“Mind if I ask you something?” she whispers.
I lick my dry lips. “Anything.”
Jesus, Seffers.
“It’s only a question.” Her small hands twist in her lap and she bites her lip. “I just don’t know who else to ask.”
I swallow, my throat closing up. “Shoot. Aim for the heart. It’s quicker that way.”
She sends me a quick smile and relaxes against the cushions, her hands smoothing out on her legs. She’s wearing a dress again, old-fashioned and classy like last time. I don’t think many chicks could pull this look off and not look ridiculous.
In her black heels and that flared skirt framing her long legs, the cleavage dipping just enough to show me the pale swell of her tits, she looks hot. Sexy as all hell.
Fuck. Curling my hands into fists, I rest them casually on top of my crotch and hope she won’t notice how hard I am for her.
She hasn’t asked anything yet. Her gaze flicks to the door and back.
I reach over, take her hand. “You can ask me whatever you want. I won’t laugh. I promise.”
She nods jerkily and squeezes my fingers. “Thank you. Do you…” She struggles with it. “If things were different,” she starts again, “between us, if we weren’t just friends… would you have kissed me if I asked you to?”
My mind blanks out at the thought of kissing her, running my tongue over those soft lips, thrusting my tongue into that hot mouth as I touch her all over, as I make her moan in pleasure.
Then I realize what she’s really saying, why she’s here and not with her boyfriend. Why she looks sad.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” she blurts before I fully connect the dots, pulls her hand free and gets up. “This is so stupid. I should never have asked you that. I should be going.”
“Whoa, wait!” I stand up so fast my knee buckles before I straighten, but I manage to grab her wrist and pull her back down with me. She cries out but I cushion her fall, and we’re back where we were two seconds ago.
Only not quite.
“Bastard hasn’t kissed you? Why the fuck not?”
“He’s not…” She scrambles off me, curls up at the other end of the sofa. She looks tiny like that—a porcelain doll, fragile and beautiful. “Fred is a good guy. He’s trying to protect me.”
“From what?”
“My own inexperience. Wants to take it slow.”
“I’d have kissed you,” I say. “Fuck slow. I’d have kissed you fast and hard.”
Her eyes are fixed on me, wide. I love it when she blushes, and the color rising to her cheeks right now is deep. “You would?”
“Fuck yeah.”
I’m so hard it hurts, and she’s asking me if I’d kiss her? I’d eat up her mouth, then move down to her tits, her belly, her pussy. I’d kiss her everywhere, and then I’d fuck her—slow and then hard. So hard she forgot about the asshole who’s dating her.
“I’m a terrible kisser,” she whispers.
The hell? “Says who?”
She shakes her head and a dark curl escapes the hair-tie, stark and shiny like bronze against the white of her cheek. “I just never dated much, you know? Dance took up all of my time. I only went out with a guy in France, but we rarely kissed.”
Hot jealousy flares inside my head at the thought of anyone but me kissing her—the mysterious guy in France who convinced her she doesn’t know how to kiss, the asshole boyfriend here who won’t kiss her.
“Fuck them,” I mutter. “I bet you’re an amazing kisser. Don’t let any guy make you feel you’re not worth it, or too fragile to handle.”
She’s still looking at me all wide-eyed and shit, and I scrub a hand over my face.