Jocelyn #2
Conflicting desires war in my head. What am I doing right now? What is this draw? And why—when I know it could be fatal—is it so hard to ignore?
I slip into his bedroom and close the door behind me. “Asher?”
He steps out of his closet, now changed into a dry set of trunks and a blue-striped tank. “Oh, hey. Crazy, right? She’s so
extra.”
“Yeah.” It’s barely audible. Oxygen has abandoned me.
His brow creases and he points at his closet. “Did you need a T-shirt or something?”
“No.” I approach slowly, tingles making my voice jittery. “I—um—”
“You okay?”
“I really liked that,” I say because I don’t know how to articulate this overwhelming gratitude and tantalizing heat growing
in my chest. My hand gathers a handful of the flimsy coverup over my stomach, right where the nerves have concentrated.
“Which part? The part where she insulted you or the part where I got soaked?”
“The part where you defended me.”
He chuffs. “That was the most boring part. What else was I supposed to do?”
What is happening in my chest right now? It’s somehow expanding and imploding on itself. A supernova.
You aren’t running, Joss. You’re hiding.
I draw close enough to touch, and his thumb brushes my shoulder. “Joss?”
His hair is pool-messy. Sun-induced freckles dust the bridge of his nose. Chlorine taints the delicious scent of his skin.
He’s perfect.
Something snaps clean in half—my restraint, probably—and I throw myself into his arms. His bewildered laugh prefaces the warmest hug I’ve ever experienced. I bury my face against his heartbeat, and his arms wrap tight around my shoulders.
“You got me a little worried here,” he says.
I laugh into his stupidly hard chest and lift my head to look at him.
He isn’t smiling. His dynamic eyes are troubled. Concerned. “What’s the hug for, Jocelyn?”
My full name on his lips is obscene. Like dirty talk. It slinks over my skin with prickles and fire. His thoughtful gaze searches
my face for answers, but I have none to give. He wants a reason, but I can’t explain this. Something has cracked open inside
me. I should be filled to the brim with panic. Instead, I’m weirdly calm.
Well.
Maybe not calm, exactly.
My heart is battering my rib cage, and a fine tremor has taken control of most of my muscles, but my mind is stable. Cemented
on a single thought.
He is something vital.
Words won’t form, but he must read the thoughts on my face anyway because his concern melts away to something less obvious,
but far hotter. We’re so close. Closer than we’ve ever been. Pressed chest to chest, arms wrapped tight, staring into each
other’s eyes.
He gives me a half-second warning in the form of dropping his gaze to my mouth before obliterating the remaining distance
between us.
He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t hesitate. He just . . . kisses me.
Asher.
Kisses me.
His lips collide with mine, soft and hard all at once, and somewhere inside, a pressure valve releases. Tension breaks. Heat spirals around my spine, singeing my fears, burning any hesitation that might have surfaced to ash.
In his arms, I am safe, complete, and I suspect that I might have been wanting this—needing this—for a very long time.
He doesn’t press for more, and within four, maybe five seconds, he pulls back, reestablishing space that I don’t want. Space
I can hardly stand.
Panic rises, and without even opening my eyes, I shamelessly fling my arms around his neck, connecting us once more. This
time, the kiss is frenetic. Hard. Wild. A clash of lips and tongues.
My first taste of Asher Foley is heady, all thrill and temptation and pineapple White Claw. My fingers thread through his
hair, and the subtle groan that reverberates deep in his chest settles in my stomach, low and heavy. I press my body against
his, welding us together, and let myself memorize every detail of his hard planes against my softer curves.
He’s in my arms. Lean muscle. Taut restraint. Confident hands grazing places he never has. Logic tells me it’s a mistake,
that I could be destroying something precious, but now that we’re here, the locks on my outer walls are falling open. I should
fear the breach, but in this moment, no panic surfaces.
No. This isn’t scary. This feels like deliverance, like I might sacrifice my very soul to keep him here. Right here. In my
arms.
As the revelation hits, an inner voice whispers to hide how much I want this, murmurs that he knows we shouldn’t do this,
that he’s argued against it before, and if I reveal these dark desires to escalate—potentially obliterate—our friendship,
he’ll stop.
I don’t want him to ever stop.
I barely recognize myself.
No longer gentle, his hands tighten convulsively on my waist, thumbs digging into the dips beside my hip bones. An aroused
sigh climbs my throat, totally uncontrollable.
In a flash, he tears himself away, and my chest spasms with the need to pull him back. His eyes spark when he looks down at
me, sending hot, wicked waves through my veins. We stare, breathing hard for several seconds before he takes my mouth again
with an almost violent desperation.
I’m not sure who moves first, but locked together, we stumble toward his bed, landing atop the green duvet with a little bounce.
His skin is fire against my hands when I delve under his shirt, each muscle rippling as my fingers pass over. One hand locks
around my wrist, pinning it to the mattress while his mouth dips to my throat. He feathers a tingly sensation down the entire
column, launching a wave of goose bumps across my body.
When he finds my free hand and pins that one, too, my legs open of their own accord. He takes every inch I give him, pressing
closer until we are molded together. My veins turn to lightning when the hard length of him drives right where I want him.
Sensitive nerves beg me to remove the slip of a bikini bottom that covers them.
While his mouth does sparkly things against my collarbone, I wrap my leg around him, trying to urge him closer, to make him
thrust. A stupid, pathetic whimper escapes my throat when he won’t, and he laughs, like he enjoys my suffering. He has me trapped beneath him, a prisoner salivating for her own cage, and my heart, still
protected behind my innermost barriers, begins to beat his name.
Like he owns it.
That’s when the fear rises, a great surge of it, dousing the blaze.
No, no, no. He can’t have it.
I can’t do this. I was wrong. There’s nothing better outside these walls. There’s only the potential for pain.
My eyes snap open.
He’s too close. Dangerously close.
This desire is seductive, but deadly. Catastrophic to my protective walls. Fatal to our irreplaceable friendship. What am
I doing, handing over parts of myself? I’ve already buried so many, I barely have any left, and I’m just . . . giving them
away? Sacrificing the best friendship I’ve ever had in the process?
He can’t have my heart. It’s the only part that’s still marginally human. If he takes it, and something happens to him, I
won’t survive it.
I can’t lose another piece of myself.
“Wait.”
He freezes at once, his quick breaths slicing against my tattooed collarbone. His weight is suddenly suffocating, and I push
against his shoulder. He rolls away, landing on his back beside me, so we’re both looking at the white ceiling.
Neither of us speaks.
My head turns, my attention landing on the ink on his shoulder—a smiling stick figure with legs akimbo above a trampoline.
“We can’t do this,” I whisper.
His eyes fall shut, and he raises both hands to rub his face. In lieu of answering, he takes a slow breath.
“Asher?”
“Yeah?” His hands still cover his mouth, so his raspy voice is smothered beneath them.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
I stare at the visible portion of his face, waiting for a more elaborate response, but it never comes. My heart slowly returns
to a regular rhythm, safe behind its walls. Asher gives no indication how I should proceed, so I exist in the interminable,
torturous silence, hoping I haven’t decimated us.
“Why not?” he finally asks, turning to look at me as his hands drop to his sides.
I pause, studying the guarded light in his eyes. “Why not what?”
“Why can’t we do this?” He says it like it’s a test, like there’s a right and wrong answer, and he’s curious which I’ll choose.
“You don’t do casual.” I slide my hand across the comforter, closer to his, but he lifts his away before we touch.
He rises to his elbows, studying me closely. “You—you think this would be casual?”
“Casual is just . . . all I’m capable of.”
Silence follows, broken only by the gentle hum as the A/C kicks on.
“I don’t believe you,” Asher says eventually. “And I don’t think you believe you, either.”
I— What?
How—
That’s not—
The words are a punch to the gut. I sit up, and when that doesn’t make the ache go away, I stand, pacing away from him. Who
is he to tell me what I do and don’t believe about myself? Why does he think he has the right to push against my barriers?
“Yes, I do,” I say. “This is how I’ve always lived my life, Asher. It’s just easier—”
“Easier, but not healthy.” He shifts forward, setting his elbows on his knees.
His vacant stare lands on the hardwood, the same place I’d once shattered a glass of red wine.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you. That’s not— We .
. . aren’t . . . like that, I guess. I’m sorry I did that.
But you can’t spend your life hiding from the deeper emotions, Joss.
It’s not me, sure, but it has to be someone. ”
Why does it have to be someone? If it was ever going to be anyone, wouldn’t it be him? I’m just too broken to reach for the
deeper emotions he wants. He doesn’t understand—won’t ever understand—so I ignore those words to focus on something else he
said: I shouldn’t have kissed you.
Best kiss of my life, and he regrets it. I’m not sure how to feel about that. I should probably regret it, too. I’ll force
myself to regret it at some point. Someday. But in the meantime, I have to know: “Why did you kiss me?”
He looks up at me through his lashes, expressionless. “You looked like you wanted me to.”
Fair enough. I try to resurrect the bravery that the touch of his lips unleashed, the sense of freedom, like his arms could
keep me safe from anything life might throw at me. But I’m too suffused with the familiar panic. The dread of potential loss.
The fear of pain.
For an anesthesiologist, I have very little pain tolerance. Perhaps that’s why I became one. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
“I did want you to,” I say because I don’t want him to think he did something wrong. “I just . . . changed my mind.”
He nods and drags his teeth over his bottom lip in a way that appears vaguely painful. The lack of a smile on his face jars
something loose inside me, and another kind of apprehension wakes. “Are we okay, Asher?”
Ugh. The fake smile is almost worse than no smile. “Yeah, sugarplum. Definitely.” He doesn’t meet my eyes. His gaze is trained somewhere above my left shoulder.
I glance in that direction, finding only an expanse of forest green wall.
No. No. No. We can’t go out like this. I rack my brain, trying to find something that will fix it. Smooth it over. Stupidly,
I settle on, “Are you going to be super awkward now that we’ve sucked face?”
He lets out one strained laugh. “Oh, yeah. Definitely. Awkwardness level is DEFCON 1.”
My hands clench and unclench. “Well, why—why don’t you show me a picture of the ducks, and we’ll be back to normal.”
His smile softens, as does his gaze when it lands on me. “We’ll be okay, Joss.”
I shoot him a skeptical look. Will we, though? Because he’s acting super weird.
He shrugs. “It was just a kiss.”
Right.
Just a kiss.