“Meegan and I,” Spencer says. “We have history. Bad history.”
Like me and Ashton. Though ours hadn’t been, in the grand scheme of things, what you’d call bad. Just unfortunate. Because he’d broken my heart when I’d still been in love with him.
I grab my coffee. Take a drink and stare down at the lip as I ask, “Did you love her?”
Reaching for the coffee I’d brought him after my shift—bourbon caramel, butter rum, and sea salt, which he’d deemed damn good—Spencer takes a gulp. Leans against the table next to me and stares at the shed wall. “I went back to her. After we broke up.”
For a second, I don’t breathe.
“It was just one night. A relapse. Because I’d been fucking all these other girls, and…” He drinks again. “I didn’t feel anything. Didn’t give a single fuck about any of them. Meegan was…”
“Your everything. Your world,” I offer him. It’s what Natalie said.
How I’d felt when Ashton dumped me.
Because even though I hadn’t slept with any of them, I’d tried to move on by dating other guys. Tried to find that exhilarating rush of affection with them that I’d had with my ex. But it hadn’t worked.
Until Spencer.
“As soon as we slept together that night,” Spencer says. “I knew it was a mistake. Immediately, she wanted to pick a fight. About all those other girls. How I’d finally seemed to know what I was fucking doing in bed. It was the same shit. I couldn’t do it again, even if I thought I loved her.”
But for the sound of raindrops, silence strains the space between us. My next question’s harder. “And now? Do you still think you feel the same?”
I’m relieved when his reply is more immediate. One I should’ve guessed but loosens a tension in my chest all the same. “Fuck no.”
I smile at those familiar words. At the conviction behind them.
Spencer sets down his coffee. Takes my own cup from my hand and places it next to his. With a grin, he nods at his bike. “Hop on.”
I swing my leg over, straddling it. Spencer climbs on behind me, pushing me forward on the seat with his hips. I bite back a delighted whimper at the movement as he points out various parts. The gear shift and throttle and starter pedal. Explains the foot brake and how to hold myself so I don’t fall.
“Snow’s gone. Sun’s shining more. Pretty soon, this rain will die down,” he nods outside the shed. “And I can hit the road.”
“Ever take passengers with you?”
Though he’s behind me, I can hear the lewd grin in his words. “You wanna ride my hog, princess?”
“Perhaps. You promise to make it a long and hard ride?”
Innocently, I grasp the handlebars. I have to lean to reach. And, oh, how about that. This new position perfectly shows off the accentuation of my ass in these jeans. Maybe I wiggle it. Just a little.
Spencer groans, sliding his hands under the hem of my shirt and rocking me back into him. That steely, sizable length of him.
“I thought you wanted to come out here so we wouldn’t try to jump each other,” I send a teasing look over my shoulder.
He stares at my ass, hands on my hips. “Yeah, but then you got on my fucking bike, princess.”
I smile, almost pointing out he told me to get on it. Instead, I ask, “Why princess?”
“Hn?” He doesn’t tear away his gaze. I sit up so as not to distract him from the question.
“Why that nickname?” I ask again.
He winces. “You won’t like it.”
“Try me.”
Under his breath, I hear him say that favorite word of his—fuck—and he shakes his head. “Because I thought you were stuck up. Cold. Like an ice princess.”
I frown. He’s right. I don’t much care for the reminder that we once didn’t get along.
“But you’re not cold now, are you, Kennedy?” He leans forward. Presses his front to my back and takes those hands on my hips and moves them to my lap. Squeezes the inside of my thighs and trails them slowly upward as he continues speaking.
“You’re so…” Up another inch. “Fucking…” Hands continuously converging. “Hot.”
Just when I think he’ll do it—place his hands on that heated place between my thighs—he removes them to lift my arms in the air.
“Except these fucking hands, princess,” he chuckles in my ear, grasping said appendages in his. Holds them in his until I giggle, falling back against him as he folds me into his arms and kisses me.
26
Spencer
I’m halfway to besting Morris in a high-speed chase when his phone rings. At first, he ignores it, until he sees the name on the screen, and then he careens his car into mine, wrecking my engine and any chance I had at winning.
“Fucker,” I mutter, throwing my game controller on the couch beside me.
I’m about to cuss him out more when I see his irked features and hear the stiffness in his voice when he answers the call with, “Sir?”
I lean back into the couch as he leaves the living room, taking the call into Gray’s room for privacy, and I pull out my phone to pass time. Conversations between Morris and The Sergeant always last a solid fifteen minutes, to a tee. That’s how long it takes before Morris’s eye starts twitching. Which is a great loss of restraint. For him.
So I pull up the article I’d last been reading on my phone, a breakdown of high-scoring Scrabble words. I’d resolved after our last match that I wouldn’t lose against Kennedy in the next one. She doesn’t need to know I’d sought out extra help. Or how often I picture her hazel eyes glittering with want when I lay down ‘quixotic’.
Morris wraps up his conversation, as scheduled, thirteen minutes early, leaving Rowe’s room
