“Peach,” he says, demanding I open my eyes and look down at him again. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?” My bud blooms under his velvet kisses, each one bringing a rush of wetness between my legs that he uses to slide his finger deep inside of me. With his finger massaging just the right spot, he sucks me between his lips and savors me with the tip of his tongue. The sensation is so overwhelming that I instinctively reach toward his head to get him to stop, but instead of pushing him away, my fingers thread through his hair and hold him against me.
I’m moaning. I know I’m moaning, and if anyone is still awake in this house—which they definitely are now even if they weren’t before—I know they can hear me. But God, I don’t care. Nothing matters but Adam and what he’s doing to me.
He withdraws his finger to swipe his tongue through me, sucking on my tiny nub like he’s trying to dissolve it under his swirling tongue. My entire body feels like it’s coiling too tightly, like it’s going to unravel at any moment, and Adam must be able to sense it because his finger pumps back inside of me, curling against my insides as he devours me with his greedy mouth. He watches me watching him, and the sight of those eyes on me is enough to pull me apart. I burst all at once into a flood of white hot rapids, fighting the pull until it overtakes me. My hand flies out of Adam’s hair to grip the pillow behind my head as I get swept away. My legs shake, my hips buck, and Adam pulls his finger out of me to grab my hips on both sides. He pins me to the bed and buries his face between my legs.
“Fuck, Adam!”
Moans rumble low in his throat as he drinks me up, and when I can’t take anymore, I grip his hair between my fingers and pull him toward me. I sit up to meet him halfway and kiss him while my frantic heartbeat pulses between my legs. Adam’s lips press against mine until I’m forced to lie back, and then he settles between my thighs, the hard-on in his boxers driving me wild with want.
“Get another condom,” I beg against his mouth.
He shakes his head, our lips brushing in a soft caress.
“Why not?”
His gray-green eyes search mine, and then he pulls away to trace his thumb over the curve of my kiss-swollen lips. “I don’t want you to regret it.”
The questions I want to ask are drowned in the kisses he gives me, so soft and tender that the rapids in my belly calm into a bubbling pool. He kisses me until my muscles loosen and exhaustion sets in. Then he shifts to my side, leaving every inch of me chilled and wanting. His arm wraps around my waist and tugs me in until I’m spooned inside the length of his body, and then his nose buries in my hair and he deeply breathes me in.
My body wants to sleep, but my mind is filled with the echo of his words. I don’t want you to regret it. Why does he think I’d regret it? Would he want to forget my name, just like all of the others?
The insecure part of me is shouting, Of course he would! He’s Adam freaking Everest! You’re Rowan freaking Nobody! Even Brady didn’t want you. What else did you expect?
But the other part of me—the part of me that just accepted everything he was willing to give me, the part that almost confessed the three words that would have ruined everything—lies content in Adam’s arms, wondering why he’s holding me like he’ll never let me go.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Can you come pick me up?
The morning after my epically failed hookup with Adam, I’m desperate for an escape plan. I woke with his arms around me and his stubbly face smothered against the back of my neck, but I felt so nervous about how things would be between us that instead of falling back asleep in the only place my heart wanted to be, my stomach tossed and I felt like I was going to throw up.
Dee’s response is immediate. She knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t ask unless I needed her, and right now, I need her more than ever.
On my way.
With Adam and Shawn still asleep, and Joel nowhere to be found, I sit on Adam’s couch gnawing my cuticles to bits since my fingernails have long since met their maker. I’m saying silent prayers that Adam won’t wake up and find me out here and want to talk about why I snuck out of bed, or why I’m using my best friend as a getaway driver, or why I practically begged for him to take my virginity last night after almost telling him I loved him.
He did me a favor. He still wants to be friends.
Friends . . . Unless in the light of a new morning, he realizes we are so far beyond that and one of us—the one who has never had and never wants a friend like that—will never be able to go back.
My thumb is bleeding and my foot is bouncing up and down when a key turns in the lock and Joel strolls in ahead of my thoroughly tousled best friend. Her chestnut locks are pulled up into a haphazard ponytail, and Joel’s normally meticulously styled blond hair is all over the place in the most sexed-up bed-head I’ve ever seen. I raise my eyebrow at Dee, but she tugs me to my feet before I can even ask.