13. Reid
THIRTEEN
REID
I can’t stop looking at Avery.
She has a drop of red enchilada sauce on her chin right under the curve of her cheek, and I’m tempted to lick it away.
It’s as distracting as the pretty yellow ribbon she has tied in her dark hair. I don’t know if I want to leave it in place or find another use for it.
Probably the latter.
“Not a total failure of a night.” She wipes her hands with a napkin and adds it to the pile on the coffee table. “A solid eight out of ten.”
“That’s almost a C,” I say. “What are my areas of improvement?”
“They’re all things out of your control. Fire alarms. Smoking chicken. The flames that were coming out of the oven. Good call with the extinguisher, by the way.”
“Those are all things in my control.” I turn and face her on the couch. “I think I’m screwed.”
“The cookies might bring you up to a nine,” she says.
“I’ve always been a fan of finishing strong.”
I wonder what I’m supposed to do next.
Kiss her?
Invite her to spend the night?
Drag her back to my bedroom and ask her to read Planetary: Volume 1 naked and on top of me?
Christ .
Why don’t they make manuals about how to handle situations like this?
“Are you okay?” Avery asks, and I reach for my glass of water.
“Wonderful,” I say, finishing the drink in two sips. “How’s the work week looking?”
“Not bad. I was asked to do a presentation for some people, and I feel a little silly they think I’m qualified for the job.” She drags her finger through the sauce on her chin then sucks it clean. It’s embarrassing to admit my cock twitches. “It’s weird to consider myself successful, and it’s even weirder that other people look up to me and try to emulate what I do to be successful too.”
I frown. “Someone told you that what you do is meaningless, didn’t they?”
Avery blinks. She wrings her hands together and touches her necklace. “What makes you say that?”
“Because I used to do the same thing when I talked about my dad.”
She laughs, but there’s no humor behind it. It’s jagged and sharp. An obvious deflection tactic that’s probably worked on people in the past. I know there’s more to the story, but I don’t push her to tell me.
“It’s not really a second date conversation,” she says. “It’s more like a tenth or twelfth or twentieth date conversation.”
I nod, understanding. “We don’t have to have the conversation at all. I just want you to know you’re not alone.”
She blinks and looks at me like I have four heads. Her jaw works and her hair curtains her face, hiding it from view.
“I have an ex,” she says. “He works in the same industry as me but in a different role. A role of power. When I started to make a name for myself, he started to pull back in our relationship. There were off-handed comments I was able to ignore. I brushed them off and made excuses for him, but it kept escalating.”
I scoot closer to her. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to go into detail,” she says, and I automatically assume the worst. That some piece of shit asshole hurt her, and now I want to hurt him. “Anyway. That’s where the self-doubt started. It’s eased up the last few years, and I’m finally happy again. I think about how drastically my life has changed and…” Avery trails off and shrugs. She draws her legs to her chest and brings my hand with them. “Things are good now.”
“I think it’s really cool you’re giving a presentation to people who admire you. I hate public speaking, and I could never be on stage,” I say, and she pulls me by the hem of my shirt.
“But why? You’d be such a star.”
I sit up on my knees so I’m between her legs. She wraps her ankles around my back and urges me closer to her. I stroke the inside of her thigh and look down, my chest a tangle of emotions when I see her.
Horny. Happy. Sort of embracing this whole “live in the moment” thing. Still questioning how the hell this woman is in front of me, looking up at me like I did something spectacular, like hang the fucking moon.
“That’s debatable,” I mumble, and she laughs.
“Your best man speech at the wedding was great.”
“I took three shots of whiskey before someone handed me the microphone.”
“Really?” Her brown eyes flash to the front of my jeans. “Never would’ve guessed.”
“About that.” I take her wrists and pin them over her head. “I don’t want you to think I’m an asshole or making any excuses, but my job is about to become increasingly busier. I told you it’s been a point of contention in my previous relationships.”
“You’re secretly afraid of commitment, aren’t you?” she asks, slipping her finger into my belt loop and giving a gentle tug. “I knew it.”
“The opposite actually. I’m not a casual guy. When I date someone, I date them because I see a future with them, not because I want a quick romp in the sheets. I’ve liked spending time with you, Avery. I also know I’m not going to be able to give you the attention you deserve for the next few months, but I don’t like the thought of someone else touching you after I’ve had you.”
“What are you proposing?”
“I don’t know what I’m proposing because I don’t know how to do anything except buy you flowers and burn dinner. The relationship stuff I don’t have time for right now, but wish I did.”
“You know how to do a lot more than that. You also know how to make me come. How to make me feel good,” she says, her voice wickedly low. “How to listen and how to hold a good conversation. You’re very good at a lot of different things, Reid.”
“You’re just being nice,” I mumble. My thumb brushes along the edge of her skirt and over her tan skin. I wonder if she likes to sit outside on warm summer days. I wonder if she drives out to the ocean and basks under the sunshine. “But my ego needs the boost after the dinner disaster.”
“So, you’re not looking for anything serious right now?”
“I’m not, but that doesn’t mean I want to stop seeing you.”
“Okay.” Avery bites her bottom lip and lifts her hips. Her skirt inches up her thighs, and I see a flash of purple under the denim. Lace, just like she wore the other night, and I have to stare at the ceiling. “Are you thinking a friends with benefits thing?”
“I guess.” I slide my hand up her leg. “But I also want to make you dinner every now and then. Read a comic book with you in bed and go get ice cream. That stuff sounds like a relationship, but I need to keep my emotions in check. Just for a few months. Does that make me a piece of shit?”
“No.” Avery slips her palms under my shirt and runs them up my back. I shiver at her touch. “It’s a good idea. My life is pretty chaotic too, and there are going to be days when I can’t answer my phone for hours. I’d never want you—or anyone I was seeing—to feel like they were second on my list of priorities.”
“Are you okay with a strictly physical relationship?”
She smiles. Some bright, beautiful fucking thing that makes it difficult to remember why I’m going this casual route when I think it would be nice to say fuck the responsibilities and spend time with her instead.
“Yeah,” she says. “Because I’d really like to have you again.”
I grab the waistband of her underwear. I snap it against her skin and smooth over the mark with the pads of my fingers.
“I won’t take advantage of this.” My voice cracks, seconds away from hiking her skirt all the way up to her waist and asking if I can eat her out. I’d like to live on my knees in front of her. “And we’re going to need to have honest communication if it’s going to work.”
“No sleeping with other people. If one of us feels like the other is getting too suffocating or clingy, we’ll talk about it.” Her right hand moves from my shoulder to the front of my jeans. Avery palms my cock, and my grip on her leg turns bruising. “Work comes first for both of us. It sounds like we both really like our jobs, and we don’t want anything to interfere with our careers.”
“Yes, yes, and more yes,” I say.
She laughs. “You’re not paying attention to me, are you?”
“I promise I am. Jobs. Work. No sleeping with other people. I heard every word.” I nudge her thighs wide and get my first real glance at her underwear. “God. Look how wet you are.”
“Bold of you to assume this is for you.” She dances her fingers up her leg and rests them on her hip. “It could be for anyone.”
“Don’t care,” I mumble. “Just like that I get to see it.”
“Such a nice guy.” Avery pulls the lace to the side, a slow and torturous sort of hell that makes me want to rip the fabric in two and buy her a new pair. A hundred pairs, if it means I get to have her like this again. “Gosh, I like being your friend.”
“I’ve never had a friend like this. Not as beautiful as you.”
“Do you want to touch me, Reid? Or do you want to watch?” she asks.
“I think I’d like to watch,” I mumble again. The last strands of my rationality slip out of my grasp. “Please.”
And I do watch.
I watch her, a rhythm to her movements. I study the way she touches her body, the things she likes and the things she does more than once. I take mental notes of the sounds she makes, of the soft and sweet hitch in her breathing when she lifts her shirt, no bra, and massages her round tits.
I watch and I watch and I watch , folding my large body over her small frame so I can hear every sound, so I can talk her through it, so I can tell her how pretty she is and how much I’d like to see her come undone.
Avery kisses me when she’s close, a rough and vicious press of her mouth I swallow down, hungry for more, more , and more . She begs me to touch her when she’s close and I do, my fingers sliding inside her and moving in the way she likes.
And when she falls, she says my name. Again and again she says it— chants it—and some primal, possessive part of me that’s never existed before rumbles to life in my chest.
She unzips my jeans and wraps her hand around my cock when she comes down from her high, stroking up and down and coating the head with her own arousal and blinking up at me with bright eyes.
I fall too when she puts me in her mouth and sucks my cock, a goddamn headfirst plunge into some unknown territory I’ve never been before.
This is dangerous.
Stupid, probably, to think I can keep my feelings in check and touch her platonically. Casually.
But fuck, I’m going to try.
She licks her fingers clean and I drag her to my bedroom. I set her out on the sheets and grab a condom from the bedside table, one thought racing through my head when she rides me to oblivion and fucks me like the world is going to end tomorrow:
I’m in big fucking trouble.