Flirty Thirty (Nerdy Thirties Book 1)

  “I’m fine,” I choke out. “Well, I was until you scared the crap out of me.”

  “I scared you?” His blue eyes flash with fury, and I jolt a little in his arms. “Damn it, Maya. What are you doing down here?”

  “I… I couldn’t sleep.” I blink a few times, trying to get the water out of my eyes and catch up to his mood. “How’d you know where I was?”

  “Security cameras.” He reaches up, the anger in his eyes slowly dissolving as he smooths my hair back. “Scared the hell out of me.”

  I give him an apologetic look, biting my bottom lip. “Sorry.”

  He shakes his head. “Like hell you are.”

  “You’re… really mad. I’ve never seen you mad before.”

  “Picture this,” he says, tilting his head. “It’s three a.m. and the security alarm wakes you up. Your groggy eyes open to check out the camera, and you see your girl face down in the pool, fully clothed.”

  “You’re a good story teller,” I tease. “Ever thought about writing a book?”

  His hand drags down from the small of my back to my butt, and he gives me a pinch. “Shit… you can’t do that to me.”

  My playfulness starts to dissipate, and I put a hand on his chest. His heart pounds under my palm, and I kick myself even closer into his embrace.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him sincerely this time, but his brow tilts in skepticism as he runs a wet finger across my smile.

  “Yeah… you sure look it.”

  “I am.” I tap my forehead to his. “It’s just… well, you called me your girl. The smile cannot be helped.”

  I thought he’d be happy about that admission, and I think a part of him is, deep under all the concern swirling in his baby blues. We bob in silence for a bit, the water the only sound around us until he says, “I’m surprised it makes you smile. The endearment.”

  “Trust me,” I whisper-laugh. “No one’s as surprised as I am.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches in that adorable, magical way. He moves in close, his breath a warm wave over my lips.

  “I’m gonna kiss you,” he says.

  “Go for it.”

  “I’m not gonna stop.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “I’ll probably tell you something…”

  I tilt my head at him. “Like…?”

  “Like I’m falling for you.” His fingers knot up in my hair, his eyes closing as he blows out a long breath. “I’m falling hard, Maya, and I know you don’t want to hear that, but my mouth just likes to tell you every thought in my head.”

  My heart jumps up on a cloud, and I float up there with it. He has no idea… none… just how much I like that he tells me his thoughts. How I feel like I know so much about him and yet he still manages to surprise and shock me. I want to do this every day for the rest of my life. I want to let go of the edge and fall right alongside him.

  “Okay,” I say, and he jerks back and blinks.

  “What?”

  “I’m okay with that.” I lift my arms out of the water and wrap them around his shoulders. “In fact… tell me again.”

  His fingers dig into my back, clutching me close to him, his smile full and almost disbelieving. “I’m falling in love with you, Maya. It cannot be helped.”

  I bite away a grin. “Damn it.”

  His brows pull in, and he flings his hand up and out of the pool. “You told me to say it!”

  I bat his hand back down. “I know. I was saying… damn it, you win.”

  Confusion looks good on him, too. “I win what?”

  “I really did try to stop it,” I tell him, trailing a finger over his shoulder. “But you have to be so cute, so charming, so fun and funny and sexy and honest and real and I’m falling. Damn it, I’m falling for you, too.” I let my voice take on the best impression I can of his. “It cannot be helped.”

  He stares at me, his eyes wide with shock and his lips slowly turning up as everything I said sinks in. He lets out a long sigh of relief, his body collapsing as he reaches for the edge of the pool behind me for some sort of sturdy ground. With one arm tight around my waist and the other propping himself up, he presses a pattern of kisses up and down my neck, over my cheeks, on my nose, my forehead, my lips. He nips at my ear and kisses away the specks of water on my chest. I can feel his beaming happiness in every press of his lips, in every stroke of his tongue. It lights up under my skin, making me just as anxious to kiss and touch him.

  I did this. I made him this happy, caused such a loving and joyful reaction and it is powerful, exciting, humbling. And my trepidation for a family, for a husband and kids is gone from my head. I want to give him all of that. I want to see him this happy always. I would give up everything I’ve ever wanted just to see this look on his face again. I’ve never… I’ve always thought of myself… and he’s making me want things for him… and my brain is losing its power as his hands and lips touch me all over in the heated pool water.

  I pull myself up on his hips, grateful for the way water makes a person feel weightless. His hard length presses against me, and I ache to push away my shorts, to pull down his boxers. I want to make love for the first time in my life. I want to love him like no one ever has. I want to look into his eyes and tell him that they are the only ones I want to look at during sex from now on. I want to tell him how lucky I feel, how I want to give him everything he’s ever wanted, how I’m so glad that he took a risk on me.

  He must want me naked just as much, his hands skating up my ribs and wriggling my wet camisole up and over my head. It slops against the edge of the pool, the sound oddly arousing. I cradle his face in my hands, words never finding their way to the surface as I look into his eyes and hope and pray he can see my every thought. He covers my mouth in a seductive, hot kiss that sets my entire world on fire.

  I’m in love with him. There is no falling—that part is done and over with. I’m deep in the pools of love and I don’t ever want to crawl my way back out.

  He pushes me up on the edge of the pool, his fingers tucking into my shorts and I frantically try to help him pull them off. He flings them behind him, and the land somewhere in the water as I scramble back along the floor, watching the water drip and pour off his muscular, lickable body when he pushes himself out. He drops his boxers, kicking them into the pool alongside my bottoms before he sticks his hand out for me.

  I tuck my fingers in his palm, and I severely underestimated his strength. He pulls me to my feet, bends his knees, and a giggle escapes the back of my throat and echoes around us as he hoists me over his shoulder. I get a glorious view of his ass—and smack it for good measure—while he walks me over to the hot tub. Thank heavens we aren’t walking too far away; I want him inside me asap.

  He lowers me in the center, and for once in my life, I’m not too concerned about how much flab is going on. He doesn’t mind it, and really… I don’t think I do either. Not when he’s looking at me like he is.

  “Come here?” he asks, slowly sitting in the hot water and hitting the jet button on the side. I love that he asks, that he’s a guy who knows what he wants, but respects what other people want, too. I slide onto his lap, slipping him inside as I settle.

  I hate being on top. There was always that self-conscious bug that bit me every time. I’m too much boob, too much hair, and my cardio and stamina is not anything to write a book about. But I want to be on top now. I want to show him just how much he means to me. I want to keep that look on his face for as long as possible.

  I rock my hips, the first satisfying rub sending a tingly flush under my skin. His own body is red, wet, and the steam rising around us only adds to my arousal. But it’s the joy in his eyes, the loving caress of his fingers on my jawline that is making me feel so good.

  I make love to him for a lifetime, yet not long enough. When I feel myself tumbling over the edge, throwing my head back in ecstasy, a small part of my mind is sad that it’s almost over. Cooper is saying something, his voice muffled through the
clouds in my ears. There’s pressure on my hips, on my thighs, and as I blink myself into coherency, I realize he’s pushing me from his lap, desperately shoving against the stone grip I had on his waist.

  “Maya, I—”

  I kiss him as hard and strong as I can in the aftermath of the orgasm. His hands are still urging me off of him.

  “Maya,” he says around my lips. “You’ve gotta… you have to get off.”

  My head is still foggy, and I grasp for the reason for his request. It can’t be my weight, can it? I’m light in the water, and he picked me up without breaking a sweat.

  But as he softens inside of me, the realization hits like a sobering bucket of ice water and I all but leap off his lap. We’ve been making love for so long that the jets have stopped, and I can see his release in the water. My heart trips and heat rushes through my cheeks.

  “Maya…” he says, his eyes polar opposite from the joy that was in them not ten seconds before. He reaches out to me, and I easily go back to him, wanting to feel the comfort of his skin as my body starts to shake with panic.

  “I pulled out as fast as I could,” he tries to comfort me, but I can feel the evidence between my legs, and I don’t know if its him or if it’s just the hot tub water. “It’s gonna be okay. I heard… I’m pretty sure you can’t get… not with the hot water.”

  I shake my head against his, silently letting him know that I don’t need him to comfort me with words. I don’t want this moment ruined by a lapse in judgment. I press my lips against his, soft and gentle, but hard enough to let him know that I still have fallen for him, that this isn’t going to change how I feel.

  But I wonder if he can sense how scared I am now. I never forget a condom. Never.

  He wraps his arms around me, and he pushes us up and out of the hot tub. We sit on the edge, wrapped up in each other until finally sleep takes me over.

  20

  Maybe Baby

  My bathroom mat has been trampled down from fluffy to flat within the last twenty minutes. All I’ve done is pace and pace in my Cozy King pajamas and stare at the blue box on the counter, occasionally talking to myself.

  It’s been one week since I packed my bags and came home. One week since I Cooper and I made love in the hot tub. One week of tossing and turning every night before breaking down and begging him to come over just to sleep in my bed. He was so sweet about it, too. One night he showed up at around four, his hair disheveled and his eyes droopy. He pressed a sleepy kiss to my forehead and used me for a crutch as we climbed up my stairs and fell on the bed. He was out within a minute. I followed almost immediately after.

  “It’s okay,” I tell myself for the tenth time. “It’s fine. I don’t feel sick, my boobs aren’t sore, and I’m not experiencing any cravings that are outside of the norm. I’m just being paranoid.”

  Kat rubs up against my bare ankle, and I stop my pacing and lean against the counter. My mirror self looks like she’s gone through the ringer, and I’m too fidgety to even try to fix my hair or adjust my clothes. It’s not like I have to look like a rockstar to pee on a stick anyway.

  “There’s no signs of a bun in the oven,” I tell myself again. “Well… other than the obvious one.”

  I’m only a day late, but a one day delay is one day more than I’d like, especially after my birth control brain fart.

  I shift my weight onto my other leg, clenching them together a little to keep all the water and orange juice I drank in there until I get the guts to rip the box open. Okay… there are only two answers here. A negative result means I can breathe again. Cooper and I can have some fun in the new romance stage and I can slowly dip my toes into something more. I just got past my qualms about that. So a positive result would mean…

  I swallow hard, hanging my head and watching Kat try to squeeze her way through my ankles. She’s purring hard, and I wish I could say that was helping, but my nerves are way too shot to calm down even for a comforting kitty.

  “Okay…” I say. Maybe speaking it out loud will make it sound better. “If it’s positive, I’ll go to the doctor and make sure. Just one step at a time. No panicking.”

  A rush of warm, heavy pressure plummets in my lower belly, and I jam a hand between my legs, but there’s no stopping the force of a full bladder. My shaking hands fumble for the box, tearing it open and grabbing the stick, which is also in a wrapper. But with slick, sweaty fingers, a nervous heart and an overflowing bladder, I can’t get the darn thing open. A hiss slips through my teeth as my thumb slips and slices on the wrapping. I start bouncing on the balls of my feet, biting the edge of the wrapper and tearing through it just in time for me to yank down my pants and let loose.

  Hmm… maybe waiting until you’re about to explode is the key to feeling relief when taking a pregnancy test.

  My doorbell rings right in the middle of my business, and Kat runs through the open bathroom door and ducks under my bed. I hope it’s just UPS.

  As I’m setting the stick down on the counter and searching for a Band-Aid, the doorbell goes off again, followed by a few knocks. I let out a huff and check the box. Two to three minutes for results. Well, whoever’s at the door has impeccable timing. I run a brush through my hair and jog down the stairs and peek out the peephole.

  It’s Holland… and she’s running a hand over her cheek like she’s wiping away tears. My fingers quickly close over my lock and flick it open.

  “Hey,” I say as I swing the door open. “What’s wrong?”

  Holland’s red, watery eyes meet mine briefly before she drops them back to her feet. “I…” She sniffles and my heart plummets into my stomach.

  “I… I left Warren.”

  21

  Best Buds and Hugs

  Holland brings her long, dark ponytail over her shoulder, playing with the ends of her hair as we sit with Tom and Kat on my couch. Her crestfallen face hasn’t had a flicker of a smile on it in the past few hours, even when she asked me to make her laugh, tell her funny stories, do anything just to make her not feel so heartbroken. I couldn’t, though. I didn’t have an ounce of humor in me. So I got her one of my cats and silently prayed for her.

  “I don’t want to go home,” she says, dropping her hand from her ponytail to Tom’s fluffy back. “I don’t want to face him.”

  “What happened?” I watch her shake her head. “Holland…”

  “This pregnancy…” She gulps away another round of tears threatening in her eyes. “We’ve both just become such different people. We’re mostly fighting, and I feel so sick and horrible, I just need someone to understand and all he does is pester and hover and I… need a break.”

  “How long of a break?” I ask. They’ve been together over ten years. Even though I’ve seen them fight and I’ve heard Holland complain about things losing their spark, I still believed they loved each other.

  She lifts one shoulder, shaking her head, her mouth open like she’s at a loss for words. I quickly lean forward, setting a hand on hers, her fingers unusually warm for her. Holland’s always complaining about being cold.

  “Why is he being so… controlling?”

  “Do you know how long it took to get pregnant?” She brings her eyes up to mine, and I shake my head. “Four years.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve been trying for four years.”

  My brow furrows, my brain trying to process. Holland and I tell each other everything. How did I not know about this? “I thought you guys wanted to wait ten years to have kids.”

  “I changed my mind.” She sighs and starts stroking Tom’s fur again. “When I told Warren I was thinking about starting earlier than planned, he was so happy. His eyes… seriously, Maya, I’ve never seen them sparkle like they did. Almost like he was just waiting for me to say it.”

  I shift uncomfortably on the couch, gaze drifting down to her baby bump. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She snorts, the first slip of amusement—however hollow it is—she’s had since she walked t
hrough the door. “Yes, Miss Anti-Baby is going to be fully supportive of me changing my mind and becoming ‘one of them.’ I mean, I got enough grief over getting married so young.”

  The joke has a jolting sting to it that I don’t expect, and it shocks straight into my heart and sends bolts of guilt through my stomach. Have I really been so anti-family that even my best friend feels like she can’t talk to me about what she wants? I guess I never saw it that way, always thinking about it defensively. I grew up with the idea that family, love, babies and marriage was the ideal to live up to. That was the life that meant you’d be fulfilled and happy. So when it didn’t happen for me, I built a life that I could be fulfilled and happy with. Any time someone asked “Are you seeing anyone?” “You think there’s a ring coming?” “How many kids do you want?” and when I’d answer honestly, saying that I don’t want kids, I don’t want a husband, I’d get the followups. “Why not?” “Aren’t you lonely?” “Kids are so different when they’re your own.” I grew tired of it. Every time someone brought up family or marriage I instinctively thought it was a way to get me to “see the light.” Maybe I was a bit too hasty to accuse and a bit too vocal about convincing everyone how happy I was that I didn’t realize just how rude and disparaging I was to them for their choices.

  I scoot across the couch, knocking Kat off my lap and wrapping my arms around my best friend again. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Please don’t feel like you can’t come to me about anything. I’ll be happy if you want a hundred babies.”

  Her hands come up around my waist and squeeze back. “Thanks, but… I don’t think I can move past this,” she says, her voice wet. “I feel like the man I fell in love with has been ripped away from me. How can I start a family with a stranger.”

  I don’t have an answer for her, but Warren could be completely oblivious to how he’s making Holland feel. Men usually are.