Page 108 of The Best Laid Plans

There was a loaded moment as we stared at each other.

Don’t leave me alone in this.

She sucked in a breath. “That what they wanted and what you want now are not the same.”

Something dangerous ignited in the air around us.

“It doesn’t matter what your friend would want,” she continued.Push.“Not right now.”

“No,” I growled. “It doesn’t. Because I can’t ask. He didn’t fucking tell me.”

Her cheeks blushed pink, and my hand came up, the tip of my finger tracing the edge of her wet ponytail. Her hair was darker from the water, like it was when we showered together.

“What do you want?” she whispered.

She’d pleaded for quite a few things since I met her. And in the last handful of weeks, the pleading had turned physical. When my hands and lips and tongue teased her, mindless and arching against me. I could handle that kind of begging from Charlotte because it somehow felt easier than this.

She wanted honesty.

She wanted armor peeled back and nothing between us.

I wanted to give her all those things, but I still didn’t fucking know how.

Answers crowded my throat, and I thought for a moment I might choke on them if I tried to say them out loud. Because they either weren’t possible or were so far out of my reach that I didn’t dare let them break the surface. Kept locked in my aching chest, they felt just a bit safer.

“I don’t know,” I managed.

Her eyes flashed. “You’re lying.”

Denial stuck in my throat too.

Charlotte shook her head. “You’re lying. I think you pretend like you hate this, hate having this, hate being here, because it’s harder to admit that—”

“Stop,” I snapped.

She did, but she didn’t concede a single solitary inch.

“You want to know what I want?” I asked.

Charlotte’s eyes lingered on my lips, and my hands shook from the effort it took to keep them off her.

“I don’t want to take a shower with you and slip my hand between your legs anymore. I don’t want to push you onto your bed and hold your thighs down while they shake around my head. Not right now,” I said. I slid a hand along her jaw, and she sucked in a breath. My thumb tracked over the curve of her bottom lip, which trembled at my touch. It felt like warm silk. I briefly wondered if she’d melt underneath my tongue, like cotton candy or chocolate. “I want something new.”

I glided the tip of my nose along hers, coasting it over her cheekbone, the line of her temple. Her fists tightened in the front of my shirt.

I held there, giving her plenty of time to pull back.

But she didn’t.

Neither did I.

“I want something that I probably don’t deserve.” I leaned down, dropped my voice to a whisper.

I don’t deserve you.

Another man might have been able to tell her that. But it felt even more dangerous than the fact that I was touching her. I kept those words to myself, watched the climb of color in her cheeks as she registered what I was saying.

There was a rough current to this entire exchange, something quick and sharp under my skin. I didn’t want to soften it, and I didn’t want to walk away.

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