EXCERPT REVEAL | Well Played by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

Harper picked up the notebook that contained my to-do list from the table and opened to a fresh page. Clicking the pen open, she scribbled across the top.

I chuckled. “Are we making a dirty to-do list?”

She wiggled her eyebrows and put the pen to the paper. “We certainly are.” “Tell me one thing you fantasize about doing with him.”

Yep, I was definitely drunk, because sober me wouldn’t have participated in this. Though, even in this state, I felt my cheeks blush. “Well, every day he goes out back and does pull-ups in that big oak tree. Sometimes I imagine he’s naked while doing them, and then I walk out naked, too. I wrap myself around him like a koala and he’s a tree, and he keeps doing the pull-ups. Hoisting us both up and down.”

Harper smirked. “Nice start.” She then jotted down koala pull-ups. “What else you got?”

“Well, I also have this running fantasy that I’m watching him do the pull-ups from my bedroom window with binoculars, and then I lie down on the bed and…you know…go to town on myself. And when I’m just about to orgasm, I look up at the window and see Levi with the binoculars. He’s watching me masturbate from outside.”

“Oooh… I like that one.” Harper wrote down voyeur masturbation.

For the next half hour, we polished off our spiked lemonades, laughed a lot, and added more than a dozen sexual to-do tasks to my list. It was the most fun I’d had in ages. But Harper had to fly home in the morning, and I didn’t want her to have a raging hangover. So rather than make another pitcher of spiked lemonade, I grabbed her a water bottle and some Motrin and told her to drink up before going to bed.

But as I walked around and shut off the lights, another fantasy hit me. “That peach cobbler we had for dessert at the restaurant was orgasmic, wasn’t it?”

“It sure was.”

I pointed to the notepad. “Sit on Levi’s face while eating that pie.”

Harper had been drinking water and spit it out all over the place. “Oh my God. That is most definitely going on the list!” She picked up the pen and spoke while jotting something down. “Double orgasmic peach cobbler.”

We started to crack up, but a knock interrupted our laughter. At least it interrupted mine. I looked up to find Levi standing in the doorway to the living room.

My eyes widened. “Levi… What are you doing here?”

His brows lifted. “I own half the place.”

“No, I meant I didn’t know you were back.”

He looked between Harper and me and seemed to smirk. “Oh, I’m back.”

My palms started to sweat. “I didn’t hear you come in. How long have you been…standing there?”

Levi tilted his head, and his smirk elevated to a cocky smile. “Not too long.”

Oh my God. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. What if he heard? I suddenly felt pretty damn sober. “Umm…well, this is my friend Harper. She’s leaving early tomorrow, so we were just going to bed.”

He nodded. “Nice to meet you, Harper.”

Harper stood and hiccupped. She covered her grinning mouth. “Nice to meet you, too. Your family’s inn is beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

Her eyes shifted to me. “Although there’s a lot to do around here. Presley and I made a list. You might want to take a look at it and get going on some of the new to-do tasks we added.”

My eyes nearly bulged out of my head, and I lunged for the notebook on the table.

Levi squinted at me. “Everything okay, Presley? You seem stressed.”

“I’m fine!”

He nodded slowly. “Right.”

“Alright….” I grabbed Harper’s arm and tugged. “We’re going to bed. Welcome home.”

Levi never moved from the living room doorway as he watched me drag my friend out of the room.

Harper waved over her shoulder. “’Night, Levi. Enjoy your to-do list!”

Somehow I managed to get Harper to her room without her yelling anything too obscene. But for the next half hour, I lay in my bed with my heart pounding. What if he’d heard us? What if he’d been standing there listening the entire time? Oh my God. I covered my face with my hands. The things I said I wanted to do to him. My head began to ache, and tomorrow’s hangover hadn’t even started yet.

After another twenty minutes of lying there freaking out in the dark, my mouth was so parched that I needed a bottle of water. But there was no way I wanted to run into Levi again. So I cracked open my bedroom door and listened for any sounds of someone moving out in the common area. Finding it quiet, I snuck down the hall and peered around the corner to see if any lights were still on. They weren’t, so I breathed a sigh of relief and went to the kitchen for a drink.

I guzzled half a bottle of water before turning to slink back to my bedroom. But I froze at the sight of Levi standing in the kitchen doorway. My hand flew up to cover my racing heart. “Oh my God. You scared me.”

“Sorry. I was just going to head out to grab a bite to eat.”

“Oh…there are leftovers from lunch in the fridge, if you want. I made chicken pot pies this morning.”

Levi held my eyes for a moment. “Thanks, but I think I’m going to go out.” He walked over and leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I have a real hankering for peach cobbler.”

My jaw dropped to the ground. I had no idea what to do or say.

Levi winked as he walked to the door. “Get some sleep. I wouldn’t want you to be too tired to work on that to-do list.”