Page 86 of Come Back to Me

And whatever she needs from me to atone, I’ll do because this cannot be the final time we’re together.

I close my eyes, pull her close, and breathe in her scent.

Aware that I’m holding the best thing that ever happened to me and knowing that I potentially fucked it up before we had a chance to begin.

I can’t lose her.

Tee

When I wake up, my face is buried in Cody’s throat.

He smells so fucking good. There’s a musk that wasn’t there before, and I know it’s from what we did.

Just as I’m certain I need to pinch myself, he’s stirring.

He stretches.

Then stills.

And I can feel the moment he realizes where he is and what he’s doing and who I am.

My heart lodges beside my epiglottis—half certain he’ll want to escape, renege, that he’ll?—

No, he wasn’t drunk.

Neither was I.

One beer doesn’t make a man of Cody’s size over the limit, and he’s a cop! He’d know.

No beer goggles were in play and?—

Wait, it was nonalcoholic beer he was drinking?—

“I know you’re awake.”

My gaze darts over the sky that’s streaked with oranges and reds and purples as day breaks. It’s beautiful. Glorious. But it’s stained, tainted with my fear.

So, of course, I fall back on my usual crotchety self. “If my pussy has mosquito bites on it—” He jolts in surprise at my words. “—then I expect you to make it up to me.”

I can feel how my cooch is totally exposed to the elements, and it’d be just my luck that lesbian mosquitos would want a taste of me.

He relaxes. “Want me to apply calamine lotion?”

Okay. He’s not running.

“Eww, no. That doesn’t help. That’s for poison oak. You can apply aloe vera though,” I offer, like a princess gifting a starving commoner a loaf of bread. “You’re fully dressed. I bet they never bit you.”

“I guess we’ll see later, won’t we?”

We?

Hell, yeah.

“I’m ready for inspection, soldier,” I offer, well aware my voice is a purr.

He snorts. Then, he hesitates.

As a chant of,No, no, no,sweeps through my mind, his lips are opening and they’re forming the worst words in the world:

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