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“I like it.”

I roll my eyes. He grins against my lips. The assignment is still open on his laptop. I watched him finish the problems. He’s not submitted them yet, which means he’s not technically done.

“Upload it,” I say. “Then I’ll give you one sentence. After that, we go to your game night, and we will stick to me being just your friend.”

“You’re okay with that?”

“Yeah. You said he’s getting over someone, and if he loved him, he wouldn’t want to see our happiness right now. We have forever to tell your friends.”

He bites his lower lip, and I can see he’s unsure.

“Do you want the sentence or not?” I arch my brow and look pointedly at his screen.

He sighs and lets me go, which is how I know he’s actually going to do it. He drops into the chair, clicks through the portal, and hits submit like the button offended him. The confirmation pops up. He spins around. “Reward now, brain. Then we’ll go.”

I cross my arms. My face is already warm. I’ve had him in ways that I can barely imagine, saying something dirty out loud shouldn’t be hard anymore, but it is. He waits, delighted as I shift on my feet.

“I’m going to sit on that floor tonight at Luke’s and pretend I don’t know what your mouth feels like wrapped around me, or what you feel like when you're thrusting inside of me,” I say. “And when we get back, if you let me win one single race…I’ll let you bend me over that desk and sink your big cock inside of me until we both come.” He looks at me with his lip captured between his teeth, his pupils blown wide and full of lust, and it does things to me I enjoy. “And don’t look at me like that in their room. Luke will notice. He’s sad, not blind.”

He goes quiet in a way I’ve come to sense is a good way. He blushes and releases his lip. “Fuck,” he says. “That’s cruel.”

“You asked for one sentence.” I'm smiling, and I don’t hide it. The confirmation is still up on his screen which means that rule has been satisfied and I’m allowed to be a little evil about the rest. “And I gave you more than that. Consider it interest. Now stop looking at me like that or we’re going to be late.”

He adjusts himself with zero shame at all. “Come on, I have a game of Mario Kart to lose.” He grabs his hoodie off the back of the chair. “You’re lucky I like you.”

“You love me.”

“Yeah.” He says it easily, then he remembers the plan for tonight and reins his face in, which is almost funny. The smile doesn’t disappear. It just gets smaller, the one he uses in public. “Okay…Friend, and I will not follow you into the bathroom to blow you. If Will asks why you’re there, you’re my roommate who somehow agreed to be destroyed on Rainbow Road.”

I pull on my own hoodie and check my pockets for my phone. He stops me, pulling me into him for a deep kiss that I can feel all the way down to the tips of my toes.

We’re running late anyway, and a slight anxiety starts to build inside of me. I hate being late to things. His friend swings open the door, and I linger behind Daniel. I push up my glasses nervously and resist the urge to drag my fingers through my hair again.

“This is Quinn,” Daniel says as he drops a bag of chips on the counter. “He’s my new roommate. Be nice.”

New isn’t technically true, but neither is just roommate, it is however the story we were going with. “Hi. I, uh…Daniel said we are playing Mario Kart, and I don’t actually know how to play.”

Could I be any more awkward? There goes my first impression with his friend group. I mean I did meet some of them once before in the fall, but I doubt they remember me. A collective gasp follows my words, and every eye turns toward me. I shift, uncomfortable.

“Blasphemy,” Eli says. I know his name because of the games I’ve gone to. Daniel has told me most of them. And he’s shown me pictures on his phone. So I do know all of their names, even if no one is actually introduced. I’m just sort of welcomed and it’s assumed I know names…or something.

Micah clutches his chest, and Colton grins over at him. “How dare you walk into this sacred space uninitiated.”

“We’ll fix that,” Luke says, grabbing a controller and tossing it toward me. I almost drop it, and a nervous chuckle comes out. “You’re on my team,” he tells me.

“Wait, wait,” Will says. He’s over by the table setting up what looks like a popcorn machine. “We’re doing teams?” he asks, turning toward Luke.

“Of course we are,” he says. I’m pretty sure he’s just being nice and trying to include me. It makes me like him immediately. “Four-way battle royale. Winner gets to pick their next partner. Loser has to film a TikTok with Will.”

“Why am I the punishment?” Will asks, pouring popcorn into the popper.

“You post inspirational thirst traps,” Luke says with a straight face, and I can’t decide if it’s a joke or not.

Ty leans forward and passes out plates for the pizza. “Alright, warm-up round. Let’s see if the new guy can survive.”

I sit on the floor next to Daniel, Luke is on my other side, and it feels like this is harder than any homework I’ve ever had. “If I lose, are you kicking me out?”

I know I told Daniel he had to let me win, but if I don’t actually know what I’m doing, that might be an impossible feat.