Page 57 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
He’s standing over me, a washcloth in his hands. His eyes fix on mine, and he hesitates. “I haven’t done this, like…ever, actually. So, um. I’ll be gentle.”
“You—what?” I ask, not sure what he’s talking about. “OH!”
This last is a gasp of surprise as he tugs my thighs apart, and then with an exquisitely gentle touch, he uses two fingers to splay apart the tender folds of my center and uses the warm, damp washcloth to wipe me clean, dragging the cloth upward, folding, and swiping again, until I’m clean.
My throat closes and the prickling in my eyes returns, and my chest is somehow tight as a drum and hammering like one.
Because that was, without a doubt, the most tender, most intimate, and most vulnerable moment I’ve ever experienced in my life and I’m in no fucking way ready for it.
It makes my heart hurt.
It makes my head spin.
It makes everything inside me tense up, freeze, paralyzed in a breathless panic.
When I’m clean, Franco straightens, holding the washcloth in one hand, his eyes on mine. His brow is furrowed in deep, troubled grooves.
The hand holding the washcloth shakes, almost imperceptibly. I know he was as affected by this as I was.
“We just had sex without a condom,” I whisper, blinking up at him—blinking, because I refuse to acknowledge the stinging blurring heat in my eyes as anything other than…something I don’t want to think about.
“I know,” he mutters back.
“I’ve never, ever, ever had sex without a condom. Not once, ever, in my whole life, even though I’ve been on birth control since I was fifteen.” I hesitate. “And, um, I get tested regularly, so I’m…you know, clean.”
“I haven’t either, even when I was married.” He meets my eyes briefly. “And so do I, and so am I.”
I sit up very, very carefully, not taking my eyes off of his. “You were…married?”
He closes his eyes briefly, as if he can’t believe he just said that. “Shit.” He opens them again. “I…yeah. I was. For almost six years, back in my twenties.”
“And you never once had unprotected sex with her?”
He is so visibly tense that I kind of wish I hadn’t asked. “No. She…um. She hated birth control. Said it whacked up her hormones, so we…no, we always used a condom.” He winces. “It’s weird talking about this with you. I’ve never talked about it at all, with anyone, let alone like this.”
“Like this?”
He indicates me, himself, and the bed, all in one gesture. “We’re still naked, we just had sex, and it was…”
“Something?” I suggest.
His laugh is disbelieving and amused. “Yeah, it was something all right.”
We are both silent. What do I say? I can see him trying to figure out the same thing.
“Audra, I…” Franco starts. Trails off.
“I can’t believe we did that,” I say just to fill in the quiet.
“I know. Me either.”
“I just…I got…I got carried away,” I say. I look at him again, after long moments of looking anywhere but at his eyes. “I never get carried away.”
He nods. “Me too, and me neither.”
“How did it happen, Franco?” I ask, tugging the blanket up and clenching it under my arms. “How did we…how did this happen? How did we get here?”
“I don’t know, Audra.” He sits on the edge of the bed, and I’m drawn into his eyes, into his lean frame, his tan skin and hard muscles. “If you’d known this was going to happen when you got into the Lyft with me, would you still have come with me?”
I’m having terrible difficulty breathing. “I…” I blink hard. “I don’t know,” I whisper.
“You don’t?”
I swallow hard. “No, that’s not right. The answer is yes, I would.” I’m somewhere between panting and breathless. “Okay? I would.”
“What if…” He turns his eyes to mine—don’t say it, don’t say it, please fuck don’t say it, I hear myself chanting in my head. “What if you get pregnant?”
“I’m on the shot, and I have been for years. I’ve never lapsed.” I’m swallowing hard. “I’ll swing by a pharmacy and get a Plan B, though, just to be safe.”
He clenches his jaw so hard I hear his teeth grinding in the silence. “Plan B.” Even his voice is hard.
“Yeah.” I’m confused by his reaction to it—the mere mention has him tenser than ever and almost angry. “Is that a problem for you?” I know I sound pissy, but if he’s going to turn all controlling about this, we’re gonna have problems.
“No…no.” He softens his voice. “No, it’s not a problem.”
“Then what’s with your reaction just now?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nothing. Just…a personal thing.”
I frown. “I’m naked in your bed. I still have your cum leaking out of me, Franco. I think I can handle some of your personal stuff at this point.”
He takes a deep breath. “I need a minute.”
