me?
He ran his hand through his wet hair. "I have plans after work tonight. What time is the wedding on Saturday?"
I hoped he couldn't see the disappointment on my face. "The ceremony is at five. And it's about half an hour from here." It was weird having a conversation with a guy in a shower. Especially a naked guy who I was crushing on, who was starting to get another erection. I peeled my eyes away from his groin.
"Okay." He smiled at me. "In the meantime, you should think of all the different ways you think you deserve to be punished." He leaned forward. "And don't worry, I already have a few ideas of my own," he whispered in my ear. His warm breath and naughty words made me shiver.
I watched him and his perfect ass step out of the shower and close the curtain.
Chapter 27
"What's wrong?" Emily asked as she opened the door.
"Why do you always assume something is wrong when I visit you?"
She stepped aside to let me in. "Because whenever you show up unannounced, something is always wrong."
I sat down on her couch and tucked my feet beside me.
"Seriously, Keira, you're freaking me out. What's wrong?"
"Really, nothing. I just finished my last two articles for the How to Play with a Player series."
"What steps were those again?"
Emily seemed to love hearing about my risqu茅 articles. "Step four was 'Turn up the Heat'. You know, being super sexy and all." And giving Rory head and pretending I was practicing for my date. Emily didn't need to know that though. Fortunately she already confessed that she never read my articles, so hopefully she just wanted to hear about it and wouldn't read it. It was actually really fun to remember all the crazy stuff I did to get Rory's attention. "And step five was 'Make Him Jealous'. It was just about going on a fake date. So I'm officially done now."
"Well, that's great. Now you can just put that behind you and hope that Rory never sees it."
My stomach churned. "Yeah, I know. The last one will come out in Sunday's paper and then hopefully the whole thing will just blow over. But..." I looked down at my hands in my lap. "It's just...when I was writing, I felt..." I sighed and put my face in my hands. "I've never felt this way before," I said into my hands.
"Keira, I can't even understand what you're saying."
"Even when I'm not with him, just thinking about him makes me...ugh, what am I going to do?"
"I seriously can't understand anything you're saying right now."
I lifted up my head. "I think I'm in love with him."
"Wait, what?"
"No, I know I'm in love with him. Because I thought I loved David. And it killed me when he dumped me. And I couldn't stop crying when he got engaged to the next girl he dated. But I never felt this way about him. I've never felt this way about anyone before."
Emily smiled.
"I'm completely addicted to him. Why are you smiling at me? Stop smiling like that. You look like you just murdered someone, you psychopath."
"Whoa! Calm down for one second. I'm smiling because I'm happy for you."
"You can't be happy for me! I wrote a whole series of articles about how I tricked him into sleeping with me. I'm a monster."
Emily laughed. "You're not a monster. Just think of all the things that he's probably done to get women into bed with him."
"I don't want to think about that. Besides, that's different. He didn't do any of that with me. When he finds out about my articles, he's going to hate me. His last girlfriend completely fucked him up when she cheated on him. That's why he acts like a slut and is afraid of commitment. He's going to think what I did was a huge betrayal."
"You don't know that."
"Wouldn't you?"
Emily paused for a second. "What made you write the articles in the first place? I've been reading along and all these things you've done...it's not like you."
Crap, Jim. "I just got some advice about how to make Rory want me again. And the article just kind of accidentally happened. I pitched a pretty different idea to my editor and she wanted it to be sexier."
"Who the heck gave you the advice to be more risqu茅 instead of being yourself? That's terrible advice."
"Just another friend."
"Well don't listen to them anymore. They're the worst."
I couldn't help but laugh. It was pretty funny that she was making