Three Simple Rules (Blindfold Club 1)

Payton hesitated beside the bed, waiting for me to climb up on it, an expression I didn’t understand fixed on her face.

“What’s wrong?” I folded the comforter down to the edge of the bed, then again so it was a narrow strip, and climbed onto the sheets.

“I don’t want to make things weird between us, but . . .” She paused. “Your tits are amazing.”

I laughed at her unexpected compliment. “Okay, thanks. Yours are really nice, too.” I mashed the pillow with my hand and lay down on it, spreading my hair out beneath me.

“You’ve been checking out my rack?” She gave me a pretend judgmental look.

I’d only seen her naked, like, a thousand times. “You hardly ever had clothes on when we lived together.”

She handed me the black blindfold and I took it, along with a deep breath. Good things waited for me once I had it on, so I didn’t waste time. I positioned it right where I wanted it, slipped into darkness, then surrendered my first wrist to her soft hand.

“Tell me if it’s too tight, I’m not so good at tying slipknots.”

The ribbon wound around my wrist. A second time, and I felt the tug as she knotted it. It was tight, but not too tight. Her footsteps led her around the bed.

“Scoot over, you’re not centered.” My heart beat faster at her hushed voice. I slid across the sheets, carrying the pillow with me, and scratched my nose. Of course it had begun to itch. Her grip was light on my free wrist, drawing it up so she could tie it off.

“Now comes the waiting,” I said, when it was done.

But the side of the bed dipped down. She’d sat beside me, and with the blindfold on I could focus on her movements by sound. Ends of her hair brushed on my chest when she leaned over me, her breath right beside my face.

My head jolted backward when her lips brushed mine. “What are you doing?” It came out confused and not angry. It wasn’t the first time she’d kissed me. We’d been out bar-hopping after graduation, and she’d been hit on relentlessly by this guy who would not take no for an answer. He’d followed us to another bar, and it was the only time I ever saw Payton nervous. So when she told him she wasn’t into guys, she turned and kissed me, and I played along.

It hadn’t worked. All it did was put me in his sights too, and eventually we hid in the bathroom for twenty minutes and escaped out the back. She’d thanked me, and that had been all. But there was something nice about how she’d kissed me then, tentative and cautious at first, and then greedy and passionate when she knew I was willing to help her sell the lie.

It was sort of the same this time. She didn’t answer my question with words. Her satiny lips pressed against mine hesitantly, her breath hurried, and this time I was too stunned to react. A hand slipped behind my neck, and her fingers curled into my hair, and the kiss deepened another shade.

“Whoa, wait,” I said, breaking it off, my head spinning. “Payton—”

“I’ve never been with another woman.”

I don’t know which was more surprising; the fact that she hadn’t, or that I was technically more experienced than her at something. She tasted like tequila this time, and her sultry kiss was hypnotic. I didn’t have use of my hands, so I couldn’t stop her, nor could I slide my hands through her hair and hold her into

the kiss. And I had absolutely no fucking idea which one I would have done.

The lips abandoned mine and sought out the skin below my ear, and her silky hair fell into my face, pulled into my mouth along with the ragged breaths I was struggling for. “What are you doing?” I asked again, desperate and disoriented.

“Getting you warmed up for him,” she purred into my neck. Her palm was flat on my shoulder, inching down, and when I realized where she was heading I jolted again. No idea if it was a recoil or a reaction to the fire her skin on mine created. The hand crept over and down, until . . .

“Your hand is on my boob.” Sometimes when I’m drunk I like to say the obvious stuff out loud.

Her mouth returned to mine, muffling any protest I might have made. I couldn’t think when she was touching me. Everything scattered hopelessly. What would happen if I asked her to stop? Would things descend into awkwardness? What would happen if I kissed her back? She was a beautiful woman, desired by many, and that she now desired me was powerful.

There was a tiny voice that said this was cheating. I loved Logan. I shouldn’t be kissing someone else, and certainly not my best friend. I turned my head again, ending the kiss, but I couldn’t do anything about her hand that continued to massage me. Her fingernails scraped lightly over my nipple and I gasped. It felt wrong. And good.

“We can’t,” I said, breathless. “You’re my best friend, and I’m with Logan.”

“You don’t want to?”

I struggled to find an answer. One that wouldn’t hurt her feelings, wasn’t a lie, and wouldn’t require me to really consider whether or not I wanted this, because I worried I did. “We shouldn’t. It’s going to mess things up between us.”

She shifted on the bed to where she seemed to be lying beside me. “No, it won’t. We could do it as a one-time thing. As long as we communicate and set some rules, I think it could be really fun.”

Like I needed more rules. “But Logan—”

“Won’t be here for at least a half-hour.” Something flat and wet dragged across my nipple, then swirled. Her tongue.