Page 93 of Praised
“Please don’t pay my rent,” he said. “And please don’t do something insane like buy the building I live in.”
That earned a laugh and a tighter hold on his hand.
“That’s rule number four of the Trophy Doms,” I told him, making up the number for something thathadbeen a longstanding agreement amongst the five of us. “Don’t buy buildings out from under your friends.”
“Oh, my GOD!” he yelled, stomping his feet on the sidewalk before smacking me on the arm. “Which one of them owns my building?”
I hooked my arm around his neck and pulled him close. He came, if not begrudgingly, sliding his arm around my waist and falling back into step beside me.
“Rob does.”
“Rich asshole.”
By then, Dalton and Drake had caught up to us.
“That’s kind of who we are,” Dalton said, and I winked at him over the top of both Rose’s and Drake’s heads. “It’s in the name.”
“I think you’ve done well for yourself, Rosie,” Drake said, kicking Rose in the back of the knee. “This one seems like a keeper.”
“He’s something alright.”
“What am I?” Dalton asked.
“A mistake,” Drake said, laughing. “Now can we please get burgers? I’m hungry and horny, and I don’t want to get mean.”
CHAPTER30
ROSE
Quick burgersand milkshakes at two turned into cold French fries at sunrise. Stumbling over the threshold of Flynn’s house just shy of six in the morning meant I had enough energy to get to his bedroom and not much else. Together, we collapsed on top of the sheets, fully dressed, his arm and leg thrown over me rather unceremoniously.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was trying to pin me down so I couldn’t leave.
As if I would.
Spending time with him outside of what I’d always considered to behisnatural environment had been enlightening. I was quick to realize that he was the same man, whether he was with his rich friends or me and Drake. Even when we were alone, though his mouth ran a little dirtier when we weren’t in public, he was always authentically himself.
And I loved all of him.
I’d been caught off-guard when he admitted it earlier in the night, the night before, whatever the time had been, but it hadn’t been a scary confession. It had felt right to me in an indescribable kind of way. Like I was me and he was him, and of course he loved me. What else was there for him to do? Thinking about it that way made me feel terribly arrogant, and I wondered if that was how he always felt.
But there was another part to the equation that I hadn’t dared to admit out loud yet.
I was me and he was him. He loved me and…
I was also very much in love with him.
In the light of the late morning, I woke with the glaring heat of Flynn’s body behind me and the bright rays of nearly afternoon sun streaking across the foot of the bed. At some point during my sleep, I’d taken my clothes off, or maybe Flynn had taken them off for me. He was naked too, cock half hard against the small of my back.
In that moment, I found myself desperately wishing that we’d already gotten tested because it would be so hot to just lube him up while he slept and slip him inside of me. There were times in my life when I’d risked it, but after finding out that Cody cheated on me, there was no way I’d do that to Flynn. Even as I reminded myself of that thought, the urge to feel him bare, totakehim bare, gnawed at me.
It was Saturday afternoon, there had to be a clinic open somewhere.
But it was also Saturday afternoon and I had to work the dinner shift later that night. Because my job wasn’t like Flynn’s, my life wasn’t like his. I loved the idea of him paying my rent, even though I would never ask for it and I would most certainly not allow it. Not having to stress about money would be a whole new chapter in life for me, and I supposed I didn’t have to stress. Because even though I didn’t want Flynn’s money, I knew it was there if I needed it?
That felt like some kind of a concession.
Behind me, Flynn stirred, fingertips skating low across the bottom of my stomach and tangling through the golden patch of curls at the base of my shaft.
