I blinked over at him with a glare and changed the channel. "I was reading the subt.i.tles."
Will tilted his head, eyes moving from the tips of my toes back to my face. "You look pretty."
I wasn"t really sure what I was doing, and was actually starting to sweat a little. Why did I always decide to prove a point first and think about it later?
"Thanks," I replied.
His hand curved around my ankle, his thumb brushing up and down along the top of my foot. Moving my foot away, I stood, turning toward the kitchen and trying to remember everything Chloe had told me about being s.e.xy. I think I shook my a.s.s, but it probably looked more like I had a charley horse.
"Do you want a beer-" I started to ask, but didn"t make it that far.
Will cracked up, bending over laughing before he tackled me back to the couch. "Are you trying to prove a point here, Plum?"
"Yes!" I shouted, trying to escape. "Admit you don"t think this is s.e.xy. Admit it!"
"Are you kidding?" he said, tucking his head into my neck and covering me in kiss after kiss. He tickled my stomach and pushed my shirt up to my ribs. "It"s been long enough, I could absolutely do it again."
"Are you serious?" I screamed, laughing and attempting to twist away from his fingers.
He kissed his way across my chest and down between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, over my shirt. His fingers moved to the waistband of my panties and he slowly tried to peel them down my legs. Tried being the operative word because five pairs of underwear don"t really fit the same way as one . . .
"What in the actual f.u.c.k-" he started to say, tugging at the fabric.
"Just . . . Oh my G.o.d, Will-" I curled on my side, laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. He managed the first pair, holding them up victoriously before he went back for the second.
"Jesus Christ," he said, attempting to pull them down without stretching them or damaging the elastic. "Are these on with some kind of adhesive?"
"No!"
"Okay . . . It"s possible this wasn"t my best plan. And will you hold still! It"s like trying to peel a wiggly onion!"
"I"m going to die of laughter and when the police finally get here I"ll still be wearing these hideous underwear. Why didn"t you just take them all off at once?"
"You can"t expect me to think when all my blood is in my d.i.c.k!"
"I told you this wasn"t s.e.xy. Admit that I was right and I"ll just go in and take them off. Admit that I"m smarter than you."
"Oh, you"re definitely smarter than I am, and they"re definitely s.e.xy," he said. "I really don"t see a way I lose in this scenario." He lifted my shirt off and over my head and took my b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands.
"We"re never going to be packed at this rate," I said, watching as he took one nipple into his mouth, and then the other.
"I"d say I wished we would have hired someone, but this has been fun. Today . . ." He kissed my breast again and then looked up at my face. "Today has been pretty great."
"And you"re not worried at all about losing this? When we move?"
Will shook his head, placing an elbow on either side of my head and looking down at me. "Absolutely not. It"s always fun with you. Remember San Diego for Ben and Chloe"s wedding?"
"You mean when we barely left the room?"
Will grinned. "Exactly. You"re going to kick a.s.s at Harvard and be the most amazing professor they"ve ever had. I"m going to figure it out with Max, maybe even open a second office, and we"ll make things work. Just like we always do, Plum."
I gripped his hip, pressing into the H he had tattooed there, and realized he was right.
This? Was a constant. We could move halfway around the world and nothing would change.
We were going to be just fine.
Seven.
Will Max and Jensen patted the table with their hands, a rumbling drum roll.
"How was the honeymoon?" Sara asked, and everyone groaned.
"I don"t care about the rudding honeymoon!" Max play-yelled. "I hear enough about their s.e.x life on a normal day. Tell me where you"re moving."
"I can"t take it," Chloe said, gripping the sides of her chair. "I swear to G.o.d I am going to lose my s.h.i.t in a violent way if you"re even thinking of moving to the West Coast."
"We"ve decided," Hanna said to the table, "and we are moving to . . ."
She looked over at me, and in unison we proclaimed, "Cambridge!"
A chorus of cheers rang out, with everyone congratulating us both, congratulating Hanna on landing Harvard. We raised our arms in a toast, gla.s.ses clinking loudly.
"Boston?" Chloe said when she returned her winegla.s.s to the table. "That"s like two hundred miles."
"Are you happy or annoyed?" I asked her. "I can"t really tell."
"I"m . . . not sure, either," Chloe admitted, brow furrowed. "I was preparing myself for something really traumatic." She squinted across the table at us. "Boston is sort of an annoying distance. It"s too far to drive regularly, but feels silly flying. Plus, it"s Boston."
"Not to me," I told them. "I"ll be down here three days a week."
Sara pa.s.sed me the baby, searching her purse for something a little quieter for Anna to play with than the spoon she was currently banging against the table. I turned her to face me, puckering my lips for a kiss.
Anna reached forward, grabbing my mouth in her chubby fist.
"Are you staying up there for the holidays?" Sara asked. She returned with a rattling plastic thing before noticing Anna"s death grip on my face, which, no surprise, Max was happily witnessing. "Oh, jeez, Will, that must hurt!"
Sara urged her daughter to swap my mouth for the toy, and Annabel promptly used it as a hammer against my forehead.
"Oi!" Max yelped, finally leaning forward to steady her hand. "Ouchie, lovey, be soft. That hurts Uncle Will."
"Apparently Anna isn"t thrilled about Boston," Bennett said dryly.
"It"s okay," I told Sara, leaning in and kissing Anna"s cheek. "She should learn these moves. She"s one now; you never know when she"ll get into a fight in the alley behind the daycare." I kissed her little nose. "And it depends on what Hanna"s folks want to do around the holidays," I said. I glanced at Hanna, who just shrugged.
"Chloe and I will host," Bennett interjected. "Dad and Mom are headed to New Zealand for the month, so we"ll have it at our place. And I don"t want Sara having to do anything strenuous with a one-month old."
We all stared quizzically at Bennett for a beat before deciding in unison to not question his sudden sentimentality.
I eyed Sara"s protruding stomach. "You look like a movie prop."
She groaned. "I know. Just get her out of me already."
"When was your due date again?" Hanna asked.
"Yesterday," Sara whined, sweetly. "They say the second one usually comes early. They lie."
"You know what usually helps with inducing labor . . ." Chloe sang and Sara glared at her.
"We tried that." She held up her hand, ticking off on her fingers: "We tried s.e.x, and spicy food, and walking. I swear the only thing left is a scalpel."
Max winced bodily beside her and Hanna leaned closer to her other side, putting her arm around Sara"s shoulders.
I listened as my wife laid out the details of Harvard"s hiring package, and leaned back in the chair, making faces at my G.o.ddaughter. Relief coursed through me like a drug and I couldn"t help but feel the tightness of emotion rise in my throat. We"d built a life here, and I didn"t want to lose these friends. I didn"t want to be too far from the people we loved.
We had looked online at houses in the area; we had talked about how our schedules would mesh. We had discussed our shared need to remain near our family: both hers and the chosen one here with us now. In Cambridge, we would be close enough to the Bergstroms that it would be Hanna"s turn to ha.s.sle Jensen about dating, and close enough to these idiots to share holidays.
I glanced at Hanna as she chatted happily, bubbly as ever. She grabbed a napkin and drew the layout of her lab, before looking guiltily up to me and then flipping over the napkin and drawing the floor plan of the house she thought she liked.
Ma.s.sachusetts had no idea what was coming for it, but I did.
This beautiful boss across the table from me was about to take over the whole G.o.dd.a.m.n state.
Acknowledgments.
When readers ask for more of certain couples, it"s fun for us to try to make it happen. And, more often than not, it feels a little like a family reunion to sit down and write another, small glimpse into their world.
Will and Hanna hold a special place in our hearts because it was the first book we wrote together where we both felt like authors, rather than women-in-other-careers who happened to also write books. And we think this grounding resonated with readers in a way that has really endured. So first and foremost, thank you to each and every reader and blogger who has picked up our books, read them, and then told us what you loved, what you didn"t love, and what you wanted more of. Without you, there would be no us.
Thank you to the constant MVPs in our world: Holly Root (agent extraordinaire), Adam Wilson (editor with the best margin notes and YouTube links), Kristin Dwyer (our precious, also our publicist-hehe), and everyone in our Gallery family: Jen Bergstrom, Louise Burke, Carolyn Reidy, Liz Psaltis, Diana Velasquez, Theresa Dooley, the amazing sales force (seriously, we want to buy you all dinner and drinks), and each and every person who had to correct our Oxford commas and/or question our "s.e.xclamations" with a professional tone. You deserve a bonus. There"s one for each of you in Adam"s office.
We would be a ma.s.s of inarticulate garbage without Erin Service and Tonya Irving. Our social media would be a barren landscape without Lauren Suero steering the ship and Heather Carrier making things pretty. Our families keep us smiling, and we keep each other sane, but you, sweet reader, make all of this the best job in the world.
Turn the page for a sneak peek of Wicked s.e.xY LIAR.
Book Four in Wild Seasons
from Christina Lauren
"A hypers.e.xy, sophisticated romance that
perfectly captures the hunger, thrill,
and doubt of young, modern love."
-Kirkus Reviews
Chapter ONE.
London THERE ARE A number of things that happen when you haven"t had s.e.x in a while: You inadvertently emit a sound during the kissing scenes in romantic movies-a noise that falls somewhere between a snort and an audible eye roll and which almost always elicits a pillow being lobbed at you from the other end of the couch. You can name at least three online adult toy stores from memory, accurately quoting their shipping rates, reliability, and speed. At least two of these stores auto-fill after only a single letter is typed into the URL bar, and you are always the roommate expected to replace the batteries on the remote control, hand vacuum, and flashlights.
Which is ridiculous when you think about it because everyone knows the best s.e.x toys are corded or rechargeable. Amateurs.
You become good at masturbating, too. Like, really good, Olympic sport good. And by that point, having s.e.x with yourself is the only option because how can any man possibly hope to compete with your own hand or a vibrator with 120 volts and seventeen variable speed settings?
The side effects of a less-than-social v.a.g.i.n.a are particularly noticeable when you"re constantly surrounded by three of the most disgustingly happy couples around. My roommate, Lola, and her two best friends, Harlow and Mia, met their significant others in a totally insane, it-never-happens-in-real-life weekend of debauchery in Las Vegas. Mia and Ansel are married and barely come up for air. Harlow and Finn seem to have mastered s.e.x via eye contact. And Lola and her boyfriend, Oliver, are at that stage in a new relationship where touching is constant and s.e.x seems to happen almost spontaneously. Cooking turns into s.e.x. Watching The Walking Dead? Obviously arousing. Time for s.e.x. Sometimes they"ll just walk in the door, chatting casually, and then stop, look at each other, and here we go again.
TMI alert? Oliver is loud, and I had no idea the c-word was used quite so readily in Australia. It"s a good thing I love them both so much.
And Lord, I do. I met Lola in the art program at UCSD, and although we didn"t really start hanging out regularly until she moved in as my roommate last summer, I feel like I"ve known her my entire life.