Our gazes locked, and the connection didn’t crackle with the lustful electricity that usually preceded us ripping our clothes off, but with something softer, deeper, a simpatico feeling that hummed through my blood as he leaned over and brushed a lingering kiss over my lips.
“Fuck, all this being responsible is making me itch.”
“That’s probably just fleas in your carpet.” We both peered at the shabby beige tufts underfoot. Then Ramsey arched a brow. “But just in case, want to do something irresponsible to make yourself feel better?”
This was different. “Are you actually proposing something fun and reckless? I’m all ears.”
Ramsey canted his head toward the windows. “How cold do you think that water is?”
“Fucking cold.” The only reason the pond wasn’t frozen yet was because the temps had been up and down lately.
“Last one in sucks the other one off first.”
We both took off toward the door at the same time. Ramsey shoved me backward as he wrestled it open, but I managed to swing around him and pull ahead for two seconds before he caught up with me and shoved me again.
At the water’s edge, we shucked our clothes at lightning speed. “This qualifies more as flat-out stupid than fun and reckless, but we’ll baby-step you into it.” My thumbnail snagged on my sock, and Ramsey tossed a wild grin back at me as he took two steps into the water, whooped, then dived under.
“Fuck, it’s cold!”
“You were expecting a sauna?” I sucked in a breath and followed suit, barely letting the chill of the water register on my ankles before I dived in and came up gasping for air. “Holy shit.”
We splashed and dunked each other a couple of times, and then Ramsey squinted down at the water before looking back up at me with a horrified expression. “There’s a leech on my thigh.”
“Fuck that.” I had no recollection of exiting the water. I just knew one second I was waist deep and the next I was scrambling to shore, swiping at my body wildly and craning my head to check my back for bloodsuckers.
It took me a second to register Ramsey was cackling as he waded serenely toward the shoreline.
I glared at him. “You fucker. There are no leeches?”
There were no leeches.
But we quickly encountered a more pressing problem. It was fucking cold and, considering I hadn’t moved in, there were no towels. “Told you that was stupid,” I grumbled as we snatched up our clothes and hotfooted it inside.
“Hang on.” Ramsey shut the door behind us, and while I stood in the middle of the empty great room shivering, he strolled over to the fireplace, fiddling with it for a second before the gas logs roared to life. He gestured grandly. “I give you fire. Get your freezing ass over here.”
He wrapped his arms around me when I did, and we stood in front of the blissful heat until we both stopped shivering.
“I think my dick is still in the pond somewhere,” I confessed. My balls were numb. “Probably fish food.”
“Let me check.”
Ramsey dropped to his knees, the heat of his mouth a balm on my cold skin, then an inferno as he licked up the side of my cock. “Think this is it. Could be your belly button, though. Not sure.”
“Oh, fuck off.” I broke into a laugh, then sank my fingers into the wet ends of his hair. “But don’t stop. Aren’t I supposed to be the one on my knees, technically?”
He grinned up at me. “Winner’s choice.”
I wasn’t gonna argue with that.
We went from shivering to sweating over the next thirty minutes as Ramsey turned me inside out with his mouth, then turned me around and fucked me against the fireplace, the heat from the fire licking over my skin rivaled by the heat of Ramsey’s body as he thrust into me until he cried out.
When we got back to his place, I stopped in to grab a quick shower before heading back to Houston’s. At the door, he pulled me back for another kiss before I could get over the threshold. “Damn,” I teased, nipping his lower lip. “We should jump in that pond more often.”
“You growled at dinner when Houston touched me. That was…interesting.”
“Told you, it was gristle.”
“There wasn’t any gristle in that turkey, and you know it.”
“Gristle,” I repeated, then peered at him, his hooded expression, lips damp from kissing me. “Did you like it? I mean, if it had been an actual growl? Which it wasn’t.”
He considered for a second. “I just made you fire, sucked your cock, then fucked you until you came a second time, so I guess I did.” Then the smirky bastard winked.
I fisted his shirt and shoved him against the doorjamb, kissing him again.
I had one of those impromptu epiphanies as his lips moved over mine, the kind that smacked you upside the head. I’d had a schoolboy crush on Ramsey. The hot, cool football player, my older brother’s best friend. And what I’d stupidly failed to realize was that once I’d gotten to know the below-the-surface Ramsey—the guy who simultaneously pumped me up, kept me in check, shared moments of vulnerability, and was apparently way more fun than I’d ever given him credit for—my old feelings for him now seemed like some superficial bullshit.