“Saint, it’s cold out, we both have empty apartments, we’re both tall, and I’m not anywhere near as small as I was in high school. It might sound fun, but the reality is going to be cold and cramped.” He was grinning lightly when he said this, though, and I knew he just needed to be persuaded.

I put one of my hands on the center of his chest, felt his heartbeat steady and sound under my fingertips, and looked up at him with pleading eyes.

“Please, Nash.”

He sighed and put a hand under my braid at the back of my neck.

“As long as you realize I probably won’t stop at second base and that means your ass is the one that’s going to be naked and cold, then I’m in.”

I giggled, actually giggled, which I don’t think I had ever done before tonight, and kissed him on his scruffy chin.

“Deal.”

He put the stuff from our painting party in the trunk, hopefully because he wanted the backseat free … goody … and we started to head out of the city kind of toward Brookside.

“Where are we going?”

“Lookout Mountain.”

It was just outside Golden and where Buffalo Bill Cody’s grave was located. I had heard about it but had never actually seen it. You were supposed to be able to see the entire city from up there.

“Is that where you used to take girls?”

“Uh, no. By the time I knew girls had more going for them than the fact that they smelled good and would do my homework for me if I told them they were pretty, I was pretty much living with Phil full-time. Dude is a player, way worse than Rule or I ever was. I had the house to myself pretty much every night, so when I got the opportunity I just took them home.”

“What do you mean ‘got the opportunity’?” I remembered girls hanging all over him in high school. It didn’t look like he had to work too hard at finding a willing bed partner.

“I hung out with a dude in a band, every chick’s idea of the perfect rebel, and the captain of the football team. I was just some guy with a bad attitude that was constantly getting told what a mistake I was at home. I didn’t know how to talk to girls that mattered. I had girls floating around that were easy and would put out … they didn’t really care who the guy was. That means they could’ve been into Rule for the night, or Jet. Opportunity definitely had to play into it.”

That was so odd. My perception and the reality of everything back then just seemed so different. I wanted to ask him more about it, but we got to an outcropping of rock that was flat and just long enough and wide enough for him to park the car. He killed the headlights and threw an arm over the back of the seat and looked at me in the now-dim interior of the front seat.

“We can go back to the city. You say the word.”

I didn’t answer him. I lifted up and wiggled over the back of the seat instead. I pulled off my flannel shirt along the way. He left the car running, but it was still January in Colorado and we were high up in the foothills, so it was brisk in the car and the windows were already fogging up. He watched me for a second and then got out of the car. There was no way he was fitting over the seat like I did, and he pulled his wallet out on the way. He handed me the square foil packet and climbed in, pulling the door shut behind him. He stripped off his hoodie and hat and we sat facing each other.

I thought he would grab me and pull me to him, but a ghost of a smile teased around his mouth and he pushed back his broad shoulders so that he was lounged across the leather seat.

“This is your game, Saint. How do you want to play?”

He was always putting me in the driver’s seat, pushing my limits, making me say what I wanted from him. Maybe that was why I never froze up with him, why I never had to question what was happening between us, because everything that was happening was what I was asking for. There was no room for rejection or judgment that way.

I shivered, and not at all from the cold.

“I want you to kiss me.”

He reached out and caught my braid in his hand and used it to reel me in. When our mouths touched, it was so much more than a simple kiss. He tasted like the past and like the future, the then and the now. He felt so strong and solid, but his lips were soft and searching. His skin was rougher than normal, but when he pulled me closer and our noses bumped, the glide of that little piece of metal he wore was smooth. He twirled his tongue with mine, and used his teeth on the plush curve of the inside of my lip. I gasped into the kiss and felt him chuckle. Before, I would have automatically assumed he was laughing at me. Now I knew he was just amused because it felt that good and he knew it.

My hands were on his chest and I used them to start pulling his shirt up across his flat stomach. He helped by lifting his arms up as much as he could. Considering the confined space and how broad across he was, it took a little finesse to get the fabric out of my way. Goose bumps danced across his golden skin and I bent my head to trace the ones across his collarbone with the tip of my tongue, which made him grunt.

“Now I want to kiss you.”

He was still holding my hair like a rope, so he had to loosen his hold when I ran the flat of my tongue over one of his nipples and then the other.

He swore and muttered, “Headed the wrong direction for that, pretty lady.”

I traced the ridges of his defined abs with my fingers and watched in delight as the muscles tensed and flexed along with the caress. It made it look like the wings along his abs were fluttering in the night air.

“No I’m not. I’m a little worried about working around all that metal down there, but I’m definitely headed in the right direction.”

He swore again and I started working on his belt buckle. It wasn’t something I had done more than once and Nash was working with some heavy-duty equipment, but I was fascinated by it all and wanted to make him feel as good as he always made me feel.

“Just act like it isn’t there.”

“Why? It might be my favorite part.”

He laughed again, but it turned into a groan when he fell out hot and hard into my waiting hands. He was throbbing, thick and anxious, as I hovered over him. I rubbed my thumb over the ring in the tip and his entire body jerked in response. I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding and he muttered my name softly as the moist air caressed his ready flesh.

I dropped my head and pulled the pierced head into my mouth. It was a texture and sensation overload, must have been for him, too, because he bowed up and his hand jerked on my hair hard enough that it hurt a little bit.

“Jesus.” No, not quite, just Saint, but I would take it as a sign he liked it.

I rolled the hoop across my tongue, skated down over that hidden barbell and farther down the shaft until I felt like I couldn’t take any more. I slid back up and repeated the exact same motion again, only this time I added a hand around the base that I squeezed with my bobbing motion because he was just too much to take in. He said my name again, I felt the legs I was using to brace on tense and his stomach go rock-hard, but right as I was starting to taste the slippery, salty release that would let me know it was a job well done, he pulled at my hair so hard it actually hurt for real and yanked me up and off of him.

He was breathing hard and his eyes were indigo. “If you do that much longer, one of us is gonna end up cold and horny. Hint, it won’t be me.”

He started pulling on my stretchy yoga pants. I was super glad I had worn something that was easy to wiggle and twist out of with very little room and big impatient hands getting in my way. He abandoned the bottom half of my outfit and went to work manhandling my tank top off over my head. I had to admit it was gratifying that I could actually feel how ready, how needy, he was for me. That was a powerful mood enhancer, and as soon as I got my panties off over the toe of my sneaker and he had himself covered, he pulled me down over him and we both made a noise that could only be described as animalistic. It was guttural, deep, and we both felt it as we joined together.