: Chapter 8

I’VE LEARNED THAT Lola rarely does anything on impulse. Our Vegas wedding aside, she takes her time—be it seconds or days—to weigh every angle of a situation. I’ve never known anyone so deliberate.

The first time I noticed this, we were at the beach on a perfect August night. Her book had just been released that day, and already it was topping the charts in her genre. Drunk, I’d sprinted to the water and kicked off my shoes before diving fully clothed into the surf.

Lola had been drunker than I, but she’d staggered toward the foamy edge of the water and hesitated, teetering on her toes, before plunking down onto her bum on the sand.

“I don’t have clothes to change into,” she’d slurred. She’d fallen back, arms outstretched against the sand. “I’ll be wet, and sandy.”

“You’re sandy now,” I pointed out, pushing the dripping bulk of hair off my forehead.

“But I’m not wet. And I don’t have clothes at your house.”

I’d wanted to celebrate with beer and declarations and some rowdy fucking. I’d wanted to say, Fuck it, Lola, you can wear my clothes. Or you can wear nothing at all.

But I hadn’t, and I hadn’t because I knew already not to push. She didn’t want to swim, didn’t want to trip home in soggy clothes that seemed to weigh eighty pounds.

It’s this trait that makes it easier for me to let her walk out of the store after she’s asked me what I’m doing tonight with such intent, I have to step behind the counter to let my body calm. And it helps me understand why every interaction with her the past week feels like two steps forward, one step back. But when she texts me only fifteen minutes later asking if she can come over later . . . I feel in the pounding of my heart that Lola has reached a decision. I just have to hope it’s the one that I want.

I text back a simple Sure.

ONLY THREE HOURS later, the doorbell rings as Ansel reaches for his keys.

“Expecting company?” he says, and looks in the direction of the door before turning back to me. He’s stopped by to borrow my Wet-Vac for the new house, and stayed for about an hour, waxing on about the place, wanting to get Mia knocked up, all sorts of utopian Ansel dreams. Lola’s silhouette is clearly visible through the window, and this is exactly the reason I’ve been trying to get him out of here before she showed up.

“Just dinner with Lola,” I tell him.

“ ‘Just dinner with Lola,’ ” he repeats with a smug tilt of his mouth.

“Go home, Ansel.”

“I’m going,” he says, and laughs to himself the entire way down the hall.

I open the door and my heart jumps at the sight of her standing there, dressed like she’s just come from some sort of media interview or event.

“Oliver’s grouchy tonight,” Ansel tells her.

“Is he?” she says. “I was going to suggest we play some poker but now I’m not sure this competitive maniac could handle it.”

“Get him drunk and take all his money. It’s the least he deserves.”

She turns her smile on me, obviously pleased with this idea. “I was planning on it.”

I give her a small grin. “Best of luck.”

“As much as I would love to stay and watch what I’m certain will be a bloodbath, I’m taking Mia to dinner. Goodbye friends,” Ansel says, and bends to kiss her quickly on the cheek. I’m almost certain I hear the words, “Finish him,” before Ansel is bounding down the front porch, and it’s just the two of us. Again.

Lola walks into the house past me, and there’s something new in the way she moves. Something more feminine, more aware.

“All good?” I ask.

Near the kitchen she turns and looks at me.

“All good.” She slides her thick hair behind her ears. It immediately falls forward again and she grins up at me, looking even younger than she is. “Did you have a nice visit with Ansel?”

I give her a confused smile. “Yes? It was a nice visit.”

Her smile stays put, eyes glued to me. “I’m glad you guys got to see each other today.”

“What’s going on with you? You’re as terrible at small talk as my aunt Rita from Brisbane.”

With a laugh, she turns into the kitchen, and I hear the refrigerator open, bottles clinking, and the door closing again. “Maybe I’m nervous,” she calls.

My pulse is rolling thunder in my neck. “Nervous about what?”

There’s more rustling in the kitchen, more glass, and the sound of liquid being poured before she returns.

In a few of those long, hip-swinging strides, Lola hands me a beer and a shot of tequila, and looks up at my face.

“We have a lot to talk about tonight,” she says.

I swallow, wanting to melt into her. Smiling reflexively with her this close, I say, “We do?”

She nods, using her free pinky to free a strand of hair from where it’s caught on her lip. “You said a lot of interesting things up in L.A.”

“Surely nothing you didn’t already suspect?” I say quietly.

“I may not have suspected it,” she says, mimicking the low volume of my words and looking at my mouth for a lingering moment before blinking back up to my eyes. “But I’d wanted to hear it for a long time.”

I open my mouth to respond, but she cuts in, brighter now. “But rule number one tonight: no making out.” She takes the shot and winces, chasing it with a swig of her beer.

I choke on my own shot, coughing. “Pardon?”

“You heard me,” she says.

I take a long pull of my beer, and swallow through a grimace. “No making out when?”

“Once we’re drunk,” she explains. “I want to talk.”

My chest feels too full for everything inside it; lungs, heart, the expanding emotions inside don’t leave enough room to breathe. Is this it? Is it happening now?

I reach for a strand of her hair and ask, “Is there a rule number two in case rule number one gets broken?”

Her smile is a slow-growing work of magic. “Don’t be cute.”

Smiling back, I whisper, “I’ll try.” Every single drop of blood in me is rioting. Fucking finally. “What’s happening here, Lola Love?”

She gives me an innocent shrug. “We’re playing poker.”

“I’ll clean the floor with you,” I warn, before tilting my bottle to my lips and sipping my beer again.

She watches me swallow. “You can clean the floor with all of your clothes while I watch.” I raise an eyebrow at her and she adds, “We’re playing strip poker.”

With a surprised laugh, I say, “We really do have a lot to discuss tonight if we’re playing strip poker but we can’t make out.”

Lola turns and retrieves a deck of cards from the drawer in the kitchen, and then gestures for me to join her at the dining room table.

This all feels so sudden . . . but at the same time it seems I’ve waited an eternity for this. I want the friendship barrier to dissolve. I want the next step, and the one after that. Lola has entered my house like a bulldozer, and although I’ve never seen her like this, not in a million years would I try to slow her down.

A determined Lola is a sight to behold.

She pats the tabletop to rouse me from my thoughts and I blink, carrying my beer to the table. Sitting across from her, our eyes lock, and neither of us breaks the tension by looking away. We’ve danced around each other for so long and I swear my skin is on fire, my brain thrumming as I wonder how this night will unfold.

“Ante up,” she whispers, reaching beneath her hair to remove her earrings. She drops them in the center of the table and looks up at me expectantly.

I glance down at what I’ve got on. A watch. Jeans, a shirt, belt, glasses. I’m not even wearing shoes or socks. “This seems a little uneven.”

“Lucky me.”

She has no idea that I consider myself the lucky one. To have earned her trust. To have earned her affection. To witness her take-charge attitude. I smile at her, wanting to just say it again right here: I love you.

Instead, I unfasten my watch and drop it on the table as she begins to deal out five cards each.

We look at our cards, shifting them into our preferred order, and holy fuck, I have two fucking pair: two jacks, two threes, and a seven.

“Your actual poker face is so bad,” she says, giggling. “This is the shock of a lifetime.”

“I may get you naked with this one hand,” I say, waving my cards at her, and feeling everything inside me pull to the middle in a warm tightness when I see she catches my double meaning. “I’m going to open.” I reach for my belt, slowly pulling it free and coiling it before dropping it in the center of the table. “See or fold, Castle.”

“Do you know if we’d stayed married I would be Lorelei Lore?”

I nod. “Thought about it once or twice, though I always assumed you’d keep your name.”

“I’m traditional in weird ways,” she says, putting her cards facedown. Just when I think she’s folded, she reaches for the hem of her sweater and pulls it up and over her head.

She’s wearing nothing but a bra beneath.

“Raise or call,” she tells me and I realize I’m staring.

Looking down at my cards, I know I really could get most of her clothes off right now, but I need to savor this as much as I can. “Call.”

I lay the seven facedown and she hands me a fresh card. I peek at it: the three of hearts. And now I’ve got a full house.

She gives herself three new cards—the maximum—and grimaces. “Oof.”

“You’ve also got a terrible poker face.”

Lola looks up at me, saying, “You can raise, if you want.”

My shirt is off, dropped in the middle of the table. “You can fold, if you want.”

Her bra comes off, landing on top of my shirt, and I stutter out a few sounds before reaching for my beer with a shaking hand. I can barely process the sight of her bare breasts. They’re so full, so firm. My mouth waters, and I rest my lips against my beer but don’t manage to tilt it fully to get a sip.

“You’re staring,” she whispers.

“I can’t help it; you just took off your bra.”

“Let’s see your cards.”

What cards?

I blink hard, squeezing my eyes closed, and then look down at my hand again before laying it on the table. She groans, showing me a pair of fours and then a trio of mis-suited jack, ace, and six. Dropping her head onto her arms, she shakes with laughter, looking back up only when she hears me sweeping the pile of clothes over closer to me. I put my shirt, belt, and watch back on. I put her bra on my head, her sweater around my shoulders, and her earrings stay on the table near my beer.

When she sits up, her long dark hair slides over her shoulders, covering her breasts. It’s the contrast of the black against her milky skin, the way the ends of her hair just cover her nipples. Now I know why this view of a woman has been drawn a million-million times.

Her voice cuts into my trance. “Staring again.”

“Still braless.”

“I lied,” she says, rubbing her finger absently across her lower lip.

The way she says it tells me it’s a game, at least a little. “When?”

“When I pretended I didn’t want to kiss you.”

I feel my brows pull together. “The no-makeout rule?”

“That.” She drops her eyes to where her finger traces circles on the tabletop. “And every time I saw you.”

My arteries can’t dilate fast enough for how much blood rushes into my system, and I feel lightheaded. “Come here.”

She shakes her head, pushing the stack of cards to me before standing to get us each another beer. “Your deal.”

After another round loaded with innuendo and tension, Lola loses, but this time is smart enough to only ante up her shoes before she folds. The next hand, she wins back her earrings and my watch, but after that, she loses both of these things as well as her socks.

“You’ve only got two more items, if my calculations are correct,” I tell her while I watch her shuffle the deck. “Pants and whatever you’ve got beneath.”

She laughs. “I don’t mind the jeans but I can’t lose my underwear.”

“Then you’ve got nowhere to go. It’s my turn to open after the deal.”

She ponders this, eyes warm with the effects of two beers consumed relatively quickly. “Text Harlow. Have her tell us what the consequence is for losing. Don’t let her know who’s losing, though.”

I nod, reaching for my phone and sending the question to Harlow. We need a consequence for losing at poker. One of us is out of clothing.

Barely thirty seconds pass before she answers, Dance on her goddamn lap, kid.

Laughing, I tell Lola, “She thinks this is my punishment, not yours.”

“What did she say?”

“I’ll tell you when you lose.”

LOLA SLIDES HER losing hand into the middle of the table, looking up at me with fear in her eyes. “Wait. I need another beer before I hear this. Oh, God.”

“You’re going to need music, too.”

Her eyes go wide before she grabs another beer from the middle of the table, chugging it down, then picking up my phone. She knows my passcode, entering it without thinking.

Her mouth drops open when she reads Harlow’s text. “I’m not going to do that.”

“Then give me your underwear.”

“Fuck no.”

I laugh, standing and walking over to the stereo. “Do you want rock and roll or something more club appropriate?”

She groans. “Oliver, I’ve never in my life given a lap dance.”

“Club it is!” I crow, pressing play. Walking back, I nearly trip at the full view of Lola standing near the dining table. I couldn’t see her from the waist down when we were sitting, but Lord.

Lola is in nothing but her underwear. Black silk. Minuscule. Her body is so smooth; I want to sink my teeth into the soft flesh of her upper thigh.

My skin is on fire.

I can feel my pulse in my throat as I lower myself into a chair.

She smacks my arm as I tuck my shaking hands beneath my legs. “You even know protocol.”

“So do you, it would seem.”

Lola steps closer, staring down at me. “Why couldn’t you have been the one who lost?” Her knees touch mine and I feel the pressure reverberate along every inch of my legs.

“Wouldn’t be nearly as good now, would it?”

“Is it weird to see me topless?” she asks, sliding one leg to the side of mine, and then moving closer, straddling me.

It’s hard to breathe, hard to think.

I look up and down the length of her body. Her waist is narrow, hips perfectly curved. She has a tattoo along her side that I can’t read in the dim light, but I’ll read it later. Right now, I’m one breath away from putting my face in her tits. “It’s fucking bliss is what it is.”

The music rolls through the room, slowly taking over my pulse until it seems to do the same with Lola, and her hips tentatively rock forward, and back. Her hands come around my shoulders, anchoring there.

“Lola . . .” I whisper. “Just do whatever you’re comfortable doing.”

She leans in, looking at my eyes so closely as if searching for a stray eyelash, to steal a wish. Her gaze swims a little, but I like tipsy Lola. She cracks out of her shell and looks at the world around her. Right now I want to be that entire world. I want to be all she sees.

“What’s your tattoo?” I ask.

She licks her lips and studies my mouth as she answers. “ ‘It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.’ ”

I scan my thoughts to place the quote, but with her nearly naked body over mine, the smell of her shampoo, her skin, and even the hint of her lust . . . I’m obliterated. “What is it from?”

“The goddess of wit, the woman who made generations of women put on their big girl pants: Eleanor Roosevelt.” Lola anchors her hands on the back of the chair and tilts her head as she moves.

The heat of her body against me makes my words come out thick: “How old were you when you got it?”

“Seventeen.”

Her hair slides over her shoulder, tickling along my bare arm. When her eyes lock on mine, my chest clutches at how her makeup has smudged slightly, making her appear sweetly rumpled, as if I’ve already had my way with her. Just the thought tips me into a desperate, trembling sort of hunger.

“Is this awkward?” she whispers.

My words are propelled by an incredulous burst of air: “Fuck no.”

Her brow twitches. “You mean because you’re used to having half-naked friends dancing on your lap?”

“I think you are at least one article of clothing past ‘half-naked,’ ” I tease. “And perhaps more than a little past friend.”

She stares down at me, worrying her lip with her teeth.

“It’s not awkward because it’s you, Lola Love. And you look amazing half-naked.”

A long stretch of silence passes where she’s still just looking at me. Staring, eyes fixed on mine. But it isn’t static. It’s an enormous transition in her expression from playful to sincere, and watching each step seems to pluck at a vibrating, urgent thread between my ribs.

“Are you hard?” She lowers her hips and slides over me, just once.

Oh, fuck.

I lose my breath when my heart climbs into my throat. She knows I am; my cock is rigid and pressed right against her.

“Are you wet?” I volley back.

I know she is. When she rocks forward again, I can feel it in the easy slide of her over me.

She laughs and her attention shifts from my eyes back to my lips. She’s so close, it isn’t just a flicker of her gaze; it’s an intentional drop, a mile-long stretch that seems to take forever as she looks at my nose, my cheeks, my lips, then snags there. If she looked any lower she would no doubt see my pulse frozen in my throat.

“Are you thinking of kissing me?” she asks.

I stare right back at her mouth. Lick my lips. “Are you thinking of being kissed?”

“Will you answer any question I ask?”

“Yes, but only that one.”

She gives me my favorite laugh: the quiet thrust of breath from her mouth. The sound she probably doesn’t even know she makes. And then she bends, time stops, and after a tiny beat of hesitation where she holds her breath, Lola presses her full lips to mine.

Warm, soft, and just the tiniest bit wet: it’s the sweetest first kiss I’ve ever had. Lola gives me a blissful few introductory kisses before the eventual parting of her lips, and the careful capture of my bottom lip between hers.

When she sucks, gently bites, and makes a tiny rough growl, I am wrecked.

When the tip of her tongue grazes mine, my heart seems intent on punching its way out of my chest.

I am totally fucking ruined.

I can barely keep my hands beneath my thighs on the chair when she pulls away, licking her lips.

“I kissed you,” she whispers.

My voice shakes: “I thought we weren’t allowed to do that.”

With a tiny one-shouldered shrug, she whispers, “I think I’m going to do it again.”

My pulse is hammering so hard, I can barely manage an “Okay.”

When she comes back, I groan, pulling my hands free and so desperate for the taste of her that I stretch forward, meeting her halfway with my palms cupping her face. It’s explosive: the feel of our skin touching just here. I perceive the kiss in every tiny hollow part of me, filling me up with her sweetness, and lust, and abandon. I want to devour Lola, but this first series of kisses is remarkably gentle. Aimless. Everything wild and tense is held in our muscles: in the tight clench of my quads under her ass, and my hands barely holding her face. In her hands in fists in the shirt at my shoulders, her legs trembling over me. It feels like sex, the way she’s kissing me, the way her tongue slides across mine, but slower, and infinitely more innocent.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” I murmur into her mouth. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

The words cause her to tense and she sits back, blinking slowly. “Will this mess everything up?”

I move my hands from her face and rest them, carefully, on the outside of her thighs. “It can make everything better. We can do whatever you want.” I stretch to kiss her again, repeating, “Whatever you want. We can put on a movie and relax. We can stay here and kiss. We can play some more cards.”

The clock in the hall must tick at least a hundred times before Lola speaks.

“I don’t want to stay out here and play cards.”

My lungs have evaporated. “Okay,” I agree.

“Or watch a movie.”

I nod, choking on my own breath. “Whatever you want, pet.”

“And I don’t want to just kiss.” She stands, pulling me up with her. We’re so close my exhales puff against her hair as she stares, wide-eyed, up at me.

Her hand comes down the inside of my arm, fingers curling with mine, and she turns, tugging me down the hall.