Unwrapping the Best Man

I feel the warmth of his grin, I feel it all the way to my toes and I know I’m in trouble.

‘Good, I’m glad.’

I’m glad too, and I’m supposed to be mad at you.

He’s watching me so intently. He’s not eating, he’s not anything but watching me.

‘What?’ I say, lowering my cutlery and eyeing him warily. ‘Do I have something on my face?’

‘No, considering how rough you must feel, you look remarkably stunning.’

Stunning. I snap my eyes away and stick two sugars in my coffee, stirring vigorously. ‘Don’t tease me, Jackson.’

‘I’m not, Cait.’ He leans over, his hand resting beside mine, his energy, his warmth too sincere and inviting. ‘I am sorry, you know. For what I did.’

I take a glug of coffee and wince as I scald my mouth. ‘Which bit?’

‘All of it. I never should have...’ He looks away and when his eyes return they have that tortured look I’ve come to know so well, and I know it’s not an act. ‘The things I did to you, they’re unforgivable.’

I frown and place my mug back down. ‘If you mean walking out in the middle of the night and giving me the cold shoulder the next day—yeah, they’re pretty unforgivable.’

‘No, I mean...what we did together, what I did to you. I shouldn’t have.’

I turn in my seat and look at him head-on, too stunned to speak. And when I do it erupts with a laugh. ‘You’re apologising for the sex?’

He recoils, his frown priceless. ‘Cait, don’t say it like it’s nothing.’

‘Nothing? Jesus, Jackson! You gave me the best sex of my life and that’s what you’re apologising for!’

He shakes his head. ‘You didn’t ask for what I did...what I did to you. It was wrong.’

I’m out of my seat faster than I can blink, and I curse my lack of height as I want to tower over him while I put him straight. I settle for poking him in the chest instead.

‘I thought I’d disappointed you, freaked you out, put you off, so much so that I sent you running, and now you’re telling me you left and you ignored me because you thought what we shared was wrong?’

He just keeps shaking his head and it’s driving me insane. I grab his face in my hands and I stare into his eyes that burn and torment in one.

The truth of the last four months opens up in my heart. Thinking I’d done something to push him away, for him to reject me. Instead he’s tortured himself with what he perceives to be some wrong he enacted against me.

‘It wasn’t wrong, Jackson. It was what I wanted, every kiss, every touch, every fuck!’

‘You can’t mean it.’

‘Of course I mean it. And, what’s more, I want you now.’

He clutches at my wrists. ‘Don’t do this, Cait. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.’

‘Hurting me is ignoring me, hurting me is making me feel like I did something wrong.’

‘It wasn’t you. It could never be you.’

‘Then why push me away? Why didn’t you let us live out the holiday fling we agreed to at least?’

‘Because I’m no good for you; it was better to end it sooner—’

‘Bollocks, utter bollocks!’ And I kiss him. I kiss him so hard. I kiss him to punish him for four months of hell and making me believe the worst. I kiss him to make him remember just how good it was and I keep kissing him until his hands fall from my wrists to cup my arse. To urge me closer. His groan is music to my strung-out clit as he lifts me onto the counter, shoving the plates aside, his mouth taking all that I give freely now.

I wrap my legs around him, draw his hardness tight against me, telling him with my body that I want this. Here. Now.