How to Misbehave (Camelot 1)

“You don’t tell me, I’m gonna have to guess.”

“Let’s just—” She made to push his hand away. “It’s not going to happen.”

He took her arm in his free hand and pinned it next to her head. “Oh, it’s going to happen.” Their eyes met. “Unless you’re saying you don’t want me to.”

He moved his hand out of her, and she wanted to cry, because no, she wasn’t saying that. She did want him to. She wanted this dark-eyed, dark-haired, hard-angled man to be the first one to unlock her, to teach her all the secrets she couldn’t discover on her own. But she cringed at the idea of failing at this. “I just don’t know how. With you. I mean—I’ve done it before. By myself. But not … And if it doesn’t work …”

He watched her as she spoke, his eyes keen and interested. She felt as if he could hear everything she didn’t say.

“You have performance anxiety.”

“That’s for men.”

“Not just for men. For anybody, especially with somebody new, and especially when they don’t have a lot of experience. Which you don’t, do you? You’re not a virgin, but you haven’t done this much.”

“No.”

“How many times?”

“Twice.”

“Same guy?”

“Two guys.”

Tony’s look of concentration sharpened. “One-night stands?”

“Not really. We were dating. It just … The sex was kind of the deal-breaker. Both times.” She saw Brian, quietly crying, and closed her eyes. “Do we have to talk about this? It’s raining.”

“We don’t have to talk about it.” He kissed her. “We don’t have to do any of this. But I want to.” Another kiss. “I think you want to, too.”

She did. She thought she did, but it was hard to know just what she was getting into with him. Everything had happened so fast, and she couldn’t even guess where they’d be in an hour, much less a day.

And the longer she stood here, pressed up against a tree with rain dripping on her head and falling in a curtain beyond the canopy of the oak tree, falling into her ruined car, falling into the weird post-tornado light—the longer she looked at everything that wasn’t Tony, the more aware she became of how uncertain she felt.

He was right. This was crazy.

A few hours ago, she’d never even spoken to hi

m, and now they were … what? What were they?

She didn’t have a name for it.

“Hey. Amber.” His hand on her face. “Look at me.”

She met his eyes and threw away all the words she might once have used. Dirty. Shameful. Wrong.

It wasn’t like that. When he kissed her, touched her, they were close. A scary, vulnerable, maybe-I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this kind of close.

She liked him, and he made her feel different. Like the version of herself she wanted to be.

It was crazy.

It wasn’t completely crazy.

Still. They’d probably dabbled enough in crazy for the time being.

“I think we should lock up,” she said.