Page 26 of The Bad Girl List

“What?”

“If it wasn’t on your list, why did you draw a picture of me?” I already know she thinks I’m good-looking, but I don’t think that’s why she drew me. There were other good-looking guys in the bar, I’m sure. She could have drawn my brother, for example.

She swallows. “I don’t know.”

I decide to wait her out. In the short time I’ve known her, I’ve already deduced she doesn't like silence.

“It’s just …” She chews her bottom lip, fingers tightening around her sketchbook.

I continue to wait.

“I like to draw stories,” she says at last, her eyes unfocused as she looks out at the vineyards shifting in the darkness beyond us. “Like your grandpa and his friends. I bet he’s been friends with those guys for fifty years. I bet they sit and play at that same table all the time, and when they’re on their deathbeds, I think that table, those cards, and the whiskey are going to be some of their best memories.” She shakes herself, face snapping back to look at me. “At least, that’s what I saw when I looked at them. I tried to draw that.” Her eyes search my face. “There’s a story to you, too. I saw it when you walked in. I don’t know what it is, but I wanted to draw it anyway.”

I touch her cheek, running my fingers along her smooth skin until I cup one side of her face.

When I left the bungalow with Thomas, I hadn’t expected to feel a magnetic pull to a girl I barely know on the anniversary of the accident. I hadn’t expected to meet someone who sent all my painful memories into the background.

What would she say if I asked her to Sunday dinner? Would she think it was weird, considering the circumstances? If she says yes, would she wake up tomorrow and regret the decision?

Without warning, she leans forward and kisses me. Her lips are warm and soft and taste like vodka and cranberry juice.

A jolt goes through me. Before I realize what I’m doing, I pull her closer to deepen the kiss. Her hands run up the bare skin of my back and raise gooseflesh across my spine.

Then she’s on my lap, her chest pressing against mine in my dirty work shirt. I run one hand up her bare thigh, recalling she has nothing underneath but a pair of panties. I skim my fingers under the shirt, stopping just below her ass, and give her thigh a firm squeeze.

A soft sigh escapes between her lips and she arches against me. I feel myself getting hard.

The air between us shifts. The softness dissolves into something desperate, bordering on feral. Her hands come around and trace the ridges of my stomach, lingering around the waistline of my jeans. I trace my fingers down her neck, past her collarbone to her breast. It’s small and firm and perfect, the nipple rolling under my palm. She shifts again, arching herself into my hand. The throbbing in my pants leaves me breathing hard.

“Trevor.” Her breath hitches as she skims her mouth along my neck. Her fingers continue to dance along the waistline of my jeans.

“Yeah?” I tilt her back just far enough to bite down on her nipple through the denim shirt.

“There’s this thing on my list, number ten.”

When she breaks off in a soft moan, I bite down harder. My other hand slides past the hemline of her underwear to grip her perfectly smooth ass.

“Number ten?” I bring my mouth back up to her neck to suck. “On your Bad Girl List?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I growl in her ear when her hand slips down to cup my erection through my jeans.

“A vacation fling. I’m supposed to have one. You know, so I can have a place to live for free when I get back home.”

I didn’t think it was possible for her to make me any harder, but clearly I was wrong. I force myself to pause, to pull back and look her in the eye to make sure I’m not misconstruing anything she just said.

“Are you asking me to have sex with you?”

“Only if you want to.” Her eyes are dilated, one hand still rubbing me through my jeans.

My brain is fogging over. I want her so badly that it’s all I can do not to tear open the front of her–my–shirt and fuck her on the mountain of bar towels in the back of my brother’s car.

But I have a rule. I never sleep with a drunk girl unless she’s my girlfriend. There are too many potential fallouts.

But I’m drunk too, which at the end of some very complex math equation seems to equal a level playing field. I can’t be accused of taking advantage of someone if I’m three sheets to the wind too, right?

“I have a problem, too,” I say, tracing my hand around her panties to splay across her stomach.

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