Page 11 of Live for Me

“Don’t forget to breathe, Memphis.”

The son of a bitch made it worse when he chuckled.

“Well, you don’t have bad breath,” I said. Why it came out as a whisper, I wasn’t sure.

“I’m not going anywhere, angel,” he whispered right back.

“What?”

I looked up at him that time, and he nodded down to where my other hand was digging into his bicep so hard that my knuckles looked like they were trying to break through the skin. I had to very consciously think about releasing each one of my fingers to get them to move. And even then, I abandoned the death grip on his muscle and just moved my whole hand down a little further to make sure it was still on his arm.

“Sorry. I tried to tell you everything about this would be uncomfortable. When you add my kind of awkwardness to an already uncomfortable situation, you’re just asking for it to be rough.”

“You can’t say things like that while I’m holding you this way.”

“What?”

“Asking for it to be rough,” he repeated and laughed. “How can you set me up with a line like that and expect menotto tell you how much you’d love my version of rough?”

My entire motherfucking body tried to seize up when my brain registered that he was talking about sex. I immediately dropped my eyes right back to his chest to escape whatever way he might’ve looked at me after that.

“Oh, no,” he said quickly and tightened the arm around my back. “Don’t you dare even think about standing still or backing out of this. Imagine how fucking awkward that’d be to have to get back into a quiet truck with me right now.”

At least then I’d have the option of not looking at him.

And not touching him.

When had everything in my mouth dried up?

And when had my underwear gotten wet?

CHAPTER SIX

utah

This wasn’t my first time holding an attractive woman this way. Not by a long a shot.

It absolutely was my first time holding an attractive woman who was panicking so hard that she could barely speak. Attractive women in general weren’t new to me, but something about Memphis put her miles above the most attractive woman I’d ever seen in real life.

It wasn’t the natural breathtaking beauty that put her there.

It was the weird-as-fuck contradictory state in which she existed.

Outwardly, she was the embodiment of perfect calm in the middle of absolute and pure fucking chaos, but she couldn’t function at all in the quiet intimacy of two people simply being alone. I’d experienced this girl’s brain operating at incomprehensible speeds to make life or death decisions that should’ve been beyond a human’s computing abilities, but she couldn’t figure out how to slow down and feel this moment with just me.

Even with that, I’d embarrassed her nearly to her actual death by giving her a tiny glimpse into how constantly sexual my thoughts were about her.

She gave up trying to respond to my words. She gave up trying to escape. She gave up trying to stand still. She squished her entire face into my chest to avoid me entirely, and I couldn’t do anything about it other than laugh and keep spinning her in circles. Spinning myself deeper into this Memphis pit. There was already no chance of escaping it. Not that I had any plans to make so much as an attempt, but at this point, she might as well start tossing dirt back into said pit on top of me because I was already prepared to die here.

Her whole body tensed even more when a group of giggling women walked by us. She turned her head; so she was looking away from them, but she kept her cheek pressed against my chest.

“They’re laughing at us,” she whispered. I released the hand I was using to hold her hand on my chest so I could put that arm around her, too, and I brought the other up until I was squeezing her whole upper body against me.

“Let them.”

“How are you like this?” she asked.

“Like what?”

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