I shake my head in self-condemnation. “Fuck, Bea. You’re right. That note sucked. I suck.” I rake my fingers through my hair, more frustrated with myself, with this situation—with my fucking life—than she knows.
“You slept with me, and then you disappeared.” She lays it all out for me in stark, bitter truths.
“I was avoiding you,” I admit.
Her full lower lip trembles ever so slightly, and before I realize what I’m doing, I run the pad of my thumb from one corner to the other. They’re so impossibly soft, and I can’t help picturing them sliding over the skin of another part of my body—the part that doesn’t seem to remember how we got ourselves into this clusterfuck of a situation in the first place.
I take her chin and lift it to guide her gaze back to mine. “Not because I didn’t want to talk to you,” I assure her with more fervor than the moment probably calls for. “I just…” I brush another lock of gold out of her face. “I didn’t know what to say, Bea. I pussied the fuck out.” I blow out a long breath as if to punctuate my confession.
Beth isn’t satisfied. “Why? You should be a pro at the whole friends-with-benefits thing, shouldn’t you?”
But the girls I’ve fucked around with—they were always more benefits than friends, and not knowing what to say, I simply stare at her.
“You know what, David?” Beth takes a deep breath, then squares her shoulders as if steeling herself, and it takes me off guard. “I could sit here and pretend it was just a drunken mistake—and maybe it was. But I made a decision, and I’m responsible for that. And the truth is, until I saw your stupid fucking note, I didn’t regret it, David. In fact, I…” she trails off and looks away, her cheeks heating in a gorgeous blush that sweeps down her delicate throat and over her cleavage before disappearing beneath the neckline of her shirt.
But I finally know what those gorgeous tits look like bare and flushed, and my dick throbs violently at the memory.
“I liked it,” she says with far less confidence.
But her admission has the opposite effect on my own confidence, and fuck me and my precarious self-restraint. My knuckles find her jaw, and they stroke her soft skin, following the path of her blush down the column of her neck. I picture the way that neck arched in ecstasy, her mouth gasping my fucking name as her fingernails clawed at my back.
She liked it? Bullshit. She fucking loved it.
“So, do you regret it now?” I ask, feeling her out, my voice low, and more hoarse than I intend.
“What does it matter?” she retorts, but the light shake to her voice gives her away. “When you obviously do.”
I have to clench my jaw to suppress my smirk—this girl lives to challenge me. “Do I?”
Beth’s shrug is heavy and forced. “You know what they say about shoes fitting.” She uses my own line against me, and I blink at her for a moment before I grind my teeth in agitation.
“Do you really believe that?” I ask, but at the same time I wonder how she can be so blind, I remember that I’m probably to blame for it. I’m the one who’s been avoiding her, after all.
Another forced shrug. “Do I really believe that? Of course I do. What else is there to believe, David? I woke up that morning alone, thinking everything was normal, that nothing had changed…” She glares at me. “But it did, didn’t it? Or you would’ve sent me a text instead of leaving that note. And you wouldn’t suddenly start staying out until all hours, doing God only knows what with God knows who. But I suppose I should thank you for at least washing off whatever skank you spent the night with before coming to bed.”
It takes me a moment to account for her bitterness, but when I finally recognize it as jealousy, I’m almost ashamed by how gratifying I find it. “So you’ve noticed I’ve been showering at night, then?” I call her out. “Because you always seem to be in such a deep sleep…”
Beth bristles in her seat, but she doesn’t back down, and it only eggs me on.
My knuckles dance over the skin of her shoulder, and I lean in closer to watch as they leave a trail of goose bumps in their wake. Beth holds her breath as I murmur low in her ear. “So, you think I’m showering at night to wash whatever skank I spent the night with off my body before I scoop you off of this couch—the one you know full well I would never let you sleep on—and carry you to bed?”
She swallows audibly, but doesn’t answer.
“Hmm?” I ask. “Before I wrap myself around you for the night? Or are we pretending we haven’t noticed that, too?”
Beth shakes her head slowly, uncertainly.
I lean in even closer—close enough that her scent invades and intoxicates my senses—and then I tell her the truth. “What if I told you I started showering at night to give my dick some relief before I climb into bed with its most dangerous fucking temptation?”
Beth goes stone-still, but her sharp breath echoes between us. My pulse accelerates and my jeans feel somehow even tighter. I’ve always gotten a thrill out of shocking her—my innocent little rebel. But never have I crossed the line like this—so far past its limits I’d need satellite photos to make it out.
“Huh, Bea? What then?” Her skin flushes under my touch, which continues its path down along her arm. “You’re not a kid anymore, right? Or so you keep telling me. And you grew up around guys—you know how this works. Don’t you?”
Beth’s swallow is so loud I’d swear you could hear it out in the hall. Her eyes flash to my lap for barely a microsecond, but you don’t miss something like that, and fuck if it doesn’t tempt me even more. “I’m pretty sure you can figure out what I do in there, huh, Bea?” I tease. “How else do you think I make it through the night without losing my mind? And even then, these past few mornings I’ve suffered such brutal fucking morning wood I’ve had to take a shower first thing after waking up, too.” I give her yet another confession that colors her blush a shade deeper. “So, since apparently we’re just putting it all out there, you might as well consider that my reaction to what happened between us—”
“You mean, your pussying out?” Beth may have been taken aback by my crude confession, but she sure as hell isn’t backing down, and I have to suppress a pleased smirk.
“Yeah, that,” I allow myself a small smile. After all these years, admitting my attraction sets off a surreal mix of both relief and anxiety. “What about anything I’ve ever said or done to you would make you think that was about regret? Huh, Bea? Did you even consider that it was actually about the exact fucking opposite?”
