Page 33 of Allured By Her

“Okay, the whole point of me being here is to show him that you’ve moved on and you’re not giving him a second thought, so you’re going to have to stop staring at him like you want to have his babies,” I said. Tenley tried to argue with me, but I put my hand up.

“You can give him heart eyes all you want when you’re back together.” If that ever happened. I was extremely skeptical.

Tenley sighed and rubbed her forehead. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just hard to flip that switch.”

“Just give me heart eyes,” I said.

Tenley stared at me, squinting a little.

“You’re giving me constipated eyes,” I said, and she smacked my arm.

“Okay, how’s this?” she asked, widening her eyes and pouting her lips a little.

“I think the point is that you’re not supposed to try. It just happens,” I said. “Let’s try this.” I touched the side of her face and put my hand on her waist, pulling her closer. Immediately, my breathing sped up, and so did hers. Tenley pressed up against me and set her hand on my shoulder. A moment ago, I’d been cold, but now it was like standing beside the fire.

“This-this works,” she said, stuttering.

“I think we might be drawing some attention,” I said, sensing people looking at us. I couldn’t look away from her face to check.

“Should we try a kiss?” I asked.

“Yes,” she breathed. Obviously, we had kissed before, but each time felt…monumental.

Tenley took the initiative and leaned forward, pressing her lips to mine. Fuck, she was a good kisser, I’d give her that. It was nice to be kissed, even if it wasn’t real.

My thumb pressed into her cheek, pulling her closer so I could kiss her harder. Tenley’s tongue licked the outside of my mouth and I let her in, meeting her halfway as she flicked a little greeting against my tongue. When Tenley kissed me there was no fumbling, no uncertainty, no wondering if you were doing it right. No second-guessing.

She was just that good.

Dimly, I heard people cheering behind us and Tenley broke the kiss, startled.

We both turned to see the group at the fire laughing and the guys hooting and making other suggestive noises. Of course. They still thought two women kissing was done entirely for the pleasure of men. Fuckers.

“Shane’s looking,” Tenley said, looking back at me with a smile.

“Good. That’s what we wanted,” I said, feeling hollow and wishing we could go back a few moments to the kiss.

“Let’s go back to the fire. I’m cold,” she said, pulling me closer to the group.

I went with her.

* * *

The next hour was painful. Tenley had fully thrown herself into pretending to ignore Shane, while flirting with me and being charming and social with everyone else. My job was to smile and flirt back and pretend that I wasn’t bothered by the whole thing. The reality of being a fake girlfriend was more difficult than I’d anticipated.

Shane tried a couple of times to draw Tenley into conversation, but she basically ignored him and kept laughing with her friends, or would just lean over and kiss me, making my head spin every time. She’d end the kiss and I’d be slammed back to reality that this beautiful girl kissing me was doing it to impress someone else.

As the night wore on and people got more and more drunk and reckless with the fire, all I wanted to do was go home and get in bed with a book for a while.

Tenley seemed completely oblivious, so I guess I was doing a good job at faking a smile. We sat together on a log of driftwood that functioned as a bench and she put her head on my shoulder with a sigh.

“Did you want to go soon?” she said, her voice a little dreamy as she stared into the fire.

I had wanted to leave hours ago. Once again, I had to ask myself why the hell I was doing this in the first place. And then Tenley looked up at me and smiled, making my heart thump.

It was long past time for me to accept the fact that I liked Tenley, even a little bit.

“Sure,” I said. She put her arm around me and snuggled me closer to her. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I felt her lips in my hair.

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