The Pool Boy (Nashville Neighborhood 2)

“He cheated on you?”

I inhaled a deep breath. “Yeah.”

I didn’t tell him with who, because despite everything that had happened between us and how terrible Clark had treated me, I wasn’t going to ‘out’ him. I hadn’t even told Jenna the truth. Just that I’d caught my husband having sex with someone else, and I didn’t correct her when she made the assumption it’d been a woman.

Anger flashed across Troy’s face. “He’s a fucking idiot.”

I lifted a shoulder in response. What else was there to say? “You’re not wrong.”

“I got cheated on once.” As soon as his statement was out, he frowned and waved a hand like he was trying to brush his comment away. “Okay, I get it’s not the same. Doesn’t compare to yours, but I just meant it sucks and people are stupid. If you want to be with someone else, go be with them. It ain’t that hard.”

I drew in a deep breath. “Again, you’re not wrong.”

We lapsed into silence, and it grew cold and awkward.

He scrubbed his palm over his chin as he contemplated what he’d said, making his scruff bristle against his fingertips. “I made it weird.” He gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry about the boner-killing conversation.”

A short, unexpected laugh burst from me. “Boner-killing?”

“Yeah.”

As he strolled toward me, the mood in the room shifted yet again, but it lightened. How the hell did he do that? The promise of sex lurked in his eyes, and I couldn’t help but see dollar signs in his future. I’d given up any attempt to be professional with him, but when he strutted to stand in front of me, I had a vision of him in a music video, crooning a love ballad and making every woman in America swoon over his bedroom eyes.

They’d go as weak kneed as I was now.

He let go of the blanket and it dropped to our feet. “I promised you another round, didn’t I?”

Excitement edged my voice, but I tamped it down and bit my bottom lip. “Troy—”

Too late. He threaded his hands into my hair and lowered his mouth to mine. He kissed me as if it were do-or-die, like an audition where he’d have to give it his all, leaving everything on the table.

Instantly, I was drowning in him. I succumbed to his lips and the desire coiling inside me, not fighting him as he tugged at the knot on my belt to undo it. I followed him blindly as he led me to the couch, slipped a hand inside my open robe, and eased me down to sit on the cushions.

Did he know his kiss was just as powerful as his singing voice was to me?

He knelt beside the couch and nibbled on my lips, his hands roaming over my bare skin.

“How is it,” I murmured between his slow kisses, “you’re so good at this? More YouTube tutorials?”

His grin was lopsided. “Those kinds of tutorials aren’t YouTube.”

Troy’s hands scooped under my legs and he jerked me to the edge of the couch, making me flop back on the cushions at an angle. My legs straddled his waist, and I was still technically wearing my robe because my arms were in the sleeves, but the sides were wide open. It gave him a perfectly naked ribbon of my body to drink in.

A moan seeped from me as his hands took full advantage of the access he had. His palms smoothed over my breasts. They caressed my stomach, my hips, my legs. His musician hands played me like an instrument he’d studied, and I made all the sounds he’d hoped for because lust flared across his face.

The way he looked at me was amazing. And sort of terrifying because he gazed at me with reverence. He’d put me up on an unwarranted pedestal and it was much too high.

His blue eyes were focused as his hand glided over my waist, inched downward, and brushed between my legs. His featherlight touch sizzled.

“Oh, my God,” I whimpered as he pushed his middle two fingers inside me, all the way until his knuckles pressed against my sensitized skin. I arched up, bowing off the couch cushions at the sudden pleasure. I reached out, grabbing onto the thickest parts of his arms, and my gaze was drawn to his fingers as they slowly eased out and disappeared inside me again.

The sensation made my toes curl into points and I dug my fingernails into his skin, unable to control myself. Shit, it felt good. So different and new and better than anything I’d had before.

Troy was kneeling next to the couch, but he sat back on his heels and dipped down, running his tongue up the length of my slit. It tore a cry of satisfaction from my lungs.

“Yeah?” His question was teasing, seductive, and one hundred percent rhetorical.