Page 127 of Hometown Halftime

Riley presses one last lingering kiss against my neck before lifting his head to look at me, his cheeks still flushed and his hair messy from my hands.

“Talk to me,” he says.

The concern in his voice is so hot I could die.

I smile lazily at him. “I'm pretty sure I saw God for a second, but otherwise, doing great.”

A relieved chuckle vibrates through his chest. Then he kisses me again before carefully pulling away and disappearing into the bathroom with the condom.

The second the door closes behind him, I let myself relax into post-orgasmic bliss.

My limbs feel heavy, tangled in the sheets as I unsuccessfully try to process the fact that Riley Weston just absolutely wrecked me.

Not just physically, either. Because I think he also ruined me emotionally.

As we moved through the nervous smiles and the whispered check-ins, this stopped feeling like just sex. And damn it, my body already misses him.

I’m still staring at the ceiling, replaying everything in my mind when the bathroom door opens. Riley climbs back into bed, still naked, lying on his back, pulling me against him. I go willingly, settling my head on his chest while his arm wraps securely around my shoulder beneath the blankets.

His fingers drift slowly through my hair while my cheek rests over his heartbeat, steady and strong beneath my ear.

And I feel…safe.

That’s the word that keeps circling through my head when I’m with him. It’s been so long since I let a man this close, but Riley seems to know how to care for me in a way I've never experienced before. We can be our true selves with each other. And that realization might have just completely ruined me for every other man on the planet.

Riley presses a kiss against the top of my head. “Are you still okay?”

“Yeah, very okay. Just riding out the orgasm stupor.”

His chest shakes beneath my cheek with laughter. “Good.”

Then his tone changes as he whispers against my hair, “Thank you, Kinsey.”

Fuck. Me.

The gratitude and tenderness in those words wash over me. It feels like he’s thanking me for sharing something vulnerable and making him feel safe enough to let go.

My finger traces a lazy circle on his chest as I say, “You’re welcome.”

I wake up to music drifting upstairs through the duplex while morning sunlight stretches across the blankets beside me.

For one sleepy second, I reach across the mattress expecting to find Riley there. Instead, the bed is empty. I sit up and rub my eyes, realizing he’s downstairs.

I look in a couple of drawers and throw one of Riley’s T-shirts over my head before padding downstairs, following the music to the kitchen.

The second I hit the bottom stairs, I stop.

Riley’s standing at the stove wearing plaid pajama pants and absolutely no shirt while flipping pancakes with entirely too much confidence for a man who lost his virginity less than twelve hours ago.

His head turns when he notices me approaching, and the smile that spreads across his face could power the eastern seaboard.

“Good morning.”

I lean against the doorway. “Why are you glowing?”

He points the spatula at me. “We had sex, Kinsey. I understand the hype now.”

Laughter bursts out of me before I can stop it. He slides the pancakes onto a plate and turns off the burner. The satisfaction in his eyes is infectious as he sets the spatula aside and crosses the kitchen toward me while a Motown song plays from the speaker near the coffeepot.