Page 28 of Back for More
“For instance?”
She pauses, about to say something, and from the look on her face it would probably blow my mind, but then she clearly changes her mind about saying it. She takes a swig of beer and then says, “For instance, I’ve sent Leesh tons of gifts from her baby registry, every few months, ever since she started cranking out kids. It’s hard to stay in touch when you’re in different cities. Oh my God—why am I explaining myself to the guy who doesn’t talk to his own mother?”
“I don’t know, Lily? Whyareyou explaining yourself to me?”
She huffs. “I’m done explaining. Anyway, I didn’t get the sense that Alecia was mad at me.”
I shrug. “Well, if you didn’t sense that, then I guess she wasn’t. She’s been kind of busy raising a family. Did it ever occur to you that maybe your absence didn’t have as big of an impact on her life as you’d expect?”
She places the bottle on the floor by the chair, stands up, and heads for the door. “Screw you.”
“Like a boss,” I say, like a dick, without getting up.
I hear her stomp down the hall and shut the front door—she doesn’t slam it, but she doesn’t do it quietly either.
I place my empty bottle on the floor too, stand up, and walk over to the foyer.
One, two, three…
I put my hand on the door handle and wait for the angry knock that I know is coming.
As soon as she knocks three times, I open the door, grab her arm, and pull her inside, up against the wall, my hands on her waist. My lips smash against hers as she fists my shirt, pushing against my hard chest even as one leg circles around mine to bring me in closer. She hisses and gasps and sighs as she bites my lower lip and sucks on my tongue and tilts her head to the side so I can kiss her neck while she claws at my back. She rocks her hips back and forth, rubbing herself against my thigh and creating as much friction between our jeans as there’s been between us ever since we met.
“Wesssss.” When her smooth hand touches the hot skin of my abs, I feel her go limp for a second, and then her thighs tighten around the bulge in my pants. “Oh my God,” she whispers.
I reach under her T-shirt and sweep my fingers from her hips up to her rib cage. She trembles. I grunt. She licks my neck all the way up to my earlobe and then sucks it into her mouth, twirling and flicking with her tongue.
Son of a biscuit.
This kiss is going to kill us.
Since I was sixteen, my life can be categorized as long stretches of time when I’ve been able to resist kissing her, punctuated by moments when nothing on earth can stop my mouth and tongue from colliding with hers. This collision is fueled by lust and frustration and guilt and resentment and possessiveness and impatience and annoyance and sympathy and some new thing that I can’t even name. This is not the hungry, curious kiss of a high school girl who doesn’t fully understand the consequences of teasing me. This is the hungry, furious kiss of a young woman who knows exactly what will happen if we go any further and knows exactly why it shouldn’t happen.
“We can’t do this,” she says on an exhale as she tugs on my earlobe with her teeth.
“I know.” I hike her up so both her legs can wrap around my waist. “We can’t.” I grind up against her. She writhes around, so out of control. God, if I could just be inside that energy, just once, just one time.
“Tell me why,” she groans.
“You know why.”
“Say it.”
I squeeze her ass, and she moans into my mouth. “Because I’m your boss.”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re my boss’s daughter.”
“Yeah.”
“Because we’re all wrong for each other.”
“Yes. We are.”
“Because I don’t know what your father would do if he found out about us.”
“I don’t either.”
