Page 91 of Forever Offsides

I sigh dramatically. “That’s a bummer.”

He tickles my side, and I shriek.

“Ah! Stop. I’m kidding.” I swat his hands away. “We’ll improvise. I’ll ride you all night until your cute little di—ah, no, put those hands away.” I smack his grabby hands. “Big dick, big dick. That’s what I meant.”

“Better have.”

“The biggest. So big I can barely take it without my vagina writing her own obituary.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know. It just came out. That’s what he said.” I cackle, clearly losing it. “But get the food because it smells ready and I’m starving,” I emphasize the last word. “Then I want you to keep your promise and eat me for dessert. If you have ice cream of the vanilla variety, all the better. And before you say anything, I like my ice cream vanilla, not my sex.”

He chokes out a harsh laugh, his forehead falling to my shoulder as he shakes with laughter.

“Fuck, there will be no coming back from you, will there?”

“Nope. I’m a goner for life kind of girl. But I’m also serious about the food.”

His teeth scrape my shoulder, but he starts pulling things out of air fryers and ovens, and I get more wine even though I may not need it with how things are already going.

He plates everything up and sets the dishes on the counter. But because it’s Rhett and he’s my country boy, he picks me up off the counter bride style.

“Grab your wine.”

I do, and he carries me over to the bar stool where he sets me down so we can eat this incredible meal he made. He even made sourdough rolls and has really good salted butter from France.

“Do you normally eat this way?” It seems like a lot of specialty food for a single guy to have in his home. I mean, other than Roman when Roman was single, but he’s a celebrity, a Michelin-starred and James Beard Award-winning chef, and we’d always go to his place to mooch off his cooking. Crew has like six or eight condiments in his fridge, a bottle of vodka he hardly touches in his freezer, eggs, protein shakes, and questionable takeout containers, and Forest and Hayes aren’t so different from that.

“No. I stopped at the gourmet grocery store on my way home. I heard the shower running and did some prep work before I came upstairs.”

“You’re trying to woo me,” I tease.

He grins as he sprinkles my potatoes with pepper, parmesan, and freaking truffle salt.

“I’m definitely trying to woo you. But more than that, these are the kinds of things I thought about doing during those months when we were texting. When you’d tell me about the Boston sky from the rooftop of your hospital at three in the morning and what the OR was like for you and I’d tell you that I was an only child and that my son is as well but that I secretly always wished for more kids and how I love mountain biking in the spring and fall but hate it in the summer because in Colorado it’s too dry and not messy enough.”

I stare down at my plate, at this perfect meal this perfect guy made for me. “I loved how we talked to each other. Like we were secret friends who shared truths and yet had this underlying layer of more.”

I cut into my lamb, and it’s amazing. Not the tiniest bit overcooked, and it melts in my mouth with the rosemary and garlic hitting just right.

“I’ve wanted to text you,” he continues. “I’ve wanted to call or FaceTime. I’ve wanted to walk down the stupid block and break into your house like the stalker you accuse me of being just so I could see the house and all the spaces you live in.”

“And crawl into my bed in the middle of the night, right? Possibly tie me up as you do.”

His head swivels in my direction, his eyebrows tickling his hairline. “Um.”

“I mean, that’d be a red flag in real life but a green flag in fiction and with the right guy…”

He swallows his bite of food and wipes his mouth with his napkin. “I could do that. I could do all of that.”

My heart pounds, and holy shit, I’m practically panting.

I stare down at my food, suddenly all of my hunger focused on the man beside me and not the food in front of me.

“Not tonight, Quinn. We have plenty of time for all the fun and dirty things. Tonight is for us.”

And it is.