by Max Monroe
“That’s an understatement.”
“Are you going to invite me in?”
I shrugged. “That depends.”
He rested his palm against the doorframe. “On what?”
“Why are you here?”
“To see you.”
I raised an eyebrow and rested my hip against the doorjamb. “To see me? At this hour of the night?”
“This hour of the night?” He questioned with a smirk. “It’s not even ten.”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes. “You can come in, but you’ve got about thirty minutes, and then I’m sending your cocky ass packing because I need to get back to writing.”
And masturbating. Lots and lots of masturbating.
The door shut with a quiet click as he walked into my apartment and made himself comfortable on my sofa with a big smile on his face.
“Please, by all means—” I gestured my hand around my apartment dramatically “—make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks,” he responded, stretching an arm across the back. “I will.”
“Well…do you want something to drink?” I asked after a few beats of silence, struggling a little to play hostess. How does one act when they want to bang and banish someone all at once? “I’ll warn you, though, if your answer is yes, all I have is water or coffee. I haven’t been to the grocery store in days.”
“Deadline chasing, again?”
I flipped him off, and he laughed.
“Nah, I’m good, but thanks.” He patted the couch cushion beside him. “Come sit.”
“You show up at my apartment, and now you’re bossing me around?”
“Just sit your bony ass down on the couch,” he retorted.
I pointed a finger in his direction. “I’m only doing this because I’m tired. Not because you’re telling me to.”
Tired. Pfffft. I had been doing nothing but sitting on that sofa all fucking day. I wasn’t tired. I was an idiot, an idiot who was attracted to an even bigger idiot, probably the biggest idiot in the world, who now happened to be sitting on my couch.
He raised both hands in the air. “Got it.”
I sat down and turned toward him, resting one thigh on the cushion. No immediate award-winning conversation starters came to mind, so I focused on perusing him instead. A conversation starter jumped out at me pretty quickly. “What in the hell are you wearing?”
He glanced down at his attire and then back up at me. “Clothes?”
“The shirt,” I said on a sigh and jabbed a finger toward the white cotton material that fit a little too snugly in my opinion. We get it, Reed. You’ve got muscles. Congratulations on your muscles. I’m sure there are plenty of women who would enjoy your muscles. I mean, I’m not one of those women, but some women might like your firm muscles…
Seriously, he didn’t have to be so goddamn obvious about it. He might as well have just had a giant neon arrow hanging over his head that had the words, “Come look at my muscles!” flashing in synchrony with each inadvertent flex of his biceps. The man was flexy. Too fucking flexy, if you asked me.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t flexing all the time, but it sure as hell felt like he was constantly shoving his biteable ass and stroke-worthy biceps in my face. If he lifted up his shirt, I was liable to stroke out or suffer a psychotic break.
Biteable ass? Really, Lola?
“Lola?” His voice pulled my attention away from the land of crazy and horny.
“Hmmm?”
“You okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Well…you haven’t heard a word I’ve said in the past minute, and you just keep staring at my arm like you’re torn between tearing it off my body or licking it.”
My face scrunched up in disgust. “I was not staring at you like that.”
Fuck, was I staring at him like that?
He flashed a disagreeing smirk.
“I wasn’t,” I lied. “Sure, I was spacing out a little, but I wasn’t staring at you. I was doing that weird daydreamy thing where you’re looking at something, but not really looking at it.”
“Daydreamy?” He winked. “Do tell, what does sweet Lola daydream about?”
“The best places in San Francisco to hide a body.”
He chuckled at that.
“Did you answer my question?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Your shirt,” I stated. “What’s up with your shirt?” My eyes trailed across the simple black lettering across his chest. “Reed ate waffles.”
“It’s my status update.”
“Your what?”
“My Facebook status update.”
I quirked a questioning brow. “I know enough about you by now to know there’s more to this story. So, let’s just skip the part where I have to ask one million questions to get the details out of you, especially that part where you give me some ridiculous lie like ‘I made a seventeen-course meal for six kittens, and they hand-sewed this T-shirt for me out of their ball of yarn.’”
He smirked and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans…near his zipper…which was covering his ahem… I mean, he might as well have just grabbed his dick and told me to look.
Do not look down. Do not look at his crotch, Lola…
“Are you staring at my dick?”
Goddammit, Lola.
“Of course, I was staring at your dick,” I admitted, but it was in that sarcastic tone people use when they’re trying to play it off like a joke. “I was definitely just creepily staring at your pants like my eyes had the superpower to actually see through clothes.”
An amused smirk crested his lips. “Well…how’d that go?”
“Not good. I didn’t eat dinner, so my superpowers are all off today. So, I guess you might as well just tell me… How many inches, Reed?” I teased, but the second the words left my mouth, I wanted to reach out and shove them back in. The last thing I needed was to be thinking about Reed’s penis.
“Fuck if I know.” He shrugged and smiled that naturally confident smile only someone like Reed Luca could actually pull off without looking like a cocky bastard.
I raised an eyebrow. “Wait…you’ve never measured? Isn’t that like an adolescent pastime for boys?”
“I’m not the kind of guy who needs to measure his cock for validation.”
What in the hell was that supposed to mean?
Most men were all too eager with their cliché answers that painted a picture of a penis the size of a grown man’s forearm—which I have to be honest here, scared the fucking bejesus out of me. My pussy was a pussy, not Mary Poppins’s bag of fun. I preferred to stick to dicks that couldn’t be used as a third leg.
But, once again, Reed didn’t do what most men did. He did the complete opposite.
He was a fucking enigma.
“Do you want to know about the T-shirt or more about my cock?” He stretched his arms across the top of the sofa and grinned. “I’m fine with either subject.”
Don’t say cock, Lola. Don’t you dare fucking say cock.
“Co—” I started, but thank baby Jesus, the word was silent. I cleared my throat. “T-shirt.”
“I made this when I was in college. All of my buddies were on my ass about not having a Facebook profile, and I refused to give in to the whole social media craze.”
“So you bought the shirt?”
“Made it, actually,” he corrected. “And not just this shirt. I made 365 of them.”
“What?”
He chuckled. “I made one for every day of the year, different random, boring statuses, and you bet your sweet ass I wore each one.”
“For an entire year, you wore a T-shirt like this?”
“Yep.” He nodded. “Sophomore year of college.”
“Holy shit, that’s some dedication.”
“I tend to go whole hog when I’m letting the world know my opinion about something.”
“Whole hog?” I raised an eyebrow, and he smirk
ed. “So, are you against social media…or just Facebook in general?”
“Nah, I’m not against any of it. It’s great for some people. It’s just not really for me. I prefer to spend my time without my head buried in a phone.”
God, this man lived his life so differently than most. Reed Luca was the guy who made his own rules without apology and never let social expectations veer his direction in life. He lived for himself—not for anyone else.
I’d honestly never met a more interesting man in my life.
Fucking hell, what was happening to me?
He was supposed to be the bane of my existence. Not the man who had me wanting to rip off his clothes while simultaneously asking him one million questions about anything and everything. I wanted to crawl inside his head and explore his captivating mind.
And spread your legs and beg him to slide inside of you.
Welp…this wasn’t good.
But holy hell, his blue, blue eyes.
And his perfect body.
And his lips…
Before I knew it, my body had somehow managed to move itself closer to Reed’s, and then my lips were on his. Moving against his. Kissing his lips.
What in the hell, Lola?
Stop it. Abort! Abort!
My tongue slipped past my lips and slid into his mouth until it danced with his.
Seriously. Stop. It.
His lips, his mouth, his tongue, it all felt so good in that moment. Holy hell, he tasted like peppermint and just…Reed. He tasted exactly like Reed Luca should taste.
No, Lola. He tastes like dislike. Like hate. Because you hate him.
My hands slid up his chest, and my fingers found their way into his hair.
Oh. My. God. You hate him.
Stop. Kissing. Reed. Luca.
My brain finally caught up with my mouth, and I pulled away from the kiss before my body decided to do other things.
When my eyes finally met his, he smirked. First time maybe ever, it wasn’t smug. He actually looked a little surprised. “Did you just kiss me?”
Oh, God. His earnest face is even better than his smug one. Jesus. Stop looking at me like that.
“No.”
He quirked a brow. “Are you sure?”
“Fine,” I said on a sigh. “But it wasn’t really a kiss. It was more like…”
“More like what?”
“It was an ‘I still dislike you’ kiss…an ‘I still kind of hate you’ kiss…a ‘this isn’t a kiss’ kiss,” I rambled.
“Interesting,” he said, running his sexy fingers across the scruff of his jaw. “There was a lot of tongue for it to be an ‘I hate you’ kiss.”
“I said it was an ‘I still kind of hate you’ kiss,” I corrected.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So, like I said, it wasn’t even a kiss. It was like the opposite of one.”
“You know what I think?” he asked and leaned closer to me. I wished I didn’t enjoy the lack of personal space so much.
“What?”
“I think you’re full of shit.”
I sputtered, but no words came out.
“I also think that we’re going to kiss again.”
“We are?”
“Yeah, LoLo, we are.” Leaning forward, his lips trailed tenderly down my neck, and then back up to my jaw, until they finally stopped their seductive path beside my ear. “You know what else I think?”
“What?” I asked in a voice that was far too breathy and needy and lots of things I should’ve been embarrassed about, but hell, the synapses in my brain seemed to be misfiring the responses. Instead of “I hate Reed Luca,” they were all, “Ohh, Reed Luca… Kiss us. Yes, yes, yes, please kiss us.”
Jesus. I had to get it together. This was not supposed to be happening. I mean, this was Reed Luca. I hated Reed Luca.
“I think I’m dying to taste you, Lola.”
Okay… So maybe hate was too strong a word for him. I mean, I’m a nice girl. I don’t really hate anyone, right? Maybe I just dislike him a little…
“And I think you want me to too. Don’t you, Lo?”
Before I could even muster a response, or double-check the fact that I was actually Lola, Reed’s lips changed their path, down my neck again. Slowly sliding my shirt off to the side, he exposed my shoulder and took advantage of the newly revealed skin by pressing soft, openmouthed kisses to every surface inch of it.
Back and forth, he moved his mouth from that one exposed shoulder to my neck and back again, somehow making the mere inches of skin feel like miles. Deeper and deeper his kisses went, growing more seductive with each gentle lick of his tongue.
Goose bumps pebbled my skin, and my nipples grew tight and hard with anticipation.
“Hey, LoLo,” he whispered at my ear. I shivered. “You still with me?”
“Uh-huh.”
Oh, I was here, all right. I wasn’t sure why or how, but with the sensations running right through me from nipple to navel and below, I was sure I was.
“I want you to remember something for me, okay?”
Right now? my mind shouted, and he chuckled as though he heard it.
“When I do something, it’s because I want to do it.”
Kisses and warm, tickling breath straightened my spine and wiped my mind. “Okay.”
“Do you know what I mean by that?”
“Uh-huh.” I had no idea what we were even talking about.
He shook his head. “This is important, Skeets.”
I tried hard to focus, but fuck. Was he serious right now?
“When I do something, it’s because I want to do it. I need to do it. I fucking desire to do it.”
“Well…that’s a good rule of thumb to live by.”
I honestly had no idea what was even going on at this point. He could’ve been telling me that the bookshelf I bought from IKEA was actually a teleportation device and we were going to climb inside of it and go to Egypt, and I probably would have said yes.
“It is,” he said with a soft chuckle highlighting his voice. “And you know what?”
“What?”
“I want to taste you. I want to put my mouth on that pretty little cunt of yours and drink in every sweet inch—and I want to do it out of purely selfish desire. Not because I’m using this as foreplay so I can slide inside of you, or because I’m wanting you to return the favor, but because I can’t go another second without memorizing your taste. Knowing it like I know every single line of your scowl. Knowing it the way I hope to know your laugh and smile and all of the weird stuff that makes you tick. And you know what?”
“W-what?”
“I’m not going to stop until I’ve had my fill.”
Oh, boy.
His hands slid down my sides until his fingers gripped the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head. Unfortunately, that meant his mouth left my skin. His hands traced a hot path down my collarbone, between my breasts, until they reached my belly. Deftly, he smoothed the fabric of my shorts over the bones of my hips, and before I knew it, I was standing in front of him in no more than I had on the day I was born.
His normally tranquil blue eyes darkened to a deep gray as they moved over my body, taking their time, like he was memorizing every inch of me. Mine locked to his and moved with them helplessly.
“I think you know I’m not like most men, Lo. I don’t waste my time with games. I do what I say, and I say what I mean. And when I say I want to taste you, I fucking mean it.”
My brain could hardly compute his words.
Reed Luca had just changed the whole game of sex as I knew it. It wasn’t about give-and-take with him. It was about want. And need. And desire. He didn’t keep score. He didn’t keep up pretenses. And he didn’t hold back.
And he was now face-to-face with my pussy.
Holy hell. How did this happen?
Whatever it was and however it came to be, I was ready to embrace the fuck out of it.
“God, you’re beautiful.” The warmth
of his breath washed over me, and I couldn’t hold back the whimper that left my lips as my hips punched up on their own accord. My body was all but begging for him to do what he said he was going to do. I didn’t think I’d ever hoped so badly that someone would follow through.
Fuck, I wanted him to taste me.
I wanted him to put his mouth on me until I wasn’t thinking about anything. I just wanted to feel.
But Reed Luca wasn’t in a hurry, and he didn’t seem to care that my body was pleading for his mouth. No, he took his sweet, sweet time, his fingers gently stroking me, his eyes caressing me. It felt like an eternity. It felt like no time at all. It felt like I wasn’t even thinking anymore and like time ceased to exist.
God help me, it felt very much like I liked Reed Luca.
And when the tip of his tongue slipped out of his mouth and tenderly swept across where I ached and throbbed the most, my eyes fell closed and a deep, heady moan spilled from my throat.
One lick.
Two licks, three.
I was officially lost.
A greedy groan left his lips as everything in him shifted. He wasn’t taking his time any longer; he was devouring me.
He licked and sucked and ate at my pussy ravenously, like he couldn’t get enough, and I soaked up every moment—insatiably, hungrily, and without inhibitions.
I clenched the cushion with my fingers, and my thighs tightened in anticipation as I felt that slow, aching build stir inside of me.
He licked.
It increased in intensity.
He sucked.
It reached a fever-pitch of hot, aching need that I couldn’t hold back.
The waves of my climax took over and left me breathless and clenching and wrapped softly in pure, beautiful bliss like I had never experienced.
But he didn’t stop.
No.
He ate at me, working me over with his mouth until the sensitivity turned to selfish need again, and my hips proved that point by thrusting upward toward his face.
He groaned his approval, and I came instantly. Again.
What in the ever-loving fuck was happening to me?
I wasn’t a multiple-orgasm type of girl. Hell, before this, I often questioned if anyone was really a multiple-orgasm type of girl. I’d started to wonder if multiple orgasms were a myth—and I made a living writing a goddamn sex column. But apparently, they had their place, high in the sky like the unicorns of the sex world.