Page 15 of His Perfect Woman

She started to stir with a deep, honeyed groan as she stretched and curled up next to me again. Her body relaxed against me, then she opened her eyes and jumped.

“Oh! Sorry.” She laughed, jerking back all of a sudden. “I didn’t mean to get so...cozy with you. Just habit, I guess. When there’s a guy in my bed.”

We awkwardly yawned and stretched, laughing between breaths.

“That’s okay,” I offered, sitting straight up and inching toward the edge of the bed.

I could feel her watching me as I started hunting through the tangle of clothes, separating mine from hers. The morning bulge in my pants twitched at the sight of her lace panties on the floor.

“I guess, also out of habit, I should make an excuse about needing to work early and not being free for breakfast,” she quipped. “This is exactly the kind of thing I try to avoid.”

“Kind of hard to avoid this time around,” I realized. “We have that big meeting this morning, remember?”

“Ha! You’re right. So, no excuse needed. You know that I have to work early, and so do you. I guess you were also right about this whole thing making sense, then.”

I felt a sudden pounding in my skull. I was in over my head. I wanted to have breakfast with Victoria. I didn’t want to be talking about what she usually did with guys in her bed or how she handled her one-night stands.

“What do you mean?” I asked, only half-thinking about it. I was too distracted by my own reservations—the same ones she had the night before and that I should have been paying more attention to instead of only thinking with my cock.

“You said we were a perfect match for this,” she explained. “And I guess you’re right. No need to lie or be weird. It just...I don’t know, Lucas. Maybe I’m just trying to comfort myself here. But...this isn’t weird, is it? Do you feel weird?”

I gave up on my search for my shirt and sank down on the edge of the bed in my boxers and pants, still unzipped.

“No, not weird. But we should talk.” I raked my hands through my hair.

I shuddered at her hand grazing my back. “What’s wrong? Are you having doubts?”

Looking back at her, I saw the way she clutched the sheets tighter around her and sank back against the pillows.

“Not doubts, necessarily,” I lied. Well, it was sort of a lie. The problem was my lack of doubt in all the wrong ways. This wasn’t just an arrangement to me. My head and heart were already at war after just one night. “I just think we need to set boundaries to keep this from getting messy.”

“Oh, now you want to talk boundaries!?” she snapped incredulously. “What happened to fuck rules?”

“I know, I know,” I groaned. “We should have talked before anything happened. I just couldn’t...I got caught up in everything. The rush of it...was exciting, you know?”

She crossed her arms and glared off towards the corner of the room. “This whole thing was your idea. You were so sure of it all being easy as pie and you didn’t want to entertain a single question or reservation I had. But now...what? I’m just another girl you’ve slept with and lost interest in? Now you want to clarify every little detail of this?”

I wanted to pull her into my arms to comfort her and calm her down. She had no idea what I was really thinking. No idea how I really felt about her. It had become second nature to keep it all to myself, but seeing her naked in bed next to me was dragging it all up to the tip of my tongue.

“I’m sorry, Vic. It’s not like that. I just want to iron things out, like...do we keep seeing other people?” I cringed to ask. Just imagining her having a night like that with someone else and then making an appearance together the next day...me knowing some other guy had his hands on her and trying to pretend like it didn’t bother me...

“I thought the whole driving force behind this was our disinterest in seeing other people?” she asked in a resentful tone.

“I’m not—” I insisted. “I don’t need to, but...what about you?”

“I don’t see this arrangement complicating my love life any more than a sperm donor would have,” she shot back. “Maybe I’ve thought about this more carefully than you have...even though it was your idea.”

“You don’t have to keep saying that. I know it was my idea. But if you’re open to seeing other people, then I will, too. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“I see what’s happening here,” she scoffed, shooting up from the bed to throw on her robe. “You think just because we slept together one time that I’m going to fall head over heels for you now.”

“I didn’t say that…”

“Then what are you saying, Lucas? I keep giving in and letting you have everything you want. I went along with your stupid lie! Now I’ve agreed to keep going along with it and everything else you proposed. I gave up on having a serious conversation about this and had sex with you instead. I feel like you’re jerking me left and right...like you can’t make up your mind.”

I stood up and swallowed down the hard lump in my throat. She was standing there with last night’s bun in her hair, all disoriented—strands of hair flopping down in her face. Her makeup had long worn off, but she had a fresh morning glow. She was in a big fluffy robe, fuming with her arms crossed.

I imagined the same scenario, but with her pissed about something else entirely. Me forgetting to take the garbage out or working too much. I loved her. She was beautiful. I wanted it...all of it. And this was the closest I was ever going to get. But if I didn’t do something to fix it, I wouldn’t even have that much.

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