Page 81 of The True Love Experiment

“That right?” I ask.

Fizzy nods. “On the beach, when I talked about the way I felt reconnected to the part of me I missed?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s you. The person my heroines choose is always the person who makes them feel like the best version of themselves. You make me feel that way.”

“But that doesn’t have to be romantic, Fizzy,” I tell her, throat tight. “I do want to be your friend when all of this is said and done.”

“What if I wanted you to be mybestfriend? The kind who also kisses me?” she quietly asks.

Maybe the champagne has disengaged my filter, but otherwise I’ve never felt more sober. This all suddenly feels inevitable. I can’t even remember wanting to resist her. “You’d only have to ask.”

Her gaze drops to my lips, and her mouth goes soft and hungry. “Kiss me.”

With her hand cupping my face, she gently guides me to press my mouth to the full sweetness of hers for a single, lingering touch. I pull away.

“More,” she whines sweetly, and her smile turns wicked. “With tongue.”

I laugh at this. “Is that a good idea?”

“No, it’s a terrible idea, but that’s my brand.” Fizzy stretches, dragging her lips up the column of my neck. “Holy shit you taste good.” Her teeth graze the straining muscle there, and she scoots closer, pressing into me. “I want you, Connor, all the time.”

Fire sears through my bloodstream and an ache pierces my groin. Surrendering, I let my hand do what it wants—gliding up that warm, honeyed thigh, over the curve of her hip, under the hem of those unbelievably soft sleep shorts to find even softer skin just beneath. The kind of sex we could have in here makes my imagination dissolve into white noise.

“How’s this for a plan,” she says, gently biting my neck. “What happens in this room stays in this room.”

“I feel like I’ve heard this before.” My voice is thick with desire. My fingers find the lush curve of her ass.

“We start with kissing,” she continues, using her leg to coax one of mine forward. She rocks into me, clamping my thigh between hers. “If it feels good, we maybe take some clothes off. If you don’twant to have sex with me, that’s fine.” Pulling back, Fizzy smiles up at me. “You can just eat my pussy and head home, and everyone is happy.”

Laughter rises up out of me and I couldn’t resist her even if I was shackled to the wall by my wrists and ankles. I am so fucked for this woman. So I do the only thing I can imagine: I give in, turning my face down to hers, and let the night dissolve between us.

thirty-fiveFIZZY

Iused to think first kisses were the most powerful of all the kisses. That first, hyperaware contact with such uniquely soft, responsive skin. The discovery of someone else’s sounds and tastes and desire. The ultimate reveal: Is there real passion there?

But I was wrong. First kisses are great, but the one hundredth, the one thousandth kisses are better. There’s familiarity and comfort, satiating a need but with enough knowledge to know how to tease and play. Whoever invented kissing is my favorite historical figure ever.

“I want to kiss you for the rest of the weekend,” I mumble into his mouth.

With a laugh, he rolls over onto me, his hand running up and down my thigh, gripping and stroking until I arch into his touch, coaxing his fingers up my hip, along my ribs, over my breast.

I could be satisfied with kissing, but I want everything else. Being with Connor feels like a devastating inevitability. I have this pit-deep need for something not just fast and satisfying but slow and whole. I sense the same surrender in him, too. It’s in the way he kisses me so slow and deep, the patient mapping of his hands across my body, over my clothes, before he drags one item of clothingat a time up over my head or down my legs with deliberate, patient purpose.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says into the sensitive skin below my ear, and then repeats it quietly into my neck, my shoulder, my breasts.

This isn’t rushed foreplay. This is like someone put the whole world on pause. He’s solid and strong above me, and I become a pliable, languid tangle of limbs and skin under his attention. His lips linger on my breasts, tongue and teeth teasing me expertly, mouth sucking. It hits me like a thunderbolt: only someone who knows me from the inside out can satisfy and torture me like this in equal measure.

I’ve never felt such a longing to besomeone’sthe way I do with Connor. I want to eat his possessive, open-mouthed kisses for every meal. I want him to have a memory of kissing every place on my body. I want my hands to instinctively mold to the shape of him. I want him to know by the heat of my skin and the pitch of my sounds how close I am.

Connor tells me he can’t stop thinking about me, that all he wants to do is touch me. He kisses down my body to settle between my open legs and reaches up, running his thumb over my lips, feeling the shape of my sounds as he works me over with his mouth, giving me something to suck and bite while pleasure pours out of me. I want to let my head fall back and lose myself in the wide swirls of his tongue, when he sucks, tight and determined, but I’m afraid to miss any of it. When I look down, I see the top of his head, his eyes closed in bliss. I tangle his soft hair in my hands, and when his name escapes on an exhale, he looks up, mouth still on me, fingers inside, his own sounds vibrating up my spine. I say his name, wantingto imprint on my memory that it’s Connor making me feel this way, should only ever be him taking me to the edge, closer, closer, and then making me fall. Once I’m wrecked and boneless, he rolls me over, sinking fingers and teeth into all my curves, biting gently down my legs, his teeth grazing the swell of my ass, up my back to send shivers down my spine. A slow thrust against my thigh, and I feel how hard he is, his breath shaking against my skin.

I look over my shoulder at him, feeling kiss drunk and heavy-limbed. “You don’t by chance have protection.”

“I do.” He kisses back down my spine and stands. “My wallet.”

“Please tell me it hasn’t been there since the divorce.”

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