Page 161 of The Snowball Effect

Emma tossed her hands in the air, exasperated. “How do you read me so well?”

“Oh.” Regan shrugged, watching Emma intently. “I mean… it’s not hard, I guess? You might think you’re a closed book, Emma, but I think I have your number.”

“I think you do, too,” she agreed, distressingly.

“So,areyou going to do us both a favor and admit that you were having us babysit so that you could pull back from what we started last night?” Regan pushed, that edge of raw honesty in her tone cutting right into Emma, right to the heart of everything.

Emma felt her heart thud in her chest, as she slowly shook her head. “Idid,” she admitted. “But – not because I’m trying to pull back from you. Or from this.” She gestured between the two of them.

Regan’s expression slid into something sweetly surprised. “Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed, swallowing thickly, before she explained, “I’m just trying to figure out how to put some brakes on this – on us – so that we don’t go careening forward too fast.”

Regan took another step closer to her. Then another. And the look on her face, as she peered up at Emma was sogentle, in a way no one had ever looked at her before. “Will it make you feel better if I swear to you that I won’t jump your bones when we’re alone in our apartment? I know it might not seem like it,” a self-deprecating smile flashed over Regan’s face. “But I can control myself a little bit–”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Emma cut in, her cheeks burning with the truth.

That, again, stopped Regan in her tracks. Those gorgeous, dark eyes widened as her mouth fell open with surprise, and the gleam of excitement was clear. “Emma–”

“I’m worried aboutme,” she added, even though she knew Regan already understood the unspoken implication. But Emma needed to say it. She had to get this out. “I want you, Regan.I’mthe one that answered your text last night. I’m the one that didn’t hang up the phone. And I’m the one that came into your room, after. It’s not you I’m worried about.”

Emma had never in her life been someone that didn’t have some control over herself.

But that had been exactly how she’d felt when she’d gone into her room, post-date. She’d felt the ghost of Regan’s hips rolling needily against hers while they’d kissed. She’d felt that kiss, burning through her. She’d felt… god, she’d felt so wanted and wanting in equal measure.

Emma had done very, very well to keep Regan from entering into her dirtiest, neediest thoughts. But the dam was had been officially broken, and she’d touched herself – feeling so wet, her clit so achingly hard – with a fervor she’d never had before.

She’d never been so turned on in her fuckinglifeas she’d been when she’d come for Regan, and she’d felt desperate for more when Regan had orgasmed – loud and unashamed – for her. She hadn’t even known what the hell she’d been thinking when she’d hung up their call and hurriedly gotten out of bed and went to get Regan a glass of water.

All she’d known was that she needed to actually, physically, see Regan after that.

“Do you regret last night? Either the sex or coming to sleep with me?” Regan asked, her voice an octave lower than before, and raspy. So raspy, it made Emma shiver.

And she found she couldn’t be anything other than truthful, as she shook her head. “No. I don’t regret it.”

She’d tried. This morning, after she’d woken up with her face buried in Regan’s soft, dark hair because of her alarm blaring in her ear – she’d tried. She’d told herself all morning at work that they’d moved too fast. That this wasn’t the right thing.

But she didn’t actually feel that way, and she was so, so tired of trying to pull herself back from Regan.

“This is all really new for me. Yes, I’ve been in a serious relationship, before. But it wasn’t – it didn’t feel like this,” she could hear her own desperation in her voice. “It didn’t feel so consuming. I didn’t think about her all of the time. I didn’t feel this need to check my phone to see if she texted. I didn’t count down the time in my head until we were going to see one another, again. And it’s crazy, because I’ve been doing all of those things for you, for far longer than the last few days.”

There it was. The utter, most honest truth she had for Regan.

“You are so honest with the way you feel, Regan, that it blows me away. Oh, you’re attracted to me? Well, then, you kiss me. Oh, you realize you have feelings for me? Well, then, you confess it to me. Oh, you want to know what it’s like to be with me? Well, then you take me out on an incredible date and make it impossible for me to think straight. Do you know how crazy that is, conceptually, to me?” Emma demanded, needing Regan to understand. To see how different they were, how baffling she was to Emma.

“Do you not… like it?” Regan asked so quietly, uncertainly, as she bit the inside of her cheek.

Emma scoffed, scrubbing her hands roughly over her face. “I like it,” she informed Regan, her voice gravelly. “I like it, and you, far too much. I liked waking up with you this morning. I liked going to sleep with you last night. I love how forthright you are, how you never make me wonder what’s on your mind. How you never make me question where you stand or how you feel orwhat you think. It’s never been my experience in dating, and I love it.”

The wide, unabridged smile that broke over Regan’s face was breathtaking, and she walked even closer to Emma. “Good, because I love it, too. I love that I can be my whole self with you, and I never hold back, and it’s never been my experience, either! But I think it’s a good thing. A really good thing.”

“It is,” she agreed. “But it’s also something that makes me think – how soon is too soon? How are we possibly going to keep our wits about us when we’re in such close quarters in our own apartment, all alone?”

Emma was entirely unsure if shecould. Even now, in her mother’s house, with her little sisters upstairs, she stared at Regan and she craved to be closer.

The sight of Regan – even the thought of her – filled Emma with this intense, needy feeling.

Not just her body, not just a sexually needy sensation – though, there was that, too. But something deeper, a place Emma had never really explored, before. Not even in the years she’d been in a relationship with Felicity. It made her feel giddy and excited and nervous, and like she couldn’t wait for more.

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