Indecent Suggestion - By Elizabeth Bevarly Page 0,61
too, but it didn’t quite feel genuine. Turner seemed to realize it, because his own smile faded.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, his voice edged with concern.
She nodded, but said nothing.
Now his smile disappeared completely. But he didn’t withdraw from her, only skimmed her cheek with his thumb and then turned his hand to repeat the action with the back of his knuckles. “’Cause, you know, Becca, as nice as last night was, right now, you kind of look like you’re having second thoughts about what happened.”
“No, I’m not,” she lied.
He said nothing for a moment, his fingers still caressing her cheek. Then, very quietly, he said, “Yeah, I think you are.”
She sighed softly. “Okay, maybe I am. But not the way you think.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “I’m not having second thoughts about what we did last night.”
“You sure?”
She nodded, for the first time feeling certain about her reply. And about her feelings, too. “I’m not sorry we made love,” she told him. “I’m just not sure I understand how it happened, that’s all.”
His smile was back, but there was something melancholy about it this time. “That makes two of us,” he told her.
She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I know I’m the one who started things last night. And the other times, too. And I know that, before last night, I was always the one to stop them before we had a chance to finish.”
“But last night you didn’t,” he added unnecessarily.
“I know,” she said. “That’s what has me so confused.”
“You don’t understand why you didn’t put a stop to things last night?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t understand why I did put a stop to them before.”
He propped himself up on one elbow to look at her, clearly very interested in what she was saying. “So then why was last night different from the other times?”
Becca thought about that before answering. She hadn’t felt any different, she realized. Last night her feelings had been identical to the first two times she’d wanted to have sex with Turner. But the first two times, those feelings had subsided. Last night, they’d just kept growing fiercer and fiercer. And last night, she couldn’t put her reaction down to stress or pressure. Because last night, the two of them hadn’t been under any stress or pressure. And even if they had, she could have eased the tension by going outside to smoke a cigarette, the way so many other people were. Instead, she’d bypassed the smoking area and had gone straight into the shadows with Turner. Because she hadn’t wanted a cigarette. She’d wanted him. Powerfully. Intensely. Immediately.
But why had last night been different? she asked herself. Why had she finally gone through with it, and taken what she so desperately wanted? And why had she denied herself what she so desperately wanted before last night?
“I don’t know,” she finally said, not just in reply to Turner’s questions, but to her own, as well.
He said nothing for several moments, his expression offering not a clue about his thoughts. Ultimately—and, she had to admit, surprisingly—he seemed okay with her answer.
“Maybe it really doesn’t matter why,” he told her. “Maybe we shouldn’t question it. Maybe it’s something really simple that we’re just trying to make too complicated.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s like in the song.”
“What song?” she asked.
He smiled. “You know. It’s that crazy little thing called—”
Love, she finished silently for him when he stopped himself before saying the word out loud. And also when his expression changed from one of fond affection to one of stark-raving terror.
“Lust,” he finished then. “That crazy little thing called lust.”
Becca nodded. In a way, she even believed it. For some reason, though, she didn’t much like it.
But what else could it be but lust? she asked herself. What they’d done last night certainly hadn’t been generated by love. It had been too powerful, too hot, too raw, too extreme. It had been much too intense to be anything but a purely physical response to a purely physical feeling. Love was founded on the emotional, not the physical. Love was tender. Love was gentle. Love was sweet. What she and Turner had done last night had been—
Well. Something she wasn’t likely to find with anyone else, that was for sure. But it hadn’t been love. It couldn’t have been. It had been way too potent for that.
“Lust,” she repeated, thinking maybe it made sense, after all. Certainly more sense than that other L-word.