My words died on my tongue when the expression on her face shifted into something I wished I couldn’t make out. I wanted her to be pissed, to be angry with me the way she should be, but instead she was looking at me a little like I’d been looking at her for the last month. Her eyes were tender, but her lips were parted, and something like need rose and sucked all the air from the room.
I drew in a ragged breath. “Aly… ”
Don’t.
I barely shook my head.
Slowly she began to approach, and I sank farther back into the chair the closer she came, my knee bouncing harder as she timidly inched up in front of me. Her movements were slow, hypnotizing, and I couldn’t stop myself from watching those legs. My eyes darted to her hands. She was rubbing her thumbs over her fingertips as if she were searching for some kind of friction or maybe looking for confidence. My gaze flicked up to meet her face. A color I didn’t understand had darkened her eyes. There was no looking away as she crossed the room, and my head continued to tilt back, locked on her, lost in this place where I knew I absolutely shouldn’t fucking be.
She stopped just a breath from me.
My hands dropped slack, dangled at my sides.
Everything became heavy. My fingers twitched, and I had to force the air in and out of my lungs.
I swore I could actually hear Aly’s heart beating as she hovered in hesitation an inch away. She blinked hard, squirmed before she looked at me with determination. “Jared, I don’t want you to leave.”
“Aly… I… ” What was I supposed to say? Because I didn’t want to leave, either.
I had to.
Erasing the last of the space between us, Aly allowed the front of her legs to touch my knees, and she groaned as if the contact seared her. She wavered, before she reached out to run the back of her hand down my face, testing me. Tempting me.
I stopped breathing altogether when she slowly straddled my lap and murmured close to my ear, “Please… don’t leave me.”
Fuck.
This was bad, really fucking bad. And I knew I should push her away, make her stop because what she was doing was only bringing us a little closer to the edge. She held on to the chair behind me, her warm body pressed into mine. There was no chance she wasn’t feeling just how much I wanted her.
“What are you doing, Aly?” My hands went to her slender hips with the intention of edging her off my lap. Instead my fingers dug into the soft skin.
A shudder sped up my spine when she trembled above me.
Wetting my lips, I tried to move her back but only managed to brush up against her farther. Her expression was severe but soft, her movements shaky but sure. She searched my face, her eyes burning a path as she left me utterly exposed. And I could smell her, and the memory of the way she tasted, the way she felt, overwhelmed every last one of my senses. She didn’t even have to move, and she was already touching me everywhere.
She swallowed, then spoke. “Did you want to kiss me last night?”
“Last night was a mistake, Aly. I – ”
Her hands went to my face, and she held me there, forcing me to look up at her. “I didn’t ask you if it was a mistake. I asked if you wanted to.”
A frustrated sound worked its way free of my throat, and I shifted again, which only brought her closer. Right then I knew there was not a fucking thing I could do because nothing else mattered in the world except for the way she felt pressed up tight against me. My fingers dug farther into her hips, and we were nose-to-nose, Aly’s hands firm on my face. I realized we were moving, our bodies subtly rocking.
I groaned. “I’ve wanted to kiss you every single second of every single day since the moment I opened my eyes to find you standing over me, Aly. But you know we can’t do this.” My voice cracked. “I don’t get to have this. I already told you… you deserve someone who can love you, someone who will be good for you, and you know that’s not me.”
I hoped maybe she’d listen to reason, but instead she crushed her chest to mine and dipped her head to the side. Her mouth came urgent against my neck, and she kissed at a sensitive spot under my jaw that very nearly made me jump out of my skin because it felt so fucking good. And she was sucking and moving and touching and… fuck.
Making her way up my neck, she kissed along my jaw, then lifted her soft lips to mine as she murmured, “Then tell me you don’t want me.”
Pleasure rocked through my body when she ground herself against me. A growl clanged around in my chest and rumbled up my throat. “Aly… ”
And she did it again, holding me close as if she were hanging on to life. “I said… tell me you don’t want me.”
“You know that would be a lie.” My eyelids closed with the admission, and I knew I shouldn’t say it, but I needed her to know. “God, I want you so bad, Aly. So bad.”
I could feel the affection in her touch as she slowly slid her hands down my chest and over my stomach. Her deep green eyes never released mine when she sat back a little to take hold of the bottom of her tank. Slowly she drew it up, inch by excruciating inch. And I was frozen, everything except for my eyes that trailed her movements as I took in the lush flesh she exposed.
Aly wasn’t wearing a bra, and I thought maybe somewhere in my subconscious I already knew that, but this… this was shocking, too much, and I sucked in a fortifying breath because I had no idea how I was ever going to get out of this.
I didn’t want to.
Aly’s hair fell in a tangled mess around her shoulders as she finally lifted the shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor.
And I was trembling, my body losing all control as my attention shot between her face and her full breasts.
What the hell did she think she was doing to me? This was almost as cruel as making me watch her splash around with Dickhead in that fucking pool last night. Although neither time had there been anything callous in her movements, nothing meant to taunt, and tonight it was clear this was spurred by the same need spinning through her that was spinning through me.
“Touch me,” she commanded, her voice low. There was something in the demand, a hidden shyness that only affirmed the goodness I found in her.
“Aly… damn it… you need to stop.”
“Please,” she begged.
My fingers worked deeper into her hips, and Aly sat back, her hands on my shoulders as she bared herself to me. This girl was so unbelievably gorgeous, her skin a creamy color that seemed to glow in the dim light. So soft. Perfect.
My fingers moved, slowly trailing up her sides, dipping into the faint divots between each of her ribs. “Aleena” quietly slipped from my mouth like a prayer.