Page 67 of My Favorite Bad Decision
His smile is slight. “No, I’m just thinking it must have been awkward to act as if everything was normal. I’m assuming you didn’t live together?”
I shake my head. “His business is in Vegas. He claimed he was planning to sell it and relocate to New York, but I got the sense that it might never happen. He kept trying to get me to move out there instead. But anyway, I just hadn’t seen him.”
He looks relieved by this for reasons I can’t understand. “So, no amazing reunion sex after you got back from Kilimanjaro? I’m struggling to imagine dating you and not being in Manhattan waiting the second you got off that plane.”
I squeeze my thighs together to ward off the hard press of want there. It’s all too easy to imagine Miller waiting for me, eager for that reunion. I’d be eager for it too. So fucking eager.
“I don’t think I’ve seen him since New Year’s actually.”
His mouth falls open. “So you’re saying that the two of you went without sex for nearly two months?”
I frown. I suppose that means hehashad sex in the past two months, which shouldn’t bother me but does. “It just kind of worked out that way. But yeah, I guess it’s a long time to go without it.”
His gaze lands on mine, sayingI could fix that for you.
I can’t agree. But if he just…went for it…I already know I wouldn’t be willing to stop him.
I really wish he’d just go for it.
I shower when we get back to the house and don the second of the bikinisElitesent: bright red and as skimpy as the first.
He’s in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher. I grab a popsicle from the freezer and hop on the counter to watch him.
“I’m being helpful by providing you with interesting conversation,” I claim.
He glances over his shoulder, his gaze lingering for half a beat on the bikini, on the popsicle as I place it between my lips.
I wonder if he remembers the way he used to tease me, threatening to eat the cherry ones whenever I left the beach house. I loved it. And I loved that hedidn’ttease Maren. It made me feel as if he and I shared something he didn’t have with her.
“Go ahead,” he grunts, turning toward the dishwasher. “Provide the interesting conversation, then.”
I lick the sides of the popsicle first. “What would you like me to discuss? Global warming? Celebrities I think are overrated?”
He slams the dishwasher door and leans against the opposite counter. His gaze is on my face. On my mouth.
“I want to talk about the dream you had in the tent,” he says.
I pull the popsicle out of my mouth. “I had a lot of dreams in the tent.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “You know what dream I’m referring to. You said it was about someone from college. Who?”
My eyes fall closed for a minute. I could lie. I could make someone up. I just don’t want to. “You know it wasn’t about someone from college,” I whisper. “What was I supposed to say?”
“Jesus,” he whispers, his hands clenching the counter behind him. “You’re lucky I didn’t know that at the time.”
My body is so tightly strung that a single touch could make it shatter.
I lick a trickle of juice running down the popsicle’s side, stalling. His pupils dilate; his nostrils flare. And suddenly I know what that favorite fantasy of mine was based upon, the one I told Maren about: it was him, during that talk in the kitchen.
The faceless man who grabs me on the kitchen counter, the one who doesn’t take no for an answer, was Miller. I needed him to take it from me because I couldn’t offer it, and he was only faceless because I couldn’t stand to admit to myself whose face it was.
I didn’t run him off because I didn’ttrusthim. I ran him off because I couldn’t stand not having him for myself, and I kept right on wanting him for years and years.
My gaze slowly returns to his. It’s the point where I should make a joke but none come to mind. The only thing in my head isDo it, Miller. Close the distance.
“Fuck it,” he whispers, and in a single stride, he’s crossed the kitchen to where I sit. He pulls the popsicle from my hand and tosses it toward the sink before he grasps my face in his palms and kisses me.
His mouth is warm against my popsicle-cold lips. His tongue finds mine, and my thighs spread wide to bring him closer.
