Out on Good Behavior (Radleigh University Book 3) (19 page)

“Guessing that’s a yes,” she murmurs, then slides back on the bed until she’s up against my pillows, watching and waiting. I push my jeans down to the floor and pull the top over my head, far too impatient now for a full-on strip tease, and crawl over her until I’m straddling her waist.

Then I dip my hand down below again.

“Frankie.” My name is nothing but a breath.

“Mm?”

“This.” She hooks a finger into my thong and slides it down just an inch, her fingertips sizzling my skin where they graze it. “The last one.”

“Told you you’d find it eventually.”

“Fuck, that’s hot,” she murmurs, placing a kiss right over the black ink reading
Mine
. “Now get back to work.”

I’m so fucking aroused my clit may as well be a land mine, and neither Sam’s hands holding me upright by cupping my ass nor her smoldering gaze as she watches me is doing anything to cool me down.

“Is this what you had in mind?” I ask, slipping a finger inside, just up to the first knuckle, knowing she can tell exactly what’s happening through the thin lace of my thong.

She shakes her head slowly. “You are always so, so far beyond what I can even imagine. Nothing I can conjure in my head ever compares.”

“But you
do
conjure me in your head,” I can’t resist saying.

“Frankie.” She gently pulls my hand free, her gaze holding mine as she takes my wet fingertip into her mouth. “I do
everything
to you in my head.”

“Jesus, Samara Jane, do you fuck your girlfriend with that mouth?”

She tugs my lip between her teeth. “Only when she’s good.”

Holy fuck, this girl. I can’t take another breath without kissing her, so I do, over and over until I don’t even know whose tongue is whose anymore. “Doesn’t seem like either of us is being very good tonight,” I murmur against her lips. “So maybe you should tell me what you want, my newly minted bad girl.”

She smiles and takes my face in her hands. “Know what I want?” Another kiss, this one gentle against my lips. “I want you to fuck me like you don’t know you’re the only person I’ve ever been with.”

“I
don’t
know that,” I point out, sliding my finger just inside the panty string spanning her hip. “You’re the one who’s been dating around while I’ve been taking care of myself all over my apartment.”

“Oh come on,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper as she skates her hands up my ribcage and palms my breasts. “You didn’t seriously think I hooked up with anyone, did you? Frankie, I can’t even look at myself in a full-length mirror without thinking about being with you.” She unhooks my strapless bra and tosses it to the floor. “For as wild as I like to think I’ve become”—she punctuates her sentence with a swirl of her tongue around my nipple that sends goose bumps over my entire body—“only you do this to me.” She sucks my other nipple into her mouth, sending my eyes rolling back into my head. “Only you make me feel like I can do absolutely anything.”

“You definitely can,” I say on a groan. “Especially that.”

She smiles against my skin and sucks again, harder, and my hips respond by pressing back equally hard, fabric rubbing against fabric, so close to what I want, what I need, but not quite there. I sit back and slide my finger back inside that string. “I think it’s time for this to go.”

There’s no argument from her as we part just long enough for me to slide her underwear down her legs, and her to do the same to me. Then she turns to present me her back, where the corset dips low into a line of complicated little hooks. I groan as I start to unfasten them, and find that my clumsy, far-too-eager fingers can’t do a damn thing. I kiss the top of her spine and give up. “This will have to stay. Get back here.”

She turns back to me and I waste no time climbing back on top of her and covering her mouth with mine, straddling her until wet, naked flesh rubs wet naked flesh and ignites me with hot, desperate need. I fuck her like I don’t know I’m the only person she’s ever been with, and I fuck her like I know she’s the only person I wanna be with, and we both come so hard I swear the earth must be shifting beneath us. It feels like hours before I can even open my eyes, but when I do, there she is, right next to me, my girlfriend, my girlfriend, my girl.

“Good news,” Sam says, tucking a piece of sweaty hair behind my ear when we can finally breathe again.

“What’s that?”

“I am definitely gay.”

I laugh and kiss her shoulder, her cheek, her lips. “Phew. I know that was touch-’n-go there for a little while. Glad it turned out to be touch-’n-come instead.”

“Oh my God, Frankie, that was horrible.”

“I’m sorry, it really was.” But I can’t help grinning anyway. “Still like me?”

“Questionable.”

“Still love me?”

“Possibly even more so.”

I reach between us for her hand and squeeze it. “Most important question, though, my book-loving girl—do you ship us?”

“How could I
not
ship us?”

“But, like, where do we rank? Do we beat Tim and Jenna?”

“You mean Taylor and Jonah?” She sighs. “Yes, Frankie, I ship us harder than Taylor and Jonah.”

“What about those books where you switched teams from one guy to the other in the middle? The one where you said the pink-covered book almost turned you bi.”

She contemplates for a minute. “I ship us harder than the girl with either guy,” she says carefully.

“But not more than if they were a threesome.”

“I mean…come on.”

“Fair. What about—”

She places a finger over my lips. “There’s no competition, Francesca. I don’t know what I want to do about my family, and I don’t know what I’m actually gonna do with this degree and…God, there is a lot I don’t know. But you are the first thing in my life that’s ever been exactly what
I
want. So as long as you’ll stick by me while I figure it all out, we are my OTP forever and ever.”

“Your O-what?”

She sighs. “Shut up and kiss me.”

“If I follow your instructions, does that make me a good girl?”

“It might have if you’d done it.”

“Touché.” But I shut up and kiss her anyway, because I want to, and because I need to prove that I can be good when she needs me to be—that I
will
be, as she figures the rest of this stuff out. Maybe I’ve officially earned her and maybe I haven’t, but I think part of loving someone is that you never stop trying either way.

Our kisses become lazier as we both grow sleepy, and I finally help her out of that corset so she can get comfortable. As I curl around her to pull her close and cover us with a blanket, I get a little pang in my chest as I remember the last time we fell asleep together. “Hey,” I whisper into her ear. “You’ll be here when I wake up, right?”

Under the blanket, she wraps her fingers around mine. “I’m not going anywhere this time. I promise.” She brings our hands to her lips and kisses my knuckles. “What about you? If I make a reservation for that restaurant for tomorrow night, will you be there?”

“With bells on. No promises about pants.”

She sighs and pulls our arms around her waist. “So this is what I’m committing to, huh?”

“Gotta take the bad with the good, Sam. It’s what keeps life interesting.”

I can practically feel her roll her eyes, but she snuggles into me anyway, and it’s all the response I need. Yeah, the tiniest part of me still finds the prospect of a serious relationship scary. And the tiniest part of me is worried I’ll still freak out sometimes. And I know that not everything will always feel as perfect as it does right now. And I know there’s bound to be some shit ahead.

But right now, I’m falling into a peaceful sleep, and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, in a way I never knew I could be. I spend every day in that studio or at my easel or sketchpad trying to capture and create beauty that pales in comparison to the girl in my arms right now. And if I had to interpret Hope again, I know I’d paint it a lot like this.

Possibly with more clothing, but probably not.

end of junior year

Frankieeee!! Hurry up!!!

Chill, Lizzie B
, I text back.
The more you make me stop to respond to you, the slower I’m gonna go.
I know that’ll shut her up, so I shove my phone back into the pocket of my cutoffs and continue my last-chance survey of the apartment before leaving for the summer.

The place is completely full of shit. Cait, Connor, Mase, and Sam all live in dorms, so whatever’s not coming with them now—bedding, winter clothes, and unspeakable amounts of assorted crap—is lying all over our apartment. But I like the mess, if I’m being honest. It feels like a promise that we’ll all be back. That we’ll return the same found family unit we’ve been working our way into from the day Cait, Lizzie, and I were placed together through the six months and counting Samara’s been putting up with me.

I mentally tick off everything important I might be forgetting. As many art supplies as I could cram into the car Lizzie’s graciously lending me for the trip? Check. Socks, because for some reason, Lizzie and Connor insist we must hit a certain bowling alley on our caravan’s way down to Pomona? Check. Ample amounts of sunscreen for lying around on various beaches on the way south, mostly to give me an excuse to rub my hands all over Samara’s bikini body? Definite check.

The caravan was Lizzie’s idea—one epic journey to say goodbye as we split for the summer. It’s a five-hour drive from Radleigh down to her house in Pomona, where we’ll be dropping her and Connor off to stay with her brothers for the summer, and the two of them have somehow managed to find a billion things for us to do along the way. Then the remaining four of us will continue on to Philly so “Claw” can spend a little time with Mase’s mom and brother before Cait starts her summer job at a bank.

And then, finally, it’ll just be me and Samara, ambling down toward South Carolina, toward Meridian, toward what she may be calling home for the last time.

I’ve told her a million times she doesn’t have to tell them anything she’s not ready for, but she says if we can survive driving all the way from Upstate New York to South Carolina together, then I’m clearly someone her family and friends need to know about. So that’s our new deal: we make it down there, we make it everywhere.

I feel pretty damn good about our chances.

As if she can tell I’m thinking about her, she calls me right then, “S&M” muffled by my denim pocket. I pull out my phone and allow myself to appreciate the picture of her lighting up my screen—the way her eyes are sparkling and her skin is glowing and her smile is teasing and all of it is because I’m the one behind the camera, taking her (secretly post-coital) picture.

Hell, I feel pretty fucking good about everything.

“Hey, you.”

“Frankie, you’ve got to get out here. Lizzie’s trying to get me to send you topless photos to lure you out.”

“So if I stay here, I get boob shots?”

Sam sighs. “Trust me, Cait and Connor are practically fistfighting over which one gets to explain to her how incentives actually work.”

“I’ll be out in a minute, I swear.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, just being a sap. I’m appreciating that this will be the last summer break that isn’t followed by everything in the world changing.”

“Maybe everything in the world won’t change after graduation either,” says Sam. “Mase graduated, and he’s still coming back for another year.”

“Yeah, but for a master’s and to keep coaching. We already know neither of us has grad school plans right now, and Cait will work at a bank or something for a few years before business school, and Lizzie’s gonna move back and get custody of her brothers for good, and Connor’s done here after one more year, and—”

“Oh my God, Frankie, breathe.” Her gentle laughter floats through the phone line. “I’ve never heard you get so nostalgic.”

“Me neither,” I admit. “There’s a lot to miss about this place, I guess.”

“Well, you don’t have to start missing it for a long time, so why don’t you get that sexy ass out here and actually hang out with us?”

She has a point. “Fine, but I’m instituting a rest stop-makeout rule.”

“Deal.”

Finally, the nervous tingles that’ve been coursing through my body all day are replaced by ones of anticipation. “Okay, I’m coming.”

“Not yet, you’re not,” she drawls, “but I bet we can fix that somewhere around Binghamton.”

Have I mentioned I fucking love this girl?

I head outside and the others make exaggerated “Finally!” proclamations while I flip them off, gliding straight over to Samara for a kiss.

“I had a feeling she’d be able to lure you out,” Cait says with a wink.

“So confident in yourself now that you’re a two-time national champion.” I stick my tongue out at her. “You’re not the boss of
me
, Captain Johannssen.”

She just beams smugly in response, while Mase drops a kiss into her hair. Her new title has totally gone to her head, and the rest of us couldn’t be prouder.

“Enough, children!” Lizzie claps her hands. “We’re already running behind schedule. Get in your cars!”

“So, she’s always this bossy, huh?” Mase murmurs to Connor.

“Yes, yes she is,” Connor replies under his breath, as if we don’t all know he’s completely turned-on by it.

But none of us want to face Lizzie’s wrath, so we get in our cars like the relatively well-behaved students we are.

And off we go.