The incessant flutter in my stomach is the only thing to blame for how quickly I manage to put Liam to bed.
I checked the score for the last time on the couch with Oliver and Liam earlier, which Oliver promptly watched over my shoulder. He tried to play it cool, but I could see the sneaky smile he tamped down after seeing the Waterfell victory.
The point division shows Matt Fredderic as a top scorer, along with two other names I don’t recognize. As I mindlessly scroll through the play-by-play, Rhys’ name pops up on my screen with an incoming video call.
I check myself in the mirror of my bathroom while swishing mouthwash out of my mouth.
The phone continues to buzz, only further igniting the swarm of bees attacking my belly. I slap off the bathroom light and slide on the wooden floors of the hall in my fuzzy socks, practically vaulting into my bedroom. I answer the phone as soon as the door closes.
“Hey.” I check myself in the top corner, making sure he can even see me in the low lamplight of the room.
“Hey Sadie Gray.” He smiles.
He’s breathtaking, even through the screen of my phone, with damp bedhead hair, resting on a pile of bright white hotel pillows. His skin is shining with a light flush, dimple gleaming with an excited smile I now recognize.
“Where are you?” he asks, and I remember just how often he’s been in my dorm room between and after classes. Enough that he would recognize my decorated walls or checkered blue bedding.
“Home.” I move a little and find a comfy spot on my bed, sinking into the old twin mattress. “Congrats on the win, hotshot.”
His mouth opens to speak, but a deep voice rolling from the background cuts him off.
“Don’t congratulate him. He tweaked his ankle in the first shift and rested most of the game.”
My eyebrow crinkles, the words Bennett has said rolling around in my head as I try to make sense of them. The sheepish look on Rhys’ face doesn’t help the inkling of disbelief.
But then he smiles, his eyes glazing.
“I love that,” he says.
“What?”
“When you get that little wrinkle in your eyebrows. Like you’re thinking really hard about something.”
“About you.” I roll my eyes, dropping my phone to point at the ceiling, hiding the blush and kicking my feet.
I’ve never been this way with anyone. Watching my dad mourn my very much alive mother—drowning tears with alcohol, drugs, and women since I was twelve—left a bad taste in my mouth for relationships. Hell, people in general.
But with Rhys, it’s different.
Real.
“You didn’t play?” I ask.
Bennett walks close enough I can just see him out of frame.
“Want me to bring you anything back?” he asks, slapping a baseball cap on his head as he leaves the frame again.
“I’m good,” Rhys replies. The door slams and he visibly relaxes when it’s just us.
Like he always does.
“So.” He sighs, a mischievous glint to his eyes. “My surprise.”
I giggle—not a sound I make often but there’s a thrill to this.
I’m not nervous, I’m excited—and a little worried that I’ll regret this later, when he’s moved on to a real girlfriend and his big career.
Still, I take this moment to be selfish.
“I don’t remember anything about that.” I tease, slipping the stretched neck hole of my oversized t-shirt off my shoulder with a strategic shrug.
His eyes track the movement, shoulders slumping as he relaxes further into the bed.
I open my mouth, but he cuts me off.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Something warm and unwelcome wriggles in my chest. So, instead of responding, I strip my shirt from my body in one fell swoop. This isn’t romantic. We aren’t a couple—this is sexual only.
“Oh, fuck,” he curses, eyes wide as he takes in the baby blue lingerie set Aurora gifted me for my birthday last year.
“You like it?”
He nods like a bobble head.
“Good. I like that you like that.” I smirk when he almost reflexively flexes his abs. “Do you want to touch yourself?”
“I want to touch you,” he responds immediately. The warmth in my stomach tries to grab hold again.
I shove it away, finding a spot to prop up my phone, before sliding my hands across the translucent material against my stomach.
He tracks my every movement, now clearly holding the camera one-handed.
I watch with fire in my eyes as his arm moves up and down.
I’ve felt and seen exactly what he’s packing down there, but even still I bite my lip to stop myself from asking to watch.
Slowly, I slide the straps of the bustier down my shoulders, shimmying closer to the camera for a better view. This way feels safer, cutting off my head from view, so he can’t see my eyes. I’ve already let my guard down too much—this is me taking back my control. I desperately need it, before I drown completely in everything him.
He lets out a low moan as I bare my breasts to him, his arm quickening, jostling the camera.
“Fuck, Gray,” he grounds out, before the door clicks and the phone goes flying with a non-pleasurable shout from Rhys.
I knock the phone down, pulling my duvet up and over my head, cloaking myself like an Eskimo with only my face now visible.
Bennett is the next one on my screen, picking the phone up. I see a flash of his blushing, bright red cheeks, before rapid movement and Rhys in the camera again.
He walks somewhere, a bathroom it looks like, before sighing and apologizing over and over.
“It’s okay,” I mumble from my cocoon.
He smirks at my new ensemble even more than he did the lingerie. And I try desperately to smash out the growing warmth when he says, “You look so adorable.”
But that warmth is taking up permanent space in my chest. And so is he.
