Page 89 of A Certain Step
“Ethan?”
No, this was real. Willa looked at him as though the expression on his face was so bizarre she couldn’t read it. He blinked a few times, trying to ensure this was real.
“Right now?” he questioned, trying to gain some clarification of what was happening. Maybe she meant days or weeks from now.
She bobbed her head. “Unless you’re too tired.”
In all the ways he’d pictured this happening, it’d somehow never been like this. Frankly, he wasn’t sure what he had pictured. How or when, really, but it wasn’t on a random Sunday night after they’d gotten back from a night out with their friends.
Why does that even matter, Ethan? She wants you,he berated himself.
“How much did I drink?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed, eyebrows arched. “You’re asking me?”
“You were next to me the whole night,” he added.
She must’ve sensed what was happening because she unleashed another laugh. Her expression grew wicked, wildly full of want. Willa rolled her hips against him. Ethan groaned, entirely incapable of hiding it.
“Do you think that you’re somehow so drunk you’re imagining this?”
He confirmed with a nod.
She did it again, slower this time, more calculated. Once, twice, three times.
His breath hitched. She giggled.
“You seem pretty sober to me,” she asserted.
He shut his eyes for a beat. “I’m sure I am. I’m just surprised.”
Ethan was also so enraptured that if she kept grinding her hips on him, he’d lose it. Come undone way too soon, right here on his couch, and he didn’t want that.
He wanted this to be all abouther.
She lowered her head, taking his ear between her teeth. “If you want me to repeat it, I will,” she whispered.
He rose from the couch immediately, carrying her up with him.
No, he wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even buzzed. His tolerance was too high.
Willa wanted him tonight.
He’d give her everything he had.
30
WILLA
He lowered Willa onto her feet. “Are you sure? We could wait. I promise. I meant it when I said I’d wait as long as you need me to.”
Desires flamed through his eyes. Crimson made its way onto his cheeks. Willa was sure she must’ve looked the same.
She shook her head with finality, wrapping her arms tight around his neck. “I want you, Ethan. I want to try, not because I think you’ll get tired of waiting, but becauseIwant you.”
He breathed slowly, still processing. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “And you’ll tell me if you want to stop, right? If there’s anything you don’t like, or even if you change your mind midway through. You’ll tell me to stop?”
She concurred. “I’ll tell you to stop.”
