Page 1 of Playing With Forever

PROLOGUE

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I’d been standing back, watching for the last fifteen minutes, and still couldn’t believe it.

The woman was class, all class—designer jeans that molded to her curves, a long-sleeved black silk blouse with pleats around the high collar, not an inch of skin showing but still sexy as hell. Blood-red spiked heels on her feet looked lethal. Short, bobbed blonde hair that might’ve been her natural color at one time but now came from a skilled stylist.

High class and gorgeous.

She looked like she belonged in a swanky bar that served seventy-five-dollar drinks, not a pool hall. No shade to Balls Deep—Matt and Chelsea ran a fine establishment. But you came to Balls Deep to tie one on, play some pool, and have a good time with friends.

Which was what we were doing, with the addition of celebrating Tucker and Liza’s engagement. I couldn’t say I knew Tucker well, and I’d only met Liza a few times, but Liza was tight with my partner Echo Kent’s family.

The couple looked happy. I had yet to see them separate since they’d walked in. No, I’d yet to see Tucker let his woman get far. He held her in the curve of his arm while she chatted with her friends. He kept her close as they laughed, smiled, and accepted congratulatory handshakes and hugs. Since the bar was packed with well-wishers, they’d been busy.

But my attention was taken by the woman schooling some guy—by the looks of it, a biker—at pool. There were four bills under a beer bottle on a high-top cocktail table nearby. Echo’s brother Phoenix and his wife Wren stood guard over the money.

Money that would wind up in Josie Lark’s wallet at the end of the game.

As if sensing I was watching, Josie’s head tipped up, and stunning blue eyes locked with mine. This only lasted a second before she winked, looked back down at her cue, and sent the eight ball sailing across the felt, sinking it in the side pocket.

Decision made.

I pushed off the stool to make the acquaintance of a sexy, classy, gorgeous woman.

CHAPTER ONE

It had been a long time since I’d done the walk of shame. In fact, it had been so long I wasn’t even sure that was a thing anymore. Thirty years ago, when a woman snuck out of a man’s house in last night’s clothes, she prayed no one saw her. Now, rightfully, women simply walked out the front door, ordered an Uber to come pick them up, and didn’t give a rat’s rear end who saw them. I didn’t even think women quietly rolled out of bed, crept out of the bedroom gathering clothes as they went to silently dress in the hallway, before tiptoeing out of the house.

Which begged the question: why was I right then tiptoeing out of Evan Sanders’s house before dawn after a night of mind-blowing sex?

It had not been thirty years since I’d engaged in wild, energetic, unbelievably fantastic sex. Seeing as I’d never engaged in such activities. I’d been married for sixteen years—seventeen by the time the divorce was final—and in the fifteen years since then I hadn’t lived in a nunnery. I had experienced what I’d erroneously thought was great sex. Though this was not the first time I’d had the realization that I’d never had good sex. My first awakening happened with my first post-divorce lover. It was then I realized that Dameon was shit in bed, but since Dameon had been my first, then my husband for sixteen years, I had nothing to compare it to. Honesty? I’d naively thought all the hype was just that—hype. Then I learned differently. That wasn’t to say every man I’d had since I’d divorced Dameon was great, but they’d all been better than him by a mile.

But none of them held a candle to Evan Sanders.

And for some bizarre reason, that had me fleeing the scene of said phenomenal sex. I would like to think my escape had to do with last night being a lapse in judgment, due to our loose connection. But I wasn’t sure it was completely due to the fact we had friends in common, and it was never a good idea to get romantically involved when there were shared acquaintances. Though his ties to the group were tighter and deeper than mine were. Still, it wasn’t a good idea. Evan also volunteered at the center I ran. While I wasn’t in charge of volunteers, it wasn’t smart to mix business and pleasure, and the kids he worked with at my center needed him more than I needed mind-bending orgasms. (Yes, plural. In the hours I’d spent in his bed, he’d doled out climaxes like Oprah did cars.)

This was not good—because it was all really good, and now that I knew how good—no, scratch that, how astonishingly great sex could be, I was ruined for all other men. Not to mention that aforementioned loose connection, and now I’d have to face him in the rare times we were together, having firsthand knowledge of his prowess. (And what he looked like naked, and how pretty his cock was—and yes, I’d learned last night that a cock could be beautiful when it was perfectly shaped—and how skilled his mouth was, and then there were his incredibly sexy hands. That was something else I learned last night, I’d had a latent hand fetish, or at least I had one with Evan.) None of this boded well for me.

Then there was a small piece of me that was worried my escape had nothing to do with any of that but instead with my insecurities. I couldn’t face the possibility of waking up next to Evan only to find out that Dameon was right, I was the one who was crap in bed, and that’s why he’d gone looking for sex outside our marriage. Insecurities I’d been certain I’d worked through after the shock of his betrayal had worn off. Wasn’t that most men’s excuse for stepping out of their marriage—blame the wife instead of taking accountability for their weakness?

But there I was, a fifty-two-year-old mother of two grown children sneaking out of a man’s house in the wee hours of the morning like a twenty-something of the sex-shaming-women era.

All because I’d had the best sex of my entire life with a handsome man who, at his age, had a body that should be criminal—as in felonious. As wondrous as that was, and it had been an eye-opening journey discovering the ridges and valleys of his abdominals, it was still off-putting in the sense that he was Adonis and I was nowhere near…a goddess of anything.

And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, with Evan being cut from marble and me being soft and curvy—if memory served, and I knew it did because the last four hours were seared into my memory in a way I knew I’d never forget a single moment—he’d had to instruct me.

Instruct. Me.

So, yes, I was escaping.

“JOSIE, HEY,” Quinn Lancaster called out from the doorway of my office.

I had an open-door policy with everyone who worked, volunteered, or used Hope Center facilities. That was, if my door was open, they were welcome to come in. Quinn and her crew had been working with the center in some capacity for years; she was well aware of the policy, so her standing outside my door gave me pause.

“Come in.” I motioned her forward. “Did everything go okay with Brynne?”

“Yes. She’s…” Quinn paused, obviously struggling to find the correct adjective.