Page 37 of The Spark Between Us

Chapter Twelve

Braden

The feelingsof guilt over leaving Sarah in the bike shop disappeared when my doorbell rang. I opened the door to find Kelsey standing on my doorstep in tight black jeans, a purple tank top, and no bra.

To be clear, the only reason she didn’t need a bra was that she was twenty-two and her C-cup breasts still defied gravity in a way that normally made my dick hard just thinking about them. And now they were pressed to my chest as she brushed her lips against my cheek.

Kelsey’s long, dark hair curled into waves around her face, and mascara made her brown eyes look even darker than usual. “Hi, hon,” she said, sweeping past me with a bottle of pink wine in her hand. That was how she referred to it, “I’ll take a glass of the pink.”

She’d come over before each of our dates. “It’s a thing. I like to meet at the man’s house for safety reasons.” Her cooing voice had sounded a little young, probably too young. Then, after a couple glasses of pink wine and a nice dinner, we’d gone back to her house where I enjoyed her young tits and young everything else.

I’d taken Kelsey to dinner three times. Three dinners that had led to fairly hot sex in her living room, two orgasms each for her, and a goodbye fuck against her front door before agreeing to see each other in a week or so.

It wasn’t love, and it was never going to be love, but it was evolving into the perfect situation.

“Hey, hon,” she hollered, and I realized I was still lingering by the front door. She’d called me ‘hon’ on our first date, which told me the nickname didn’t mean much to her. That was fine. I’d stopped using any sort of endearments because I could never match the feelings that I thought should accompany them.

Except for calling Sarah ‘Damsel.’ I just couldn’t break myself of that one.

“Sorry. Spaced out. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” I walked over to where she was rifling through my kitchen drawers looking for a corkscrew, even though she’d done the same thing twice before. “Listen, we should head out,” I told her, not wanting an awkward encounter with Sarah when she got back from the bike shop.

Kelsey ignored me, and each time she opened a drawer and slammed it again, her breasts jiggled inside her tank top. Normally, that would be enough to have me hard. Instead, I found myself slightly annoyed that she was so clueless about where I’d keep utensils.

Quit thinking.

Kelsey was exactly what I needed—no complications, no heavy conversation about the future, no misunderstandings about spending the night together.

I took her hand, intending to walk her toward the front door. But she pressed into me, rubbing her hand over my cheek.

“I’m sorry you’re tired.” She moved her hand down to my chest, where her fingers edged lower until her acrylic nails teased my abs, and she dipped them into the waistband of my jeans. “I’ll make sure you don’t have trouble sleeping tonight.”

I breathed in her slightly cloying flowery perfume and tried not to compare the bottled ordinary scent to Sarah’s fresh citrus and flowers—every time she walked by, I had visions of a summer garden.

“Deal.” I needed Kelsey to wear me out. I needed to drive into her so hard that I forced distracting thoughts about my goddamned roommate to the sidelines. It made no sense that Sarah entered my thoughts at all. She was a temporary guest, end of story.

If I needed a reason why she and I made zero sense, all I had to do was look at her, feel her goodness, listen to her brilliance. My relationship with Ellie taught me that women like that might have firefighter fantasies, but when those wear thin, they walk away.

Kelsey wouldn’t do that. She loved whatever I could give her.

And yet...even with Kelsey’s fingers massaging their way into my pants, I was distracted. It felt suddenly wrong to have her stripping my clothes off within the first five minutes of seeing me.

It felt . . . empty.

I grabbed Kelsey’s wrists and extracted her hands before she could wrap them around my dick. “Dinner first? Play later?”

She pouted and turned her upside-down smile to me before kissing me on the lips. Her mouth was soft and willing, and she succeeded at shifting my focus completely to her. “As long as it’s not too much later.”

Kelsey was sweet. And so willing. I didn’t know what the hell my problem was. I had no excuse for not enjoying my night out with her, starting right now. So I leaned in for one kiss, telling myself to enjoy the taste of her and the escape from the rest of my life. I closed my eyes and concentrated on feeling instead of thinking.

Which was maybe why I didn’t hear my front door when it opened. But I heard Kelsey shriek a few seconds later. “What the hell?” She clung to me possessively, and it took me a moment to adjust my vision and figure out what had her so distressed. Then I followed her gaze to where Sarah stood a few feet away, a grocery bag and a bottle of wine in her hands.

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Sarah looked frozen, staring at us with aqua blue eyes that were wide with surprise and embarrassment. I quickly looked down to make sure no errant naked parts were exposed. Kelsey didn’t move her hands from around my neck and had trouble freeing the garble of words that had collided in my throat.

“No, don’t even...we were just...” What in the hell was I saying? I leaned my forehead against Kelsey’s and pointed. “Roommate. Sorry, Kel...Sarah, I should have...”

Sarah waved her hands dismissively. “No, it’s me. You said you had plans, I just didn’t...never mind. I just came for a corkscrew.” Her eyes darted past us and around the kitchen. If I’d been able to form words, I’d have told her where it was, but in a second, she’d opened the correct drawer and found the corkscrew.

“Gosh, I was just looking for that.” Kelsey’s voice was breathy.

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