We’ve had sex before, but this feels different. Even more intimate. This isn’t in a club or a bathroom or a closet. It’s spontaneous, but in a way that’s premeditated. He’s pleasuring me because that’s what he wants to do, not as part of a one-night stand or a flash of lust.

I’m nothing but nerve endings.

Pleasure lights up my body, as potent and powerful as I’ve ever experienced.

“I’m too blissed out to give you a blow job right now,” I inform Beck breathlessly when he returns to eye level.

He’s still pressed against me, so I feel the low chuckle reverberate in his chest. “We don’t have to keep score, Saylor,” he replies.

His statement chases away the final remnants of ecstasy. Beck may have just carried me out of the lake, but I suddenly feel like I’m in over my head.

Because I hate losing.

Because I like to know where I stand with people.

And because Adler Beck is the furthest thing from a sure bet.

Chapter Nine

The next few weeks fly by. I guess that’s what happens to time when you’re attending an elite soccer camp with an enervating itinerary that believes in only one day off a week. My fellow Scholenberg attendees are tired, too. Even Olivia is too drained to make as many snarky comments. Each day, Coach Weber finds a new way to challenge us. It’s exhausting, and none of my fellow attendees are sneaking around with Adler Beck on top of an already draining schedule.

Ellie is definitely suspicious about how I disappear early some mornings and at other random points throughout the day. I had to make up an elaborate story for the day I spent hiking with Beck. I still don’t think she bought that I’d spent the day at the renowned art museum I actually visited on the first day of the program. Maybe because the ends of my hair were still damp when I returned to the house.

I’m not sure why I keep lying to her. I like Ellie. I’m certain she’d keep my extracurricular activities to herself if I asked her to, but I also know she’ll have questions. Questions I’ve never minded answering about a guy before. Questions I wouldn’t mind answering now if it had just been that time in the club. Or the club and the bathroom. It’s easy to answer a few questions about a one or two-time thing that’s ended.

Not so much when it’s lasted for weeks. And counting.

My phone vibrates on the table that flanks Beck’s king-size bed, waking me from a post-orgasmic utopia. Yup, I was right on about the bed. Although, honestly, his penthouse apartment is so massive anything smaller would look ridiculous.