it all wrong. I want to have sex with him. He’s played the starring role in my dreams for months now. “I don’t want to take it slower. I was just thinking that the last time we had sex, we had both had our fair share of alcohol…” I shrug. “It just seems weird that I’m going to see your penis.”
“You’ve seen it before. And can we not call it a penis? It sounds like we’re in that puberty class in the fifth grade.”
I chuckle. “I know, I know. But don’t you feel weird that you’re going to see me naked?”
“Um, no. I feel eager. I have puzzle pieces of you that I’ve formed in my head and I can’t wait to see the whole package stone-cold sober.”
I unbuckle my seat belt and rise onto my knees, leaning forward to kiss him again. “You always say all the right things.” I press my lips to his. “Take me home. Forget what I said.”
Getting situated in the seat again, I clasp my seat belt and he puts the truck in drive.
“What if I’m not what you imagined?” I say as he pulls into his neighborhood.
Colton lives just outside downtown so he can walk to work if he wants. It’s a two-story, three-bedroom house that people made fun of him for buying when he graduated vet school. He told me he didn’t want to move into an apartment and pay someone else’s mortgage. We looked at thirty houses before he put an offer on this one. Watching Brigette move in and make it her home after I helped him decorate it all these years probably would have felt like a knife in my heart.
He says nothing until he’s parked in his garage and takes the keys out of the ignition.
“I’m gonna need you to get out of your head now.” He climbs out of the truck, and I open my door to climb out, but he’s there to open it for me. “From now on, you wait until I open it for you.”
“That’s demanding, and you know I don’t adhere to demands,” I say, accepting his hand to step down onto the running board then the concrete.
He chuckles. “Okay. Please don’t get out of the truck before I can open the door from this point forward? Is that better?”
I walk into his house. “Maybe, but I can open my own door. Just saying.”
I do love his chivalry. He’s always been that way throughout our friendship. But I also like giving him a hard time.
I slide off my heels in his laundry room and walk into his kitchen like any other time I’ve come here. I’m smiling until I spot the folder on the table labeled honeymoon. “Oh, you were going on a honeymoon?”
He picks up the folder and stuffs it into a drawer. “Just a quick trip in case questions were asked. With no cancellation insurance so I guess I can kiss that money goodbye.”
“Do you think you guys would have… I mean, maybe feelings would have developed.”
“No. I don’t.” He rounds the kitchen table and grabs my hand, entwining our fingers. “I was already in love with a crazy ginger.”
“But over time?”
“Stop it.” He releases my hands and wraps his around my waist, pulling me to him.
“Stop what?”
He kisses my forehead. “Stop trying to put roadblocks in the way of what’s happening between us.”
“I’m not.”
“I see it. It’s the same way you were after we had sex right before I left for college.”
My forehead falls to his chest. This man sees through me and it scares me. “I think I’m just scared.”
His lips press to the top of my head. “Me too, but I don’t want to be anywhere else. Do you?”
I look up at him, willing myself to push past the fear. “No.”
His knuckles graze my cheek. “Look, we’re already agreeing.”
He bends down and kisses me. The awkwardness fades, and an intense desire for this man replaces any hesitation. I want more as he sweeps his tongue into my mouth and his fingers thread through my hair, holding my head to him. As if I’d pull away now.
My hands fiddle with his shirt, unbuttoning each button until his chest is bare. If I could stand to have his lips off me, I’d push him back so I could watch my hands slide down his well-built chest.
He strips his lips off mine, eyes searching my dress. “Zipper?”
“Side.” I push his shirt off his shoulders.
He takes a moment to remove his cufflinks,