I move my lips from side to side as I fight back my smile at his adorable rambling, waiting to see if he’s done before I tell him that I’d love to stay with him. When he looks at my face again, the worry lines smooth out and he narrows his eyes at me. “You’re laughing at me.”
“Am not,” I protest, but the wobble in my voice betrays me.
“You are!” he insists, squeezing me tighter. Then his fingers dig into my bare sides and I squeal, twisting to get out of his hold, but he keeps tickling me, dragging me back into the room where we collapse on the bed, him still tickling me. “I’m over here baring my soul, and you’re laughing at me.”
“No!” I shriek, laughing and writhing underneath him, trying to escape his tickling fingers. “That’s not—Stop!” I slap at his arms ineffectually, and he finally stops tickling, instead trapping me beneath him, his hands holding my wrists out to the side.
“You weren’t laughing at me? Cause it sure as hell looked like that’s what was happening.”
Shaking my head, my laughter still bubbles out of me. “No, well, I mean, yes, fine, a little. But I’ve never seen you all rambly and unsure of yourself before, and it was cute.”
“And funny.” The two words are a disgruntled statement, not a question.
“Yes. Cute and funny. You laughed at me checking you out a minute ago.”
He looks at the wall and tilts his head to the side, considering my statement. “True. Fine. You make a good point. I guess we’re even.” With a kiss, he releases my hands.
“No, I don’t think we are,” I say, my fingers immediately finding the ticklish spots under his arms.
He flinches, his arms clapping to his sides and trapping my hands. But I can still wiggle my fingers enough that he squirms and yells, “Aaaaah! Fine! Fine! You win! I’m sorry!”
I push on his hip with my leg, and he lets me flip him over, my hands still trapped under his arms. I roll on top of him and give him a kiss. He finally moves his arms, wrapping them around me and releasing my hands at the same time. But I don’t care about being released now. I slide my hands under his shoulders, kissing him back, meeting his tongue stroke for stroke.
With a groan, he ends the kiss. “You better go see what Kendra wants,” he says. “And while you’re there, think about moving in with me for the break. You don’t have to answer me now. Just promise you’ll think about it.”
The way he asks me to promise makes me think he won’t accept my answer if I give it to him now. Maybe this is a bigger deal than I thought. Maybe I should take some time to consider the situation from all angles, though from where I’m sitting I’m having trouble coming up with a downside.
I give him one more kiss and slide to the side to climb off him, giving a longing look to where his hard cock lays on his belly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? I could take care of that for you.”
He gives a throaty chuckle and reaches out to squeeze my ass. “I can wait till you get back. You should go hang with her. Kendra’s been lonelier this stint since Blaire’s gone. It’d be good for both of you to become better friends.”
My brows draw together again, once more puzzled. “But she has Ava and Sam.”
He raises one eyebrow in response. “The moms? You think she feels like she fits in with them?”
I open my mouth to answer in the affirmative, but then think back to our girls’ night and the way those two seemed to commiserate more, leaving the rest of us out of a lot of their conversations about babies and diapers and breastfeeding. Not on purpose. Not to be mean. It’s just where their lives are right now, so it dominates their minds and therefore their conversations. The rest of us without kids can’t relate, so we had our own conversations.
“I see your point,” I concede at last. Is Kendra disappointed that we haven’t hung out more? Looking back at the times she sought me out, I can see it now as an attempt to befriend me, bring me into her circle. I was just too caught up in my own feelings of being an outsider that were compounded by Mason’s initial treatment of me to recognize it for what it was. I thought if Mason just saw me as barely a step up from a groupie, probably everyone else did too, even if they were too nice to actually treat me that way.
But now I know that was Mason working through his own shit in the worst way.
“Alright. I’ll go see what Kendra wants. And when I come back, we can resume naked day.”
Mason watches me dress, pulls me in for one more brief kiss, and I head for Kendra’s room.
Kendra answers the door before I finish knocking, grabs my arm, and drags me inside. “Good! You’re here. I wasn’t sure if Mason would be able to keep his hands off you long enough for you to come. But this is important.”
“He’s not some kind of crazed sex fiend,” I say, following her into the bedroom of their suite, feeling the need to defend him. Though, to be fair, we would be having sex now if she hadn’t demanded my presence. But I’m not going to say that out loud. “Anyway, what’s so important that you summoned me without telling me why?”
With a flourish, she reveals a rack of dresses next to the bed. “I heard you’re going as Mason’s date to the awards show. That means you need a dress. A killer dress. Better than the ones the PR company would send over for you as just the
