Page 106 of Smut

The sex is amazing.

But…there’s something else.

Something I can’t put my finger on.

Something I don’t want to put my finger on.

I’ve noticed it since we got back.

When we fuck, there’s this tenderness on both our parts that keeps coming out, wrapping around us like it’s second nature. When we’re done, we no longer just get up and go back to work and move on with our lives.

We linger. We stay in bed forever. Just talking. About everything. Relationships, childhoods, books, films. We laugh.

We laugh a lot.

And each time this happens something in my heart aches. Because I’m experiencing everything that a relationship should be, but it’s not a relationship at all. No one even knows we’re together except for Ana, and she doesn’t know about the books so the actual whole truth has never been laid bare.

I want to be honest with him. But I don’t know how I feel and I don’t know where to start.

I really like what we have and I don’t want to ruin it.

But I want more.

Not more books, not more money, not more work, not even more sex, as good as it is. I just want more of him. I want all that he is and I want to be able to call it mine and dive in and possess every part of him. I know I sound no better than the possessive alphas in our books, but it’s true.

He’s becoming something more to me, something very real but all we’re surrounded by is fiction.

We take a break from each other for a few nights. This is mostly my doing. I need to talk to Rio, need to go out and lift my head out of the sand. I need to see the life around me, the world that exists without the books and Blake. I need to know that no matter what happens, there is always more out there, even when Blake feels like all I need.

“You look like you need another drink,” Rio says to me.

We’re back at our favorite place, the Tapas Bar, managing to snag a table on the small patio that ducks out into the middle of the alley. The weather is beautiful, a welcome respite after a week of rainy gloom. We’re in the heat of summer again.

She pours from a near-empty jug of sangria and it splashes noisily into my cup, spilling a bit onto the table. “Shit, we need more,” she says, signaling to the waiter for another. She gets half out of her seat and yells after him, “And napkins too, please!”

I fish the orange out of my glass and suck on it with a sigh. “I’m fine.”

I’m not really sure how to tell her I’ve been sleeping with Blake for a month now. She’ll definitely be hurt that I didn’t tell her earlier, and when she gets hurt, she likes to hurt others. Like, physically.

“I’d say you need to get laid,” she muses, eyeing me over her gigantic sunglasses, “but I’m not sure that’s it. Either you’ve been hitting it hard with your battery-operated boyfriend or you’ve managed to snag dick elsewhere. You seem a bit…spent.”

“Well, I have been running a lot,” I tell her, taking a long gulp from my glass. That’s still true. When I wake up in my own bed, I try and go running, and sometimes when Blake hits the gym in his apartment building, I’ll jump on the treadmill.

Just like fuckbuddies would do, I tell myself dryly.

“That’s not it,” she says. She leans in closer, her layers of brass bracelets rattling on the table. “Are you doing hard drugs?” she attempts to whisper. Very loudly.

I jerk my head back. “What? No!”

Tell her. Tell her now.

“So, whatever happened with that guy you were seeing?” I casually ask her.

Damn it, Amanda!

She cocks her head, studying me. “You’re trying to change the subject. You never ask me about any guy I’m humping.”

“Because you always tell me, whether I want to know or not. Anyway, the last text I got from you, you said that God was testing you with copious amounts of brownies and dick.”

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