acting skills are that good. You should have caught me at the studio. Doesn’t it bother you that most of that is fake? I saw how sick you were when you got here. And you told me how miserable things have been at home with your dad, which we still need to talk about properly. Like, don’t you feel like a fraud?”

Willow looked at him as though he’d just slapped her. “It’s my job. To curate aspirational content. I think of it like acting, to be honest. Each week I build a script, then I find images that fit the script.”

Luke glanced down at the app she was using on her laptop. Days of the week, content titles, boxes for images and videos. And he’d noticed in her bedroom a whole heap of camera equipment and ring lights that seemed to have appeared while he’d been away.

“I can’t fake it, Will. You either need to catch it while it’s happening, or I don’t think I’ll be able to do this. I can’t be something I’m not. I think that’s a boundary for me.”

“Okay. I’ll try to work within that,” she said, but not before he saw a flicker of disappointment in her eyes.

Goddamn.

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