Page 18 of Imagine Me and You

“Why the hell did you...thank me?”

“Because the orgasm was good?” She tugged her shirt over her head. “It seemed polite.”

“Polite?”

“I don’t know. What’s the protocol for this situation?”

“There is no protocol.” He let out a string of curse words, each progressively more crass than the last, ending in a word combination she never could have conceived of. “There is no protocol.”

“I was afraid of that.Farmer’s Almanachas nothing? No? Okay.”

Jace was still shirtless, still standing in the tub in water that hit him mid-shin. His expression was starting to resemble that of man who’d been punched in the stomach with the end of a two-by-four.

It was like watching him go through the stages of grief. Denial was the part that had him frozen in the tub, and she had a feeling anger would be next. But she didn’t know whether the anger would be directed at himself or her.

And she didn’t really want to stick around to find out. “It’s been a long day,” she said, starting to edge out of the bathroom, wondering if Jace would be pissed about the water on the floor. Too damn bad. She was not hanging around to clean it up. That was what had caused this mess in the first place.

It confirmed her deepest suspicion that nothing truly good ever came of housework.

“Yeah,” he said, looking down, probably realizing he was still standing in the tub.

“I’m going to go to bed.” It was five o’clock. Even she didn’t buy her BS. But darn it all, she would huddle up in her roomuntil Jace went to work the next morning if she had to. Because she couldn’t deal with this just yet. Just yet or maybe never.

So she would do what she’d done when she was a kid and reality sucked. She would cover her head with a blanket and imagine she was somewhere else. Just like she’d done nearly every time they’d moved.

Or on particularly cold, frightening nights sleeping in their car.

As scary as that had been, she was pretty sure this was worse. Because this had rocked her foundation.

If she ruined things with Jace, there was no one else.

Mrs. Brown was in Florida. Her mother probably didn’t even remember which city she’d left her only child in all those years ago.

And Poppy was wonderful, but she didn’t make Sam watchDie Hardor drink beer with cupcakes.

She needed Jace. She needed this to not have happened.

“Good night,” she said, not looking at him and as she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Jace was still trying to catch his breath, and Sam was already gone. It was probably a good thing because the moment he caught his breath, if she was still here, he would have done one of two things. He would have started yelling. Or he would have pushed her back down into the water and wrestled those jeans off of her no matter how hard it was to peel wet denim from skin.

He breathed in deep, finally, his chest pitching sharply with the motion, and stepped out of the tub.

Dammit. What had he just done?

Years of pent-up lust had exploded, and it had gotten all over Sam. Had he been in a shower by himself, great, fine. He’d have guiltily jacked off to her image. And it wouldn’t have been the first time.

Even those moments, moments of pure fantasy, made him feel like dirt.

But this was inexcusable. He’d expended his fantasies all over her. Well, the denim had caught most of it.

He winced. What kind of asshole did that to his best friend?

In fairness, she’d kissed him back. And she’d really seemed to enjoy everything that had happened in the tub. But he should have stopped. He should have known better. He should have done better.

He looked around the bathroom. It was a mess. Evidence of the dog’s bath all over the place, and puddles from their water fight splashed across the floor.

But for some reason the thought of cleaning didn’t relax him.

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