Page 18 of Breaking the Rules of Love

My fingers slide across her hips and the smooth skin of her stomach. There’s something so hot about knowing my seed is somewhere deep inside her as she looks at me.

“What’s a sign from the universe, Jake?” Was her voice always this beautiful? Or do things just sound nicer after what we just did together?

“Me moving in next door to you.” I smile, moving up to her breasts and taking one in my hand. I’mstillturned on, but I just want to lie here with her for a while and talk. I just want tobewith her now. And I can’t remember the last time I felt like that with any woman.

“Oh yeah?” She smiles. “I agree. Because that was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

I chuckle and kiss her. Now there’s a statement every man would love to hear at some point in his life.

“Amen to that,” I reply.

I feel so alive beside Sadie. Alive in a way I haven’t felt in a long time.

It goes beyond just the sex too. There’s something about Sadie that has me thinking about the future. Something about her gives me that feeling in my chest that you get when you know you’ve met someone you’re really going to click with.

“Hey, I didn’t tell you about my job last night, did I?” I ask.

“No, you didn’t,” she replies. “Why? Did something crazy happen?”

I chuckle. “You could say that.” I take her hand and guide it to the stitches on the back of my head. “Feel that?”

Her eyes go wide. “Jake! Are those stitches? What happened?”

“Do you know the pop star Violet Keith?”

Sadie’s jaw drops, and she props herself up on one elbow. “You were protecting her last night?”

I nod. “Yup. And she assaulted me with a bat. Gave me those stitches.”

Sadie’s jaw drops and she gasps. “She did not!”

I burst out laughing and point a finger. “No, she didn’t. But I got you.”

Sadie frowns and giggles at the same time and gives me a flirtatious punch in the chest.

“What really happened, Jake!?”

Laughing, I recount the story of last night to her—from the start of the job to me getting hit by whatever it was I got hit with to Violet hitting on me and inviting me up to her room. I also tell her how I turned her down before heading to the Emergency Room for some quick stitches.

“So let me get this straight…” Sadie says slowly, as if she can’t believe it. “Violet Keith invited you up to her hotel room, most likely to fuck, and you turned her down?”

“That’s right.” I smile.

“Why would you do that?”

“Well…I was hopingthiswould happen, so I didn’t want to screw things up with you.”

I thought this would either flatter her and get her to cuddle up closer to me, or at least get her laughing about how crazy the whole night ended up being, but for some reason, she ends up with a strange, somewhat concerned look on her face.

Sadie stands up from the bed, goes over to her dresser, pulls out a big oversized T-shirt, and slides into it. She stands there with her back to me for so long that I actually start to wonder what’s going on.

“Sadie? Hello?” I say. “Earth to Sadie?”

This gets her attention. She turns around, but she’s looking at the ground like she’s trying to figure out a really hard math problem.

“Jake, I…what you said just now…that was really sweet…but…”Oh, boy. This isn’t good.“I kinda sorta have this rule.”

“A rule? What rule?” For the first time we met, Sadie can’t bring herself to look at me. “A no-relationship rule.”

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