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A husky groan fell from his lips, his chest vibrating, and my thighs clenched in response.
He pulled me off of the dryer, fingertips clenching into the skin of my hips, and set my ass down on the folding table in the middle of the room.
I watched in anticipation, breathing shaky, as he unbuttoned my jeans. Easing the way, l lifted my hips as he slowly slid them and my panties down my body. His hands gripped my thighs again, and he spread my legs, baring me completely to his heated gaze.
His groan of approval made my heart beat faster as he gently slid his index finger inside of me and found me wet with need. “You’re so beautiful, LoLo.”
“So are you,” I whispered, and I meant it.
I’d never met a more beautiful man than Reed—and I wasn’t just talking about his outward appearance. His soul drew me in. The world wasn’t the same through his eyes, and judgment was something best left to God. Every experience was worthy of at least one try, and he’d never met a stranger. He was beautiful. Everything about him.
“I want you,” I whispered.
“I want you, too.” He pulled a condom out of his back pocket and slid it down the length of him, his lips teasing mine.
I felt drunk trying to concentrate on everything at once.
“Watch, Lo. Watch me slide inside you.”
Defiance wasn’t even an option. Slowly, inch by inch, he pushed himself inside me, and I didn’t stop staring, couldn’t stop watching, even when he was pushed to the hilt.
His hand slid up my neck until his fingers reached my chin, lifting my gaze to his. Our eyes stayed locked as Reed moved in and out, bleeding himself into me with every stroke. He wasn’t hurried or harsh, and the intimate connection far superseded our physical joining. There was a current from him that flowed into me, and when it came back out the other side, mine had joined it to form an us.
I could feel everything—his long fingers gripping my thighs, the warmth of his breath brushing across my skin, the way my heart pounded inside my chest. My thighs clenched as I struggled to find air, but I was rooted there, stuck in his blue gaze.
This was the most intimate encounter I had ever experienced in my life. Every time we’d come together had been something, but now, finally free of my own persecutions and judgments, my own avoidance and denial, this felt real.
“This isn’t just sex, is it?” I asked on a whisper before editing my question into a statement. “This isn’t just some random fuck in a public place.”
He shook his head. “Never. Not with you.”
As he thrust inside of me with an intensity that matched his words, it was all I could do to wrap my legs around his waist and bury my face in his neck.
“This is everything,” I whispered into his skin, a rush of emotion clogging my throat and my pores and fighting to escape.
His eyes met mine again, and his hands came to my jaw. I softly pressed my lips to his.
“I don’t hate you,” I said against his mouth, and he smiled against my lips.
One soft piece of hair felt cold against the back of my ear as he tucked it there. “I know.”
Our eyes stayed locked, and I searched his endless gaze. To the bottom of his ocean and back, inside those depths of blue, I found only trust and tenderness and affection. A great deal of affection.
Maybe even the same thing I figured lingered under the surface of my own eyes—love.
Something had changed between us.
And I didn’t want to go back.
Around him, I felt good and strong and like everything someone had once suggested about me was wrong, was right.
For the first time in my thirty-two years, Reed made me feel like a woman.
“Reed Fucking Luca.”
I winced as I lifted the hand not clasped with Lola’s and greeted my favorite coffeehouse owner slash barista. “Hey, Tony.”
His eyes lingered on mine for only a moment before straying to the woman attached to me. In an oversized gray sweatshirt that hung off of her shoulders, cutoff olive-green shorts, and her maroon-colored glasses, Lola looked like everything a comfortable woman should—poised, genuine, and a little bit tired from staying up late with me.
It’d been a couple of weeks since she’d admitted to our sex being anything but casual, and there’d only been a couple of bumps in the road. More like speed tables than anything, they’d both revolved around our columns and the root of their purpose—disagreeing with one another.
Of course, for me, the more I knew about her, the more I liked, and as a result, it was getting harder and harder to see her perspective separately from my own. But I’d been trying. I liked what we had, I liked where we were, and a small part of me was scared it would go away if we didn’t have any kind of underlying antagonism to fall back on.
She hated me, and I entertained her. It was what we did.
“I’m still not really sure if I should strangle you or give you a big hug,” Tony said.
“Always the hug. Love is everything.”
Lola scoffed, and with a huge smile, Tony pulled her into a hug instead of me, whispering loud enough that I could hear. “I don’t know anything about you, but if you’re good at identifying his bullshit for what it really is, I already love you.”
Lola laughed, kind of a rolling giggle as Tony held her close and patted his hands from the top of her arms to the bottom for way longer than either of us anticipated.
When he finally let her go, her eyes were round and she mouthed, “Wow. Awkward,” right in my face.
I smiled at the sheer uninhibited nature of her expression. Tony took my smile as an insult, pointing and lecturing me on my smug nature. “You’re lucky you didn’t come in here a couple of weeks ago.”
“What? Why?” Innocent was a nice role to play, but no one would ever accuse me of playing myself. I knew what he was talking about.
“The Reed Luca discount?” Tony answered, and I laughed.
“Come on, Tone. I bet you had a healthy percentage increase in customers. Enough to make up for a little innocent incentive?”
Lola, standing to the side and pulling her hair into a high ponytail, piped up. “This is kind of like Selena.”
“Selena?” I asked, completely lost. “The singer?”
Tony nodded knowingly, his pointer finger settling into a wag. “Ah, yeah. The movie.”
“Exactly,” Lola confirmed excitedly.
My face must have been as blank as my mind because she rolled her eyes and started to explain. “She gets married on the sly to a guy her father doesn’t approve of, and before she can tell her father herself, the radio announces it. He’s a total hothead and is completely outraged, as she expected, so she puts off going to go see him until he can cool off a little.”
“And when she does go back, her father has had time to gain perspective on the situation and welcomes her husband to the family,” Tony added.
“And this is like me, how?” I asked. Quite frankly, I wasn’t getting it.
The speed of Lola’s dictation told me she was losing patience with my ignorance.
“You’re Selena, Tony is your father, the discount is the marriage, the video’s unexpected success is the announcement on the radio, and the time you’ve taken to come in here since then is the cooldown period.”
“Oh.” Wow. Okay, so she had it all figured out.
Tony and Lola looked at one another like I was the crazy one in this scenario, and I don’t know, maybe I was.
One thing I foresaw for my future pretty clearly was a forced movie-watching by Lola.
“How do you know so much about Selena?” I asked Tony teasingly.
“Because she was the goddamn American dream, Reed.” He turned and walked to round his way back to his post behind the counter, calling over his shoulder as he went, “And she had this unmistakable quality that made everyone like her even when she was getting into some sort of trouble.”
“Sounds familiar,” Lola mumbled, and Tony nodded. Both looked from one another to me.
I didn’t know what they expected of me or what reaction they were patiently waiting on, but this was literally one of the best days of my life.
Lola was here, in one of my favorite places, getting along with someone I respected on a human level and finding common ground with him over something completely unexpected. Not to mention the two of them were using all kinds of skills and perspective I’d been planting in their minds since the day I’d met them to confront their affection for me.
I felt like I was on top of the world. My smile reflected that.
“You want to go ahead and order?” I offered, putting my hand on the small of Lola’s back. “I’ll grab a table so we have enough room for the four of us.”
Thanks to Tony’s good business and my random video, the place was packed. But we’d finally gotten around to the coffee date with our sisters, and I didn’t think mine, in particular, would take kindly to standing for even a second longer than she had to.
“Uh, sure. What do you want?”
I waved her off and smiled at Tony. “He knows.” Lola looked uncertain, but Tony quickly confirmed with a nod.
“Okay, perfect. I wanted to buy anyway.”
I shook my head and flexed my fingers into the fabric at her back. “Just put it on my tab, LoLo.”
“Do you ever actually pay your tab?” she asked sarcastically, and the realization struck me like a spark. I guess we still had a lot to learn about one another. The prospect was exciting—I was always hungry for new experiences and information.
