Series: Do-Over #3
Publication date: January 28th, 2021
Synopsis:
I'm not too proud to admit that finding Mr. Right involves swiping right. Right? Welcome to dating in avocado toastland.
Here I am, on my first blind date, ever, courtesy of a smartphone app and my two annoying best friends.
So what is Christ "Fletch" Fletcher doing, walking across the room, looking at his phone like he's pattern matching a picture to find a real person he's never met before?
Oh.
Oh, no.
The guy I drop-kicked in seventh grade cannot be my blind date. The guy who earned me this infernal nickname.
That's right.
Feisty.
----
More from New York Times bestselling author Julia Kent as Fiona "Feisty" Gaskill gets her chance at love - drop-kick included.
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Excerpt
I charge Fletch, channeling it all, giving him what he's asking for.
He moves as I plow into the bag, my body still unable to attack him directly, his hands on my waist as I spin. Dropping to the ground, I use my lower position to twist out of his grasp, leg cocked and ready, but he's fast.
So fast.
Sweat sprouts all over my body like someone's misting me, the sudden crush of hormones, heat, and the pounding physicality of what we're doing making me wet.
In more ways than one.
I'm a mixture of revulsion and arousal, hating myself for feeling this way as his arms encircle me, my mind split between re-igniting the terror of the preschool attack and the very real, visceral feel of Fletch's skin against mine, welcoming the rutting, animal-like push of his slick thigh muscles against my arm as I fight him, working to pin him.
Failing miserably.
By the time we're done, this scrimmage is a joke, his body pressing me into the ground, arms immovable, my breath heating his nose as he looks down on me with a grin.
And then that fades.
Replaced by the unfiltered expression of a man who is falling. Falling, falling, falling into me.
Like time itself has collapsed.
And the sheer force of attraction is how we propel ourselves forward.
"This is great!" Michael shouts from the sidelines, the click click click of his shutter breaking the silence, Fletch's hips digging into mine, his hardness making it clear how he feels about me.
He doesn't move. My wrists pressed into the mat, my hair tugging at the roots, caught under my shoulder blades.
"See?" he whispers in the space between us. "Not happening again. You kicked my ass in seventh grade. But we're not tweens now, are we?"
As he says the words, my nipples harden, a yearning in the form of flesh centering between my legs. All I want to do right now is wrap my ankles around his waist and be screwed four ways to Sunday.
If that's even really a thing.
"No," I gasp, fighting and failing to be freed. "We're not. And if we're not, then what are we?"
"You tell me, Fiona. What are we?"
All the oxygen in the room rushes out. I'm left in space, floating, aimless and without anchor.
Jolene was wrong.
So wrong.
Space isn't my friend. It's my enemy. It's where everything safe becomes dangerous.
Where Fletch becomes the good guy.
The hot guy.
The I-need-him-in-me guy.
And where it's all caught on camera.
Because this journey started there, with Rico and cameras and people watching me because they can.
As Michael shoots photos and dictates angles, all I feel is Fletch's rum-THUM-rum-THUM beat, his heart against mine, telling me stories that go back seventeen years.
Before my heart wall had turrets. Before my heart wall had defenses and gun mounts and cannons.
Before I had a wall around my heart at all.
The kiss comes, unexpected but oh, so right. Fletch's mouth is inevitable, lips on mine like fate herself stepped into the frame and ordered us to do this. Logically it makes no sense, but emotionally, it's what the universe dictates, the kiss aligning so many layers of my being that it's almost painful how perfect this is.
His hands loosen at my wrists, one threading its way through my hair, tugging just enough to break the sensuality of this moment, but also brutal enough to make my hips rise up and beg for more. His tongue is exploring me like no good guy should, nothing but bad and filthy and raunchy and a promise of slick, hot, no-holds-barred sex if I just let him in, just let him try, just let him--
Just plain old let him.
But first, I have to let myself.
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Julia Kent writes contemporary romantic comedy with an edge. From billionaires to BBWs to new adult rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every contemporary romance she writes. Unlike Shannon from Shopping for a Billionaire, she did not meet her husband after dropping her phone in a men's room toilet (and he isn't a billionaire). She lives in New England with her husband and three sons in a household where the toilet seat is never, ever, down.
