Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy (The Reed Brothers 2.5)

Sean

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I protest, watching my best friend in the world as she paints her face. I think she’s even more beautiful when she doesn’t wear makeup at all. But even I’ll admit that this Lacey is smoking hot. Her legs are a mile long, and her dress dips deep enough that the round swells of her br**sts are taunting me. Look at me, Sean, you stupid f**ker. You can’t touch them. Nanny, nanny, boo, boo.

“It’s not like I’m offering up my virginity to the highest bidder,” she protests, blinking her eyes as she applies heavy coats of mascara to her lashes. The brush slides slowly down the miniscule strands of hair, and she sits back, bats her lashes, and looks at me over her shoulder in the mirror. She sticks her tongue out.

“You might as well be offering up your virginity,” I grumble. Some college-age, hormone-ridden ass**le will guess the number of jelly beans in her jar, and the lucky bastard will get to kiss her. He’ll get to kiss my girl. Well, she doesn’t know she’s mine, but she has been for as long as I can remember. I can’t recall a time when Lacey wasn’t in my life. And the thought of some dickwad putting his mouth on her has my heart tripping in my chest like it’s going run away without me.

Lacey begins to paint her pretty, full, perfectly kissable lips with a horridly sexy shade of bright red. She smacks her lips together and makes a kissy face toward the mirror. I can’t watch anymore. I just can’t. I fall back across the bed in her dorm room and throw my arm across my eyes, groaning to myself.

It’s not fair that she can undo me with a simple kiss at a mirror when she doesn’t even see me as a real, live, flesh-and-blood man. She still sees me as the boy who grew up next door to her. She seems to forget that I’m the one who held her hair back as she threw up her first few shots of tequila. She forgets that I’m the one who carried her luggage up three f**king flights of stairs when I moved her into her dorm room. I’m the one who hugged her when Dusty Forbes dumped her at the homecoming dance. I’m the one who left my own date—who was a sure thing, by the way—standing alone by the wall while I retrieved Lacey from the ladies’ room and stroked her hair until she could breathe.

She forgets that I saw her naked. All right, so she wasn’t completely naked, but it was close enough. Whoever designed bikinis with those little triangles that cover the naughty bits should be given a f**king medal. Or buried six feet under. I’m not sure which.

The bed dips as she sits down on it, and she lifts my arm from over my eyes. She’s so f**king beautiful with her strawberry-blond hair hanging down over her shoulders. It looks like she’s been rolling around in bed with someone, but I know she hasn’t because I watched her work for an hour to get it to look like that.

Her hip touches mine, and she leans across me, bracing herself on her forearm. She looks down at me but doesn’t say anything. I go hard immediately. I’m glad she’s looking at my face and not at my crotch because she would get the shock of a lifetime if she glanced down right now. But she doesn’t think of me like that. She said so. She said, loudly and clearly, that she wouldn’t go there with me. She didn’t want to lose her best friend if things didn’t work out. She needs me, she says, as more than an ex-boyfriend. She needs me to be her best friend. So I am.

But good God, I want her.

“What?” I grouse.

“Stop pouting,” she says quietly. She pushes up off her propped arm and lays that hand on my chest, her elbow digging into my belly as she looks at me.

“Stop trying to impale me.” I grunt and adjust her elbow. But I don’t want her to move. I like having her this close. If this is all I can get, I’ll take it. I set my hand on her naked knee and draw swirls on it with my thumb.

She shakes her head, her face soft. Her green eyes blink at me as her gaze skitters around my face. “It’s just a kiss,” she says softly. “Why are you all torn up about a kiss?”

She’s studying me way too closely. “I’m not torn up,” I protest.

“You’ve been moping ever since I told you about the fundraiser, Sean,” she says. “What’s your problem? It’s for charity, for God’s sake.” She lays her free hand on her chest. “My kiss is going to feed victims of domestic violence. I’m doing my part for a better community.”

I look down at her mouth. God, I could just slide my fingers into her hair, pull her to me, and kiss her right here and now. But I won’t. Because she doesn’t want me. “I can’t believe you’re going kiss some stranger,” I bite out. “Don’t do it.”

“I’ve kissed men before, Sean,” she reminds me. I wish she would keep that shit to herself.

“What if it’s some big, goofy guy with really bad breath?” I ask.

“What if it’s some big, brawny guy who smells like you and kisses like a god?” she asks. She smiles, the corners of her lips tilting up so prettily. Her fingertips touch my forearm lightly, and she traces the tattoos that decorate my arm from wrist to shoulder. Every hair on my body stands up, and I lift my hand from her knee and thread my fingers with hers so she’ll stop. “If I’m lucky, he’ll be all tatted up, too.” She looks off into the distance, her gaze no longer on me.

“Honey, if you want to kiss someone who looks like me and smells like me, I think I can accommodate you so you don’t have to kiss some stranger.”