Page 88 of Dirty Rock

“Nothing.” But my voice was small—too small for me.

She turned in my arm, propping herself up on her elbow and pressing her naked tits to the side of my chest. She ran her hand over my heart, letting it pause there as she stared into my eyes. “You’re heart’s beating like crazy. Did I say something that spooked you?”

You do something every day to spook the fuck out of me.“No. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed.

“Have you ever fallen for a girl before, Rhett?”

“Fallen?” I scowled.

“Yeah, fallen. Have you ever experienced something else with a woman? Has there ever been feelings attached to sex?”

My heart began to race wilder, the panic of being found out setting in. I’d been vulnerable with her all this time but beingthatvulnerable seemed a bridge too far.

“No,” I croaked. “Never.”

“Not even the first time?”

“Especially not the first time.” No guy was ever truly proud of their first performance, and I was no exception. It had been a job to get done. A box to check. A hurdle to overcome. I barely remembered the girl, only my desperate need to zip up, get gone, and tell Ollie I was no longer a virgin.

“Do you think…” Jules paused to concentrate on the way her fingers danced over my pounding heart. “Maybe that’s what could be wrong? That because you’ve written songs about me, you’re worried it means something else.”

“Don’t get this twisted, Jules. I’m not falling over here.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. But I do want to know if, when all this is over, it’s going to mean something—us.”

The mention of this all being over made me tense, and my body went rigid around her—my jaw, too. She felt it instantly. Her eyes navigated all of me, tracing of the hard lines that were soft only moments ago, before she looked back up into my eyes and held my gaze.

I stared right back, not breaking the moment, and not knowing what to say or what to think or what to do.That had to be enough. I had nothing else to give.

“Oh, Rhett,” she started with a sigh. “Listen, sometimes, we want something because we can’t have it. It’s forbidden. Thinking there are rules makes us want to break them. Holding in a secret makes you want to blurt it out. If something is free to take, we generally turn it away because it holds no value. If anyone can have it, it isn’t special. Sometimes, we see things we can’t afford to have in our lives, and we get lost between fantasy and reality. Things get… distorted. We think we need things we don’t really need. We think we feel things we don’t really feel. It’s all in our heads.” Her hand slid up to my neck, and she leaned even closer, candy lips hovering over me, intoxicating me with warm breaths I wanted to fall asleep in. “You said I wasn’t to get it twisted, and that’s fine. I won’t. I don’t want this to scare you. But don’t you get it twisted, either.”

I looked down at her mouth, feeling myself swallowing hard before I looked back up into her eyes.

“I won’t,” I said, knowing it was a lie. Feeling it was possibly one of the biggest lies I would ever set free. “I won’t get it twisted.”

“We both know what this is,” she went on, sounding far too calm compared to the storm I was holding within.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Totally.”

“If we stay on the same page, this won’t get messy.”

“Right.”

She grinned far too brightly. How could she look so happy when she’d just delivered a speech that pretty much told me we were nothing but casual sex, no strings attached. That both of us only wanted this because it was forbidden.

It was more than that to me.

How could she not feel what I felt?

Coldness ran through my bloodstream, and my heart sank, retreating into its old space where I’d always kept it locked away.

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