Out on Good Behavior (Radleigh University Book 3) (18 page)

The idea of letting her go makes my heart ache almost as much as the realization of how stupid I’ve been, how much I hurt the girl I love by assuming she couldn’t handle or love who I am, even though she’s been saying otherwise this entire time. “If I promise to stop being such a moron, can I keep you instead?” I ask, stepping closer and twining my fingers with hers. “I’m sorry. I’m still new at this. But I want you, in my life, in my world, for as long as you’re willing to put up with me.”

“That might be a really long time,” she says like a warning.

“Good.” We’re standing so close right now, I breathe the word into her mouth, then wait for her to kiss me.

It’s brief, just a brushing of her lips over mine, before she murmurs, “You wanna go?”

I reach out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, my pulse racing with want. “Uh uh.”

“No?”

“How badly do you want the old me?” I whisper, my fingers grazing her jawline.

“Frankie.”

“Let me.”

She melts under my touch, just a little bit, and I take that as assent, pulling her gently through the crowd. People who witnessed my outburst watch us as they dance, and Sam’s mild protestations drift to my ears, but I don’t let any of it stop me, especially with the sharpness of the nails of her eager fingers pressing into my palm.

There’s only one person in the large unisex bathroom when I pull her inside, adjusting his binder in the mirror. He stops when he sees us, smirks, and lets his shirt drop back down as he steps around us and out the door.

“Frankie—”

It’s the only word she gets out before I push her up against a sink and devour her mouth. The taste of vodka on her tongue is all wrong, but the tart sweetness of orange juice is just so Sam, my Sam, or maybe it’s all my Sam now. I pull her lower lip between my teeth and oh yes, that shuddering breath against my lips is definitely my girl’s.

I kiss down to her throat while trailing my hands over her shoulders, skimming over her perfect little breasts on my way down to the curves of her waist. “So this is where the magic happens, huh?” she asks breathlessly.

“You’ll have to tell me,” I tease, nibbling her collarbone, but judging by the groans she’s working to stifle behind a bitten lip, I’m doing just fine.

“Christ, Frankie, we’re in a public bathroom.” But even as she protests, her hips fight to get closer.

“Uh huh.” I had no idea how much I missed her body, the scent of her hair, the salty sweetness of her skin. I can’t stop my hands from wandering, stroking every inch in my reach.

“I might have overestimated how much Frankie I can handle,” she says on a gasp as my thumb finds her nipple through her little indigo dress.

“I think you’re underestimating how hard you’re about to be fucked.” Beneath the hem, she’s so wet you’d think I’d been licking her thighs. I push the drenched fabric of her panties aside and slide two fingers inside her.

She cries out and grips the sink so hard her knuckles turn white. The tight, wet heat of her rocking into my hand is infuckingcredible, and I can’t help but notice any trace of protest is gone.

“Still want me to stop?” I murmur in her ear.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” She grabs my forearm as if I’d even consider taking it back against her wishes, grinding so furiously on my hand that I forget I’m doing the fucking rather than being fucked. All I want is to hear that desperate gasp, the way she whimpers my name. I want to bury myself in every soft nook of her body. I want her passion and her caring and her low, melodious drawl. I want the sunshine she exudes from her skin.

I want
her
. Every fucking part.

It’s with this thought that I press the heel of my hand into her clit until she comes, hard and hot all over my hand while she bites my shoulder to keep her cries quiet. Without even missing a beat, she grabs my ass to pull me against her, sliding her thigh between mine and sucking my throat as I ride her until I come too, taking no such measure to keep silent.

We take a minute to catch our breath, stifling laughter as a couple of guys walk in. “Okay,” she says, smoothing her dress down. “You’re making a decent argument for the Francesca Bellisario lifestyle.”

“Right?”

She laughs. “Don’t hold me to that. I won’t be able to think coherently for the next hour. But”—she cups my chin and pulls me close for a kiss—“I’m not crazy about the fact that your clothes are still on. That seems like a serious flaw in this plan.” She drops her voice to that low roll that caresses me everywhere like her rough, silky tongue. “Plus, you taste way better than vodka.”

“Bad girl,” I murmur against her lips. “Maybe you’re more like me than we thought.”

She hooks a finger into my belt loop, her knuckles grazing the bare skin at my waist. “I think maybe I’ve changed a little, too. And I’m pretty happy about it.”

“I think changing together is not the worst thing.”

“I think you are very wise.”

“I think it’s time to go back to my apartment and get you out of that dress, sweetheart.”

She smiles against my lips. “Have I mentioned you are very wise?”

I press a hard kiss to her mouth and take her hand in mine. “Let’s go and I’ll have you screaming that in about twenty minutes.”

• • •

Getting off in the bathroom sustains me for maybe half the ride back to my apartment, but between her arms wrapped around my waist, her tits pressed against my back, and her perfume floating on the breeze, I’m so keyed up by the time we pull up to the building that I nearly fall off the Vespa in my rush to get inside. The second I slam the door shut behind us, I push her up against it and attack her mouth with mine, and we grab at each other’s clothing with a fierceness that makes it a wonder nothing rips. I’d been afraid I was too insatiable to settle down with one person, but if anything, I’m even more insatiable when it comes to her. I can’t even imagine getting enough of this girl, can’t imagine wanting to stop—

“Uh, guys?”

Unless it turned out we accidentally have an audience. I pull away from Sam with a sigh and slowly turn around to see Lizzie and Connor on the couch, gawking at us. Connor smoothly slides a throw pillow onto his lap.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” Even in the dimly lit room I can see Sam’s face flaming red, and I grin.

“Please, don’t let Lizzie give you shit. She’s seen way worse.”

“Yeah, well, my boyfriend’s not quite highly evolved enough to be immune to the sight of two hot girls going at it, so.”

“Elizabeth.”

“I’m just gonna wait in your room.” Sam dashes past me and slams the door behind her.

“I think I’ll follow her lead,” says Connor, disappearing into Lizzie’s room.

“You’d think our significant others would be far more brazen by now,” I muse to Lizzie.

“Significant, huh?” Lizzie straightens her shirt and curls her legs under her butt. “So you’re all in now? Finally?”

I think of Samara—my girlfriend—lying on the other side of the wall. How I can’t wait to touch and taste her again, to see what lingerie she’s wearing. How I know that we’ll both come again tonight, sure, but we’ll laugh plenty too. How someday we’ll make lasagna together, and choereg, but lots of nights will just be pad Thai or pizza on the couch, and that’ll be perfect too. How there’s still so much I want to learn about her, but so much I already know. How I worried this was going to be the end of who I am and instead it feels like a beginning.

“I’m all in now,” I confirm. “Finally.”

• • •

I can’t help hoping I’ll open the door to Sam lying on my bed in lingerie—or nothing at all—but no such luck; she’s fully clothed, pacing across the floor. Doesn’t matter; we’ll get there.

“Hey,” I say softly.

She stops pacing. “So, that was painfully embarrassing.”

I smile. “You’ve heard the story of how Connor and Lizzie got caught, right? Trust me, that was nothing.”

She tips her head. “Fair point.” Then she finally relaxes into a smile too.

This should be the point where we meet in the middle and fall back on the bed and live happily ever after, but before all that begins, I know I need to ask her the question that’s been plaguing me since I found her wrapped in a blanket on my couch. If I don’t, I’ll always worry about it happening again, and if I’m going to do this—for real—I need the last of my doubts soothed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

I take a deep breath. “Why did you really break up with me that morning?”

“I didn’t b—”

“Yeah, you did, and you know it. Why?”

She levels me with a stare, and the little spark in her eyes makes me shiver. “You know why.”

“Tell me.”

She drops onto the bed, bracing her palms on her thighs. “Because I realized I had completely fallen for you.”

Christ, those words…and saying them to me from my bed, smoky-smelling hair in her eyes, and coming from those kiss-swollen lips…fuck. “I thought that was the whole point.”

“The point was to fall for each other. And when you didn’t show up, I assumed that meant my feelings weren’t mutual. But I told myself it doesn’t matter, that I was putting too much pressure on this, and on sex. I thought if I showed up here, ready to go no matter what it meant, I could be detached about it, just like you are.”

“
Were
,” I bite out. “Before you.”

Her delicious lips curve up at the corner. “Right. Anyway, I tried. It didn’t work. From the second you put me in front of that mirror, I knew it wouldn’t. Not because that is hands-down the hottest move I have ever seen in my entire life—though it is—but because I knew I would do anything you told me to.”

“Sam—”

“I don’t mean I can’t think for myself or because you pressured me,” she clarifies, and I feel a tension slipping from my shoulders I hadn’t even realized had been gathering. “I mean because I trusted you so fully and completely. I have never felt that with another person, Frankie. I have spent years in fear of how my friends and family will react when they find out all of who I really am. But you already knew, and you looked at me like…God, I don’t know. You make me feel perfect, exactly as I am.”

Inside my chest, my heart is cracking into a thousand tiny pieces, and all those pieces are furiously making out with each other. I can’t even muster words, just a nod in agreement that yes, that is exactly how I see her.

“I was so terrified of that feeling. Because to be the only one in a relationship who feels it? I couldn’t. I couldn’t let myself feel like
that
and be alone in it.”

“You weren’t,” I manage around the lump in my throat. “I swear on everything I have, you weren’t.”

“And now I know that,” she says, rising, “so I’m here.”

She is. The girl who knows exactly who I am—has always known—and loves me anyway.

No, not “anyway.” Just straight-up loves me.

I watch her walk toward me, slow and sinuous and mindfuckingly beautiful, and when she’s close enough to feel the words on her lips, I say, “I love you.” I always thought saying those words to someone for the first time would feel like a surrender, but they don’t. And when she smiles and says, “I love you, too,” I realize that somewhere along the way, this most terrifying thing became the best kind of foreplay.

She’s got fingers hooked into my belt loops to hold me close, and her mouth on mine is a delightfully teasing thing—slow strokes of her tongue, gently nipping teeth, barely there brushes against my lips that nearly bring me to begging. I’m about to kiss her for real when she says, “Now I have a question.”

I have to stifle a frustrated cry because I am fucking throbbing, but I got to ask my question, and she certainly gets hers. “What is it?”

“When you called me from New York, were you…?” She trails off, blushing fiercely, and underneath skin-tight denim, a useless scrap of fabric drowns.

“Was I what?” I ask innocently.

“Frankie.”

“Samara.”

“Frankie.”

“Ask your question,” I say as coolly as I can manage considering the look in her eyes is liquid fire.

Her gaze just barely slips off mine. “Fine. Were you…touching yourself when you were talking to me on the phone?”

She says the words so quickly that if I weren’t in a state to hydrate the Sahara, I would’ve laughed. “Let’s say I was. Is that bad?”

She shakes her head, swallowing loudly, and I love that she can still be teased like this, less than an hour after being fucked in a public bathroom. Still so much innocence in there.

Or at least I thought so, but then she rasps, “Show me.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Now I’m the one feeling shy. I’ve done a lot of stuff with a lot of people, but not that. Not in person.

But with the way she’s looking at me right now? No way in hell I’m saying no.

I place a hand on her shoulder and walk her slowly back to the bed until her thighs hit the mattress and she’s forced to sit. Then I drop my fingers to the button of my jeans and keep my eyes on her as she watches me undo it as torturously slowly as I can. We’re so close her breath is tickling my hand as I move to my zipper and lower it at glacial speed. Then I abandon my jeans to stroke and tease my way down the silken fabric of my low-cut top until I hit the waistband of the pink-lace-edged thong peeking out, and stop.

“I think it’s only fair you give me something to look at.” I brush the little strip of skin just above the lace with a fingertip, and judging by the breath she sucks in through her teeth, she’s at least as tortured by the motion as I am.

She recovers quickly, though. Her lips curve into a sly smile and she says, “Fair enough.” She moves back on the bed and rises to her knees, then pulls her dress over her head in one smooth motion.

My hand freezes. “Mother of God.”

“Will this work?” she asks innocently.

“This” is a corset-panty set, completely sheer save for intricate, strategically placed embroidery of black vines and roses that snakes around her lithe form and begs in a moan to be touched. “Let’s find out,” I utter, unable to resist for another second.

I dare say it doesn’t surprise either of us when I shudder the second a single fingertip brushes my clit.