Page 23 of Only You and Me

“How many men have you been with since… since us?”

Trina’s eyebrows fly up toward her forehead. “You sure you want to know that?” I hesitate, then nod while she takes a drink of her wine. “By ‘been with’, do you mean have had sex with or anything physical?”

My stomach drops. I don’t think I like where this is going. “Abort! Abort!” my heart screams. But I suck at taking advice. “Sex, I guess.”

I watch as she lifts her eyes upward like she’s thinking and I glance at her hand, which is now hovering a little above the tabletop. I see her fingers moving slightly, like she’s counting. A pang of pain stabs me right in the left side of my chest. To ease my nerves about her answer, I remind myself she was only with one man until she was twenty-one and had only kissed two others. How many can there really be?

When she clears her throat, I search her face. “Four. I’ve had sex with four men, messed around with a couple of others, and kissed more than I can remember. Now I’ve answered everything you could ask. Answer me.”

Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are glassy. I suspect mine are looking the same.

My heart pounds relentlessly in my chest and my mouth waters as queasiness settles in my stomach. Why did I fucking ask? Every bone in my body quivers with jealousy right now at the thought of her being with anyone but me. I’m aware I don’t have a right to feel that way, but I do anyway.

I lift my glass of whiskey and finish it.

“Yes. It’s true. I haven’t kissed another woman on the lips since you.”

Trina pierces me with a questioning gaze. It’s almost as if I can see her warring with her own thoughts, opening and closing her mouth several times before she finally speaks. “Tell me why. I need to know why.”

I get a moment of reprieve when the server comes over to see if we’d like anything else and I hand her my credit card while she pulls up our check on the mobile checkout device she has. I peek over at Trina and notice that she’s finishing her glass of wine.

I push her double shot of tequila across the table to her and lift my glass to clink with hers. We down the shots.

“Walk with me, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

CHAPTER6

TRINA

My mouth feels like I’ve been eating sand. It’s so dry and rough. And my head is killing me. I should get up and take something for it, but I don’t want to yet. I try to force myself back to sleep, to the delicious dream I was having.

I’ll go to my grave with the secret that I’ve been having sex dreams about Ben Donley since the day he broke my heart almost a decade ago. But this last one, Jesus, it differed from any I ever remember having before. Hell, different from how sex with Ben actually was. We were so young, and the sex was good, but neither of us really knew what we were doing. We were simply learning together how freeing it was to be physical with someone and to have sex with them when there was emotional intimacy. Before it all blew up.

But dream Ben last night… Oh. My. God. He upped his game. I keep my eyes closed, thinking about him covering me with his body while he backed me up against a wall, bringing his lips to mine. At first, he kept the kisses soft, almost a caress against my closed lips. But when my mouth parted on a soft moan, his tongue dipped in between my lips and gently explored me until I couldn’t take it any longer and tugged on his hair, pulling him toward me and deepening the kiss. That led to wandering hands, and I can almost still feel what his large, yet gentle hands were like as dream Ben cupped my breasts before he brought his mouth down to suck on one of my hardened nipples.

I’m annoyed that I’m not falling back asleep because now I’m horny as hell. So, I decide to go with it and try to recall the rest of the sleep sex. Before I know it, I’m full-on fantasizing, making up quite the scenario in my hormone crazed brain. Who needs dream Ben when I can think of these scenarios without him?

My mind imagines us frantically pulling our clothes off and dream Ben bringing his mouth to mine. When we’re fully naked, him backing me up until my knees hit the bed and I fall onto it–all without us breaking the kiss. I can’t help it and reach up to caress my own breasts. I squeeze my nipples as I think about Ben’s wavy black hair being all I can see as he lowers his mouth to my pussy. That’s all I can take, so I glide one of my hands down my body to find my clit, which is aching for attention right now.

Right as my finger finds the throbbing bundle of nerves, the mattress beside me shifts and my hand freezes in place. My eyes fly open so fast that the blinding light of day causes a stabbing pain to shoot through my temple. Yet I don’t make a sound, lying perfectly still and looking up at the ceiling.

It was your imagination. The bed didn’t move.

I count to ten in my head, trying to get up the courage to peek to my side, when a thought strikes me like a hammer in the head. Why am I naked? I never sleep naked. Mustering all the courage I can find, I peek to the side and am instantly filled with an intense panic when I realize why dream Ben seemed so real last night.

Because dream Ben wasn’t a dream at all…

I’m frozen in place for what feels like forever, but is probably only a minute or two before I come up with a plan. If I can get out of here before Ben wakes up, there’s a good chance he’ll never remember it was me here. I mean, he had to be bullshitting me about not kissing another woman in a fucking decade, right? And he probably lied about only being with three women since me. Maybe it was all an elaborate ploy to get me back into his bed. Another goddamn conquest for him.

Yes, this is the perfect plan. I’ll get out and he’ll be none the wiser.

I scoot to the side of the bed and allow myself to slither off the edge onto the floor, then army crawl across the room until I find my underpants, bra, and shirt. I quickly slip on my underpants and shirt—the bra can wait—and spot my jeans across the room. As I drag myself across the floor, the soreness between my legs dashes any hope that we hadn’t actually had sex, and that all of his parts stayed out of all of my parts. I feel like a woman who’s been thoroughly fucked, and I can’t even fully remember it.

Once my pants are in my hands, I silently stand and tiptoe over to the small desk in the room so I can hold on to it while I slip my bottoms on. I’ve got one leg in and am about to put my other leg through the hole when my eye catches on my name and I stop dead in my tracks. Not only my name, but my signature, too. Next to Ben’s signature.

“No,” I whisper to myself. “No, no, no. This cannot be happening.” Suddenly, I’m breathing way too fast and too shallow as lightheadedness overcomes me. I forget all about my stealthy escape plan. My hands drop my jeans with still only one half of them on me, and they shake as I pick up the piece of paper. I stare at it as it quivers in my grasp. “Shit. No, this isn’t real. Fuck.”

“Trina?” Ben’s rough morning voice rips me from my haze. I look up in time to see him pull up his boxer briefs. How did I not even hear him get up? He walks toward me slowly, like I’m a cornered feral cat. “It’s okay. We were drunk. I’m aware you never would have done this if you were sober.” He’s clearly looked around and put two and two together, realizing drunk us made a huge mistake. But he doesn’t yet know how enormous.

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