And that was a mistake.
She should do something outrageous, like squeeze his cock through his jeans and press up on her toes. Kiss him. Steal something soft and good from his mouth, and shut him up. Because he couldn’t mean that. Josh wasn’t that cruel. He was that wounded, however. He’d shown her that over and over again.
All she could do was gawk at him, and after a long beat, he stepped back, letting go of her wrist.
“Maybe let me do some work here on my own, eh?” His casual tone gave her whiplash, and she jerked away.
Mumbling something that she hoped sounded like agreement, she escaped upstairs. To the warmth, so she could yank off his flannel shirt. To the quiet, so she could think about how that conversation went so…wrong.
And why it felt strangely right.
I definitely still want to fuck you.She squirmed, hating how good-bad that made her feel. The white hot slice of regret lancing straight through all of her favourite memories of Josh’s mouth, his hands, his body stretched out above her.
The way he always made it good for her.
If he justfuckedher, he might not even care about that now.
To distract herself, she dug out her phone and put on a racing podcast, but she couldn’t focus on it. Talk of engines just made her think of thick thighs crouched down beside a car, and hot, slow gazes rolling in her direction.I definitely still want to fuck you.
She didn’t need him, or his complicated desire, or his big, brawny body. She had her fingers and a wide selection of steamy audiobooks to listen to. Some with multiple heroes, all of whom were deeply in love with the heroine, even when she made some pretty stupid mistakes.
And some had magical peens that could go all night.
Josh went all night, more than once.Yeah, but that was in the past.
And she couldn’t forget that the deliciously shocking line about wanting to fuck her was preceded by another that made her so, so mad.
I don’t want to love you.
Yeah, no fucking shit.
That was why she couldn’t kiss him. Because that was a mean, jerky thing to say, worse than calling her princess.
She paced back and forth in his living room. Then she stopped and glared at his couch, which was in her way. She could see why he’d put it where he did—it was centred in front of the TV, which was centred on the longest wall—but it really foreshortened the whole space.
If he moved the TV a third of the way down the wall, closer to the front window, and balanced it with something else beside it…maybe a bookshelf?…then the couch could move down and the kitchen space would open way up.
There would actually be room for an island, instead of the rinky dink little table he had.
She shoved at the couch. Stupid men. Stupid—
The couch slid, and easily at that.
It was lighter than it looked.
She pushed again, and it glided across the floor without almost any resistance.
Grinning, she moved it almost all the way to the wall. Then she turned her attention to the TV, which looked wall mounted.
She couldn’t take it off the wall, but maybe… She peered behind it, feeling lucky. And yes, it hinged. She pivoted it enough that the couch could still see it—and then that gave her an even better idea for the couch, to go on a bit of an angle.
It didn’t make the apartment any less dark. Or dated.
But it opened up the space in the middle, and she had a feeling that to survive one more night sharing a few hundred square feet with Josh, they would need all the space she could create.
Then she dug into his closets, looking for a vacuum cleaner, because she’d unearthed more than a few dust bunnies in her rearranging.
And finally, she stretched out on the couch, feeling every inch of her sore muscles.
