The Love Coupon (Stubborn Hearts 2)

It was the second time he’d heard that advice. He waited till she’d gone and he cleaned the kitchen, packed for a night camping. Flick was moving around too. The shower ran. She answered a call and he could hear her laughing.

Sleep should’ve come quickly. He couldn’t settle. Flick was in the bed in the next room. The condo was quiet and he was tired, disappointed, just wanted to check out.

And then the whirring started.

Jesus Christ, Flick. He rolled to his side, tried to get away from the sound, but it was thunder in his ears, the hum of a motor in his body, hitting nerve endings all up his spine, doing things to his brain he couldn’t ignore, lighting it up.

She had to know he’d hear. He groaned and flipped to his back. She had to want him to hear. It would quit in a minute. She’d never needed long before. She’d get slick, he knew the sound of that, and arch her back, her hips canting and her legs shaking, her breathing chopped up, stop, start, and then her body would go rigid, toes digging into the bed, head thrown back on a moan.

“Come already,” he muttered.

If he was there, he’d say that in her ear, he’d kiss her while he made her writhe, made her beg for his hand or his mouth or his cock. He was so hard he could come before she did. Was that what she was waiting for? He brushed the back of his hand over his crown and bit down on his back teeth. She’d have a sheen of moisture on her skin and around her hairline and she’d smell like a storm approaching on a hot, crystal-clear night.

Yeah, God. The whirring changed, a new pattern of pulses, and holy fuck, he could hear her moaning. That was it for holding out. If he couldn’t have her, be the one to make her come, he’d come with her and let her hear him too.

It only took a loose grip, a couple of drawn-out tugs and the sound of Flick letting go full-throated and he was there, grunting through his own climax, ropes of come splattering over his chest as if it’d been months, not days, since he’d released inside Flick.

She was quiet, there was no more whirring. He got up, cleaned himself up, trying to tap any sense of leeriness down.

“Goodnight, Tom!” she yelled. “Sleep tight!”

Mosquito, bee, bedbug. But that this was no secret took the creep factor out of it. “Goodnight, Flick.”

He’d sleep now. And tomorrow he needed to not fall off the mountain again.

Chapter Twelve

Flick had a good weekend. The bike shopping was tolerable and she could do it online. She made it to the short list for an apartment in Anacostia within walking distance to the metro line, and when she went to her postbox it was to find Coalition for Humanity had reached out with a welcome letter that made her want to be there now.

Saturday night the work crew took her to dinner at the Purple Pig. It was a fun night. She was desperate to leave them, but would miss them terribly.

And best of all, on Sunday Tom got back smelling like the woods, with a suntan and two days of stubble that made him look darkly dangerous instead of broodingly uptight.

And he wasn’t weird with her.

He did this elaborate designed-to-be-funny inspection of the apartment, looking for ways she might’ve sullied it. He checked the fridge and the pantry, found no contraband box mac and cheese, professed himself pleased and then asked if she was planning to vibrate again tonight, with a completely straight face.

“Was it too much?” One of the most fun things she’d done not having sex with a man. If he’d hated it, she’d be a little bit destroyed.

“It was different.”

He’d chosen that word carefully. “You mean hot.” Knowing he was just next door, hearing her pleasure, hearing him grunt through his, and then letting him know she knew they’d been in it together. Too delicious. Her face flushed thinking about it.

He thought it was hot too because he couldn’t keep neutrality in his eyes in the same way he could force it into his body, into the detached expression, straight spine and folded arms. She liked how molten those burnt brown eyes got, how they fixed on her as if she was the only thing in the room he didn’t understand and wanted to make a study of.

“You’d have emerged from the womb a boundary pusher.”

Not quite. She was the shy, ignored youngest. She’d had to learn how to get what she wanted. “You must’ve heard Josh. He must’ve heard you. Or you were both having the world’s most constrained sex. Tragic.”

Constrained Tom was also hot, but only because he was looking for an excuse not to be that way. Flick was the definition of to-the-moon-and-back happy to give him one.

“For all Josh’s pedantic ways, he liked his sex spontaneous and in locations designed to thrill. He never brought anyone home. I like hotels.”

“I can see that. Anonymous and housekeeping tidies up.”

“Priorities,” he said, cutting his eyes away.

“Did you make any decisions while you were striding up mountains?” If he wanted to try sex again without a wall between them, she’d be on board with that. If he’d decided to quit Rendel, he’d have to explain his plan because she wasn’t letting his pride throw him under a career bus.