We have zero chemistry. I think we both know it. Neither of us stops anyway.
Maybe some petty part of me wants to taunt Slava. Maybe I want him to finally understand we're done, so he'll stop watching me from tinted cars and let me actually move on.
I can't move on while I constantly feel him nearby. While he keeps making it obvious that he isn't giving up. I want to do something that says we're finished, loud enough that even a man like Slava has to hear it.
What's louder than another man's hands all over me?
We get out of the car, and I lock it behind us so we don't come back to find some raccoon nesting in the front seat by morning. If I'd still been with Slava, I wouldn't have had a second to think this clearly about anything—his touch never gave my brain room to wander.No. Thinking. About. Slava.
The second we're both out, this guy's on me again, one hand on my lower back, one curling around my throat. He tilts me back to get deeper into the kiss.
He's doing everything technically right.
It feels so fundamentally wrong.
We stumble toward the door between kisses, and he pins me against it to keep kissing me while I fumble one-handed with the lock.
When his hand slides down to grab my ass, the wrongness of the whole thing finally tips over into too much. That's enough. I think Slava got the message I was trying to send. I just can't stand this stranger's hands on me for one more second.
"Hey, um—can you sit here a sec? I need to talk to my sister," I blurt, turning my head so his mouth catches my cheek instead of my lips. It lands on my neck next, and I cringe. That's too intimate a spot for a man whose last name I don't even know.
I push him back gently.
"Seriously, babe?" he says, gesturing down at himself, very obviously still hard.
I give him an awkward, close-lipped almost-smile. "Really. I'm sorry. It's kind of an emergency."
He huffs and puffs but drops onto the couch and goes back to his phone.
Look—I'm a grown woman. But apparently, the second there's any adult within shouting distance, my body defaults straight back to little-sister mode.
So that's exactly what I do. I go wake mine up.
She groans and swats blindly at me the second I open her door.
"Let. Me. Sleep. Or I'll curse you, I mean it."
"Inez,please. Please, please, please."
"No."
"You don't even know what I'm asking yet!"
"What is it?" she mutters, not opening her eyes, already rolling back over.
I smack her on the butt, and her eyes fly open to glare daggers at me.
"Okay, so—I brought a guy home, but I'm not into it anymore, and I'm too awkward to just tell him to leave, so can you come out and, I don't know, pretend to be furious at me or something?"
She squints up at me. "Is he being forceful? Creepy?"
I bite my lip because I have to be honest. "No."
"Then I'm not sacrificing my beauty sleep for this. Tell him if he's not gone in five minutes, your sister will chop him into pieces and bury him out back. Half this town already thinks I would."
They're actually scared of her out here. Interesting. Maybe I can use that.
Oh my God, no, what am I even thinking.
