Page 70 of The Other Side of Paradise
“I mean, it’s not like I could deny it if I wanted to. Did, um… did you?”
“Alot.” I held up my hand, slick with my wetness, and spread my fingers to watch the way it formed trails between them. “Look how wet it got me.”
“Jesus Christ. Wow. You’re, um… hot. That was hot. This is all… very… hot.”
Poor girl would have a normal train of thought again in three to five business days. I stood up, simultaneously shaky and bursting with energy. “I’m going to take a shower,” I laughed. “Stay here tonight.”
I wasn’t sure where the words came from, and neither did Allison, judging by the look she gave me. “Uh—huh?”
“Stay here tonight.” Maybe in the morning, things would make more sense. And if they made sense in the direction of that I wanted to fuck her, then I wanted to have her around to fuck her.
“Are you… sure?”
“It’s a long way back to your place and it’s late.”
“Well… o-okay.”
I paused at the doorway to the bathroom. “Unless you don’t want to?”
“No, I do,” she blurted before I’d even finished speaking, shouting it all out as one word. She blushed. “I mean, it’s, uh, you know, it’s a long way back to my place and it’s late.”
Uh-huh. Because that was all.
She was so into me. And such a bad liar. It was cute. And I wanted to kiss her senseless.
Maybe in the morning this would make sense.
Chapter 19
Allison
I woke up in a different bed than usual, bleary-eyed, sitting up with a yawn that startled out of me when I saw the veranda doors open and Stella Valerie Bell standing out in it with a cup of coffee and a sheer, silky gown that blew in the wind.
I didn’t manage to say anything—I was busy with a heart attack—but I think she heard me choke on my lungs seeing her there, because she turned back with a soft smile that made my heart explode. She didn’t say anything, not right away, just stepped inside, her gaze fixed on mine, and I flashed back to last night, my body flaring up with awareness as she set down her cup and leaned against the doorframe, and softly, she said,
“You snore like a dump truck.”
“Huh?” I flushed, clapping my hands over my mouth. “Shit, seriously? I didn’t think—I’d never—”
She laughed, throwing her head back. Oh, god, she was pretty. “I’m kidding,” she said. “You do mumble a little in your sleep, though. It’s cute.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and I pouted, picking up a pillow and throwing it at her. “Good morning to you, too, you bully.”
She laughed, catching the pillow and dropping it on the couch, and I had a heart attack when she leaned over the bed and took me by the cuff of the bathrobe I’d worn to bed, pulling me out of bed, stumbling over to the doorway with her, where she gestured me to the glass table on the little back patio, a pot of coffee in the center. “Coffee?”
“Well, now look who’s the concierge. Thanks… this is super sweet.”
She laughed, sitting down with me, peaceful in the morning, the sunlight still rich with early-morning golden hues, the wind crisp and cool around us, and as she poured the coffee from the pot into the second cup, I considered ripping my skin off and throwing myself screaming down the hill into the ocean.
We’d just… what? It wasn’t sex. And now we were pretending everything was cool and normal? Was it nothing? Just something friends did? I’d sure as fuck never done that with a friend before. And if I had and I’d wanted to emphasize that it didn’t mean anything, I wouldn’t invite them to spend the night and then grab them to drag them into bed when they tried to take the couch.
That didn’t make a lot of sense. But the other option was that Stella actually liked me, and that didn’t, uh… that didn’t check out.
Stella broke the brief silence that had settled with, “Mom and Dad are bugging me to go meet up with them. I’m not exactly thrilled about it.”
“Oh, yeah…” I winced. “Is everything going to be okay? You still never resolved things with that big fight…”
“I’ll be fine,” she sighed. “Just as long as I’m not alone with Dad. But Mom will be there, too, and probably plenty of others. They want to talk about brunch. They talked about it in the family group chat like it was an ultimatum… everyone is so stressed and high-strung.”
