Page 99 of Rules of Association

I tried to hold myself together, but I couldn’t. He was too high up on my thighs and too gentle with his touch and too frequent on my mind. Unintentionally, I let out a short breathy moan that I immediately regretted. His hands stilled. So did his body behind me, suddenly feeling as stiff as a board.

Slowly he said in a voice that I recognized was forced control, “You need to stop it,right now.”

“You started it,” I cleared my throat and my legs tremored just slightly.

“Youstarted it.” He turned my bar stool around and placed a hand on the table beside me, showing himself for the first time since finding me at the bar and damn.

Damn.

Had he looked this good the whole time? My eyes ate him up as they roved over his chiseled face, tailored dress, muscled form and took in his intoxicating scent.Damn. What the hell was he doing to me? Just, damn.

“You started it with those sounds and you keep starting it every time you look at me like that, Celestia,” he went on, now spearing me with his stare.

“Stop saying my name like that,” I said, my voice husky, my eyes trailing from his eyes to his lips to his eyes again.

He lowered himself, bringing our faces closer. Level. “Stop looking at me like you like it.”

“Stop touching me like you likeme,” I spat at him, lowering my own voice and raising my chin in challenge. It brought us nose to nose, and I could have sworn he leaned in (maybe just an inch) before stopping.

A breath went by. One where I could feel his air on my lips. Smell his breath laced with bourbon, his drink of choice. It drove me wild. But his words detonated me.

“I do like you, Cee,” he said simply, his voice gravelly and low. “You’re my person.”

I froze. Blinking, my heart seized and I had to take inventory of his features, trying to understand what he was saying. I cocked my head. “Like, your best friend person?”

He stared at me for a second, eyes sliding from one of mine to the other and over and over again. I don’t know what he saw in me after that analysis, but it had him shaking his head and pushing away from me, effectively breaking our little bubble. “Fuck, Cee.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Standing up to his full height, he put a hand on his hip, the other going to his face to cup his mouth as he just looked at me. He shook his headagain, like I was disappointing him somehow. The movement made me feel panicked, afraid I was losing him that quick. He must have seen it in my eyes, because sighing, he let that hand drop to his side. “I mean, yeah. Like my best person—sure.”

My best person.

Not quite like “best friend” but not quite like “my person” either. And why did that makemefeel disappointed? I should be feeling relieved that he didn’t mean what I thought he meant.

I should, but I didn’t. And suddenly, I felt cold without him. I had been sleeping in his bed lately. Cuddling close to him on the couch. And now soaking up his comfort in public. I was becoming attached. I blamed that as the reason why I slid out of the bar stool to stand right under his tall frame, finding his hand and enveloping mine into it.

A rush of relief flooded me when he instantly held on, too.

“Mad at me?” I asked, looking up, up, up into his eyes and just needing to make sure. Needing to make things right.

But I was worrying for nothing. Because looking down, face grim but eyes soft as ever, he said, “Never.”

Chapter Twenty-three

CONNOR

“What the hell is she doing here?” I asked. Strangely enough, I heard the same statement being echoed from behind me. I resisted rolling my eyes. It was from Clay, because of course it was.

I wasn’t worried about him. What I was worried about were the two girls standing at the front door of my parents’ house waiting to be let in for dinner. One was my sister who looked a little gray like she always did coming here. The other was my best friend.

The same best friend who I had my hands all over the other night. The same best friend whose moans I couldn’t stop replaying in my head. The same best friend who was slowly losing the title of best friend and morphing into something else.

And the very same best friend I wanted nowhere near my mother, I thought with an internal groan. Especially as her face went from neutral to a deep frown, her eyes tracking from the forms behind my shoulder to mine before she downright scowled.

“Nice, Ferguson.” Ceci barreled through the doorway bumping mine and Clay’s shoulders as she charged in like she owned the place. She hardly even looked at our other guests and for some reason, it put a bad taste in the back of my throat. To my sister, Ceci barked, “Let’s go, Fergy. Show me your old room.”

I groaned externally this time. On top of showing up out of the blue, Ceci’s fuse was at a zero today. I could just tell. I'm not sure if something happened or if it was just a bad mood day, but I’d probably only had one chance to get on her good side from the moment I opened the door.And we now knew how that went.

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