Page 7 of The Grumpy Billionaire
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked gruffly.
“At the Seaside Cotillion last weekend, he asked me to dancethreetimes. And the last time when the lights went down, he moved me into a corner, and he kissed my neck. And then he slid his hand from my back down to my bottom.”
She might as well have thrown a torch into an oil drum. My temper flared. As she had known it would.
“That punk. How dare he touch you like that.” And then an unpleasant thought occurred to me. “Unless youwantedhim to touch you?”
I didn’t know what Mara did on the frequent arranged dates her parent set up for her. I kept trying to convince myself I didn’t want to know.
She and I were friends. That was all we could ever be. A guy like me and a girl like her… it just wasn’t reality.
“Of course not, silly.” She wrapped her hand around my tensed bicep and leaned closer.
“I slapped him,” she said. “I don’t likehim.There’s only one person who I’d let touch me like that.”
She gave me a significant look, one that contained all the unspoken desire and pent-up feeling between us. “Only one person who Iwantto touch me.”
Tensing my entire body in a desperate battle for restraint, I leaned away from her, falling to one elbow in the soft sand.
“Mara… no.”
Instead of allowing me to escape gracefully, she followed the motion, leaning harder against me as I fell over sideways onto the sand.
Smiling, Mara crawled over me and pressed on my shoulders until I was on my back and she sat astride my hips.
Our faces were even now. Her wide, dark eyes bored into mine as our rapid breaths mingled.
“I know you feel it, too,” she said. “I see the way you look at me. I felt what happened when we danced together… what’s happening right now. You want me as much as I want you. Why do you keep fighting it?”
I heaved a couple of heavy breaths, struggling against a nearly overwhelming desire to pull her down to me and sink my hands into her hair. What I should have done was push her off me, but I couldn’t seem to make myself do it.
“Because it’s impossible,” I finally managed.
It was a confession I’d never dared to make before. Now it seemed inevitable.
Might as well get this conversation over with.
Our friendship might not be able to withstand it, but there seemed to be no other choice. Mara was forcing the matter.
“If we ever started something, I wouldn’t be able to stop,” I explained.
“I’d want everything from you. I already do want everything from you,” I admitted for the first time ever.
No doubt it was a huge mistake. So was allowing her to stay in this position, cradled atop my lap, which felt at the moment like it might go up in actual flames.
Move. Just do it. Lift her off you and put some distance between you. Before you do something you'll both regret.
She pounced on my failure to do so and on my unintentional admission.
“You can have it.” A fierce light glowed in her dark eyes. “Iwantto give you everything. I want to be everything to you… the way you are to me.”
Mara leaned down, attempting to press her mouth to mine. I twisted my head, causing her lips to land on my jaw instead. Clenching it, I dug deep into every reserve of self-control I possessed.
“We can’t. And you shouldn’t say things like that.”
“It’s the truth,” she insisted.
“For now maybe. If your father ever found out about this, you know what would happen. He’d fire my mom. We’d have to move. We’d be homeless. She doesn’t make enough money to save enough for a house of our own. And my part-time job doesn’t pay enough to support us. I would have to quit the tennis team and my after-school clubs like Science Olympiad so I could work more hours to support us. Is that what you want?”
