Page 69 of Imperfect Player

I roll onto my back, deciding to let her sleep, when I hear her giggle.

“Are you messing with me?” I ask, propping myself up on my elbow.

“Yep.”

I want to kiss the smile off her lips, but fuck if I don’t need to get this shit off my chest first. It’s too important. She’s too important.

I smile, biting back my laughter at the thought that pops into my head. One that I can’t quite believe or understand. Me, Ethan Ambrose, warding off sex to have an emotional conversation with a woman.

Who the fuck am I?

Gathering my courage, I take a deep breath in then say, “We need to talk.”

Her body tenses, shifting in the bed as she pulls the covers tighter around her.

“About?”

“Last night.”

“Nothing to talk about. It was just sex. It was—”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“It’s not a big deal. We can just forget it ever happened.”

“I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that. I want that memory ingrained in my brain until the day I die. I want to close my eyes and remember what you felt like, how you tasted.”

Her eyes widen at my less-than-elegant words. I hadn’t meant to say those things, not like that, at least.

“I’m not trying to walk away. I’m trying to . . . ”

How in the hell did this go so off the rails?

Because you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, idiot. And there’s a good chance you shouldn’t be doing it to begin with.

“I don’t know what this is between us, and I sure as fuck don’t understand it. I don’t date, didn’t date, never wanted to. Until you. I know I’m not handling this right. That I’m probably making things worse. It’s just . . . I have no clue what I’m doing. All I know, all I can give you, is me. I hate to say it, but that comes with a whole lot of shit that you shouldn’t have to deal with. I like you, Everly. I like being with you in ways that I’ve never been with anyone before. I like talking. I like holding you. God, do I love fucking you. But it’s more than that, so much more. You’re important to me, too important to lose. So, if me fumbling my way through whatever this is will ruin our friendship, then—”

She presses a finger to my lips. Tears trickle down her cheeks.

“I want that too. And I don’t care what we have to fumble our way through. I’m here for it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Her lips brush against mine, soft and sweet.

The kiss causes my balls to tighten. She trails soft kisses down my torso. Her lips wrap around my cock.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Who the hell knew that soft and tender could be so fucking good?

My head falls back onto the pillow as she works her mouth around me. Soft. Slow. Gentle. A kiss to the tip of my cock, followed by her tongue darting out to taste the precum waiting there for her. Nails softly scrape along my balls before she cups them in her hand.

“Fucking hell, sunshine.”

Her smile. I can feel it against the velvety skin of my cock just before she sinks down on me, taking every fucking inch. The feel of the back of her throat has me emitting the loudest fucking groan.

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