Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86614 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 433(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86614 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 433(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
For one brief second, I thought he was about to yell at me.
Next thing I knew, my back slammed into a wall for the second time that night.
This time with more force.
And this time with the addition of Ramsey’s mouth sealing over mine. Not in a bite, but a kiss that short-circuited every thought zipping through my head.
Full of heat and need, his kiss simultaneously crashed over me like a wave and shot through me like lightning. The warring sensations left me light-headed, and I gasped for breath as my lips parted beneath his. His tongue slid over mine, smooth as silk, and I tasted him for the first time.
Long-term crushes were weird. I’d gotten so used to the unrequited part, at first I didn’t know what the fuck to do with the fact that it was now being requited, at least physically.
In my fantasies, I’d touched Ramsey a hundred times, grasped him firmly, confidently, plundered his mouth, tugged him closer, pushed him away, yanked his pants down, his shirt off, his socks, shoes. A hundred imaginary articles of his clothing had been destroyed, ripped, or torn off in my daydreams, and now that this moment was actually happening, the tremor that’d run through me earlier returned. My stomach went all jittery, alive with bone-deep desire that spread outward, seeking an outlet that finally came in the form of a moan that rumbled through my chest.
Then instinct kicked in, reminding me what I was supposed to be doing: enjoying the hell out of this, saturating myself in it. Later I could question motivation. Right now? I just needed to give in to the primal urge that always came alive around Ramsey.
I needed to take.
The jittery feeling subsided, hunger surging in its wake as my fists unclenched and I sank into the kiss. When Ramsey’s grip on me slackened, as if he might pull away, I snaked a hand into the waistband of his jeans and hauled him around the side of the building where the darkness was thicker, and then shoved him against the wall the same way he had me.
He let out a short, sharp grunt as he smacked into the bricks, and before he could get a word out, I closed my mouth over his again, determined to savor this singular event down to its marrow.
He tasted like whiskey and the bite of pepper, and the kiss morphed from fervent savagery to a more exploratory tempo, like he was enjoying the taste of me too. A minute shift of his hips sent a torturous, tempting pleasure corkscrewing through me.
Just to see what would happen, I rolled my hips once, my aching dick gliding firmly against his in one long, slow slide. Ramsey let out a groan that made me want to reach deeper behind his waistband, wrap a hand around his shaft, and get him off right there in the alley, but I resisted, just barely. This being Ramsey’s first guy-on-guy kiss, it might’ve been overkill, and fuck knew, I didn’t want to overwhelm him. Too much.
It occurred to me I was thinking with my upstairs brain, and I didn’t like it. I reengaged the downstairs brain and focused on the kissing part again because it turned out that Real Ramsey was just as stellar a kisser as Fantasy Ramsey.
Letting go of his waistband, I slid both palms up to his jawline, his stubble biting into the skin of my palms, and held him close, our cheeks brushing when we finally broke for air or risked passing out.
“Fuck,” he muttered on a gusty exhale that warmed the side of my neck.
“Okay,” I said in a teasing murmur. “Your place or your place? Because I’m kind of squatting currently.” I had no idea how it would go over, were I to trot into Houston’s loft with his best friend in tow and every intention to get loud in the bedroom next to his.
Turned out, that was the wrong thing to say.
Ramsey’s laughter was too soft, too brief. He leaned back, lifting his gaze to mine. It was enough for me to read the caution in his eyes.
I changed tack. “That was a joke, obviously.” I didn’t want things to get weird, and I was well aware that we were about one second away from that happening. “I didn’t realize your annoyance kink was so strong.”
His mouth quirked into a smile that was more familiar. “I guess it took over.”
“You might need to work on that self-control.” I definitely didn’t want him to work on self-control. In fact, I wished he would set fire to all the self-control he possessed right then so I could get him someplace private and work him over the way I’d wanted to forever.
He did that laugh again, the soft chuckle that told me the gears were cranking in his mind. I took a step back, giving him space, and he ran a hand over the top of his baseball cap.