I Pucking Love You

by Pippa Grant

  This should be an improvement.

  But one, I have glitter falling into my face, and two, he’s trying to climb into the vintage brown and tan pitcher that I insisted I wanted from my grandma’s estate merely because I knew Keely wanted it and she was royally pissing me off.

  It’s one of those weird pitchers that’s wide at the top, narrows in the middle, and goes wide again at the bottom, which means the cat’s butt is now hanging out of the pitcher, back legs spinning.

  The pitcher’s toast.

  Oh, hell.

  Shit.

  Keely will kill me if that pitcher gets broken.

  I vault myself onto the counter and grab the damn thing by the handle—the pitcher, of course, not the cat—pull it down, and dump the cat back on the counter.

  Just in time for Muffy to walk in.

  She’s in jeans, a Thrusters hoodie, and her fluffy blue coat. Her hair’s cascading in soft curls down her shoulders, and if she’s wearing makeup, it’s light.

  Her gaze darts to Rufus as he leaps into the trash can—dammit, cat—and then to me, standing on the counter, wearing oven mitts decorated to look like lobsters and holding an ancient pitcher without enough room to get down gracefully on my own.

  She bites her lower lip, and I go hard as granite so fast I feel it in the bruise on my ass from this morning.

  If she notices, she doesn’t let on. “Sorry about Rufus. He’s—”

  “Hilarious,” I finish for her. Mostly because I know the trash is empty. I took it out before I left to pick her up yesterday.

  She blinks. “You think my cat’s funny?”

  “Yes. And also not stealthy enough to eat my face while I’m sleeping. Best kind of cat to have.”

  Her lips spread in a full smile, the same one I’ve seen her use so often at Chester Green’s after a game, or when she’s talking to Kami and their friends, and I want to kiss her.

  I want to kiss her just to kiss her smile, and I don’t care if it doesn’t go anywhere but kissing.

  “Um, do you need help? I can grab a stepladder if you tell me—” Her gaze travels down, pausing halfway down. Her eyes flare wide, and she visibly swallows as they darken.

  Yeah.

  No hiding that woody.

  And if she’s not horrified, what am I still doing on this counter?

  I leap down and tilt the trash can so Rufus can escape and wreak havoc elsewhere.

  Muffy’s watching me.

  I like Muffy watching me.

  I also like that she’s not moving away as I cross the kitchen to her. “You smell like fish.”

  Her smile blooms again. “You like that.”

  “I do.” Look at that. I’m smiling back at her.

  “You put me in your bedroom.”

  She says bedroom, my dick blows a kazoo in celebration.

  Figuratively speaking, of course. “That a problem?”

  “No. I mean, we handled it fine last night, didn’t we?”

  Shit.

  What does that mean? I liked cuddling with you? Or we managed to not have bad sex again?

  “About Saturday,” she says. “When we talked about Saturday—you know, the date thing?—we didn’t know…I mean, we didn’t plan on me spending any time at your apartment. So are we still doing this date thing on Saturday? Or—”

  Fuck it.

  I’m kissing her.

  No more talking. No more awkwarding. Just kissing.

  Except I miss her mouth, because Rufus shoots into the kitchen like a bat out of hell, dragging Muffy’s pink messenger bag with him.

  She ducks away and lunges for the cat, missing as he bounces off the bottom cabinet under the sink. “Rufus! We’re guests. We have to behave.”

  I lunge for the cat too as he gets close to me. “My nieces and nephews have done worse. I found one pooping in my house plant last time they were here.”

  Rufus dashes out of the kitchen.

  We both follow, since the bag’s wrapped around his neck.

  “He sleeps twenty-three hours a day and spends the last hour trying to maim himself,” Muffy pants.

  I accidentally check her into the wall as we both try to run down the hallway. “Shit! Sorry. You okay?”

  “Padding. I’m great. Rufus!”

  I’m a romantic disaster, and the cat just took out the lamp in one of my guest rooms.

  I am not getting laid tonight.

  But that cat?

  That cat’s getting caught.

  I dive for him as he streaks back out of the bedroom, manage to snag the messenger bag, but Rufus doesn’t stop.

  Muffy shrieks.

  The cat makes an unholy noise that’s cut short as the handle tightens around his neck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  I just killed Muffy’s cat.

  27

  Muffy

  When I adopted Rufus, I couldn’t understand why he’d been at the shelter so long when he’s utterly adorable.

  But it took about forty-eight hours for me to get it.

  Rufus is the cat version of me if I were a little klutzier, a lot more YOLO, and completely lacking in any natural sense of self-preservation. If he understood English, he’d leap out of an airplane without a parachute because he’d heard cats always land on their feet.

  “He’s fine,” Kami tells Tyler once again as she snaps her travel vet bag shut, which I’m pretty sure she has specifically for Rufus.

  We’re sitting in Tyler’s living room, my cat in my lap, sleeping off his near-death-by-bag experience, Tyler himself pacing the room in front of the aquarium that I double-checked Rufus couldn’t somehow get into before I left earlier, and in need of having his heart rate and blood pressure checked.

  And he probably has a few extra bumps and bruises too.

  I stroke Rufus, who’s purring so loudly as he sleeps that the neighbors downstairs can probably feel the vibration, and ignore the subtle smirk Kami’s wearing.

  She drove across town after bedtime on a work night so that Tyler could sleep tonight knowing that Rufus’s neck was completely and totally fine.

  She probably thinks she’s helping me get a booty call.

  Or Tyler.

  But I doubt that’s the entire reason she’s heading for the door so quickly, now that Rufus has been declared fine.

  “Thanks for coming,” Tyler says gruffly.

  She smiles at him with her brilliantly kind Kami smile. “It’s Rufus. I expect this at least once every few months.”

  “He tried to climb into a glass of milk once and gave himself diarrhea,” I offer.

  And then I wince.

  Hey, Tyler, let’s talk about body waste and then bang.

  “My personal favorite was when he tried to eat a bag of yarn,” Kami muses.

  “Not the yarn,” I agree quickly. “He wasn’t trying to eat the yarn.”

  “No, he was eating the burlap bag it was stored in,” she explains.

  “We were all together for Thanksgiving anyway, so Kami didn’t have to drop anything for him that time.”

  “He hated the taste after he got the first bite off and walked around dry heaving for what felt like an hour before we figured out he had a bit stuck at the back of his throat.”

  “Kami’s an angel.”

  “Rufus is lucky he’s lovable when he’s not testing the limits of his nine lives.”

  “Yolnt.”

  They both squint at me.

  “Like YOLO? But for a cat? You Only Live Nine Times? That’s Rufus’s motto. I should get him a collar with it.”

  Kami laugh-sighs.

  And Tyler’s shoulders drop below his chin for the first time since I got back to his place.

  But all too soon, Kami’s gone, undoubtedly heading home to a hero’s welcome from Nick, which will probably involve happy naked time for them, and it’s just Tyler and me and my cat left here, and I want to hug him—the guy who whisked me away to his downtown sanctuary, I mean, not Rufus—except
I’m suddenly feeling very, very shy.

  Screw it.

  If my cat can be brave and adventurous and accidentally try to maim himself on a regular basis, I can work up the courage to stand up, meet Tyler on his way back from walking Kami out, throw my arms around him, and kiss him.

  And I will.

  I am.

  I’m setting Rufus aside. Standing up.

  Looking at the man who’s looking back at me with that mix of are you sure you’re okay? and I worry about you for more reasons than a normal man should worry about a normal woman in his flickering blue eyes.

  He knows why I left med school.

  He knows I’m average. I don’t finish at the top of anything, unlike him, who has two championship rings tucked away somewhere.

  He knows I have insecurities and weird relationships with my parents.

  And he’s still meeting me halfway, eyes locked on mine, determination written in the set of his lips.

  He lifts a hand to stroke my hair. “I’m taking you out for breakfast tomorrow.”

  That’s all it takes.

  One growly sentence from a stubborn, overprotective, sexy man-beast, and I’m flinging my arms around his neck and pressing my mouth to his.

  A rough groan comes from his throat as he takes charge of the kiss.

  Every cell in my body flashes to life. My brain threatens to spell out all the reasons this could go wrong, so I hit the off switch, part my lips as he flicks his tongue over them, and let myself believe.

  I’m attractive.

  I’m sexy.

  I’m worthy.

  I’m wanted.

  His beard tickles my face while his hand slides down my spine. I want him to touch me everywhere, all at once, and I want to touch him everywhere too. My fingers thread through his barely-long-enough hair. My other hand explores the thick cords in his neck, then the broad expanse of his chest.

  He walks me backwards out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom, his arms solid around me, his hands settling right above my ass, his thick, hard length pressing into my belly, our feet sometimes tangling, which makes both of us giggle as we’re still kissing.

  My heart is fluttering harder than a hummingbird in a hurricane.

  The backs of my knees touch the bed long before I’m done kissing him, but he breaks away as we stop.

  I whimper.

  I do.

  But it’s barely a half whimper before I go mute again, because Tyler’s pulling his shirt off, and holy mother of fried fish.

  I want to bite his shoulder. I want to lick his tattoos.

  I want to leave my mark on every inch of him.

  He tosses his phone on the floor like he doesn’t have it in him to aim for the bedside table, and then he leans in and goes vampire on my neck. “I’m going to strip you naked, eat your pussy, and make you come so hard you’ll forget time exists.”

  “O-gurp,” I gasp.

  O-gurp? O-gurp?

  He already has me halfway to forgetting how words work.

  He was all talk last time too, a snide little voice in the back of my head whispers.

  I ignore it.

  That Tyler and this Tyler are two different people.

  This Tyler is sliding his hands under my hoodie while he does a magic trick with his teeth and his tongue on a spot below my ear that I didn’t even know existed.

  It’s like I’ve been dipped in a pool of straight pleasure.

  Everywhere he touches, my nerves explode in exquisite joy. My panties are wet. My nipples are pebbled so hard, my breasts have goosebumps.

  I want to explore his body, but it’s all I can do to cling to his shoulders, the heat of his skin seeping into my hands and leaving my palms itching for more but completely ignorant of how they’re supposed to work.

  He guides one arm out of my hoodie and the T-shirt underneath. Then the other arm.

  He doesn’t catch my chin on the fabric when he pulls it all over my head like I do half the time, and when my hair frizzes with static electricity, an honest, unguarded smile blooms over his face. “You are the sexiest kind of fucking adorable.”

  He smooths it all down, kisses my forehead, then down my nose, brushes my lips with his, setting my entire face aglow with the combination of hot lips and tickling beard, and then he’s guiding me back onto the bed, nibbling on my neck, crawling between my legs, and worshipping my breasts with his mouth.

  I’m still in a bra—a massive, white, double full coverage granny bra—and I’ve never felt sexier than I do with Tyler thumbing my nipples through the fabric and licking my cleavage.

  “Good?” he asks.

  I grunt out an incoherent response, grab his head, and push it back to my breasts while I fling a leg around his back.

  Would it be wrong to rub myself against his abs to get off?

  Nope, I decide.

  He slides a hand under me, unhooks my bra, and tears it off with his teeth.

  “Oh my god,” I gasp.

  He gathers my breasts in his large hands, thumbs still teasing my nipples, pushes the girls together, and licks the underside of my breast.

  My hips buck.

  He does it again, going all the way up to my nipple and sucking it into his mouth hard enough that I feel a jolt of lust ping from deep in my breast and straight to my throbbing clit.

  “Oh, god, Tyler.”

  “Delicious,” he murmurs, his words tickling my overly sensitive skin while he licks and kisses and sucks on the very neglected part of my chest, pinching and teasing and sucking on my nipples while I fling my other leg around his ribs. My clit is tingling and begging for the attention it’s not getting with this angle. My vagina is aching. He could probably make me come just by telling them they’re both beautiful.

  I’m chanting his name.

  He shifts, his fingers trailing lightly down my ribs as he kisses a line from my breasts to my navel.

  I try to suck it in, but does it matter?

  His tongue dips into my belly button while he gently unhooks one of my legs, and then he’s tackling the button on my jeans.

  I’m still gripping his hair.

  Are these my tight jeans?

  Is this about to get awkward?

  Does he— “Oh my god,” I gasp again.

  It’s like he knows when I start thinking too hard, and he knows my nipples are my brain’s off button.

  Nothing else matters.

  Not that he has to tug to get my jeans off.

  Not that I’m suddenly exposed and bloated and I can’t remember if I shaved my bikini line.

  All that matters is that he’s kneeling above me, parting my knees, spreading my legs to gaze down at my most intimate parts, his eyes hot and dark and hungry while he licks his lips.

  Tyler Jaeger wants to eat me out.

  He bends to capture my lips in a searing kiss, like he’s claiming me, like he’s saying you are my prize and I am here to collect every last drop.

  He strokes me from my opening to my clit, and I whimper and almost come off the bed.

  “Tell me what you like,” he orders, and then his mouth is on me again, but this time, he’s licking me between my legs, his hands on my inner thighs, holding them open while he draws lazy patterns with his thumbs, his tongue going places no man has gone before.

  Sure, I’ve touched myself.

  But getting myself off and trusting someone else with my body are completely different.

  I didn’t trust him that night at the club.

  But tonight?

  Right now?

  I would trust him to guide me across a tightrope while I’m blindfolded.

  Which might be exactly what he’s doing with my body.

  Every lick is heaven. When he sucks on my clit, I see stars. I’m gasping his name. Probably a few other things too. I can’t actually hear myself.

  Everything is shut down except my pleasure centers, and they’re lit up brighter than the sun, concentrated between my legs, where every
thing inside me is coiling so tight that I’m almost in physical pain.

  “C’mon, Muffy,” he whispers to my clit, his breath landing on my exposed, swollen skin like the flutter of a butterfly wing. “Come for me. Let go. Come for me, baby.”

  He grazes me with his teeth, and I shatter.

  I think I scream his name.

  My hips are bucking out of control, my thighs straining while the most powerful orgasm of my life rips through me.

  I think I’m levitating.

  And he’s still eating my pussy, coaxing my exposed nerves higher and harder as the waves of pleasure crash and crescendo in my core.

  I can’t feel my feet.

  I don’t know my name.

  I don’t even know what a name is.

  I’m one with the universe, and I’m holding the entire universe in my pussy all at the same time.

  I am the Big Bang.

  I am love. I am fear. I am religion.

  I am the goddess of every orgasm to ever exist.

  I am clearly hallucinating, but oh my god, this is—this orgasm is the supreme, ultimate pinnacle of human existence.

  “Oh my god, am I dead?” I gasp as my body settles into soft aftershocks.

  Tyler presses a soft kiss to my very center, then to each of my thighs. “Yes.”

  “Good. That is definitely how I wanted to die.”

  28

  Tyler

  Once again, my dick hurts so bad that I wonder if it’s possible to break it from overextension, but honestly?

  I wouldn’t care.

  I’m laying with my head on Muffy’s belly, her taste on my lips, inhaling her spicy scent, while she runs her fingers through my hair.

  And I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it.

  “Is it normal to see the Milky Way when you come?” she asks.

  “The candy bar or the galaxy?”

  “The galaxy made up of the candy bars.”

  “Maybe. I see planets made of pizza when I come.”

  Her breath is evening out, and my head bounces on her stomach when she laughs. “What kind of pizza?”

  “Chicago deep dish. Pepperoni, sausage, olives, mushrooms, and banana peppers, with extra cheese.”