Dirty Thoughts - Megan Erickson Page 0,32
this was going to end.
“This’ll be it, right?” she said softly. “You’ll leave again, and we’ll chalk this up as a relapse?”
His body tensed under hers, and she raised her head to see his eyes narrowed on her. “That how you see me? Like a drug that’s bad for you but you can’t quit?”
Jenna reached up to cup his face. “Cal—”
“Why you think I stopped this that night in the tow truck? I was trying to save us this conversation.”
She’d screwed this up. Not that he wouldn’t have left in the morning anyway, but now he’d leave pissed. “Wait—”
He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and lowered her hand to rest on his chest again. “Go to bed, Jenna.”
She blew out an irritated breath. “Will you quit interrupting me?”
His chest hitched as he inhaled. “I’m sorry. But I meant what I said earlier. Not talking about this. Not now.”
She pursed her lips. “You’re dictating the conversation just like that?”
“Guess I am.”
She dropped back onto his chest with a thud. She was too tired to argue. “Fine.”
His body relaxed once again, his fingers making small circles on her shoulders. “Night, Sunshine.”
“Night, Cal.”
Chapter Ten
CAL EXHALED THE smoke out the window he’d opened in Jenna’s screened-in back porch.
It was a nice room, small, although the only furniture she had in there was a small table in the corner with some droopy-looking plant. He’d had to drag a chair out from the kitchen so he had a place to sit.
He’d woken up at two in the morning with Jenna’s hot little body wrapped around him. He hadn’t wanted to move. Lying there forever had sounded pretty damn nice, which was why he freaked out and hauled ass.
He’d found a pair of jeans in the saddlebags on his bike when he’d gone out to get his cigarettes and pulled those on rather than those god-awful pants he’d had on earlier. Although, he had caught Jenna looking at his ass, so they’d been worth the chafing.
He braced his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands, his cigarette still burning between his first and second finger in his right hand.
Relapse.
Fuck, that word had killed him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought the same thing a time or two, that Jenna was like a drug, but the way she said it made his stomach churn. He didn’t want to be her bad addiction.
If she made him feel like the sun was shining on him, how did he make her feel? Like he was dragging her into the shadows?
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck me.”
He should leave, and he probably would, as soon as he’d sucked all the fucking carcinogens out of this damn cigarette that he could. His nerves were a mess. This was what happened around Jenna. He lost his damn mind. Had he really changed all that much from when he was eighteen? Maybe he’d just avoided all situations that mattered, that made him care.
Situations that caused feelings.
He didn’t hear her until the wooden step leading down to the porch creaked. He closed his eyes briefly, then peered over his shoulder.
Jenna stood in front of the door as it fell shut behind her. She wore that blue robe again. The one he’d peeled off her body. He wanted to do it all over again. At the first spike of his returned arousal, he regretted not zipping up his jeans. He turned away from her, taking another drag on his cigarette and flicking the ash into a small bowl he’d placed beside his chair.
This wasn’t her fault. It was his. He didn’t trust himself to keep a cool head around her, to be the man he’d spent ten years trying to be. Around her, all he felt like was that head-over-heels-in-love kid.
And that kid had been a fuck-up.
He waited, listening to the rustle of her robe as she moved. A hand fluttered on his bare shoulder, and then she gasped.
He turned his head quickly, unsure why she’d made that sound. Her eyes were glued to his shoulder, her eyes wide, a hand covering her open mouth.
Shit.
He turned back around so he didn’t have to see her face. He’d forgotten about the tattoo. He’d gotten it years ago, when he was a heartsick twenty-one-year-old who drank too much. He didn’t hate it; in fact, he loved it. But he’d never intended for Jenna to see it.
Ever.
Her fingers reached out again, tracing the black-inked rays of the sun that extended down his bicep. The sun itself, on