“Once, twice, five, maybe seven times.” She laughs, her Southern drawl even slower, her breath still jagged, nipples tight and wet under my tongue.
“But that was in the throes of passion.” I dip to kiss the tattooed prayer wrapping around her ribs. “I’m saying it completely sober, so you know it’s true. Not in the throes.”
“Will you stop saying throes? No one say throes.”
“I just said it.” I lift my head, teasing her with a glance. “You’re saying I invented the word throes?”
“No, not invented, just that people don’t use the word . . .” She rolls her eyes. “Shut up and get back to my nipples. You were saying?”
My hands roam her flat stomach and one sleekly muscled thigh. This girl and her dancer’s legs are gonna be the death of me. I flip her back onto her side and spoon my body around hers until that tight ass is pressed against me as I reach around to cup her breasts. I know she’s self-conscious about them.
“How could you ever think these breasts were anything less than perfect?”
“They’re tiny,” she whispers. “Most men—”
“Don’t matter since I’m the only one who’ll ever see them.” A horrible thought blackens my brain and I turn her onto her back again. “Pep, you still want to act?”
“You know I do. Eventually. Malcolm already has an acting coach lined up.”
Fucking Malcolm. Not even going there.
“I mean, you know you can’t do nudity, right?”
“Rhyson,” she groans. “Don’t you dare start with this.”
“And no sex scenes.” Okay. Compromise. “I mean I guess, kissing is okay. Like closed-mouthed kissing.”
She turns those tilted eyes my way wearing her “gimme a break” face.
“Name the last movie you saw with closed-mouthed kissing, no nudity, and no sex scenes, Rhys. In recent memory! A Wonderful Life doesn’t count.”
I mull that over because there’s gotta be something she can do.
“Frozen.” I can barely get it around the laugh swelling in my throat. “They had it on the plane.”
“Dude, you just said Frozen.”
“That’s it. I just solved our problem. Animation. You’d make a great Pocahontas. Or who was that other one? Mulan?”
“Diverse Disney princesses.” Her shoulders shake with the laugh. “That’s what you’re leaving me? And by the way, you don’t have to physically resemble animated characters to play them.”
“But it would lend a certain authenticity, don’t you think?”
“We’re not having this discussion any time soon.”
“Animation could be a great way to ease into acting, Pep. I think you should consider it. Because if you start acting before you’re good, I’ll rotten tomato you.”
“You would rotten tomato your own girlfriend?”
I shrug, turning down the corners of my mouth and linking my hands behind my head.
“If you suck, you’d leave me no choice.”
“If you rotten tomato me, I’ll never give you another blow job.”
Even knowing she’s pulling my chain, my heart stops for a second at the possibility of those lips never wrapped around my cock again.
“You, my lady, are the most powerful woman in the universe.”
She laughs so hard she curls her legs up and grips her stomach under the sheet.
“Blow jobs make me the most powerful woman in the whole universe?”
I lift up on an elbow, turned on my side, pushing the hair back from her face.
“Nope. Just in mine.”
Our eyes hold until the laughter evaporates.
“You’re crazy, but I adore you,” she whispers. “You know that?”
When someone says they adore you, it’s like love with a heap of cherries on top. You could love someone and kind of hate them. But to adore them, you have to like them a lot. And still it seems a pretty flimsy word to describe what I feel for this girl.
She lifts off the pillow far enough to give me a quick kiss that I waste no time taking deeper, licking into her mouth and nudging my thigh between her legs.
“Don’t start again,” she says, the words husky against my lips. “Or we won’t get to talk.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” My hands skim over a naked hip beneath the sheet.
“Yes.” She pulls back to look at me. “You haven’t even told me how this happened. How you came to be here with me.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t started humping my leg as soon as I walked through the door.”
“You’re so conceited.” She chuckles, tracing the musical notes over my ribs. “How long do I have you?”
“Just tonight.” We stop smiling as that sinks in. That when we wake up in the morning together, it’ll be the last time for a while. “I checked the mistletoe schedule and realized you were headed for Berlin. Since Kaos lives here, I suggested coming to him instead of him flying to LA. I’m going to his home studio in the city tomorrow, and then I gotta fly back to work on Marlon’s album.”