“No.”Regardless, I glance around, feeling like a fugitive.As far as I can tell, all is quiet on Nic’s street.
The door buzzes and I push myself inside Nic’s house.
“Avery,” she says as she appears in the hallway.“You really can’t be here.”
“I know and I’m sorry, but I need to know…” I take a few steps toward her but keep a respectable distance.She’s wearing a light-brown knitted dress and looks more than good enough to kiss and—I need to keep my wits about me.“What can I divulge to Jan Scott?Can I talk about what happened?I can try not to, but you know what therapy’s like.Before you know it, you’re saying all sorts?—”
“You can talk to Jan.”Nic interrupts me.“She knows.We’re friends and I’ve told her everything.”
My eyes go wide.For someone who asked me not to tell anyone about us—which I haven’t—she most certainly has not kept our night a secret.But I guess it’s different for her.
“Okay.”I take another step closer.“How are you?”
“Avery, please.”She gives a small shake of her head.“This is my career.”
I find her gaze.My muscles are clenched and my breath a little shallow.I’m so ready for this fight.“I feel the same about you,” I say, playing my trump card from the get-go.I only have a tiny window of time to work with before Nic kicks me out.
“What?”Her eyes narrow.
“I know what our night together meant to you.What it did to you.”Another step.“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Please, don’t do this.”She finds support against the wall behind her.“It’s hard enough as it is.”
“But don’t you see?”Two steps.There’s not much space left between us.“I have to do this.”
Nic just shakes her head.
“Because you can’t.”I’m standing right in front of her—so close I can feel her breath come out in ragged little bursts.“I knowyoucan’t and I know why, but…” I bring my lips to her ear.“I’m not giving up without a fight.”
Chapter20
Nic
What the actual fuck is happening here?How is Avery standing in my hallway, a mere few inches of space separating our bodies, her lips dangerously close to my ear?What is she saying?It shouldn’t matter, but it does.Oh, how it does.
Why am I not pushing her away?Have I asked her to leave?Her smell is intoxicating and her words… her words make me feel like I’m ten feet tall while I should be feeling like the smallest person in the world.
The truth is I had no defense against her last week and I still don’t have one now.I’m completely smitten and she knows it.
Did she really just say that she can’t stop thinking about me?
“I’m not giving up without a fight,” she repeats and her lips are still so close to my ear, her breath hot against my skin, and it feels as though she has kissed me already.As though the very thing I should be preventing has already happened.So why can’t I just let it happen, then?If there’s nothing I want more in the world?Not even a career, it would seem.
I avert my gaze in order to find an ounce of sanity inside myself.To dig up a tiny morsel of resistance.But my gaze lands on her bag and all I can think is whether she brought a strap-on.That’s how I know I won’t resist.I don’t want to.
“Can I kiss your neck?”she breathes into my ear and my legs turn to liquid.
I nod as I pull her toward me.As I give in.As I let this madness take me and, worse, guide me.I let her kiss me.First, on my neck, where she draws a tantalizing line down to my throat.Then, up to my cheek.She takes her time before kissing me on the lips—of course she does.She only delivers the slightest of pecks, leaving me wanting so much more, before she pulls back and looks me in the eye.Her gaze is blazing fire—with desire, for me.As it turns out, Avery didn’t have to put up much of a fight at all.She only had to show up in all her delicious, irresistible glory.
“I want you so much,” she says, because, of course, she hasn’t just come here to kiss me.She’s come to fuck me—and undo me again in the process.There’s nothing I want more.I’m already halfway there.
Then, she presses her lips to mine properly, making all her intentions known.With her body, she pushes me firmly against the wall, reaches for my wrists, and pins them above my head.
“Do whatever you want with me,” I say, and I don’t recognize myself.This is not what I’m like.Yet, with her, I am.She has unearthed this new version of me that perhaps didn’t exist before.This different iteration of Nic Forbes that has emerged from a cocoon of grief.
“Oh, I will,” Avery says, her voice dripping with a sensational combination of lust and control.Like she can’t help herself when she’s with me.Like she just has to top me like this.“We are going to need all the lube in Los Angeles.”She grins at me and it’s that grin she flashes inQueer Girl Summerbefore her character transforms into a midsummer night sex goddess and, suddenly, I feel like I’m wearing too many clothes.Like all I want is to be naked with her doing to me whatever she has in mind—and I know it will be naughty in the best way possible.
It’s no wonder I can’t resist Avery.She holds the key that has unlocked the deepest part of me.The part of me that clung to who I used to be until my fingers cramped and my muscles solidified into deadweight.But I’m no longer the Nic from Nic and Lois.As much as I tried to hold on to that Nic, she can no longer exist.It’s time for this new version of me to come out—and have all the fun I missed all those years.
