Page 47 of So Bad It Must Be Good

“I guess we haven’t been on an official date, but it’s not like we’re not seeing each other.”

“Seeing each other,” she repeated and she smiled.

“But we can. I mean we will. Date. And . . . shit.” He closed his eyes feeling like a tool. “Can we go back to the precursor to sex, because I’m fairly confident in my skills there. Talking, not so much.”

She rubbed her hand up and down his jaw again, and Liam never took his hand off of hers. He just followed the movement.

“I think you do okay,” she offered, her mouth still that sweet curve, her hand a gentle, comforting pressure against his face.

“If that’s actually true, it’s because of you, because no one has ever given me credit for being good with words. Unless they were to break up a fight.”

She bit her bottom lip, looking at him through those golden lashes. There was something in her expression he couldn’t read. “Ever the fixer.”

She didn’t say it with awe or gratefulness, not an ounce of Aiden’s sarcasm. She said it as if it were simply an inexorable part of himself, and he’d always thought that was true. Fixing wasn’t a choice he made. It was simply who he was.

Still, he didn’t know what that meant with Kayla. She needed none of his fixing, and somehow that was both terrifying and . . . tempting.

Something good and bright and sweet, all for him. He didn’t have a clue what to do with that, so he lowered his mouth to hers. He tried to give her some semblance of what he felt in the kiss. Sweetness and hope. A chest-tightening, heart-pinching, brain-defying feeling that was all gentle brushes and light pressure.

Her fingers moved up over his cheeks and his temples and into his hair. She melted against him soft and sweet and pliant.

For the first time in all the ways they’d come together, he felt content to take things slow. To run his hands over her neck, feeling each goose bump pop up. To memorize the slope of her shoulders and the soft texture of her inner wrist. To mold his hands over her sides and hips and commit them to a memory of more than just brain, but soul and heart.

She sighed into his mouth, and though his dick throbbed with the need and want, his heart pounded slowly and contentedly to exist here in the sweet honey taste of her mouth and the velvety softness of her lips. He was happy to exist in this moment of perfection.

Until she gave his hair a little tug. Hard enough to pull his mouth a fraction away from hers. His eyes fluttered open and he glanced down at her. She had a flush to her cheeks and her lips were wet from his mouth and tongue. Her eyes were dark metallic blue and everything about her was a study in perfect beauty.

She didn’t say anything and for a few seconds they simply looked at each other, his heart beating hard against hers.

She released his hair slowly, and then her fingers dipped under his shirt and she tugged the hem up with a slow, almost agonizing pace. Her fingertips explored the expanse of his stomach, back and forth and up and down until he practically had to shudder with the need for more. But she only laughed and moved higher, his shirt lifting only as far as her arms did.

Her fingertips missed nothing. They moved feather light over the ridge of his stomach, moving across the indentations of his chest. She scraped her fingernails across his nipples and he choked back a moan. All the while she watched the path of her fingers, grinning. It was that grin, that self-satisfied smirk he only just learned she had, that kept him from stopping her or doing anything in return.

She pulled the shirt up over his head and dropped it onto his kitchen floor. He supposed another man would give Kayla candlelight and flowers and bedrooms and something that made sense, something that fit her grace and beauty. But he couldn’t find it in him in this moment to offer those things to her. He wanted her. Her hands on him, her body bared to him. He didn’t particularly care what kind of lighting there was or what room in his house they were in. He just wanted her.

Her fingertips scraped down his chest and stomach to the button of his pants. She began to unfasten his jeans, tugging them down. With every move she made, she carefully avoided the thick protrusion of his erection. She was teasing him and something about that struck him as perfect.

But when she began to lower to her knees, he grabbed her hard and quick to stop her. “No.”

She looked up at him with something like a pout. “But I want to taste you.”

Christ, she was going to kill him. “There will be very few times in my life where I say no to that, Kayla, but tonight I want . . . I need . . .” He thought back to earlier when he’d said the crude words to her. And she’d said she liked it.

“You want to be inside me,” she said, not quite meeting his gaze.

“I need to be inside you.”

She bit her lip again. “Well . . .” She glanced up at him, her smile spreading. “That can probably be arranged, but you might have to take off my clothes.”

He laughed, though it came out more of a strained chuckle. But he didn’t reach out to take off her clothes.

Maybe it was foolish to want this to be special. He’d never been any good at making things special. Romantic. That just wasn’t who he was, but when it came to Kayla, he wanted to be able to find it in himself to give her something special or important. He wanted to show her that even though he could be rough and not very good with softness, he did have it in him. When it came to her.

Which was probably stupid.

“Okay, I’ll do it myself.” She pulled her shirt up and over her head, dropping it on top of his on the floor. She reached back presumably to undo her bra, but he put a hand on her soft stomach, splaying out his fingers to revel in the velvety satin of her skin.

“Stop,” he ordered. He needed to get in the game. Focus. Stop worrying about “special” and shit like that and enjoy the damn moment.

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