Chapter 19
Layla
BELLA
did Kieran go back home?
LAYLA
oh, yes
BELLA
is everything okay?
LAYLA
I think I may have temporarily lost my sanity
either that or I read too many smutty books
BELLA
what’s a smutty book?
LAYLA
something that has led me astray
My fingers snap upwards, feeling along my lips as if to confirm that was indeed my own mouth forming the question.
Did I just ask Kieran Ashford, hockey god and ladies’ man—a very experienced one at that—if he would teach me?
I can’t help but berate myself.
I just asked my boss for sex.
Sex!
My god, I need to officially cut myself off from some of my books. They’ve filled my head with ludicrous confidence and ideas. What the hell have I done?
Kieran’s face falters before turning crestfallen. It looks like I slapped him.
“You…” He swallows thickly. “You want me to teach you?”
I nod my head. I’ve already stuck my foot in my mouth, I may as well commit. “Yes.” At his prolonged silence, I drop my head into my hands and groan. “Oh god, I don’t know why I asked that.”
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, the sound of Emmy playing in the living room drifting toward us.
“No, it’s not. You’re my boss. Kieran, I’m so sorry.”
He places his hands on my shoulders and the heat of his hands has me jumping.
“Layla, take a deep breath,” he instructs slowly, and it isn’t until he says those words that I realize I’m hyperventilating. The back of his hand brushes my cheek, making me draw in a deep gasp of air. “It’s okay, sunshine, just breathe.”
I try to get a hold of myself but my heart is out of control.
I said I wanted to live, to come home and experience life outside the confines of my illness, but this is insane.
Kieran runs his finger down my cheek again before placing his arms on either side of me. A spark of energy jumps between us, the current soothing my breaths to a steady pace.
This.
This fluttery feeling in my chest is what was lacking at the bar…and every other date I’ve been on.
Just a look from Kieran, and I’m swept away.
“Why do you want me to do it?” he asks suddenly.
“Because I trust you,” I find myself saying. “And you…you’re fun, Kieran. You make me feel alive.”
His eyes close at that. “And because I’m experienced?”
“That too,” I answer honestly.
If I did this with him, I’d know what I was getting. I’d go in fully aware that he doesn’t see me as anything other than one night. Would it shatter me to walk away after that? To have to work with him, to see him hanging out with Grayson and Bella and always being there teasing and flirting? Yes.
Maybe I’m a masochist.
But I would rather experience this, live out the absolute need in the romance books I’ve read and be left heartbroken at the end, than never.
If Kieran knew that he makes me feel things and that I wanted to say no to the man at the bar because he came to mind, he would run. Maybe even fire me, say I was deranged like some of the puck bunnies.
I don’t want to be that in his eyes. I like that he looks at me like I’m different. It makes me feel special. I adore our banter and I don’t want to lose that.
And I’m not ready—don’t think I ever will be—to tell him that I may have developed some type of…crush? That doesn’t seem right, but either way, however I feel about him, I’m not strong enough if he crushed me.
Kieran can never know.
I just want to experience this with him, I want to fall into the feelings he invokes within me.
I would rather crash and burn than to never live at all.
“Not necessarily.” I hedge.
His eyes flash open at that.
With my heart on my sleeve, I confess, “I don’t want to be the twenty-five-year-old virgin anymore. I read about love and sex and intimacy but never experience it. Do you know what it feels like to yearn to be touched?”
His rough voice dances along my skin. “I know all about yearning, Layla.”
“It’s painful,” I whisper.
“Very.”
“I understand if you don’t want to muddy the lines, but you barged in here like a caveman because you hate the fact that I’ve said no to you, so I thought we could satisfy both our cravings—”
His eyes twinkle. “You crave me, sunshine?”
“Be serious for a second.”
“Oh, I am. I believe the topic of you craving me is a very serious one.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to hear that you won’t just be using me,” he says, and the rough admission has my heart leaping into my throat.
“You’re not a foolish man, Kieran,” I whisper hoarsely.
“I need to hear it.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and say, “I want you, Kieran. Any woman would have to be blind not to want you.”
He sucks in a sharp breath, his eyes flaring, before he smirks down at me. “Now…can I take you on that date? To go over the list of firsts you want me to teach you.”