“Thank you,” she whispers, brushing away her tears.
I nod, but unable to resist one more sensual act of defiance, I shove three fingers, shiny and wet and pussy-scented, into my mouth and lick every drop of her from them, holding her eyes with mine the whole time until she closes hers, shuddering and biting her lip.
“I miss your pussy,” I say abruptly.
Her eyes pop open and a startled laugh floats past her kiss-swollen lips.
“You’re not supposed to say that,” she chides, adjusting her clothes, reluctant affection in her eyes.
I tug on her hand and bring her down to the pantry floor with me. I scoot until my back is against a wall and she’s seated between my bent knees, her head resting on my shoulder.
“You’re supposed to say romantic things,” she continues, glancing up and grinning at me. “Not I miss your pussy.”
“What kinds of romantic things should I say?” I lift the fine hairs curling at her temple. “Should I say that I think about you all the time?”
She goes still against me, long lashes lowered and painting shadows under her eyes.
“That would be a good start,” she says.
“Or that I actually watched An Affair To Remember because it made me think of our night at the drive-in?” I confess. “That I dream about us waking up together? Or that every time I see a sunset, I think of that orange dress you wore the night we had dinner on the island?”
Wide, espresso-colored eyes find mine over her shoulder, and her smile grows.
Our stare holds until the moment smolders and the air grows smoky with lust and need and something much too tender for me to keep dismissing or misnaming it.
She tips back and presses a kiss to my lips, and it’s so sweet, so pure, when she pulls back, I palm her head and hold her there for a few seconds longer. Not to deepen it or to ask for more, but to record it. To save the feel of her lips on mine just this way.
“You taste like pineapple,” I say against her mouth. “You hate pineapple.”
It’s a silly thing to notice, and I’m not even sure why I said it or why she looks guilty, lowering her lashes with cheeks flushed.
“I . . . yeah. I do hate pineapple.”
“You made an exception?” I trace her thick brows with one finger.
“Um . . . not really.” She blows out a quick sigh before meeting my eyes. “Zo likes pineapple in this smoothie I make for him.”
I lift my brows, silently encouraging her to go on, to explain how this all fits together.
“He, well, he kissed me earlier.”
My teeth clamp down and my hand curls into a fist on the pantry floor.
“Jared, it’s not what you think. It’s a long story.”
“One that ends with his tongue in your mouth?”
“Nothing’s been going on,” she assures me, pushing my hair back from my face, sinking her fingers in at the roots the way she knows I like. “It was a moment of weakness.”
“His or yours?”
“Maybe both.” She shrugs, her eyes weary. “Not me wanting him that way, but feeling . . . I don’t know, bad that I don’t?”
“It doesn’t help when you tell me shit like this.” I rub my tired eyes.
“This is an impossible situation,” she says softly. “But, Jared, what do you want me to do?”
“You don’t want to know what I want and I won’t tell you because you’ll think I’m mean and selfish.”
She dusts her fingers over my cheeks, my chin, over my mouth like she’s soothing me. I hate that if we sit here long enough, it’ll start working. I trap her fingers against my mouth.
“Maybe not,” she finally replies with a sad smile. “Sometimes when the day is filled with things I don’t want to do, wouldn’t choose but have to, I just look in the mirror and say out loud all the things I would do if it were up to me.”
“And this helps?” Because I doubt it.
“It does. I just say it, even if it’s awful, and I don’t judge it. Then I go and do the right thing. I know it sounds silly.”
“It does sound silly.”
She leans forward, almost teasing me with a look—but not quite because this is so hard, and she probably senses how close I am to doing something stupid.
“But you haven’t tried it,” she says. “What could it hurt? Try it. Just tell me what you want. No matter how bad it sounds. I promise I won’t judge it.”
“You don’t get to judge?”
“No, I don’t get to judge, but when you’re done, when it’s out of your system, we do the have-to thing. The right thing.”
“Okay. You want to hear what I want. Here goes. I want you to leave him and come to me. I’m not assigning right or wrong to it. I’m just telling you that every night when I’m in my bed alone, I keep hoping you’ll show up at my door. And you’ll tell me that I’m it for you. That nothing else is as important to you as I am. Because I’m saying that to you. I’m telling you that nothing else is as important to me as you are.”
It’s as close as I’ve come to confessing what’s getting harder to deny every day, to keep calling it something else, but I’m still not ready to say it, not with Zo holding all these cards. All of the advantages.
“Oh, Jared, I—”
“No, listen. I want you to leave him and come to me, but the irony is I want you so badly because you never would. Your heart, integrity, strength of character . . . they draw me to you.”
I pause to cup her face in my hands.
“And I . . .” I cough, clear my throat, and search for a word to settle on “. . . I care too much about you to corrupt that.”
She scoots in closer and wraps her arms around me, tucking her head under my chin. She’s so warm and soft and good and sweet, and she smells like her Pretty Pastel dryer sheets.
“I care about you, too, Jared,” she says softly. “If I could do what I feel is right and still be with you right now, I would. I hope you believe that.”
A distant ring robs me of my chance to answer. She scrambles to her feet, adjusting her yoga pants as she goes.
“That’ll be Maali,” she says, regret in her voice. “I have to catch this call. A couple of my guys have contracts on the bubble.”