Page 55 of Little Do You Know

“That’s because I have been staring at you. Guess I’ll have to wait until later to get my hands on you.”

She walks away, and I can’t tear my eyes away from her. Glimpsing back over her shoulder, Thalia laughs, knowing I’m watching her.I’ve been unable to look away for years.

~

“And we meet again,” Thalia says, slipping quietly into my room.

“We’ve got to stop having these midnight rendezvous,” I reply, sitting up. Thalia comes to sit next to me, kissing me on the cheek.

“Are you really okay?”

“Better now that you’re here.” I smile, despite that being so cheesy I could throw up. What is wrong with me?

“Did you hit your head today when you got tackled?” she asks, laughing softly as she looks at me like I grew two heads. I might have for all I know.

“No, I’m glad I finally get you all to myself,” I say, leaning forward to kiss her, but Thalia pushes me away.

“As much as I enjoy kissing you, that’s not why I came here. Lie back on the bed,” Thalia instructs, and I raise an eyebrow before following her instructions.

“If this is going where I think it is, then we’re going to do a lot more kissing,” I tease, causing her cheeks to flush.

“Bash, I promise you I will walk out of this room if you don’t stop talking about kissing me.” Her threat is enough to wipe the smile off my face. “Shut up and roll over. I promise you’ll like it.”

“What exactly are we doing?” I ask, following her instructions. I’m not quite sure what Lia’s doing, but she seems determined. Is this what being in a relationship is like? Following my girlfriend’s orders, hoping she might let me kiss her when she’s done doing what she wants.

“Do you have any Icy Hot in here?”

“Um, it should be in the bedside table. What do you need that for?”

I was hoping to get a little action tonight after watching her dance all night from the sidelines. Clearly, she learned some moves in France, including on a stripper pole, according to Penelope.I’m sore, but not sore enough to practice celibacy tonight.

Thalia chuckles, looking in the drawer as I remember what else is there. “A little ambitious with the sizing of these condoms, Bash,” she teases. I twist my head to try to look at her, but it pulls at the muscles in my back.

“There’s nothing ambitious about the sizing, and you know it. No glove, no love. Better to be prepared than not,” I retort, resting my head on the pillow.

“At least we can agree on something.”

Thalia straddles the back of my thighs and begins working her thumbs into my lower back. “When I used to joke about how uptight you are, I didn’t consider how true it is. You’ve got a pretty good-sized bruise here, Bash,” Thalia says, gently tracing the part of my upper back that took the brunt of my landing today. Gear or not, it still bruised.

“I’m not uptight,” I grit out through clenched teeth as she finds a knot, spreading more Icy Hot to work the kink out.

My answer must be funny because Thalia laughs. “Sure. Whatever you want to say.” She digs into another particularly sore spot, and I press my face into the pillow, swearing. “No wonder you were upset earlier. I wouldn’t have wanted to be out drinking if I was this tight.”

“That was only part of it. I really did not enjoy watching you dance with Landon.” This is the part where I open my mouth and tell her what happened with Vera tonight. It’ll be so much better than Thalia finding out on her own.

“Who knew you were the jealous type?”

Her hands work the same magic as last time, and I feel myself relaxing. “I didn’t think I was the jealous type either. The last time I had a girlfriend was my first year here when you were still in high school.”

“Who was she?”

I’m hesitant to answer because I can see this conversation going very differently, but Thalia sounds curious. “She was a cheerleader, a year ahead of Owen and I. We only dated for maybe three or four months. Her name was Madison, but it didn’t last because she didn’t like how I put football over her.” I haven’t thought about her in a long time, mainly because she didn’t mean much to me.

“What’d she do? Ask you to pick between her and football?”

“You’re going to wake up Owen if you continue being loud, Lia.” I need to try to be quiet myself. “Close, but not quite. Madison asked what my priorities were, and of course, I said football. As a cheerleader, I thought she’d get it, but when she broke up with me, I figured out that the answer she wanted was that she was my priority.”

It’s embarrassing telling her that story, but she’s known me so long that I don’t have to worry about Thalia getting upset with me like Madison did. As awful as it sounds, Madison was a failed experiment to get Thalia out of my head. Nothing has worked. Lia’s different from anyone I’ve ever known, which is why I can’t stay away.

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