Touch & Go by Mira Lyn Kelly Read Free Book Online

her eyes, giving him a look threatening to remind him of how many days it had been since he’d last hooked up. But he didn’t care. He meant it. After the way she’d wound him up at the mixer…he’d have been in bad shape without letting off some steam.
    The fact that he got to do it with Ava—and that she looked utterly unfazed by what they’d done? Man, she was too good to be true.
    “Care if I shower?” he asked, heading into her bathroom to get rid of the rubber.
    He looked in at the girly space, happy to see she was still using the organizer he’d gotten her last year for all her loofahs, salts, gels, and bath crap in general. Only when his eyes landed on the shower flower thing, suddenly he wasn’t thinking about getting cleaned up at all. He was thinking about getting dirty again. With Ava. With the shower flower and as many of her suddenly potential-filled bath-time accessories as he could figure out how to bring to the party.
    “Shower downstairs,” she chimed in from the bedroom, sounded half distracted and totally uninterested. “I’ll shower up here and we’ll meet on the couch in twenty.”
    The couch. Where they kicked back and watched movies until Ava got too tired and booted him out. Only now he wasn’t thinking about plugging in some flick like they’d talked about earlier. He was thinking about Ava bent over the arm of the sofa, her sweet ass raised as she looked back at him with eyes begging for—
    “Bring snacks,” she added, snapping her fingers. “Good ones.”
    Snacks.
    Right.
    Sam did away with the condom and washed up, laughing as he shook his head.
    She was perfect.
    —
    God,
she was an idiot. Ava closed the door behind Sam, slumping down with her back against the solid panels until she was sitting on the floor hugging her knees.
    She’d been here before. Looking at the clock, giving herself five minutes to cry her heart out before she got it together and put on the face she never let anyone see past. The face that didn’t care about which Barbie doll Sam picked up after Homecoming in high school, or whom he’d scored with under the bleachers. Or that when it had been just the two of them talking late into the night with the star-swept sky above and a college life he wouldn’t share with her on the other side of dawn, after staring into her eyes for what seemed like an eternity, he’d pulled her into a
hug
and told her he was going to miss her like hell.
    Tonight she shouldn’t even need the five minutes. After all, she’d gotten something the girl she’d been in high school would have traded her soul for. In one night, she’d tasted Sam’s kiss, learned his touch, and heard her own name breaking over his lips as he found his release.
    Seriously, what more could she ask for? Well, aside from the obvious, of course—all the rest of his nights and the piece of his heart that didn’t beat for her. But she’d already accepted those things would never be hers. She’d made peace with it.
    So why were the tears flowing one after the next as five minutes became four? Four became three. Three became two. Two became one, and—well, her time was up and she needed to jump in the shower, so the
why
of it didn’t matter anymore tonight.
    She had to show Sam that nothing had changed. That she was every bit as good with putting what they’d done behind her as he was.
    Wiping at her eyes with the backs of her wrists, she pushed to her feet, straightened her shoulders, and texted Sam to make sure he grabbed what was left of her panties and dress from the hall downstairs.
    —
    From his apartment downstairs, Sam laughed at the text and glanced at the dress he’d set aside to drop at the cleaners for Ava tomorrow before returning his attention to the scraps of midnight lace still in his hand.
Jesus,
he couldn’t believe what she’d let him do.
    But that was Ava.
    From the day he met her, she’d been giving him all the things he’d known better than to want. And more than that,