Page 44 of Fish out of Water
Her fucking essence. I craved it.
I hefted her up, dropping her ass on the kitchen counter, bringing her height even with mine. Her legs immediately came around me, dragging my dick straight to the place it most wanted to be.
Just without all these fucking clothes between us.
Julia grabbed at my shirt, shoving it up between us as her hands pressed to my skin. There was no hesitating.
No waiting for me to come to her.
No expectations of how I should be.
What I should do.
Her hands fisted in the bunched-up fabric of my shirt, wrestling me closer.
Her intensity matched mine and ramped up the hammer of my pulse. The saw of my breath.
This was spinning away from me. Stealing the lessons I’d learned and hiding them away.
Trying to make me forget.
I pressed one hand to her stomach, pulling my lips from hers. “Stop.”
Julia didn’t let go of me, but she also didn’t fight me. Her eyes went from one side to the other. “Okay.”
She didn’t look upset. More confused.
She wasn’t the only one.
A decade of changing who I was. How I dressed. How I acted.
The women I desired.
She’d ripped it all away in twenty-four hours. Cutting me back to where I started.
I dropped my head, unable to look her in the eye. “Go to bed, Julia.”
“Like, alone?”
My dick strained at the disappointment in her tone. “Alone.”
Going to bed with her wasn’t an option.
I couldn’t pretend around her. Not the way I needed to.
She would keep digging under my skin, peeling back the layers I wore until she saw the truth of what was at my core.
Women like Valentina and Cricket were what I had to have. Women who made it easy to keep the mask in place. Women whose existence didn’t threaten to expose me.
Julia was here with the man I showed her. The man I crafted.
Seeing what I hid would only end badly.
I knew. From experience.
“Okay.” She slowly slid from the counter, her sneakers hitting the floor with a soft thud. “Goodnight, Nerd.”
A tiny part of me wanted to confess. Spill the truth. Lay it out.
