I skim him for answers and to ensure he’s okay. “Did you enjoy it?”

His smile bursts forth. “Yeah.” He wets his lips. “I definitely did.”

I’m grinning. “I’d call that me being more aggressive, not necessarily rough. I’m not yanking your hair, Long Beach. I’m just in control.”

His eyes sink into me. “You like to top?”

I lean closer and whisper against his ear, “What happened to letting my body show you?”

His body flexes, practically arching up into me. “Fuck.” He reaches down and palms his shaft, still constricted behind boxer-briefs. “You’re killing me, Os.”

Os?

I sit up off Jack in a jolt.

He has another hand on his head, face frozen in too many emotions. “I, uh…sorry.” He straightens up too, breath knotted. “It just came out.” He tries to smile. “You don’t like nicknames?”

I love them. I’d give him a hundred corny, sappy nicknames if I could.

But I listen to the signs that read:

Danger!

Warning!

Going too fucking far, Oliveira!

I can’t lie to the guy though. “Just don’t call me Ozzy.”

“Why not?”

“My college boyfriend wore that one down.”

“Noted.” He stiffens, and we both slide further back on the bunkbed, leaning against the wall. Our legs are scrunched up towards our chests. Knees bent.

I cut through an awkward tension by wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

He smiles weakly over at me. “I thought I fucked that up between us.”

“No.” I shake my head at him. “Just so you’re aware, being a top or bottom has nothing to do with being dominant or submissive. Dominant bottoms exist.”

He nods with another smile. “Good to know.” He tracks a hand from my kneecap down to my thigh, breathes in, and then retracts, like the intensity and swelling feelings are too much. My skin is still tingling from the touch, and I listen as he explains, “I can’t say what I’m into yet…being a top or bottom, I guess I won’t figure it out until I have sex.”

I push back curly strands out of my eyes.

I want to tell Highland right here that I do prefer to top. That the last time I bottomed was over ten-years ago. I want to tell him that I’ll take care of him if he’s nervous, and I’d never pressure him to do anything he’s not ready to do.

But I’m a coward and too afraid of his reaction to those words. So I don’t utter a single one. He could either run scared because he doesn’t think we’re sexually compatible. Or worse, he could believe we are.

And then what? We have mind-blowing sex, the best sex of my life? We find out we’re too good together in every aspect. Too perfect for each other, a match orchestrated by a twenty-one-year-old genius named Charlie Cobalt and maybe even a higher power.

Fate.

The stars in the sky.

Aligning for him and me.

And then Jack could call this a stepping-stone. Short-term fling. Maybe that’s all I’m good for while I’m in security.

Insecurities are such assholes, and I know I’m riding this one hard and dry.

So I swallow the pit in my throat, and I hug him closer and kiss the freckle on his temple. His lip rises at me.

He places his large hand back on my thigh.

“So,” I say, “when exactly did you know you were into me, Highland?”

He chokes on a sound that I think was supposed to be a laugh. “When I met you.”

I rock back, my skull touching the wall. “That was…five years ago.”

His fingers rake through his thick hair. “I didn’t know what it meant—my feelings for you. I couldn’t process them beyond the fact that they were so different than anything I’d felt before.” His Adam’s apple bobs.

My mind races back to that time and place. I met him around the same time I became Charlie’s bodyguard.

Jack Highland was just twenty-two and a production assistant for We Are Calloway.

I was near the top in security.

It wasn’t until he became an exec-producer at twenty-five that his world started a head-on collision with mine. He was heading meetings with security during filming days, and we’ve had our fair share of flare-ups concerning Charlie and WAC shoots. But it was always professional.

Until the tour bus.

Until the FanCon.

And then…gloves off, I guess. His compliments became flirty, and I just gave in. Because why not? It was fun for a while. When I didn’t yearn and long for more. And then he rejected me, but now he’s embracing me, and he’s saying he’s felt a connection early, early on.

Jack holds my gaze. “When I talk to people, I love making them feel good, but with you…I never wanted it to stop. I wanted to come back for more, even when my work said, focus on your subject. I just wished that my subject was you.”

My chest rises.

I am in…way too deep.

And I don’t want to swim back out.

“Why do you think that is?” I ask him.

Tags: Krista Ritchie Like Us Romance
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