Never Say Yes To Your Best Friend (I said Yes)

12. Evilla

Chapter twelve

Evilla

Evilla

T his is not how I imagined this man seeing my breasts, even if it hasn’t happened yet.

We walked into his magnificent warehouse condo via a set of metal stairs on the side of the building, all very fire escape-esque. Mont brought all the to-go containers and stood behind me like he would catch me if I fell backward or wavered. I managed to limp up the steps, trapping a whimper in my throat with every single jarring movement.

Even though my nipple is in danger of falling the hell off, I can still appreciate the architectural marvel that is his home.

When I asked about exposed brick and beams, I had no idea those things could be combined with the most gothic, arched, floor-to-ceiling domed windows or that they’d have little seating areas in them. The floor looks like it’s a hundred years old, and I mean it in a good way. I love the worn-in hardwood look. I expected a mancave to the extreme when I imagined Mont’s house, but his furniture is light and airy. There is more than one mid-century piece that, even in my current condition, makes me drool. He’s got an array of wicker, metal cage-looking furniture, an antique sofa and settee, a dining set straight out of the eighteen hundreds with a big blocky table, an impressive handmade live edge wood bench, and heavy-looking carved chairs. His space is eclectic. I like eclecticism. I could never decide on just one thing from one era. There’s been so much good history when it comes to furniture and art. I don’t have the money to afford things like this, but I can dream and make a ton of online pinboards.

His place even has the swirly spiral staircase that goes up to the loft—metal steps and railing and all. When he said warehouse, I pictured an old factory, but this place has more of an old bank vault vibe to it.

As much as I want to appreciate the rest of the house, I head straight for the kitchen. It’s a long, galley-style kitchen, which makes sense in a space like this, where everything is open, without walls to divide up or make sense of it.

I like that even though the condo has an industrial vibe, the kitchen is made with rustic white cabinets and butcher block wood countertops. The stove—omg, the stove—is mint green with legs, and it looks like you’d have to put wood in it to cook or get heat, but I know it has to be gas or electric. I get a load of the fridge, which matches the stove in its seafoam-minty awesomeness. My heart might have exploded out of my chest if I had seen this on a regular day.

As it is, all I can manage to mutter is a thin and strangled, “Ice. Please.”

“Are you sure we should ice it?” Mont quickly puts away the to-go containers in the fridge. Then, he pulls out this strange contraption and shuts the top freezer. It takes me pretty much a minute to swallow thickly and get over my fear of this whole process enough to realize it’s one of those ice molds that makes giant round ice spheres. “Maybe we should look it up.”

“I don’t have time,” I groan.

He looks like he’s going to pass out. “I should have taken you to the hospital.”

“No! Okay, fine. Look it up.”

He places the ice on the counter and pulls out his phone while I stand here, trying not to pass out from the throbbing. Or more like booming. I feel like that hornet got under my skin and is still there, making a home out of my boob.

“It says to make sure the sting is clean, then apply ice, but wrap it so it prevents frostbite, and only do it for about five to ten minutes. Then, give it a break before putting the ice back, but only repeat it three to four times.”

“That sounds like a lot of instructions.”

He passes me the ice mold. His hands shake, and he looks pale. “Just let me know if you need help.”

“Need help? I can’t look! If I look, I might pass out!”

“God. Okay. Okay, I…god.”

He starts shaking so hard that I can see his teeth about to chatter.

“How about I lay down on the couch? I’ll undo my dress and look, and if I faint, then at least I’m already lying down. You can revive me with something smelly.”

“Smelling salts? I don’t think I have any of those.”

“Old socks?” I suggest.

He looks down at his feet.

My brain does a recalibration of the drive. Before he started the car, he must have put his boots back on with sandy and wet feet. No socks. I don’t see them sticking out. He’s also still soaking wet, but some of that water must have been absorbed into his car. No, the seats are leather. Would that absorb anything? Slim chance. His jeans weren’t that dark before or that pressed to his skin. His shirt fits extremely snug now. I get another hot flash that runs the course of my body, and it makes my nipple hurt more.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been so panicked about the sting that I didn’t even think. You should go change. And shower. You’re probably drenched with saltwater from head to toe. Your poor car.”

“The car’s fine. I’ll wipe it out later,” Mont assures me.

“You could get it detailed.”

“If anything is wrecked, I’ll send it somewhere where people are good at fixing it. No worries.” He swallows hard, and is it my imagination, or do his eyes get a little bit darker and more smolder-y? “It’s you I’m worried about.”

I take the ice mold and hold out my hand. “Do you have a towel? I’ll be okay.” But he doesn’t move. He’s frozen. I have to get ice on the sting sometime in this century. “Mont?”

“Yes,” he mumbles as he grabs the tea towel off the oven handle and thrusts it into my palm. “Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll just be down the hall. Showering. If you need anything, please don’t scream, as someone might call the cops. I’ll hear you even at a normal speaking volume. It’s surprising how sound travels in a place that has no walls.”

“I’ll be fine,” I tell him, though honestly, probably not. Chances are slim.

He hesitates, and I give him as much of a fake smile as I can muster. It probably looks like a lopsided pumpkin face two weeks past Halloween, but he eventually walks down the hallway, leaving me alone.

I don’t want to wreck the nice antique couch with my sandy, icy, overheated body, but it seems like the only option if I want to lie down. It’s that or the settee, which looks even older, so I take the couch.

I spread out and find it far more comfortable than I thought it would be. It’s purple and gold brocade with three seats, but it’s about seven feet long. I thought it would feel like lying on rocks, but Mont found the one antique piece of furniture in the world that has some softness to it.

I put the ice mold and the towel on the floor and slowly work at peeling my dress down. It sucks. Every movement makes the sting boom and boom and boom. It’s not just one hornet in there. It’s him and all his friends, and they’re partying hard with wild music. What kind of music do evil sand hornets listen to? It feels like a techno beat.

I get the top of my dress down, and I’m soaked in a fine sheen of sweat by the time I peel away my bra. I force myself to look down.

Okay. O-fucking-kay. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I can’t see a stinger anywhere, and my nipple is only about eight sizes larger than it should be. It looks red and welted, but is it falling off? No. It’s still firmly attached to my body. It might look like a nipple monster from another dimension, but hopefully, with a little ice, it will cool down.

Ha.

I crack the ice mold open and giggle when I see the strawberry slices in it. It’s pretty and inventive. Probably the only ice Mont has in the house. The balls are perfectly round, and two would fill up my palm. I figure that’s probably enough. I save the other two for later and wrap the towel around the two spheres I have in my palm. They nestle perfectly around my welted alien nipple.

“Ahhhhhh.” The hiss of pain turns into a sign of relief as the cold comes through the towel and soaks into my skin.

I lean my head back against the arm of the couch. Thankfully, I do have the presence of mind to drag my dress back up over everything so that it covers me up. I don’t want to give Mont the scare of his life when he comes back out here.

Connor wasn’t right. Mont clearly isn’t interested in inspecting my breasts or any other part of me in any way. Why does that make me so disappointed?

I’m not. Not at all. That’s just the crab sitting weird. It’s the pain of the sting reaching my belly.

God, I’m such a bad liar.

I concentrate on making slow, icy nipple circles. I still can’t believe this happened. I was going to enjoy that rare walk on the beach, and I was going to enjoy it with Mont. We might have had a moment. We might have brushed hands. Sure, I got a ride in his arms, but I was so worried about the pain and the hornets and more potential pain that it kind of ruined the effect.

Circle slow. One. Two. Three. Repeat. One, two, three. One, two, three.

I close my eyes and get into the rhythm. It’s nice. The more the ice balls move over my nipple, the less pain I feel. I keep on counting because it’s working.

“Evilla?”

“Argh!” I shoot upright on the couch. The balls explode off my chest, along with the towel. Ice goes flying, and so does the rest of the fabric hiding my boobs from the world. From Mont, who is standing right over me. I didn’t hear him come up. I think I might have drifted off for a minute.

He whips around lightning-fast, and his hands shoot up over his eyes even though his back is to me. “Oh my god. I’m sorry. I didn’t see anything, I promise. I was looking at your face the whole time.”

Fuck.

Can this night get any more mortifying?

I bend down, grab one errant ice ball, and jam it onto my nipple. Then, I snatch my dress up and hold it all in place with the crook of my arm.

“Can you take me back home? Please? I’ll get my dress back on, and I can take ice for the road. I’m sure it will help, even if I ice it through my clothes. And…yeah, I’m good.”

From the back, Mont looks freshly showered. He’s wet again. His hair dried fast in the car earlier, and by the time we got in here, it was barely wet at all. Also, he seems to have a knack for picking out clothes that make every single part of his body look like a magnet for my mouth. His jeans hang off his hips but also cup his ass nicely. He doesn’t have a man bubble butt, just a nice, muscular butt that his jeans do wonders for.

Owwww. This is so not the time for my nipples to get hard again. I don’t know if the injured one can, but the other one is definitely reacting, and my stung nipple wants to follow suit.

“Sure. Yes, I’ll do that. I’m just going to go wipe down the car, and I’ll be back in ten. Do you want some water? Something else to drink? Is there anything I can get you?”

“I’m fine. The pain is pretty much gone. The ice worked wonders.”

“Okay. Good.” He sounds relieved.

He takes one step forward.

“Mont?” I call out. He freezes.

“Yes?”

“Maybe I do want some water,” I tell him.

“Alright.”

He doesn’t move, and I can’t seem to get my lungs working right to breathe. A sip of water would help my dry throat. “Mont?”

“I’ll go get it. Right now.”

But he still doesn’t move. Aside from getting walloped by a pervy hornet on the beach, this is a great top-up to an evening that has been pretty awful.

Has it?

Not really. Most people would probably think so, and I can’t say I’ve ever had a worse string of events happen to me on a date, but it’s been kind of nice, too. Minus the asshole hornet, minus most of Connor’s outbursts, and minus him and Gen leaving with each other. I hope she’s doing okay. I should text her. I should call her and tell her about my unfortunate injury. She’ll laugh and say these kinds of things could only happen to me. Then, I’ll laugh, too, and it’ll make me feel better.

Mont still hasn’t moved.

“Mont?” I call out again.

“Can I kiss you?” he suddenly mutters.

Arghhhkghgh, what? Like this ? There’s no freaking way he’s talking to me. His words might be pushed ahead of him into the open space and directed at his kitchen, but there’s no one else in here that I’m aware of.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes. “That was the worst thing I could have said. You want to go home, and you’d just like a sip of water, and you’re in pain. And then there’s me, standing here, all can I kiss you like a creepy, insensitive arsehole. We just had the worst date ever, but I’m proving it can keep getting a few shades past the worst. I’m your boss, and bosses shouldn’t ask to kiss their employees. We’re not even faking anything anymore. And right now, you probably think I drove you here to put the pervy moves on you because I had ulterior motives like a boss, but not that kind of boss. I didn’t. Bring you here for that, I mean. I truly did want to make sure you were okay. I should be getting you water. I should be wiping down the saltwater in the car and checking for sand so you can be comfortable when I take you home. I should be acting, but instead, I’m just standing here and shooting my mouth off like a total dipshit. I’m never going to live this down.”

I shouldn’t laugh, but a high giggle bursts out of me. “You’re not going to live this down?”

He spins around but carefully keeps his eyes locked on mine. When he realizes I’m decent again, his eyes still don’t trail down or fixate anywhere except on my face, which is more than I can say for mine. I give him a once over that includes me fully appreciating his broad chest, his muscular arms peeking out of his T-shirt sleeves, his jeans from the front, the bulge in them, and—

The bulge in them.

I quickly drag my eyes back up, but not on his because he’ll know I just realized there’s most certainly a bulge in his pants, right there behind his fly. He’ll know it’s the reason my face is getting red, and he’ll know I totally just checked him out and—

I think I could pass out for real right now from lack of oxygen and the primal cavewoman stuff that is going on in my body.

I want to leap off this couch, say fuck the ice ball, throw my arms around his neck, climb him and straddle him, and kiss the living daylights out of him. I want to tell him that he tastes like spearmint gum from the beach, like salt, like the beach, like all the wonderful things. Not like crab. The crab test will be passed, just as I promised. I want to ask him if I taste like the beach and spearmint gum. I want him to say he isn’t sure and that he needs another taste, and then I want him to stick his tongue down my throat. I want to make out with him in the hottest way. I want him to throw me down on top of that island, push my dress up, and make me forget about the pain that might start coming back to my nipple when it thaws out.

Holy fuck. These rampaging hormones need to stop already.

“You want to kiss me?” I have to clarify that. “Right now? Really? Me?”

“I shouldn’t,” he groans.

“I’m not asking what should or shouldn’t be done. I’m asking what you want. You did say that, right? I wasn’t just hallucinating because my nipple swelled up so big that it cut off the circulation to my brain?” It probably has, or why else would I say something so ridiculously embarrassing?

“You’re not hallucinating. I just executed poor judgment.”

“What if I like your poor judgment? What if I liked being swept up into your arms on the beach? What if I liked being near you? What if I like the way you smell and the things you say and your proximity?” I’m too breathless, thank freaking god, to ask him what if I want to have all the orgasms that involve you because I know they’d wreck my brain and my vagina and my whole world?

It doesn’t matter that I shouldn’t go there. It doesn’t matter how we met, that he’s my boss, and that I was sure we were destined to be enemies. Period. Not enemies to lovers. The equation was supposed to end there. I haven’t ever had a lover. A boyfriend, sure. Maybe even one that was borderline there, emotions-wise, but I’ve never plunged headlong into love.

This is just a kiss. He’s just asking to kiss me.

My hormones need to stop freaking out, and that burning and throbbing? It’s not just in my nipple anymore. It’s so numbed out that I can’t feel anything there. All the feeling has relocated between my legs.

Mont gets down on his knees right in front of the couch, which puts him at eye level. His eyes have a bright ring around the pupil, and it’s not all darkness and flecks. There’s more detail. There’s a list. A list of many, many reasons why and why not, but we don’t need to speak it.

When Mont leans forward, I meet him halfway, and our mouths crash together. My hands scrabble for his neck, and I tug him into me, hauling him onto the couch. He leans over me without crushing me, without touching my sore nipple at all. He still manages to get a knee between my legs while kissing me breathlessly, and I make room for him, canting my hips up into his. My dress hasn’t ridden up enough. There’s my fabric and his denim, and still, I can feel his hard bulge pressed up against my inner thigh. He kisses me deep into the couch, and I let him. I crave him. I want him.

He doesn’t taste the least bit like crab.

There’s a little bit of mint, but mostly, it’s all hot, hard, furious need, and man groans, his tongue on my tongue. I don’t know if he shaved while he was in the shower, but his skin feels so smooth against mine. No man beard stubble rash.

And then.

Oh god, and then his hands sweep over my jaw and bury themselves in my hair. He lifts my head away from the arm of the couch, changing the angle, kissing me deeper, and holding me exactly where he wants me so he can introduce fantastical lights and colors into my world. Most of them happen between my legs and not in my head, and all the stuff going on in my head isn’t mythical at all. It’s just us. Fantasies of us naked and me being brave enough to do a significant number of positions with this man. It’s my hands on his shirt, palms flattened along his shoulders and back so I can feel the strength and his heat below.

There’s a base level, an elemental rightness, the smallest epicenter that I’ve never given away and I’ve never had given to me. I’ve never needed or desired anyone like I need this man right now.

We’re not faking it. He sees me. He wants me. There are no strings, no conditions, no ulterior motives. It’s just two people who were supposed to be saying a sort of goodbye, farewell, and also have a good life. Things didn’t start on a positive note, but they were supposed to end that way.

This isn’t an ending. This doesn’t feel like let’s have some fun and call it a night, knowing we’ll never see each other again or that we don’t have to see each other again, and that’s the allure. It feels like a beginning.

A beginning of something neither of us have had or known before.

It’s not a bargain. It’s not an experiment. It’s not unbalanced. It’s not bartered or earned.

It’s that rawness, that sweet, simple truth. It’s the rightness that’s nearly impossible to find, even though we all think it should be so easy.

It’s two people who love crab and maybe even pudding. It’s two uncertain people finding certainty in each other, and it’s us giving ourselves up and entrusting them to each other. That is no small leap of faith. It’s a freaking giant.

I don’t want to climb him right here on the couch, but I angle my leg up and curl it into the back cushion so he has more room—more room to fit himself exactly where I need him. The hardness of him moving more toward my aching clit. His kiss scores through me, burning every bit of my body. He’s still hovering above me, careful not to crush me or put any pressure on my wounded nipple.

He’s still rough at the same time. Rough and gentle. Gentle where it matters. He doesn’t kiss me gently. He doesn’t stick his hands in my hair gently. He does those things like he means business.

I try to rock against him, but I’m still not hitting the right spot. A wiggle and a cinch of my leg up on the back of the couch, and yes. Yes! Yesssss ! My vagina cries out in ecstasy. Yes, finally, some action. Penis action. Erotic male penis action.

Finally, feeling him, even constrained by his zipper and jeans and my dress and underwear, is the most wonderful sensation I’ve known on this couch. Or off of it. My vagina starts generating more fantasy images that my brain delivers behind my closed eyes. I lean into Mont’s kiss as I think about what his exact shape would feel like inside me. In my mouth. What his mouth would feel like licking my vagina like tomorrow isn’t coming.

Yessssssss!

I want to ride his face and come on his tongue. I want him to tell me to come on his tongue. I want him to tell me that my vagina is the best vagina on earth. The hottest, the tastiest. Then, I want commands. I want him to give my vagina commands, and I want her to obey, and that’s how I want to come. I want him to be bossy the way I can be bossy. I want him to be a boss in real life and a boss between the sheets.

Holy crabvioli. At the crab shack, crab ravioli is a thing, but I haven’t tried it yet. Maybe next time. There has to be a next time. For crab. For conversation. For this .

There has to be another time and another. There’s no way I’m going to have enough in a single session. I tilt my hips up to get a better feel, to angle Mont’s thick, hard length right at my clit. When it bumps against me, I make sounds against his mouth that sound like a jellyfish consuming a shark. I didn’t say glarb , glarb was sexy, but he grunts like it is.

We’re wearing too many clothes. I need less of them and more of this.

“Do you have condoms?” I pant, and then, since that was shockingly unsexy and blunt, I run my tongue over his lower lip.

“I do, yeah. Bathroom. I’ll get them.”

Okay, we’re doing this. We’re actually doing this. Unless he’s miscalculated and he’s out of condoms. In which case, I could be creative, and it would be more than satisfying, I’m sure, but I want all of him right now, and that includes more than his tongue and fingers.

I feel way too light when Mont gets off the couch. I don’t know how we got from sandy beach hornet crab date disaster to this, but we’re past all that, and we’re here now, and I’m here for it.

I’m here for it when he comes back with a shy smile on his face that looks so reluctantly in place. I can’t see packets of condoms trailing after him, but I’m sure he found one or two and put them in his pocket.

He sweeps me off the couch, so careful to make sure that the injured parts of me stay protected again. I gasp and hold on tight, but just because I have my head tucked against his shoulder doesn’t mean I don’t sneak a good look at the condo while we go up those twisty metal stairs. I’m glad he’s the one climbing them. My legs are way too unsteady for level one stairs, and these ones are more like an extreme level. I’d probably wobble and go careening straight over the edge.

Mont doesn’t wobble.

We get to the top of the stairs, and like magic, a light turns on. I’m not sure if he has it proximity wired. It would make sense, though. Rich people always have crazy devices to make their lives easier. Wait. I think anyone can buy those kinds of lights. I remember when dimmer switches, outdoor motion sensors, and the lights you had to make noise to turn on were a thing. Oh, and touch lamps! Oh my god. Technically, all of that was before my time, but my mom has a thing for stuff that was popular back when she was a teenager, so she’s kept a lot of her lamps, and every single light in my parents’ house is on a dimmer switch.

Anyway, the lights come on, and when Mont angles to the side, I look over his shoulder and— holy shit, a bear.

I scream. Right into his ear.

And he screams. Right into mine.

He doesn’t drop me. Instead, he takes off like the floor is lava and races around the massive open area. Correction. It’s not that open. There aren’t walls, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t furniture interspersed throughout the place—a huge fairy tale kind of wardrobe, a huge desk with a big wooden chair, and a massive bed that could have been ripped right from medieval times. How does anyone have a bed like that? Shouldn’t those things only exist in museums?

Right. The bear. Focus.

There’s a bear in here!

That just screamed into my head and didn’t come out of my mouth. I try, but my voice comes out crackly and hoarse. I guess fear will freeze a person right up. “There’s a bear in here!”

“Where?” Mont hurtles around. I’m still in his arms, but he executes a perfect drop stance. I hope he doesn’t forget I’m here and then end up using me as a defense weapon.

“There!”

He whips around.

“No! There!”

Finally, he’s facing the right direction. How the ever-loving crabshakes did a bear get into this condo? Into the building? Into the middle of the city?

I must be really tired, and that hornet sting has gone straight to my brain, or okay, it was probably that I’ve been kissed utterly senseless because Mont relaxes in an instant, and I realize, as I feel his muscles slacken, that the bear isn’t alive. It’s stuffed. A taxidermy bear. It’s just been put into one of those scary, on its haunches with teeth bared, eyes glowing, ready to fuck shit up, positions. Rawwwrrrrrr. That’s what it’s silently saying. The paws are extended menacingly, the sharp, long claws ready to shred.

“Oh my…”

“I’m sorry. I should have prepared you. That’s Stewart. He was here when I bought the building. It’s a wild thing to have a bear in here, but the last owner moved out and left almost all the old furnishings. I guess they didn’t want to deal with them anymore or didn’t have a place to put them. I’m surprised they didn’t sell a lot of the stuff off, but maybe they hoped half the charm of the building was getting some of the antique furnishings.”

“Maybe they just didn’t care. It’s sad. A lot of people seem to be that way now.”

“I care. I care about this place. I cared about restoring it, and all the furniture was either saved and put into the units that sold so they were partially furnished, or I found them good homes with people who would cherish them. Some were collectors, and some just wanted to score some great pieces at good prices. Either way, they were thrilled. A few people who bought condos also said they were in love with the furniture and thought it was great that they came already nearly ready for them to move into. I asked around to see if any museums or galleries would take Stewart, but no one wanted him. It’s hard. You have to have paperwork and such, and I don’t have anything from the last owner. So, here he stays. Inherited and loved. When I get lonely, I sometimes throw a hat on him or a button-up shirt, and we have conversations.”

“You don’t,” I say in shock.

“Why? Because you think it’s great or because you think it’s creepy and weird?”

“Because I think it’s great.”

“Then yes, I do,” he replies with a grin.

“Do you buy him his own shirts? With fun prints on them? Like flamingos and tropical flowers?”

“I haven’t, but that’s a great idea. I have to order them online in a double extra-large, but I could make it happen.”

“Mont?”

“Yes?”

“Kiss me. Kiss me again, please. And do it on that huge museum bed.”

“It’s not old. Someone was making historically accurate Viking-style beds at a market I went to a few years ago, and I had to have one. It’s all hand carved.”

“Oh my god, you should have gotten a longship.”

“Except that, generally, when you go to sleep in one of those, it’s permanent, and people are sailing you away and firing burning arrows at you or burying you in the ground.”

He sets me down on the sprawling, intricate work-of-art bed and kisses me senseless again. I hold on tight to him throughout the onslaught. His bed is super soft. Maybe too soft. Isn’t that bad for the spine? Then again, it’s got some fluffy duvet on it that I’ve sunk half a foot into. Unless this place is mega airconditioned, feather-down duvets are too heavy for how hot it is here all year round. Maybe he likes the press of a heavy blanket. Or maybe he likes his place sub-zero, so the blanket is necessary. Perhaps it’s just for show, and it gets stripped off every night.

I’d like my clothes stripped off right now.

I open my eyes to look up into Mont’s face, expecting to just see him. There’s him, and right above him, on the wall, there’s a massive sheep’s butt.

“Whoa!” I just about take off his bottom lip. He’s still on the page of let’s make out, and I’m all, what the hell is that mounted above the bed?

His eyes follow mine. “Oh, it’s a big horned sheep’s butt.”

“What? Why?” I questioned, feeling somewhat baffled.

“I don’t know why, but it’s a funny story. It was also left here, so I built this place around it, basically. I did take it down for the renovations, but it went right back up in the original spot after. The anchors are already there in the wall to hold it up. The posts are so big that they basically hide it from view, so that’s a great bonus.”

“Who mounts a sheep’s butt? Who even keeps that? What about the head?”

“I can’t say.” He looks amused, not annoyed that we’re talking about sheep butts when we should be talking about our butts getting naked. “The funniest part of the whole thing is that when I took this place over, I had no idea what it was. The bear is a bear, that’s obvious. But this? I had to take photos of it and go to some online forums and have someone identify it for me.”

“Don’t they have apps for that?”

He chuckles. He’s holding himself up with one elbow and one hand, and that laugh sends a vibration through his body that I feel in mine. My legs are around his legs, so we’re hip to hip, and I like that motion very much. People should laugh more when they’re pressed together like this.

“They do, but I didn’t think of it at the time. From experience using it after, I think you need a better side and view than just a full-on rump.”

“Okay. But you kept it. That’s the best part.”

“You like it?” Mont asks.

“What’s not to like? It’s kitschy as hell.”

“Kitsch. That’s not the word I would use, but now that you did, it works.”

I can’t wait to think about this big horned sheep’s bottom the whole time I’m making out on this bed. Never mind. One look into those sweet honey, deep brown eyes of Mont’s, and I’m not thinking about the sheep at all.

“I’m scared if I undress you, I’m going to make the hornet sting worse.” His hands stay planted on the bed for emphasis, which is no good. They should be planted on me.

“Not possible. I iced it down so thoroughly that it will probably be frozen for the next hour. If it starts to thaw out, a little pain is good in that region, isn’t it?”

“Guh, I’m not sure,” he grunts.

“I say it is.” I can’t imagine anything this man could do to me would ever be something I didn’t like. Just one look in his eyes was enough to make me lose my focus on the sheep’s butt. If my nipple starts hurting…no, it won’t. I won’t even be able to think about that while he’s doing other things.

How does one ask a gentleman in a ladylike fashion to please eat her pussy until she explodes into oblivion?

I’m really not sure, so I just grab his face and kiss him brutally with a hint of teeth and more than a hint of my tongue. My body sags beneath his into the ultra-soft duvet. I’m all sensations, and none of them are screaming hornet stings, bears, or sheep’s asses at me, so I think we’re good.

When Mont sucks my bottom lip into his mouth and follows that with something I didn’t even know a tongue could do to another tongue, I know we’re beyond good.

I rub up against his length. It now feels like he has a small arm in his pants—I know, I’m sorry. That’s the only thing my addled brain can come up with. If it can be compared to a bat or a tree, why not the arm of a three-foot action figure made out of solid hard plastic?

I roll my hips until my mind can barely register anything anymore.

I wriggle under him and work at getting my dress down while he’s kissing me furiously. It’s already undone on the top, so that’s the easy part. It’s not hard to shuck my bra out of the way since that was half off, too. It’s getting the bottom part of my dress up that causes problems. It’s wedged between my legs, which are wedged between Mont’s hard, thick thighs. I can’t just grind against him until my clothes push themselves up because of the massive friction.

Can I?

He makes it look so easy when he feels me struggling and fumbling. He gets the fabric that was trapped up and out of the way, and then his hand follows mine as I finish the job, pushing it up around my waist.

Damn panties. They’re in the way, too.

I brush my own fingers over my clit and make a mewling noise into his mouth. I’m a healthy woman, and I’ve given myself regular orgasms—a few a week is what I deem regular —but I’ve never felt anything like that. My clit has never gone off with the spice level of raw jalapeno pepper.

I find Mont’s hand and drag it to my soaked panties. He very respectfully brushes his fingertips over my center, but I need more. Even arching into him isn’t enough.

“Tear them off,” I hiss. “Please.”

“And touch you?” Mont grunts.

“Yes, touch me. Touch me until I die,” I plead.

“What if I don’t want you to die?”

“That’s a euphemism for until I come repeatedly.”

His hand slides over the soft skin at the crease of my leg. I hook the other leg around him, making more room and opening myself up to him with a single shimmy of my hips. Everything about the way his fingers trace under the edges of my panties to the soft way he caresses my overheated folds feels like the most perfect thing in the world.

Ugh, you always read stories in books about how people feel like they fit so right together. There’s book stuff, and then there’s real-life stuff, and I thought they’d never line up or meet or even come close. This feels more like a fantasy right now than real life because I feel like we fit. Not just our bodies but the way every single touch, caress, kiss, and breath comes out feeling twisted and tangled together, and yeah, it’s right. So, so right.

Storybook right.

Even with the sheep’s butt keeping guard over our heads.