Page 84 of No More Heartbreakers

“You like to torture me, don’t you?” he whispered. He brought his gaze to mine again, looking at me with glittering, hooded eyes.

“Yes, and you love it.”

I leaned forward and softly pressed my lips to the side of his forehead, moving down his face to his cheekbone, to his jaw, brushing them with feathery kisses.

He made one of his ridiculously sexy growling noises, and his hands gripped my thighs as I continued to kiss his ears, his neck.

“I thought my chair was great, but I might like your furniture even better.” His voice was tight with excitement.

He felt so good underneath me, his hands alternately squeezing and sliding over me as we kissed.

“Yes,” I panted. “We’ll have to take this couch with us, too.”

And we both froze. Without meaning to, I’d referred to some sort of future for us. As in a sharing-furniture-sort-of-future.

The slip was a symptom of the kind of thoughts I couldn’t seem to crowd out of my brain lately. As hard as I tried, it was getting more and more impossible to picture my life without him.

Maybe he hadn’t noticed? I tried to prevent any mention of it by covering Aric’s mouth with mine, kissing him while starting a slow slide up and down his lap, which had become decidedly more crowded in the past few minutes.

He groaned but was apparently not going to be put off the subject. Breaking contact with my mouth, he stilled my hips with his hands. He looked up into my face, studying my eyes in the dim room.

“Have you been thinking about us? About what you want?”

“I want what Ialwayswant, and you’re so mean, you won’t give it to me,” I teased, determined to distract him with a seductive grin. “Do I have to beg you? I will.”

I tried to move against him again, but his grip held me in place.

“Heidi—that’s not what I mean and you know it. Do you still not want anything more?” His expression stayed neutral, but I’d caught an edge of hurt in his voice on the last question.

Sugar.

Did we have to do this? I certainly didn’t want to. And this moment was not my top choice for any kind of conversation, much less a life-altering one.

I wanted to finish what we’d started for once, but Aric was forcing the issue instead of being happy with no-strings sex like most guys would be.

“I…” Was I really going to do this? Tell him again that I didn’t want a commitment, taking the chance he might finally get fed up and call things off?

Something sharp and sickening twisted in my gut at the thought.

“You…” he prompted, sitting very still, waiting.

“Ihavebeen thinking, and I still don’t know how we’ll make it work… long term.”

He let out a breath. “Do you always have to have all the answers up front? Do you never just go with your gut? Because mine is telling me this is something worth keeping.”

His voice pleaded with me as his hands kneaded my hips.

“I know. Obviously this is—you are—special,” I said. “But I did go with my gut, you know, before. With Jason. I just followed my feelings.”

My eyes begged him to understand. “I promised myself I would never do that again.”

Aric nodded, his lips tight. “And I promised myself I wouldn’t let you sacrifice what you want most for what you want right now.”

He lifted me off his lap and set me to the side on the couch.

As he stood, cool air rushed around me to fill the vacuum left in the absence of his body heat. I shivered, crossing my arms over my chest.

“What I want most?”

---