He’d been moving well earlier, but as the day had worn on, he’d quickly become more and more fatigued.
He could put on a good show, but the sad truth was, he just wasn’t up for anything strenuous, and him being this tired proved that.
I latched on to Croft’s hand, gave him a slight squeeze, and started to make my way out the door.
At some point during the night we’d migrated back to his house because of Lion, and now it was time for me to go home.
Which sucked because I really wanted to stay.
But I wasn’t going to just invite myself, even though I really wanted to.
“Where you goin’?” he asked as I moved.
I opened my mouth into a surprised O. “I was going to go back to my place.”
“You’re staying with me,” he ordered. “I need help.”
“Okay then,” Raleigh aqgreed as she all but skipped down the walkway. “Make sure you use a fresh condom for each sexual encounter.”
With that, she dove into Ezra’s truck, then promptly banged her knee on the open door as she got inside.
Croft laughed and threw the door closed, leaving him and me in the hallway.
“She won’t be going anywhere once she’s found. They can hold her with theft, withholding evidence and probably being an accomplice,” he said as he slowly put his hands on my hips and skimmed them upwards lightly “Now, I’m tired, and I really, really want you, and both of those things involve my bed. I’m going to let Lion outside. You go into my bedroom and get the shower warmed up,” he ordered, letting me go.
I licked my lips. “You just took a shower.”
“That was a quick one,” he admitted. “Now we’re going to take a really slow one.”
My insides heated.
“Are you up for that?” I asked, not wanting him to say no, but needing to ask anyway.
His eyes changed from lazy to amused. “Yes. I am.”
With that he twisted away from me, whistled for Lion, and headed for the back of the house.
I chose to follow directions for once in my life and headed for the bedroom, then further to his shower.
I’d just cranked the hot water on when I heard him enter the bedroom.
Or, more importantly, I heard Lion enter the bedroom.
I’d just stripped my shirt off and looked over my shoulder when I saw him leaning against the doorjamb watching me.
“What?” I asked curiously.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Just watching.”
“Well how about you get naked since this shower was your idea,” I suggested saucily as I shimmied my shorts down my hips, kicking them out of the way.
The bra and panties were the next to go, and seconds later I was stepping into the shower while waiting for him to follow.
Only, he didn’t.
He continued to stare at me, his lips slightly parted, and a suspicious looking bulge in his pants that was growing by the second.
“I’m going to be done if you don’t hurry,” I insisted as I turned my back on him and reached for his man shampoo. “And if I’m going to continue to do this, you’re going to have to get girly shampoo. I don’t mind smelling like you, but my hair is needy. It needs the good stuff or it doesn’t act right.”
He chuckled from directly behind me, and I felt my entire body break out in shivers.
Then I felt the prod of his erection in my backside as he entered the shower.
He ignored it, so I did, too.
Mostly.
As much as anyone could ignore something that large pressing against them.
“How about you just move in?” he rumbled, brushing his lips against my throat.
I froze. Then whirled in his arms.
I would’ve gone down completely had he not caught me up around the waist.
“What?” I asked, gasping in deep breaths.
“I suggested you just move in,” he said. “Or, don’t. I don’t care. Just know that we’re going to be spending a lot of time together from now on. And I want you here with me, in my bed, every night. We’re both really busy people, and that means that we have to get the time where we can.”
He had a point but…
“We’ve only been dating for less than a week,” I said.
“We’ve known each other for years,” he countered. “And the reason we’ve only been dating for less than a week is because I’m a moron. I’m sorry.”
I wilted slightly at his words.
“It’s okay,” I admitted. “I could’ve probably tried harder on my end, too.”
“So, is that a yes to moving in?” he asked hopefully.
I tilted my head back so I could stare deeply into his eyes.
“Ask me again when we’ve been dating a month, and I’ll say yes,” I promised as I stepped out of the shower.
His eyes sparkled with amusement as he followed me out, turned off the water, and then snatched his towel that just so happened to be behind me. He leaned in and kissed me.
When he pulled back it was to say, “So if it’s too early to ask you to move in with me, is it too early to say I love you?”
My knees literally went weak.
“Croft,” I whispered.
He grinned and left the room, leaving me to follow him.
He caught me around the waist in the middle of the bedroom, both of us still slightly damp from our shower.
“Because I do.” He spoke, his hands smoothing my hair until it was slicked backward. “I’ve loved you since I started coming to that gym. I may not have admitted my feelings for you, but I’ve definitely felt them.”
I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his sternum, then hastily did the world’s fastest scrub down.
He followed shortly after, much slower than me, and sloppily dried himself off before coming at me.
“I love you, too, you know,” I admitted. “I’ve loved you since you walked past me and flippantly critiqued my snatch.”
He burst out laughing and pulled me in closer, rocking his hips against me suggestively.
“Hey, what about my hair?” I teased. “I need to dry it. And I’m all clean…”
The last teasing statement had his eyes lighting up with an inner fire. “It’s okay,” he drawled. “I have a really good shower and plenty of soap for when I make you dirty again.”
And he did.
Thoroughly.
He started with touching every single part of my body with his rough hands. Hands that were definitely not going to win any beauty awards. There were calluses upon calluses, and there were the end stages of a blister in the middle of his right palm.
He obviously chewed his fingernails, too, though I’d never seen him do it.
But when they ran up the length of my spine, and down the curve of my ass, they felt beautiful to me.
“I want to go without condoms,” he said in my ear as he walked me toward the bedroom. “Next chance you get, reach out to your doctor and get on that.”
I licked my lips nervously.
“I’ve never done that before,” I admitted, falling backwards into the bed at his small nudge.
His eyes were serious when his hips wiggled between my splayed thighs. “You want to know a secret?”
“I want to know all of your secrets,” I answered automatically.
His eyes twinkled as he leaned down and spoke directly in my ear. “I’ve never done it either. You’ll be my first.”
I threaded my fingers into his hair.
“You want to know one of my secrets?” I teased lightly against his ear.
“Tell me?” he breathed, running his mouth along the line of my jaw.
“I’ve been ready for you since this morning when I woke up and you weren’t here,” I declared.
His eyes were hot when he moved backward to catch my gaze.
“Can’t leave you hanging, now can I?” he murmured, reaching over my body to the nightstand.
He pulled out a small foil package and ripped into
it with his teeth.
Blowing the small piece away that’d torn off the package, he hastily went up onto his knees between my thighs and smoothed the condom down over his shaft.
Seconds later he was kicking my legs even wider before slowly easing his cock inside of me.
And, like always, it was a stretch.
The burn felt just right as he slowly filled me to bursting.
And only when he knew I was okay did he start to move.
Slow, steady strokes that made my heart rate accelerate and things inside of me start to respond.
Though, it honestly didn’t take all that much for my body to respond to his.
All he had to do was look at me and I was ready for him.
Now, having him inside of me, was just the ultimate moment of euphoria.
“Look at me,” Croft urged.
I hadn’t even realized I’d closed my eyes.
Blinking them open, I stared at his beautiful eyes, taking in every single thing about the tantalizing orbs.
“What?” I wondered.
His eyes were shiny with mirth when he leaned forward and caught my nipple up between his lips.
“Nothing. I just wanted you to watch when I fucked you,” he explained as he slowly twisted his hips.
The twist, combined with a short slide, had my pussy tightening around him in surprise.
“Sometimes I used to watch you walk around in your short shorts,” he said as he pulled back, admiring my stiffened nipple. “I used to watch you squat or do a burpee, and I’d think how nice it would be between those shapely thighs. I wondered what you would do if I caught them around the back of your knee,” he did just that. “And pushed them up behind your ears.”
My breathing hitched as he completely changed the angle of his thrusts.
“Sometimes,” he said as he thrust hard, twisting his hips slightly toward the end. “I can’t breathe because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I curled my arms around his neck and held on, feeling like a pretzel and loving it.
His thrusts sped up, and it dawned on me that for the first time ever, I was making love to a man that I knew would be it for me for life.
Croft was my man. The love of my life that I knew, despite our rough start, would be there whether I wanted him there or not.
Croft was mine, just like I was his.
My breath hitched at the knowledge, and when his next thrust came, a little harder than the ones before it, I detonated.
My breath left my lungs through a strangled scream, and in seconds my vision was dimming and my heart was racing to catch up.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, feeling a massive explosion of sensation in my lower belly spread outward.
Then he was flying high right along with me.
In three short grunts, he emptied himself inside of the condom, and a wave of sadness passed through me at knowing that I wouldn’t have him inside of me until I could find some birth control to get on.
Until then, I’d just have to make do with a barrier between us.
But I wouldn’t be waiting much longer because that was the first thing on my to-do list the next morning.
I had priorities.
After he got up and divested himself of the condom, he came back and all but collapsed onto the bed.
“You did too much today,” I found myself saying.
He grunted something that sounded suspiciously like ‘maybe.’ But it was buried so far into a pillow that I couldn’t be sure.
As we were drifting off to sleep he surprised me by saying, “You really will move in, right? If I ask you in a month?”
It was through a sleepy haze that I replied with, “Yep.”
CHAPTER 18
I’m the party tit.
-Coffee Cup
CARMICHAEL
I was very much aware of the way my ass jiggled in my shorts. But for once, I didn’t freak out over the way that the fabric rolled up my legs.
Instead, I was very much aware of the man that’d entered the building in front of me.
We hadn’t arrived together.
In fact, he’d driven from work, while I’d driven from the school.
I’d stopped by my house to change, and the shorts that he’d talked about last week when I’d stayed over at his house had been on the very top of the stack as I was getting dressed.
I contemplated not wearing them since they were my least favorite for all of about five seconds before I said, ‘fuck it’ and put them on.
Now I was walking quickly up to the door, very much aware of the way my thighs rubbed together. And the way people liked to zero in on my thighs when I was wearing them.
However, my give-a-fuck meter was busted today.
Especially after having to deal with my problem children again.
When I’d first taken over that class, I’d had great hopes for us.
But as the days passed by, things didn’t get better.
In fact, they got worse.
How much worse?
Well, today my students thought it would be utterly hilarious to pull my chair out from under me when I went to sit down.
And now I had a rather large bruise on my back and butt where I’d fallen and hit the rolling wheels of the chair.
The first person I saw when I entered the gym was my brother.
He was doing strict pull-ups from the rack.
He dropped down upon seeing me, and his face narrowed.
“Where were you today?” I barked.
In Flint’s place was a newbie cop who, upon hearing about what my students had done, had given them a lecture on ‘how that wasn’t nice’ and had left. My brother would’ve scared the absolute Jesus out of them and then returned it.
“Camryn had an appointment that I wanted to make,” he answered. “Why?”
I turned around and showed him my back, not bothering to pull my shorts waistband down because I knew that he’d be able to see the bruise just fine.
“A few of the kids from my class thought it would be hilarious to pull my chair out from under me today,” I said to him. “I…”
My pants were tugged down, and I squawked. But when I looked over my shoulder, it was to see Croft there examining my backside and not my brother.
“That looks bad,” he said softly.
I nodded. “It hurts so bad that I’m not even sure I can teach today.”
Today was a lot of squatting, and I wasn’t even sure that I could stand up for that long.
“Go home and rest,” he suggested. “When you get home, put some of that ointment on my nightstand on it.”
I felt a smile growing on my face for the first time all day. “That’s your home, not mine.”
His eyes gleamed as he pulled me into his chest and buried his face into my neck.
“I hate, like super fuckin’ hate, that you were hurt,” he said. “Have you ever considered leaving that particular class?”
I had. A lot.
“Everybody helps,” I said. “Ezra comes in twice a day sometimes and shows his presence. As does Flint. I just… I don’t want to give up on it. I want to work there, and though I may not like the particular class that I’m teaching, I do like being at the school and feeling involved in something. I just… I don’t really want to teach CrossFit all damn day. It’s not my dream. Being a teacher is.”
“What did you want to teach?” he asked, his hands traveling up the inside of my shirt as we spoke.
“I wanted to be a middle school English teacher,” I said. “Then, when that wasn’t an option for me here, I chose being a high school English teacher. But the only opening the entire school system had was the theater department. And, to be honest, I don’t really have an interest in theater. But it was a job to get my foot in at the school.”
“Then tell them that you want a different class. What can it hurt?” he asked.
What could it hurt?
Well, it wouldn’t be like they’d fire me from the position bec
ause I wanted to change classes. They’d ask why, and they damn well knew why, so then they could either say ‘I have no openings’ or say ‘I have an opening.’
“Just ask,” he suggested. “That’s the only thing that you can do.”
I did know of one teacher leaving at the end of the year. Her class was senior English.
If I could stick it out until the end of the year, I didn’t see why I couldn’t get that particular class. All of the other teachers at the high school were well liked and loved their classes. I doubted that they’d leave because they wanted senior English.
“Okay, I’ll ask in the morning. I’ll leave early and do that before school.” I smiled. “And I don’t really want to go home. I’m just going to go lay on this mat over here until class. Then I’ll move up to the office to get some paperwork done that Flint is too much of a little bitch to do.”
“I heard that,” Flint grunted in between pull-ups. “And just so you know, it’s not that I don’t like doing the paperwork. It’s that I don’t like listening to you bitching that I’m doing it wrong. Those are two different problems.”
I snickered as I went to my tiptoes and gave Croft one more kiss.
It was as I was pulling back that I saw how sweaty he was.
“You’re really sweaty,” I found myself saying.
When did that happen?
Now that I thought about it, I did feel sort of sticky from where he’d touched me.
“I was working on lower body,” he promised when he saw the narrowing of my eyes.
I gave him a ‘you better watch it’ look and went to the mat.
For the next forty minutes, I watched as two of my favorite people in the world got a workout in.
Well, mostly my eyes stayed on Croft, but occasionally they’d stray over to Flint to make sure he wasn’t doing anything stupid, either.
When he was hurt a couple of months ago, my heart had all but shattered. I was glad to see that he was almost one hundred percent back to normal.
It was at one of those moments, when my eyes weren’t on Croft, when the glass behind my head shattered.
Shards rained down over my head, and I ducked my face to the mat almost on instinct as I blinked and tried to make sense of what was going on.
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