I don’t sleep well that night. I get into my dorm, and find Shane strewn across my bed, drooling on my pillow. Instead of waking him up and explaining why I’m in such a foul mood, I go to the bathroom and scrub my makeup off, hang the Givenchy dress on its hanger, and climb into bed next to him wearing nothing but a bra and panties.
“Hrum hrum,” he says, rolling over and squeezing himself against the wall without opening his eyes.
Curling up against Shane’s back, I try to get my head around my thoughts. When I was a teenager, my mom would sit me down whenever I had boy troubles and make me write down my feelings. She said it was the best way to work through things and get it straight, so I wouldn’t end up acting super emotional.
In the end, writing down my thoughts turned into songwriting. That was my angsty, emotional phase.
Blake’s hands and tongue remain in my memory throbbing like a tattoo on my skin. I rub my back up against Shane’s, but he’s not muscular enough for me to pretend I was sleeping next to my bodyguard.
There are so many things I need to think about, but in the end, my mind boils this situation down to a few main points. One… Blake is damn good with his tongue. Two… he wants me as much as I want him—because no man goes down on a woman unless he wants her. And three… he seems to think he crossed some line.
That final point excites me a little bit. I let myself imagine he was so desperate to touch me, he forgot we work together. I let myself believe Blake’s desire for me squashed his better judgment. It’s the only way I can make myself feel better after he promised it wouldn’t happen again.
Shane snuffles a little and rolls over, so he’s spooning me from behind, pulling me close. He’s a cuddler, and that’s usually okay unless he dreams of hot men. In that case, I wake up with a boner in my back and a smirking best friend telling me how lucky I am I don’t have a Y chromosome. At the moment, I’ll take the boost to my self-esteem.
Finally, I fall asleep, only to wake up at my usual time the next morning when my alarm goes off.
“I will kill everything you love,” Shane mutters into my neck as he rolls over on top of me, groping for the bedside table to trying and get hold of the alarm clock. He shuts it off and rolls back off of my prone body.
Eventually, I sigh and pull myself out of bed, reaching for my workout clothes.
“Seriously?” Shane asks.
“I need a run.”
“Tell me about the red carpet,” he says, even as his eyes droop and he flops back onto the bed.
“I’ll tell you when I get back.”
“Did you meet any celebrities?”
“Mmm… yeah. I’ll tell you later.”
“Good girl,” he says.
I throw my workout gear on, put my hair up into a ponytail, and grab my iPod. It isn’t until I get to the bottom of the driveway and realize I’ve forgotten one very important thing—Blake joins me on my runs.
Crap, I think as I walk down to the street to find him waiting there, the sun rising behind his back and pouring through his blond hair.
He looks good enough to eat, as usual. Standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and his black T-shirt tight on his biceps, it makes me want to run up and leap at him, wrap my legs around his waist and kiss him. Last night, I’d been orgasm-drunk and hardly appreciated the way his tongue and lips had felt. If I could kiss him now, I’d memorize every moment.
But when I try to smile at him and test the waters, his face is impassive.
“Are you ready to go?” he asks.
Business as usual, then.
I nod, not trusting myself to speak even though I feel like screaming. I even go as far as to stuff my iPod in my ears, so I won’t hear his breathing. I try to convince myself that the look on his face—half-confused, half-hurt—is just my imagination.
As we run together, my ears filling with the sounds of songs I can’t even bring myself to pay attention to, I am hyper-aware of him. My brain is swirling with everything I want to say to him and everything I wish he would say to me.
I wish I could grab him and pull him off the road, and tell him I don’t care that we work together because I’ve never been so attracted to anyone in my life. I wish I could ask him why he’s so damn uptight about this. Is it because of Sadie? I feel my heart clench, and it’s got nothing to do with the exercise. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe he’s convinced himself that because Sadie lost herself to fame that I will, too. And if he lets himself date me—I can barely think the word because I haven’t given it much thought either as I’ve spent more time thinking about fucking him than I have actually getting to know him—that I’ll turn out the way she did?
I stop in the middle of the road. We’re about ten minutes into the run, right near a copse of trees that sends a long shadow over the path.
Blake runs a little way further before stopping and turning to look at me.
“Did you hurt yourself?” he asks.
“No,” I say. He looks confused, and I push on, “Do you think I’ll end up like Sadie?”
Blake’s face immediately closes up. There’s tension all around his eyes and mouth, his fingers curl up into loose balls, and his chest, easily visible beneath his tight shirt, freezes as though he’s forgotten to breathe.
“I’m not, I was just curious.” I go on, “Because I think you’re probably worried about that. Are you?”
“I’m not sure,” he says, still frowning.
“Do you think I’m anything like her right now?”
“I don’t think so.”
That makes me feel better, but it doesn’t help the situation between us. It doesn’t help the fact I can still taste him as a memory on my lips, and I can still remember what he did to me, and what he said afterward.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Blake looks almost like he wants to ask, but after a moment his eyes clear, and I can see he understands what I’m getting at.
“I already apologized for that.”
“I don’t remember asking for an apology.”
“You should have,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down to his left at the clump of trees at the side of the path. “What I did was stupid and immature. I should know better.”
“I didn’t want you to stop,” I say while taking a step forward, and I’m relieved when he doesn’t step away. His arms are still crossed over his chest, but his eyes are hooded, and his tongue creeps out to lick his lips. “I still don’t.”
His legs twitch, but he doesn’t move away.
“I made the mistake of mixing business with pleasure once,” he says.
“You just said you don’t think I’m like her,” I remind him. I take another step closer. “And that sure as hell didn’t stop you before. Why did you do it, Blake? Why?”
The next words that come out of his mouth are barely a whisper. “Because I wanted you.”
His words make me want to sigh, to stretch like a cat in the sunlight, to jump and wrap my legs around him, but he’s still too far away for me to do that. “You can have me,” I say instead.
“I’m not interested in a relationship.”
I almost want to laugh. I’m so desperate for his touch that the thought of a relationship hadn’t even crossed my mind. I want him against me and inside me, but dating me? It hadn’t even registered.
“Who said anything about a relationship?” I ask.
Blake doesn’t move. The air between us is so tight with tension I almost want to pull away, but I can feel him wavering, I can feel him tearing through my shirt with his eyes. The muscles in his forearms are taut with the effort he’s taking to hold himself.
“I shouldn’t,” he says.
“I want you to.”
And then I take a chance. I step close so quickly he only has time to drop his hands to his sides before I’m throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him.
His skin is warm, not sweaty, because we’ve barely had the chance to get breathless before we stopped. His whole body tenses, and I think he’s going to pull away and tell me I’m being unprofessional. He’d be right, but I’m starting to think I might go crazy with only the memory of his touch to keep me going.
Then he wraps his arms around me, crushes me to his chest, and kisses me so hard all I can do is hang on for dear life.