Her lids popped open. The soft sage of her eyes had turned to deep forest green.
“Tell me you want more. Let me touch you,” I demanded. I searched her face for an answer as she searched mine in return. She didn’t move away, but she didn’t respond either. “Do you want what I can give you tonight?”
She gave me a nod. A hardly perceptible move.
“Say it.”
“I want you to touch me.” Her voice was unsteady. Breathy. Delightful.
I didn’t have to be told twice. I slid my hands under the hem of her tank, coasting slowly over her warm stomach and upward until I was brushing those beautifully hard pebbles. My chest tightened. My own anticipation grew, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t take her fully the way I really wanted to tonight. Not after she’d been drinking. If and when we went all the way down this path, she’d be completely sober. Drunk only on me.
I stroked and twisted and flicked, and her lids slammed shut again.
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “You want this. You watch.”
She dragged her eyes back open.
I skimmed my palms downward, coasting under the waistband of her yoga pants, exploring the sexy curve at her belly button and the widebreadth of her hip bones. She shivered again, lids fluttering shut and then back open. I dragged her forward until her butt hit the edge of the counter, and the position forced her to lock her legs around my waist.
My breath caught. And I had to take a second to steady myself, to gather the wisps of control that remained. I hungered for her mouth. I wanted my tongue thrusting inside her at the same tempo as my fingers, but I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to stop if I lost myself in her completely.
If she were sober, it would have been different. But until she was, until we’d already put new ground rules in place about this new game we were playing at, this would have to do.
So, I satisfied myself by doing what I’d fantasized about all week. I curled my hand farther into her yoga pants, past the tiny excuse for underwear she wore, and gently stroked the warmth at her core.
I was rewarded with the absolute wrong emotion crossing her face.
Not lust. Not desire.
Panic. Pure panic.
She put both hands on my chest and pushed as hard as she could.
I took three steps back, tucked my hands into my pockets, and waited while confusion and disappointment swept through me in equal measures. And below it all was a stab of pain. A stab of rejection. A stab of fear that I’d already destroyed something beautiful.
“I. No. We can’t.” She shook her head.
“Why not?”
She jumped off the counter and moved farther away. “Friends. We’re friends. We can’t complicate things that way. Friends are friends. Lovers are lovers.Youwere the one to tell me that. And you were right. We can’t be both.”
I hated I’d told her that. Hated more that I’d thought it was the truth at the time.
I hadn’t been ready for more with her then. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it now either, but I wanted her. I wanted her in my house, greeting me with a kiss when I walked in from the station. I wanted her in my bed, telling me about her day. I wanted her spread across my sheets with me feasting on her.
But just because I’d taken that leap in my head to something more than what we’d been before, didn’t mean she had. With nothing better to say, I told her the only truth I could. “I was wrong.”
Shock flitted over her face, and she rubbed her forehead.
“I can’t…” She shook her head again. “I can’t do this with you, Beckett. I need you in my life too much to risk losing our friendship by doing something stupid like mixing it with sex.”
“Believe me, there’d be nothing stupid about what we’d do. But tell me why it would risk me being in your life if we did?”
“You know why!”
“No, I really don’t.”
“Because friends and sex never end well! Do you think I could have you…have you like that and then watch while you flirted with another woman? While you left Frank’s with someone else at your side? It would destroy me.”