The Rule Book: A Novel

My words are taken by Derek’s crushing kiss. His mouth catches mine with a force that stirs every corner of my body. It simmers over my lips. It heats my skin and inches its way to my core.

His hand whispers down my side, drawing goosebumps to the surface of my arms and the tops of my thighs, as he wraps around to my lower back, tugging me up against him. Our kiss slips away and comes together again, angling and re-angling. The best geometry class of my life.

My heart is thunder as he carries his breath down my throat, teeth gliding gently over my flesh until he reaches the base of my neck. The inky night slips around us, stars winking out the window, encouraging me that this is a very good idea as Derek’s mouth sucks lightly at my throat.

More, more, more.

“Happily,” he says, because apparently I’d been whispering my sentiments out loud. My abdomen tightens instinctively as Derek’s knuckles brush against the skin of my midriff, briefly toying with the waistband of my lovely pink trousers. With an expertise worthy of an award, he flicks open the button, pulls the zipper down, and then drops them around my ankles. It happens in a flash. Cold air rushes my thighs, but I shiver from Derek’s large warm hand moving around to my ass and giving one firm squeeze.

He groans a gutted sound that sends need striking through me from all corners. “These are not your days-of-the-week panties,” he half growls in my ear.

“No. They’re not.” My smile is dipped in confidence. These are lacy. These are see-through. These are sexy and daring and make me feel like a woman. Derek’s eyes eat me up from head to toe.

“I love them.” A dark grin overtakes his mouth. Eyes glittering dangerously. “Now take them off.”

His thumbs hook the flimsy waistband and peel them off me—inch by inch. I can’t stand to keep my hands to myself any longer. I want to plaster myself to him and never let go. To start, I trace the raised lines of the tattoos on his shoulders and chest, letting my fingertips dance down his hard abdomen and toward other hard places. But Derek catches my wrist, stopping me before I can.

“Not yet,” he warns. No—pleads. It cracks the moment wide open, reminding us how much this means to both of us. “I don’t want to rush. Tonight I just want to savor you.”

There’s absolutely no arguing with that. So I raise my arms above my head, letting Derek remove my bandeau top. He gives it a few quick tugs, but it won’t budge. I’m just about to show him where to find the zip when I hear a sharp tear. My sad little bandeau falls limply to the ground next to my trousers as a discarded scrap of fabric. I’ll take this top home with me and frame it with a little plaque underneath that reads An Ode to Cancún.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to rush,” I chide, taking my hands up over these mountain ranges he calls shoulders.

“We have to make exceptions now and then. I’ll buy you a new one, Ginger Snap,” he whispers against the shell of my ear, teeth catching at my lobe once. Tension gathers between my thighs as Derek’s tongue swirls over my pulse. Sensations unlike any other zigzag down through my stomach.

My nails bite into his back, trying frantically to get closer, to feel the rocking pressure of our hips meeting. He swears against my skin before his hands drop to hook under my thighs. He hoists me up so we’re face-to-face, and despite drowning in this haze of lust, I’m able to appreciate how very blue his eyes are even in the moonlight.

I clinch my legs tightly around his abdomen, and his skin is blazing against me. His mouth takes mine in a slick, hot kiss, winding me up to a tension so tight I’m afraid I’ll snap right in half. My hands chart a path through the back of his hair as he carries me to the bed. But he doesn’t lay me down, he sits with me straddling his lap, breathing deep and slowing the moment to something graceful and dazzling. As a perfect contradiction, his massive, rough hands delicately push my hair off my chest and shoulders to fall down my back. His arctic eyes melt over my body as his fingers trace up my ribs like piano keys. I’m not prepared for the sensation of his hands curving worshipfully under my breasts.

The look he’s giving me right now. Yes, there’s desire and promises of how good his body will feel covering mine completely, but there’s so much more here too. Something raw and almost painful.

His finger runs a line up the center of my breasts and pauses on the left side of my chest, just below my collarbone. He draws a shape. My shape. A heart. And then bends, caressing it with his lips.

“I never told you thank you,” he says while standing up from the bed. I squeak and grip him around his neck, even though he seems to have me easily tucked against him without needing my help at all. One half-turn and he lowers my back to the cushy mattress. It’s a white, puffy cloud of luxury.

Finally he’s covering me with his weight, and I want all of it. I hook my leg around his back just to make it a reality. But he grins as his hair falls over his brow. “Patience. I have something to say.”

“Do you want to maybe say it later?” I’m desperate for him. Never been more desperate for anything or anyone in my life.

His hand dives under my back, lifting again until he scoots me up to the pillow. “No. I want to tell you now, while you’re naked. It’s better this way.”

I barely manage to hide my whimper, especially as Derek dips his head, shoulder muscles rippling under his skin, and presses his mouth to the most sensitive skin of my breast. His tongue is a work of art, and I arch helplessly into him.

After a moment, he has more to say. “Everyone in high school and college made me feel inadequate when I was pursuing anything apart from sports. Even as an adult, the relationships I’ve had have been purely physical and surface level. I’ve never felt particularly wanted or cherished. Except…with you.”

As he’s talking, his hand is skating down my belly, drawing tiny hearts with his large fingertip on my inner thighs, and then moving between them, finally touching right where I want and need him most. His words alone buzz over my skin like a dangerous current of electricity, but paired with his touch, it’s like taking a direct hit from a bolt of lightning. It’s an overload. An onslaught. And he’s right—these conversations are better naked.

His mouth presses into my neck as his hand keeps its pace and I’m dizzy from the pleasure he’s coaxing from my body. He still knows me so well. I don’t want it to stop. I don’t want it to end. I want to live here in this cushy cloud with Derek for eternity.

“Thank you for loving me back then, Nora.” His voice is ragged. “It was the right thing for us to have time apart, but god, I’m so lucky that we still ended up back here somehow.”

“Derek,” I pant, so close to the edge. “Words. Can’t. Form…”

He smiles like this is the best reply I could ever give before his mouth catches mine in the devouring kiss I crave. The feel of his tongue and hand and body all culminate to release that delicious pressure rolling inside me. Sparks fly behind my eyelids like crunching a wintergreen mint in the dark. I grip his back as a shudder corkscrews through me, curling my toes and wringing me out. He kisses me through it—groaning like he loves the feel of me coming undone from his touch.

I don’t think there’s anything better than this.

Except a few seconds later, after a brief pause for Derek to put on a condom, I realize how wrong I am. There is something so much better—Derek whispering my name, kissing my neck, my face, my shoulders, anything his mouth can reach as he slowly pushes inside me. This. This is how it’s supposed to be. How it’s supposed to feel.

Being reunited with Derek nearly brings tears to my eyes because it’s so right it’s a relief. My body letting go with the only other person I’ve ever truly felt comfortable with. He moves slowly in and out, letting me adjust to him again and I want to sob from how much I missed him. How much I missed doing this with him.

He grabs the headboard with one hand for leverage as his hips push into mine. Sensation peaks and a new wave of need rushes me. I match his movements, rolling and lifting my hips, and together we build toward that approaching height. That bright burning thing in the distance. I lock my leg around his hip and he groans, dropping his head in the crook of my neck.

“Shit, Nora,” he rasps as his free hand laces with mine, pressing it into the mattress.

His rhythm picks up, carrying mine with him. “Derek…” I don’t even know what I was planning to say. I don’t have real thoughts at this point. Just a body. And he has a body. And we are working them together so perfectly, so obsessively I think I might die.

I lift my head and open my mouth against his neck—tasting the sweat from his skin. I swirl my tongue and I hear my name on his breath one last time before he grips my hand harder. The sound of him unraveling has me tumbling right after him. A rush of electric pleasure surges through my veins before I go limp with delight.

We breathe together a minute, settling and savoring. After a minute, an hour, a year, who knows…Derek shifts his weight onto his elbow, releases my hand to tilt my chin up and kisses me so carefully it splinters my heart into a zillion pieces. “Are you good?” he asks in a low rasp that make me wiggle my toes.

I smile, lean up to kiss my initial on his bicep, and then push his hair back from his damp forehead. “I can assure you, I’ve literally never been better.”

He leaves me only for a minute to go clean up, but I’m too sleepy to move yet, so I lie here with a big cheesy grin on my face. And after he climbs back in bed, he pulls me up against him so he’s the big spoon and tucks the covers around me. I’m a warm little caterpillar in a cocoon of comforters. I live in a cloud of delight where no trouble can reach me.

His big bicep is draped over my shoulder and I kiss it. Nip it. And kiss it again. “It’s never been like this with anyone but you for me too. Not just the sex. But everything.” I pause and listen to the ocean roll in the distance mixed with the pulse of Derek’s heart. “Even when I’ve been in a relationship, I’ve felt sort of…lonely. No one understands me like you do.”

And it’s because of this understanding that he doesn’t push me to explain more. So I keep the rest close to my heart—that being replaced became such a common experience in my life that I stopped pursing relationships and even friendships altogether.

He kisses my temple. “I’m sorry I said I couldn’t be your friend. It was only because I didn’t trust myself to not want this if I got close to you again.”

“It makes sense. I’m very irresistible,” I say, twisting in his arms to face him.

“Is the offer still open?”

“To be my friend?”

“Mm-hm,” he says, closing his eyes.

“That’s trickier now that we’re naked. And married.”

He pulls me in tightly against his chest. “No—it’s better now. Please say yes. I’d love to be your friend, Nora.”

As if there were a chance I’d ever want to say no.

I draw a heart on his ribs. “Yes, you can be my friend, Derek Pender. But this breaks rule number three.”