Ayla

The final draft of my manuscript is due to my agent at eight AM tomorrow, but here I am, standing in the foyer of Rhett Carson’s apartment, letting him tear my clothes from my body and hoist me into his arms.

Our lips crash and our tongues meet and my legs hook around his rock hard body and nothing else matters.

He deposits me in the center of his bed and undoes his jeans with a single hand, letting them fall to the ground. There’s a hint of a smile on his mouth when he pulls his t-shirt over his head, and when our eyes meet there’s a glint in his gaze that makes my stomach swirl a bit.

Butterflies.

Butterflies have no business being a part of this equation.

When he looks at me like that, it’s hard to remember that this is purely a physical arrangement, that it can never be anything else for a myriad of reasons.

I close my eyes, breathing in the masculine scent of his bedsheets, when I feel the bed shift from his weight. The warmth of his body hovering over mine and the graze of his palm along my inner thigh follows next. My legs spread for him, and my hands reach for his cock, pumping its throbbing length.

Two calloused fingers slip between my folds, plunging deep inside me, and he isn’t satisfied until I release an audible gasp. A moment later, he brings his fingers to his mouth, tasting me.

“God, you’re so fucking sweet,” he growls. “And wet.”

Hooking my hands along his torso, I pull his naked body against mine.

“I don’t have all day,” I tease. “Looming deadline, remember?”

He punishes me with a kiss and reaches for the top drawer of his nightstand, retrieving a foil packet.

* * *

I collapse on his chest when we’re done, my body liquid and spent.

He wanted me to ride him today, and so I did. I grinded against him, rocking back and forth while his thumb gently circled my clit. When he told me to fuck him harder, I did. When he told me to fuck him faster, I did that too.

It’s not a pity fuck when you enjoy it, right?

Still, I can’t help but want to take his pain, the pain my brother caused, and siphon it into me. He seems so tough all the time, so unscathed, but I know it isn’t possible to go through what he’s gone through and come out on the other side without so much as a scratch.

It doesn’t happen.

No one is that cold hearted.

My palm presses against his chest, and I can feel the steady drum of his heartbeat. When I open my eyes, I see he’s looking at me, but I pretend not to care. Brushing my bangs from my eyes, I carefully climb off him and head to his bathroom to wash up.

When I come back, he hasn’t moved. He’s just lying there like he’s lost in thought. Or maybe he’s just spent. Something about today felt just as emotional as it did physical, like he was releasing something.

Maybe I’m assigning meaning to nothing. I do that sometimes. I think too hard about things I have no business thinking about. I dissect people until there’s nothing left.

“So what is it that you write?” he asks.

Finally!

We’ve been fucking a week now and he finally wants to know a smidgeon more about me.

“Everything,” I answer, checking a nearby clock. I’m going to be up late tonight.

“Everything as in ...”

“Blogs. News articles. Fiction.”

“Do you have a pen name?”

“Nope. All me,” I say, returning to his room and realizing all my clothes are in the foyer. “You a reader?”

His eyes linger on my body. He drinks me in like he’s parched, like I didn’t just basically fuck his brains out a few minutes ago.

“Little bit,” he says, leaving it at that.

“You get my lifetime supply of coffee?” I ask, winking.

“Gift card is on the counter actually.” He climbs out of bed, his cock still swollen, and heads to the bathroom. “You didn’t think I would, did you?”

“A gift card is not the same as a lifetime supply, Rhett.” I saunter to the kitchen and swipe the card from the counter. Five hundred bucks. Not bad. Grabbing my clothes by the door, I return to his room to get dressed. “This will do for now.”

“Where would you even put a lifetime supply?” he counters. “Logistics, Ayla.”

“I’d find a place.” I step into my jeans, my legs already sore from riding him for the last half hour, but it’s a good kind of sore, like I worked out really hard. And I did. I bet I burned enough calories fucking him to earn myself a pimento stuffed double cheeseburger from Whitman’s, my newest NYC addiction thanks to Bostyn.

Rhett throws on a clean t-shirt and a pair of sweats, and I secretly like that he doesn’t immediately wash me off of him. That tells me he’s comfortable with this; with us. That I’m not some dirty little plaything.

“What are you doing this weekend?” I ask casually, the way I’d ask any other person in any other situation.

His gaze whips in my direction. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” I shrug.

“Don’t try to make future plans with me,” he says.

“Who said I’m trying to make plans? I literally just asked what you were doing this weekend. I’m trying to make conversation, not date you.”

“That’s how it starts.”

I roll my eyes, chuckling. “Right. One minute we’re screwing, the next minute I’m asking what you’re doing this weekend, and then bada-boom, bada-bing we’re dating. That’s exactly how it works.”

“You’re mocking me. In my own apartment.” He comes up behind me, slapping me on the ass. “You better get out of here before I decide to punish you for it.”

I zip and button my jeans, gifting him a playful glare. “Just so you know, you don’t intimidate me. At all.”

Except he kind of does. The undercurrent of something darker, angrier is always there, even when he’s smiling. I see it in his eyes. Beneath it all, he’s a bit of a ticking time bomb.

The reason I was asking was because I wanted to know if he was going to the charity skate-a-thon this Friday at the Spartans’ rink.

I don’t think he would go and support Bryce’s cause ... but if he does, and he sees me, this will be over, and it’s kind of just starting to get good.

I enjoy Rhett. I have fun with him. And I kind of think, in a weird sort of way, he needs this.

He needs me.

Slipping my arms through my shirt, I pull it over my head and tug it into place. “I’m kind of busy this weekend with ... obligations ... so that’s why I was asking. I have limited availability, is what I’m trying to tell you.”

Rhett saunters toward me with the confidence of George Clooney and Ryan Gosling combined, and his lips pull into a smile that incinerates my core and elevates my heartrate. My gaze locks on his, and I wonder if this will be the last time he’ll ever look at me—like this.

It’s a very real possibility.

I think about telling him the truth.

I think about it every day.

And then I tell myself I’m in too deep; that I missed that exit miles ago.

“You make time for what you want,” he says. “If you want this, you’ll find time for it.”

Yeah. True. But I still need to know if he’s going to be there Friday night.

Lingering in the doorway, the truth bubbles on the edge of my tongue. I should tell him. I should come clean with everything right here, right now. Get it over with. Do the right thing.

“Rhett.” I inhale, practicing the words in my mind.

“Yeah?” He lifts a brow. And then his phone begins to vibrate. With a finger in the air to silence me, he answers. “Hello ... yeah, hey.” He takes a seat. It’s going to be a while.

“I’m leaving,” I whisper. He nods, angling his back toward me as I leave.

I have to end this.