Page 135 of The Charlie Method

“The smartest.”

“Shut up. I’m just going to keep saying it all night. Shut up.”

I grab my beer off the table, my arm brushing hers when I straighten up. “Sorry,” I murmur.

“No, you’re not.”

My lips twitch. “I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose. But you’re right. I’m not sorry.”

Smirking around the rim of the can, I sip my IPA. I feel her watching me as I drink. When Will rakes his hand through his hair, I see her track that too.

She’s very aware of us. And I’m very aware of her. She repositions herself, stretching her legs to rest her feet on the table. Her socks are pink. So is the tank top she’s wearing underneath her oversize gray sweatshirt, which is falling off one shoulder. I wonder if she’s got a bra on beneath the tank. She wasn’t wearing one the night we met her for drinks in the suburbs of Boston, at the most random bar where nobody would see how naughty she was being. I remember the way her hard little nipples strained against her top.

My mouth is suddenly tingling. Fuck. I need to suck on something.

I take another sip, bringing much needed moisture into my mouth.

Charlie snorts at the cheesy joke Professor Qualls just made. The snort is somehow both sexy and adorable. Will’s laughing too. Deep and husky. For a second, my libido is like, what the fuck is happening? I have these two hot people beside me, and nobody’s naked. This feels like a travesty.

Still giggling, Charlie leans forward to pick up her tea. She blows on the liquid to cool it, but each time she raises the mug to her lips, she chickens out and doesn’t sip it.

Will, who’s also observing the great hot tea dilemma, finally breaks out in a grin. “Do it.”

“I don’t want to burn my tongue,” she whines.

“Do it,” he urges. “Feel the burn.”

With a deep breath, her entire body tensed up, Charlie takes the tiniest, most fearful sip I’ve ever seen. Steam moistens her face, and her nose turns red, as do her cheeks. I want nothing more than to snatch that mug out of her hand, pull down her leggings, and screw her brains out.

Yes. I am getting aroused watching a woman drink tea.

This is a first.

“Okay, that wasn’t too bad,” she relents before returning her attention to the movie.

Will is still trying to explain the plotline to her, his face becoming animated. “So basically, in the last movie, the professor found out he has a son with Maritza, the Spanish assassin he had an affair with when he time traveled to eighteenth-century Spain. He was trying to stop her from assassinating the man who in ten years would invent the cure for the rare blood disease that killed the professor’s first wife—”

He’s midsentence when Charlie leans over and kisses him.

The move catches him off guard. Catches me off guard too. I blink, and suddenly her mouth is glued to Will’s.

Before he can kiss her back, she eases away and says, “Sorry.”

I snicker into my beer.

Charlie glances at me now. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing to me?”

“Because I kissed Will.” She groans. “He just looked so hot while he was explaining that crazy plot.”

“Yeah, I know. Sci-fi gives him a real hard-on,” I tell her, and Will sighs.

At the wordhard-on, Charlie looks at my crotch.

“Why are you looking down there?” I grin at her.

“I don’t know.” She lets out another groan. “I’m just so…”

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