Page 53 of Do You Take This Man

Lear:You make it home?

If there hadn’t been things I needed to do the next morning, I would have driven home, too. I pushed off the door, pulling my shirt from my pants and unbuttoning it. My phone dipped to five percent, and I was digging for the charger still plugged in next to the bed when I heard a knock at the door.

“It’s me,” a voice said from the other side, a smoky, sexy voice I’d wanted to hear all evening.

When I opened the door, RJ stood there in yoga pants and a T-shirt that hung off her shoulder.

“I thought you left.”

She looked up at me through thick but unadorned lashes, her features soft. “I didn’t.”

“Why?”

RJ stepped into my room and wrapped her arms around my neck, pressing her lush body to mine, and I pushed the door closed behind her, hugging her back. “I thought... It seemed like you might need someone.” She squeezed me tighter, pressing her face into the crook of my neck, clutching me, pulling me in.

I held her, inhaling the scent of her hair product and pushing back against the tide of emotion. “RJ,” I said, flattening my hand against her shoulder, unsure of what to say and wanting to say a hundred things at the same time.

“That thing today...”

I stiffened. “Yeah.”

She settled her hands against my chest and tipped her chin up. “Do you want to talk about it?” She bit her lip in a way I knew meant she didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to hear the sob story I wasn’t eager to share. She slid her fingertips through my hair, and my body warmed, despite the mental and physical exhaustion.

“Can we not talk?”

She kissed my throat, sliding a hand under my shirt and along my stomach. “We could not talk.”

She finished unbuttoning my shirt, her fingers dexterously moving over the buttons with laser focus. Her silence in that room came back to me, and I wondered about things some more. “RJ?”

She pushed my shirt off my shoulders, the graze of her palms like a balm.

I missed the heat when she pulled them away, but didn’t mind when she tugged her own shirt over her head, and I was rapt as shereached back to unhook her bra, the move awkward and sexy. I finally pulled my senses back. “RJ?”

“Yeah?” She shrugged away her bra, standing in front of me with her perfect breasts begging for my touch, my mouth, but my eyes kept drifting to hers. “What?”

“Thank you for coming over.”

She took my hands and guided them to her pebbled nipples. She let out a sigh at my touch. “Let’s not talk.”

Chapter 29

RJ

“WOW.” I COLLAPSEDonto the bed, Lear’s chest heaving against my back. “That was good.”

His breathing was heavy when his arm wrapped around my waist. “Good is underselling, don’t you think?” He spoke into my skin, his breaths puffing against my shoulder.

“Be happy with your A minus.”

Lear rolled me to my back in one fluid motion, pinning my arms over my head. “I don’t get A minuses, and we both submitted assignments.”

I pulled my arm free from his grasp and traced his jawline with my fingertip. “Peer review. The minus makes you work harder next time.”

Lear’s hair was sweaty, and some longer curls framed his face. “You’re...” He propped himself on an elbow next to me, letting his forearm rest over my stomach again, the weight familiar and comforting.

I let my head loll to the side and studied the stubble on his chin. It was so rare to relax like this after sex, to have time to notice things like the scar under his chin or the small chip in his front tooth. “Difficult? Hard to please?”

He shook his head while his fingers grazed my waist, swirling an invisible pattern on my skin. “Pleasing you is fun. You’re hard to read.”

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