Page 70 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

“Please don’t stop,” I breathe.

I pull his mouth down to meet mine. He kisses me, and suddenly, everything about this makes perfect sense. We are warm and hungry and sure. He tugs my bottom lip between his teeth, and his fingers thread into my hair, and I surrender to this impossible feeling. Another desperate sound escapes me.

“I expected a bit more enthusiasm,” he teases.

I kiss him around my grin. “I didn’t know you needed me to stroke your ego.”

He breathes out a laugh, but I feel him growing harder against me, and I get the feeling there’s another, very obvious part of him he wouldn’t mind my stroking. My thigh has involuntarily hooked around his hip. His hand slides down it, palming my ass, pulling me closer with a ragged breath. I tease his tongue with another tiny groan.

He just feels so good.

Better than I imagined, in the brief, secret moments that I allowed myself to imagine him. Me. Us.

We fit together in an insatiable way, with him trailing kisses down my neck, kneading my ass, nipping at my shoulder, like he can’t touch or taste enough of me. He smooths his widespread palm beneath the edge of my shirt, up the sensitive skin of my low belly, my ribcage, over the curve of my breasts. Why the hell am I wearing a sports bra right now? I consider taking it off. The way he’s kissing me makes me consider taking everything off.

“Do you wanna talk about this?” he asks as he’s peeling off my shirt.

I tug his shirt over his head, dropping it somewhere over the edge of the couch before pulling him back into a kiss.

“Is there anything I need to know about you?” I counter.

“Like what?”

“Condoms?”

“Yes.”

“Fetishes?”

“You,” he says, biting at my neck. “When you make that sound.”

I exhale into a smile, only belatedly realizing the tiny little moans I’m making as he moves. I can’t help it. He continues kissing down my chest, along the swell of my cleavage, licking and biting as much of me as he can reach. My skin feels tight, and I need more of him. More of this. It’s going to take a contortionist act to get out of this bra.

Absently, I seem to realize someone’s phone is vibrating against my hip. One message, followed quickly by a second. A third. I fish it out of the couch cushion and glance down to make sure it isn’t an emergency – and I realize belatedly that if it is, it isn’t mine. I don’t mean to read the message, but the backlit words stare up at me.

“Like Melissa,” I say flatly. “Who is texting, ‘I really need you right now’.”

This is joined by two other messages, which I don’t read aloud, mainly because I’ve briefly lost the ability to form words: ‘I know you said you couldn’t keep doing this. I’m sorry.’ and then simply, ‘Please’.

His face shifts as his gaze registers them. “Okay. That’s not what you think.”

I wait for the explanation, but it doesn’t come quickly enough. He seems dazed and confused. Caught.

“Care to elaborate?”

He swipes a hand through his hair as he straightens. “She’s my, um… She’s married to my dad.”

This hits me like a physical blow, with a simultaneous shock and sting. Heat blooms across my face, but the rest of me goes cold. I conjure up the image of the thirty-something brunette who was eyeing him at the restaurant like she wanted to jump his bones. I tug myself out from under him, feeling especially exposed without a shirt. I search for it with my face hot.

“Wow,” I say, the word tasting bitter. “I have to admit, I appreciate this plot twist less and less.”

He doesn’t respond, just sweeps another hand self-consciously through his hair. He looks… tortured. Not in a way I find very attractive. There’s a palpable shift in the mood, and just like that, the moment has passed. Suddenly, we’ve gone from not being able to close enough space between us to feeling like we don’t quite have enough distance. He’s suddenly serious, looking for his shirt.

“What’s going on there?” I prompt.

“Nothing.”

The way he says it sounds more like something. A big something. He tugs himself up off the couch, adjusts himself in his shorts, seemingly starts looking for his shoes or keys.

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