How could I describe the enormity of my feelings at the moment? There was a terrifying need to keep going, but also a consuming fear that I was yet again making a colossal mistake. Hadn’t I made enough of those in my life? I was trying to be a good man. I couldn’t afford making another casualty out of her.
While I was trying to find the right words, she took my silence to mean something else. “You’re not into me,” she concluded with resigned disappointment.
I ran my hand through my hair. “You’ve just spent the past minute pressed against physical evidence to the contrary.”
Her lips twitched. “So what’s the problem?”
“I am. I’m a mess. You don’t want to get involved with me, Ivy.” The words tasted like ash on my tongue. She had no idea how badly I wanted her.
“Don’t make decisions for me,” she countered, her tone taking on an unexpected hardness. “I’m not high, and I’ve only had one drink. I know exactlywhat I want, Jamie. And right now, I want you.”
I shut my eyes, as if it would reverse time and make her take those words back. My resistance, my good intentions, were evaporating and in their place was pure, depraved desire. I wanted to lick her pussy clean for hours until she was no more than a blubbering mess on my bed, to bury myself in her to the hilt, to make her scream my name as she came over and over again.
After everything that I’d done, I deserved none of that pleasure. But here she was, offering herself to me, and the pull of alcohol paled in comparison. She was tugging on me with invisible ropes tied around every vital organ.
“I haven’t done this in a long time,” I confessed, a desperate last-ditch attempt to have her tell me she meant none of it.
Instead, her lips curved into a teasing smirk. “Are you worried you’ve forgotten how?”
I laughed despite myself. She grinned, then leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I’d be happy to help you remember any of the finer points.”
My mouth went dry. “I need a drink.”
She leaned back. “Hell, no. You can have me, but you’re not having a drink.”
“I meant water.”
Her face relaxed. “Okay. There’s some back in the booth. I’m going to hide the bottle.”
I wrapped my arm around her and led us back through the crowd, shielding her smaller body from any of the particularly enthusiastic dancers.
Zoey and Sophie jumped to their feet when they saw us approach. “Hey! There you are. We weren’t sure where you’d gone to,” Zoey said to Ivy, her perceptive eyes quickly cataloguing the position of my arm around her friend. Her lips curved into a knowing smirk.
“We were just dancing,” Ivy said, showing no intention of slipping out of my reach. Neither of her friends seemed particularly surprised to see us return like this, I noted.
“Great!” Sophie said and grabbed Zoey’s arm. “We’re going to go back out there.”
The two girls squeezed past us, shooting conspiratorial looks at Ivy, who’s cheeks were tinged pink. She stepped away, picking the bucket off the table and putting it on the ground in the farthest corner of the booth.
“There. If we sit right here, you won’t see it at all,” she announced, dropping down onto the leather sofa and patting the space beside her.
My leg pressed against her bare thigh, and before I could even consider stopping, my hand wrapped around to her knee. Her eyes shone with anticipation and excitement as she put her fingers over mine and moved it higher. “I’m not fragile. You don’t need to take it slow.”
Despite her age, she came off as fairly experienced, confident in what she wanted. But what was that, exactly? I reached for a glass of water on the table, letting the cold liquid cool the fire that was building inside.
“What if I’m taking it slow for my own sake?”
She laughed—a full, melodious sound that dismissed my question as a joke. I could see why she would—the Jamie she’d known rarely took anything slow, but I was different now. Still, as I watched her drinking me in with her warm eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to correct her.
Instead, I tried to deflect. “I didn’t ask earlier, but what’s the occasion for tonight?”
The subtle tilt of her head suggested she knew exactly what I was doing, but she let it go. “Soph’s surprise visit from Paris. She’s going to school there, studying business and fashion, but she’s trying to get an internship here. She flew in for an interview.” As she spoke, a tension in her body I hadn’t noticed before softened. Was she more nervous than she’d let on?
“Did you go to college?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “A small community college near Austin. Though, I dropped out during my third year.”
She counted something off on her other hand. “That must have been around the time Ritual Disruption took off.”
