Page 17 of Badd Ass
I eyed her curiously. “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.”
“Neither am I!” she said, in a sudden outburst. “I’m, like,crazyattracted to you—I’m just not sure what to do with it. I don’t do relationships, and I’m only here for a week, so it’s not like it’s going to be…athing, or whatever. But I would like to spend some more time with you.”
I let out a breath, turning to look out at the hometown I’d never expected to be living in again. “Huh. So, when you talk about spending time together, do you mean just sex? Or are you suggesting stuff like spending time together with our clothes on?”
She lifted both hands palms up. “I don’t know, Zane. I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing right now. But I was talking to Claire earlier, while you were collecting all those phone numbers, and she said I needed to open my mind a little bit.”
“Open your mind?”
She nodded, shoulders hunched as she leaned forward, bracing her forearms on the railing. “Like, start trying things beyond the way I normally do them. But I—I don’t know how. Trust is…hard, and I’m just cynical, I guess. None of the guys I’ve ever met have seemed like anyone I’d be interested in seeing more than once.”
“And I’m safe, because you’re going back home in a week, so if I turn out to be a raging douchebag, you can just catch a flight home and forget about me.”
“Exactly.” Her eyes cut to mine. “But please, feel free tonotturn into a raging douchebag.”
“I’ll do my best.” I pivoted to put my butt against the railing, looking down at her. “So, yeah. I’m game. It could be fun. I mean, I’m not the relationship type any more than you are. Most of my interactions with women happen either naked, or in the pursuit of getting naked. This would be something new for me too.”
She smirked up at me. “Hey, you can probably count on getting me naked, because let’s face it, you’re just too damn good at seduction.”
“Good to know,” I said.
She straightened, then, standing beside me, still facing the view, arms crossed under her breasts. “But I would also like to try this whole…being together without the sex thing.”
I considered what she was proposing. “So basically, we’re sort of…practice dating.”
She nodded. “Exactly. Practice dating.”
“So, is there a ratio or something for how much time we spend dating and how much time we spend naked?”
“Um, good question. I don’t know. Maybe we just see how things go?” She eyed me with a teasing grin. “But you can’t spend every single waking moment trying to get into my pants, or this won’t work.”
“No?” I edged closer to her. “Why not?”
Her fingers fluttered like restless birds, and eventually settled on my chest, playing with the folds in the fabric. “Because you’re too good at it, and I’m not very good at resisting. We’re supposed to be trying something new, after all.”
“Well, I could argue that since neither of us typically sleep with the same person more than once, if we spend this week fucking like newlyweds wewouldbe trying something new.”
She glared at me. “Goddammit, Zane.”
“What?” I laughed.
“That’s exactly the type of logic we’re supposed to be avoiding, mister.”
“It is? Why?”
“Because the whole point of this experiment is to see what it’s like having a relationship with someone outside of sex.”
“Oh.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Oh.”
I consulted my watch. “Well, ithasbeen at least twelve hours since we last had sex, so…maybe we could start the whole clothes-on part of this practice dating tomorrow morning?”
Mara laughed, her head tipping back, her laughter ringing out through the forest. “You’re something else, Zane.”
I slipped sideways, wedging myself between the fence and her body.
“You can’t even make it through one conversation without trying to slip me your dick,” she said.
