Page 61 of Ready to Score

“I bought it last year. It’s pretty damn cute inside too.”

Jade turned her head a fraction so that she was looking at the other woman. Their faces were inches apart, and Jade could smell Lim’s shampoo and the minty ChapStick on her lips. Her thighs flexed in her shorts as her mind flooded with images of their mouths pressed together, their bodies pressing into each other. Then a flash of remembering the feeling of Lim’s hot, wet pussy contracting around her fingers.

“Do you want to see?” The words where whisper quiet, like she couldn’t believe she was saying them.

Without so much as a word, Lim put the car in park and turned it off. As Jade led them up the small path toward her front door, her tummy started to burn. After she closed the door behind them, she froze, unsure what to do.

“Can I get you a water or…” Jade was suddenly skittish, shy. Why, she didn’t know. She was no stranger to this—to sex—not even with Lim. She already knew exactly how the other woman tasted, and here she was acting like it was the first time she’d ever been alone with a girl.

“Did you invite me in here for water, Jade?”

Jade shook her head.

Lim took a few steps until she was right up on her, breasts touching. “Why did you invite me in, then?”

All Jade could do was swallow. Her eyes went to Lim’s lips, peachy and plush, and her skin tingled as she recalled how they felt making their way across her neck and chest.

Lim took Jade’s chin between her thumb and her index finger,tilting her head back a bit. Jade’s eyes instantly fluttered closed—like it hurt too much to look at the woman in front of her.

“Tell me.”

“You already know why.” It sounded more like a whine, needy and desperate.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“So you can torture me?”

“No, I just want to hear it and keep it with me.” Lim’s voice was breathy, and it sent a shudder through Jade.

Fuck. What a thing that was to hear. Jade wound her arms around Lim’s waist, resting her palms against her lower back, just under her T-shirt. She was warm there, heated and a little slick. The fine hairs at the base of her spine felt like silk that Jade was helpless to do anything but stroke with her thumbs.

“I want you,” she said, opening her eyes. The words felt ragged and not enough. “I always want you. Here in my house and at the club and in the car. Even in my fucking tree house, I want you.”

“To fuck me?”

“Yes, but also…” Jade’s mouth hung open, and she hesitated. “I don’t know why this is so hard.”

Lim stroked a finger across Jade’s forehead, down the middle between her eyes, and over her lids, before swirling around the apples of her cheeks. “You don’t trust yourself,” she said. “Not right now and not with this.”

The words hit Jade like a Mack truck. Head-on, knocking the wind out of her sails and leaving a dagger lodged in the middle of her throat.

“I still don’t,” she admitted. “I’m still scared.”

“You’re scared of me?”

Jade nodded wordlessly. Maybe Lim was right. Maybe she’d hit the nail right on the head. Jade felt like she were living on a wire,where every decision she made had the power to knock her off and kill her.

“Francesca…”

Lim stroked her finger over Jade’s cheek once more. Then she pulled away. “I genuinely cannot believe I’m the one saying this, but we’re not doing this, not until you’re sure. Because I’m not sleeping with you again just to have you run out like your head is on fire and pretend like I don’t exist.”

Guilt punched Jade in the chest so hard that she took a step back too. “Yeah. I get it.”

“I want you, Jade Dunn. So much. And not just for sex. Like, I want you for real. I want the kisses and the crying and you sitting in my car. Fucking Sundays at the farmers market and us trying not to get caught flirting at work. I wantyou, all of you. But I’m not willing to fall for another girl who isn’t all in for me too. You understand that, right?”

Jade’s eyes started to water, salty liquid pooling at the edges. The tears were on her cheeks before she could take a breath in. “I understand.”

The look on Lim’s face made Jade’s entire body ache, and the sound of the front door closing behind her almost brought Jade to her knees. Keeping shit steady had been the only way to move forward for her. No surprises, no fuckups. Clearly, that had not been sustainable. For all her caution, for every bit of her carelessness, Jade was in the exact position she’d feared most. Adrift, unsure, completely up shit creek without a paddle. She felt just as terrified as she had when she thought about Landry’s final decision. Hating Lim—or pretending to anyway—had always felt much safer than leaning into whatever feelings she knew she had.

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