Page 62 of Near Miss

Greer glances down, the raised pink edge of the scar hardly visible in the light, and shakes her head. “It’s not the physical presence part of the scar that bothers me. Scar tissue is just healed skin.” Her nose wrinkles. “I’m just realizing that maybe it feels sort of ... unfriendly, for me to ride you on a couch.”

I groan. My cock twitches and I pause halfway through rolling the condom on. “Don’t say ride.”

She smiles, and it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen. The corners of her lips curl up, eyes sparkling, and she rolls her hips forward. “Mount?”

“Stop.”

“For me to take a little drive on—”

“Enough.”

She must think so, too, because her hands find my shoulders, and she lowers herself down onto me inch by inch, pausing as she stretches around me, her head tipped back with these breathy moans.

Our eyes meet, her lips part with a sharp inhale, and we stay there, joined, just for a minute. My hand moves up the centre of her, thumb pressing down where I know she likes. My other hand finds the small of her back, and she rolls her hips forward.

It’s just a small movement, but my head drops back against the couch, and I move with her.

Greer arches her back, nails digging into my skin, and when her chest brushes my face, I take my hand off her back, palming her and rolling her nipple between my fingers again before replacing it with my tongue.

It goes like this: wandering hands, hips rising to meet one another, mouths crashing together, and really no echo of the wordfriendsuntil she clenches around me and I swallow the moan she makes into my mouth, and I combust, too.

Her forehead drops to mine, and we’re too close to really stare at each other but I think I see all of her anyway before she moves her head to the side and drops it to the crook of my neck.

“We’re still just friends,” she whispers against my shoulder.

I turn, pressing my lips to the side of her head. “You’re probably my best friend, actually.”

That might be true. But she’s also this unyielding, unbreaking, beautiful person who sculpted me from crumbled clay.

She loves her sister and I know she loves her father even though it hurts her. She’s funny when she means to be and endlessly serious the rest of the time, even though she reads books about faeries and doesn’t appreciate the intricacies of the French Revolution.

My heart tells me this is a stupid fucking idea, because she’s only given me tiny pieces of herself. But I can’t really hear it because it’s whispering to me from where she is, one leg on either side of mine, hands still on my shoulders, but not really, because they’ve got that stupid organ of mine in their palms.

Greer

Habits form anywhere between eighteen and two hundred and fifty-four days of repeated behaviour.

Beckett Davis becomes one in significantly less time than that.

As far as habits go, it could be worse.

It’s not a habit that would kill most people, but I do worry it might kill me.

Not the sex.

It’s the way he smiles. How his laugh strolls across my spine before wrapping around me and clasping itself in the centre of my chest. How the dimple in his left cheek scores, and I think each time it does, it carves another scar on the left side of my ribs to match the one on the right.

Like it might take another organ from me—one that lives just above in my chest, right behind and slightly to the left of my sternum.

I left his house that night and didn’t think I’d end up back there.

But I did.

And all it took was him sending me a few facts about the French Revolution he thought I’d find interesting.

Somehow, that had my brain shutting up, lulling it into a false sense of security. Because what was that, if not friendly? It’s not like he’s been waxing poetic about his undying love for me. His body likes mine and my body likes his. A mutually beneficial arrangement that keeps my heart in its cage but feels more than good for everyone involved. Just sex.

But he might need to work on his definition of interesting—I’ve heard about Napoleon’s alleged intense dislike of cats, that he was apparently afraid of open doors, and about his unrivalled sense of smell.

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