Page 76 of Dirty Fighter

Wait.

My eyes widen, and Jason’s pure-sex expression shifts to curiosity. “What?”

I blink, looking from his hair to his eyes and then the room around us. “Look.”

He turns around and then back to me, astonishment bright in his eyes. “It’s not raining.”

“It’s… sunny,” I say breathlessly, eyes flitting around the room at the golden sunshine spilling over a space that’s lived exclusively in shadows since the power went out. From one sun-drenched surface to another. My bags piled against the wall, his desk, the forgotten glass of water from God knows when.

I laugh. “It’s beautiful.”

But when I turn to Jason, his eyes are on me. “Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

I don’t know what it is. But something in the way he’s looking at me, there’s a tenderness. No. Maybe affection. Or depth of it. I don’t know. It’s different.

Or maybe it’s the same look he’s been giving me all along, and I just needed a little sunlight to see it. But it makes me ache in a way that is so far beyond the physical pleasure he’s been showering me with for days. It makes me feel lighter and fuller, and an inexplicable kind of buoyant joy takes my breath away.

I reach for him, my thumb brushing the soft scrape of his morning stubble. And then I lean in to kiss him. I feel almost shy, which is madness considering the things this man was saying to me as he made me come harder than I have in my entire life less than five minutes ago. But there it is.

And maybe it’s the same for him too. Because then he’s giving me this smile that feels like possibility and joy and wonder. And he’s gathering me into his arms and kissing me like it’s with his whole heart.

No. I think maybe it’s the other way around. I think, maybe I’m kissing him like that. Like I want him to have all of me.

“Rowan.” There’s a reverence in the way he says my name. Because of course he noticed. Of course he stopped to search my eyes, my face. To brush my cheek with his thumb the way I did with his. “Tears?”

“What?” But then I can see the remnants glistening on his thumb before evaporating away.

I shake my head as this sound that is somewhere between laughter and tears born of joy slips past my lips. “I’m just really happy.”

And then he’s laying me on the bed, and we’re kissing and touching and laughing and then not laughing as our eyes meet, and I feel this thing inside me click into place.

And this time, when Jason pushes thick and long inside of me, making my body one with his… it doesn’t feel like Escape.

It feels like making love.

Jason

I’m tracing circles around Rowan’s navel while she runs her fingers through my hair again and again and again as we laze in bed.

“We should get up,” she says, and even though I’m not looking at her, I can hear the smile in her voice. “For real this time.”

I got so far as putting one foot on the floor the first time she suggested it, but then she murmured something about my shoulders and wanting to bite them. And then she was in my lap, and I was inside her… and yeah. That was about an hour ago.

“Don’t know. This seems like a pretty perfect way to spend the day.” I’m only half joking.

She hums. The light run of her nails over my scalp ceases, and she stretches her arms wide before crawling out of bed with a saucy smile. “I know I wore you out, but it’s sunny. Game time, Static. Let’s do this.”

“Static?” I like that she almost never uses my team nickname. But the way she says it now? It sounds pretty good.

I sit up and watch as she shimmies into her panties and then grabs the T-shirt I was wearing yesterday and pulls it overhead. Slayers red spills to the midpoint of her thighs.

So sexy. “If it were game time, that shirt would have my name and number on it.”

She grins back at me as she heads down to the bathroom. “You like having your girls wear your number?”

“I’d like you wearing it.” I’d love it.

There have been girls I’ve dated who showed up to the games wearing Stanvic jerseys. It was nice. I always made sure they knew that I appreciated it. But seeing them did nothing compared to just imagining Rowan wrapped up in my name and number.