The Ten-Year Game Plan

Chapter 35- Josie

If desire had an expression, it was the one on Donovan's face.

Neither of us moved for a moment, a long moment. I didn't move to cover myself. He didn't reach out to touch me. Both of us knew that we were standing in front of yet another line.

We were like a football game— god help me for the metaphor.

Every step in our relationship was a line: becoming friends, hating each other, finding our way back into the other's life, telling the truth, and now this. Sometimes we went forward, got to first down. Sometimes we went backward. But every time we faced a new line to cross, there was a moment of silence between us like we both knew what could happen.

But I couldn't cross this one... not yet.

He smiled with that goddamned dimple like he knew. Because he always knew.

"Not tonight," he agreed even though I hadn't said anything out loud.

"I—" I struggled to find the right words to explain my change of heart, "I just... tonight's not right. I still want to."

He shrugged. "Meh. I'm ambivalent about it."

A surprised laugh left my lips at the teasing grin on his face and I shoved his shoulder back. He fell against his pillows, pulling me on top of the hard planes of his chest. The soft cotton of his shirt brushed against my exposed belly, and I could feel the cords of his muscle running underneath me.

"Ambivalent, huh?"

Donovan gave me another wicked grin, grabbing one of my hands that rested on his chest and guiding it down to his waist band. Then over the hardness straining against his jeans. Oh.

"C'mon, Fish," he murmured, his voice considerably lower than his teasing tone, "does that feel ambivalent to you?"

"No." It was the exact opposite of ambivalent actually. "At least the feeling is mutual?"

Donovan arched a brow. "Oh, is it now?"

A challenge. Just as he guided my hand, I guided his from his jeans up the inside of my thighs and under my skirt. His blue eyes flashed something hungry and desperate as he found the proof of our mutual need for each other. In an instant his lips pressed against my own, one large hand capturing my chin and holding me in place.

One long forefinger ran up the thin fabric of my underwear and I shuddered against his lips and against his chest. Donovan wrapped an arm around my back, flipping us so he hovered over me. His mouth attaching to my collar bone, to the curve of my breast, to my rib cage, to my belly button, to my waistline. His tongue darted out along my skin and teeth scraped over the fire he left in his wake. Every single inch of me wished he could somehow be closer, somehow be wrapped around me even more than he already was.

My hands grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, of his hair, as he continued his foreign survey. Donovan's fingers pressed into my thighs as he lowered his exploration of my body.

A man I knew for years— years— acting as though he'd never seen me before. Kissing inches of my skin that lit up under his touch. He hadn't really seen me— not like this, anyways.

He peered up at me through familiar dark lashes with those familiar blue eyes with a look of hunger that was so foreign to me, I realized that maybe this was the first time I was seeing him too. It was certainly the first time that I'd ever seen his blue eyes look so dark.

Donovan's index curled into the waistband of my skirt.

"Can I—" he started to ask, and I felt the rasp of his voice somewhere deep in my core. Especially when he added, "Fucking hell. Please, can I?"