“I’m the best decision you’ve ever made!” I shout before he can close the truck door.
A moment later, he’s sitting in the driver’s side. Starting the engine.
I stare straight ahead, trying to calm my pulse. It won’t stop racing ever since he lifted me with so much ease. Ever since he touched my back. My waist.
When I finally look over at him, his chest is rifling up and down.
Sweat glistens on his upper lip.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine.”
“Can we pretend I didn’t just overshare that I’m a virgin?”
His jaw flexes in the muted moonlight. “Petra, I couldn’t pretend I didn’t hear that if my life depended on it.”
“Drama king,” I mutter, crossing my arms and slouching, like the petulant teenager he assumes me to be. “You know, since we’re going to tell everyone I’m twenty-three, that means I get to drink at the wedding.”
He snorts. “Shirley Temples, you mean.”
I snort back. “I might be a virgin, but I’ve been drunk.Twice.”
He rakes an agitated hand over his shaved head. “Please make that the last time you mention you’re a virgin.”
“Fine.” I last all of ten seconds, because now that I’ve overshared, I feel the need to explain myself. “I just grew up with a lot of bad impressions of men. Mostly through the stories my sisters told me. Or stories that I overheard.” I sit up straighter and cross my legs. “I guess I just want to be selective about who I get naked with. If a man is going to get on top of me and put his thing inside of me, I’d like to trust him. You know?”
I sneak a glance in Barry’s direction and catch him staring at my thighs.
It’s so brief, I wonder if I imagined it. But…
There’s an oddly shaped bulge pressing outward from behind his zipper.
Oh my gosh, he has an erection. He’s sweating and out of breath.
Despite all of Barry’s complaints about my age, does he have the hots for me?
Should I find out?
Before I can second-guess what is surely a bad idea, I unhook my seatbelt and slide across the bench seat toward Barry, watching the muscles tense and pop in his right arm, the leather of the steering wheel cracking beneath his grip.
“What are you doing?” he asks, low.
“Nothing.” With the tip of my index finger, I trace the cut line of his triceps. So warm and smooth, yet visibly lethal. “I just couldn’t help but notice you look a little uncomfortable.”
He laughs without humor. “So you thought you’d make it worse?”
I lay my cheek on his shoulder, my fingers continuing to strum up and down his arm. “It’s me that’s making you…uncomfortable?”
His swallow is heavy. Loud. “Like I said, I haven’t been with a woman in a long time. My body is confused. Petra, please stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Everything.”
I should be sympathetic to his tortured tone of voice. Why do I find it so…exciting? Is it the note of hunger? The implication that he’s fighting whatever is putting his body in pain? Emboldened by his reedy breaths and the darkness of the truck’s cab, I lift my mouth to his ear, whispering. “I’m only going to say this once, but youdidpay for the full Girlfriend Treatment, Barry. Normally, the experience includes unlimited sex.”
He makes a choked sound. “You said earlier that you came to help me because youwouldn’tbe required to have sex.”
