Page 114 of Dallas

Oh, geez. How had this happened? How had they gone from best friends to this? To her sitting frozen on the couch afraid to move and break the band of electricity stretching around them? Because if she did, she would either snap it and things would just fizzle all to hell with the uncomfortable tension, and he wouldn’t want to sit next to her ever againever. Or worse, she would set off a spark that would ignite them both and she’d find herself flat on her back again, riding the ridge of his arousal.

But she looked at him anyway, in spite of the inner voice screaming at her not to. She couldn’t do anything else.

He was looking at the TV, his jaw tight, his hands clenched into fists. She looked back at the screen and her skin prickled. Some serious action was happening there, and she was feeling envious and edgy.

“It’s going to get better, right?” she said.

She wasn’t going to pretend everything was fine—not when it wasn’t. She’d tried that earlier and the attempt had been laughable. He knew her too well. And she respected him too much to lie to him. She respected their friendship too much.

“This?” he asked, and she knew he knew she was talking about that invisible crackle of electricity, the one you couldn’t see. But damn, you could feel it. “I don’t know, Sam.”

“It has to. How else are we going to...live together for the next month? How else are we going to be friends?”

“It’ll get better.”

“But you just said you didn’t know it would get better!”

“I lied one of the times. Pick which one disturbs you less and call it the truth.”

“It will get better.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it will.”

“Or we just have sex and get it over with.”

Jace did a literal spit take with his beer, a fine sheen of moisture coating the TV screen. “What?”

“I don’t know what I just said. I think I’m crazy. Don’t listen to me.”

“You said we should have sex and you think I’m going to just...not listen to that?”

“Well, I hope you’ll write it off as temporary insanity.”

“Like last night?”

“Yes.”

“If we’re still having insanity from last night, is it really all that temporary?”

“We’re within a forty-eight-hour window. I think it is.”

Jace looked at Sam, who was looking back at him with huge eyes, chewing on her thumbnail. A gentleman might let her take back what she’d said. A gentleman might get up and go to his room instead, take the offer off the table completely by removing himself from the situation.

But he’d proved yesterday that he wasn’t a gentleman, and she was offering sex so he sure as hell wasn’t about to start pretending he was one.

“It’s not temporary for me, Sam. I wanted you before last night. I want you now. I don’t know what that tells you, except maybe that, for me at least, it’s not just going to go away.”

“But what does that mean?” she asked. “Does it change things?”

He closed the distance between them and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, drawing her to him and kissing her hard on the mouth. She was even sweeter than he remembered. “I don’t know,” he whispered, his voice husky. “Does it?”

She bit her lip, looking at him, so close it would be easyto taste her again. “I don’t...I can’t think when you do things like that but I...I thought...I mean, wouldn’t it be better to let things go back to normal? I thought we were being normal.”

“Closing the gate when the horse already got out?” he asked.

“Maybe that’s what it is,” she said, looking down at his lips. Then she leaned in and kissed him, lightly at first, then deepening it, slowly, thoroughly. She slid her tongue against his. Her mouth fit perfectly against his, the rhythm and flow seamless.

It was nothing like other kisses he’d had. Nothing like kissing a woman he picked up in a bar who didn’t know him. Who didn’t know the steps to what he liked or the shape of his mouth. Nothing, even, like kissing a woman he was in a relationship with.

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