Page 163 of Passion at the Lake

I knew from experience the best position for me to work on this cut, so I straddled his chest. I’d spent a lot of time straddling him, lower of course, and the contact with him threatened to melt me into a sobbing puddle of need. I straightened my shoulders and internalized tonight’s mantra,I can and will be better.

“You certainly like to be on top,” he quipped.

“Shut up.” With Boone, I’d always insisted on it. His comment made me question whether I’d been overcompensating for my time with Kevin. Maybe I’d gone overboard in trying to be the reverse of the woman I’d been before—the woman who’d allowed herself to be bullied.

“Ouch,” Boone protested as I dabbed at the cut with water-soaked gauze.

“Man up, Benson. I’m using a lighter touch than you did with my knee.”

“Yeah, but I had to get gravel out.”

Pushing his head back onto the towel, I wiped the cut again. “And I have to get the germs out—invisible, but no less harmful.”

He shut up and tolerated my ministrations, occasionally casting his eyes downward toward my chest where my tank top hung loose.

“Got something in your eye?”

“No. I was…” he stuttered.

“If you sayadmiring the view, I’m going to put vinegar in this cut before sealing it up.” For some reason we’d gone from dancing and kissing back to battling. I needed to get us back to a middle ground, given what had been on that police report.

“We need to talk,” I said as I cleaned around the cut.

“Last time I said that to you, your response was, and I quote, ‘I don’t need to do shit.’ Oh, and then you added that you never wanted to talk to me again.”

Ouch.That made me sound terrible, and I had been. This was going to be harder than I thought, because I’d hurt him. I sighed. “I was pretty mean, and I’m sorry about that. I would like to talk, please.”

“You want everything your way, including talking but not listening. I’ve had enough of that. Just now you saw Lisa and ran away rather than ask the question on your mind. You have to decide if you’re going to run away at the first thing you don’t like, or stick around and have a conversation.”

Ouch again.He was landing direct blow after direct blow.

* * *

Boone

With her ontop of me like this, it was incredibly hard to resist pulling her down and kissing the hell out of her. But I’d told Angela to decide, and now it was her choice which way this would go. At least she wasn’t straddling my cock.

Her face contorted in confusion, and silence followed.

I’d meant to give her the freedom to leave if she wanted. But as the seconds of silence ticked by, it scared me that my words might have been too harsh.

She took in a big breath. “You’re right. I was wrong to walk out on you. So very wrong. I should have stayed and talked it out. I could have told you that what you thought happened wasn’t true, or at least it wasn’t the whole story. Grace gave me the police report.”

“I was wrong to say what I did,” I offered, trying to soften my previous words. “I jumped to a conclusion from the page Devlin gave me, which wasn’t the whole thing, and wasn’t even accurate. I was pretty fucking stupid.”

“You said it, not me.” She laughed. “And from Devlin?”

Her laughter kept a spark of hope alive.

“Next, I have to ask,” she said. “Did I interrupt something between you and Lisa tonight?”

I swallowed a laugh. The flare of jealousy in her eyes when she’d seen Lisa here had been obvious enough, so I played with it. “You mean, did you stop us from getting frisky?”

She gulped. “Well…she was dressed kind of—”

“Slutty,” I finished for her.

“I was going to say like for a date.”

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