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His smile was wry. “Join the club. Come sit.”
I grabbed a glass, filling it with tap water, before joining him on the couch. I looked at the TV, but I didn’t recognize what was on it. It looked like a high school basketball game. “What’s this?” I asked.
He lowered the volume but didn’t look at me. “It’s a tape of one of my first high school games.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Tape?”
“Please tell me you know what a VHS tape is.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nathan, I’m twenty-five. Yes, I know what a VHS tape is.”
He smirked as he shrugged. “We’re ten years apart, and technically, you’re Gen Z. I don’t know what you know. I got the shock of my life when I had to explain a floppy disk to John.”
I poked his shoulder. “Okay, old man. Why are you watching this?”
Though he smirked at the nickname, he sighed. “I don’t know. Sentimentality? Remembering when life was simple?”
“Which player are you?”
He pointed to the screen. “In the white jersey, with the number three.”
We sat in silence for a while, watching the game play out on the screen. Finally, he said, “By this time, I knew for sure I wasn’t going to the NBA. My parents—Mom, in particular—were disappointed.”
“Why was your mom disappointed?”
He cupped the back of his neck. “She had been bragging to everyone in town that I was going to be the next Michael Jordan,” he said. “According to her, I was good enough to make it to the pros. That was the thing about my mom: she was always pushing under the guise of making me the best I could be.
“But really, she couldn’t stand that Zeke was better than me in basketball even though he was a year younger. Sure, we were both athletic, but my heart wasn’t in it the way his was. He actually ended up playing ball in college, but things went a little south when he got suspended for being a little too wild at a party in his sophomore year.”
“So this rivalry with Zeke,” I said. “It started with basketball?”
Nathan snorted. “If only—I would’ve had at least a few years of peace. No, it started the moment my mom got pregnant and Zeke’s mom got pregnant four months later. My mom and her brother—my uncle—had always been in competition with one another. My mom is the oldest of her family, so she held control of the Hemingway estate, its assets, everything. Uncle Bob wasn’t a spiteful man, but he did feel some type of way about his sister being responsible forhismoney. So I’m sure he had something to do with the whole marriage clause being a part of the deal. Zeke never had a problem getting women to like him, strangely.”
“And you did?” I asked. When Nathan turned to me, I blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply…”
“No, it’s a fair question,” he said. His eyes caught mine, and I saw a glint of something I couldn’t name. “What do you think, Cinderelly? You’re a woman; do I have a problem getting women to like me?”
I bit my lip, actively fighting against the fantasies of Nathan I had built up over the last couple of weeks.In my dreams, I wanted to say,you never have a problem gettingme. But I was sure that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.
“I…I don’t know,” I stammered. “I’d imagine not. You seem sociable enough.”
“Yeah?” he said, his gaze flicking down to my lips and then back up. “I’m sociable, huh? Is that what made you like me?”
“I mean, sure,” I breathed. My mind helpfully supplied the word I had been looking for to describe Nathan’s look, along with a few others: possessive. Wolfish. Wanton. He fingered a curl that had escaped my messy bun, the errant one that hung loose at the nape of my neck. Meanwhile, I tried to remember how to breathe.
“So is that all I needed, then?” His voice was a murmur that spoke right to my soul. Or maybe it just spoke to the heat pooling between my legs; I couldn’t be sure.
Either way, my eyelashes fluttered as he came closer. My nipples hardened of their own accord, inviting his gaze downward as they brushed against his arm.
“Yes,” I whispered. “And, you know, charming. Which you already know you are, with the nickname Prince Charming and all.”
“So you find me to be charming, then,” he said, his breath touching my lips. I gave up on trying to take in air or keeping my eyes open. It was all I could do to stay upright.
“Yes, very,” I admitted, savoring the feeling of the tip of his nose brushing the column of my throat, puffs of air hitting my collarbone.
“Well, then, I guess I have my answer.” His lips met mine, finally.
Much like our last kiss, this one tasted of urgency, of inevitability. There was a sense of longing in the way Nathan lowered me to the couch cushion and ran his hands down my sides without breaking contact with my lips, in the way he wrapped my legs around his waist. He groaned when my tongue tasted his, flitting and dancing and finding our own secret rhythm. I could feel his hardness against my center, and it was all I could do to force myself to enjoythismoment instead of pushing us to the end, where he pulled out a condom and entered me inch by inch. Because for once, my fantasies of him did not do the real man justice, instead showing me that I did not have nearly enough creativity when it came to the one Nathan Hemingway.
