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The deal was simple.
Two roommates.
One sex tape contest.
Zero feelings.
Riley Daniels thought a night at the movies was just the thing to cheer up her recently dumped roommate, Paul Holder. That’s what friends were for. But when they see an ad for an amateur adult video contest—the same contest Riley won two years earlier with her ex-boyfriend—they both look at each other with the same thought: huh.
Riley suspects Paul could use some help getting over his breakup. Paul knows his roommate has fallen into a professional rut, and when he hears Riley describe the confidence she used to have when she last entered, he knows he can help her get it back.
With these magnanimous goals in mind, they decide to make an entry of their own, sealing the deal with the promise that they’ll remain friends—nothing less, but nothing more.
The plan is perfect, except for one little problem: their agreement to stay just friends means they can’t reveal that they’re secretly in love with each other.
Excerpt
“I might get distracted with your fancy words, so maybe we keep this script simple.”
He forgot about the camcorder, about their plan—about everything except the gentle feel of her hips in his hands as he pulled her close, the slight escape of breath as she pressed against him, the faint tickle of her hair on his nose as he leaned towards her ear.
“Say my name, or say stop.”
He pressed his cheek to hers and waited, letting her know it was her call. Her fingers gripped in the waist of his jeans, an anchor to keep her from drifting. “What’s your script?” she whispered.
Despite the acute awareness that it was still being filmed, their connection was intimate. A shared experience, the rest of the world having faded into nothing. He acted on instinct, like his body intuitively knew what hers craved, drawing the soft shell of her ear into his mouth. Worried her lobe between his teeth, leaving her with a soothing caress. Her sigh passed over him like a mountain wind, calm but stirring his blood to a fever pitch.
“Are words the best use of my mouth?” He let his hands drift to cup her deliciously soft ass and pull her against him, as if there were any more space for her to go. “My name.” His lips dipped lower, kissing a trail along her neck. “Or stop.” He eased away, enough to signal the next move was hers. He already missed her skin, her taste. “I’ll just kneel and listen.”
Paul traced lines on her legs, feeling her relax further, sink deeper into straddling his thigh. He could map her skin from a year of surreptitious gazes, but the feel—even through her jeans, the feel—was a revelation. How had his hands not been here the whole time? What would he do if they were never here again?
“Kneel?”
He snapped open the button of her jeans, then slowly worked down the zipper, folding the flaps open until her panties came into view. He spied a thin stretch of skin above, her belly pressing out as if reaching for his touch.
The permission in her response—standing slightly taller so he could more easily access her body, the softly gasped “yes” that was for his ears alone—made that revealed strip of skin the sexiest, most desirable flesh he had ever seen in his life. That she was letting him look at her like this was so trusting, so personal, so validating, he couldn’t believe moments like this existed. Certainly not for him.
“That wasn’t one of the words.”
Even to his own ears his voice betrayed barely restrained need. The raw hunger of someone who was not doing this with the idea they would still be just friends. Could she tell he wanted this whether it was filmed or not? Did he care if she knew? Didn’t he want her to know?
“Listen.”
He hooked his fingers into her panties where they met her hips. So close to heaven he worried he might faint. He stroked back and forth, reveling in the slight squirming shiver following his fingertips’ trace. “I’m listening.”
She tilted the side of her mouth in a smile. Her pupils dilated with excitement. She was loving this; he loved that.
“Paul,” she said, as if saying the word for the first time. Testing it. Exploring the nuances of the syllable, curious what it meant for her to say his name.
It didn’t mean stop.