Total pages in book: 9
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
And I’m already so wet I should probably be ashamed of myself, but I’m not, I’m simply grateful and all but trembling with relief.
It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything like this, if I ever have. A part of me insists it was like this with my college boyfriend, Dean, and I at the beginning, before he became a controlling asshole who made me wish I’d never agreed to join his teaching assistant study group freshman year.
But deep down I know that’s not true.
I wanted to want Dean, I was desperate to be swept away by a poetic romance with an older boy who read the classics and wore sweater vests and knew how to make curry from scratch. I willfully ignored the warning signs that he wasn’t as “woke” as he pretended to be and the fact that rounding the bases with him was more a rite of passage I was determined to complete than a sexy experience I looked forward to every Friday night.
Most of all, I wanted Dean to help me forget about that other kiss, that other man, the one who still haunts my steamiest dreams.
This man.
“Take me upstairs,” I whisper against his lips, the words transforming to another soft groan as he rocks between my legs again. “To your room.”
“Are you sure?” he asks. “We don’t have to rush, Frances.”
“Genevieve,” I insist. “When you’re inside me, you’d better call me by my real name, Bartholomew.”
He curses softly and pulls back, gazing down at me with wider eyes. “Damn. That was hot, Frances.” I narrow my eyes, and he laughs before adding in a voice that makes my panties threaten to melt off my body, “Genevieve. See, that’s why I don’t like to say it. Even your name is almost too hot to handle. I’m probably safer calling you Genny if I can’t call you Frances.”
My brows pinch closer as I search his face, trying to figure out the punchline. But there doesn’t appear to be one. He seems as into this as I am and the erection pulsing against my clit is sending a pretty clear message.
But if he’s really attracted to me, I can’t help but wonder…why?
What’s changed?
I’m sure I’m better at kissing than I was as a teenager, but I’m still the same person the old Panic couldn’t push away fast enough.
I’m about to ask him, point blank, what’s up with all this, when a soft hiss makes me flinch. I tip my head back to see Beastly and his minions closing in on us from across the carpet. Floof Loaf is holding them off—for now—but I can smell a cat fight coming on.
“Right,” Panic says, rising and helping me to my feet. “Let’s talk upstairs, away from my mother’s familiars. I think she put a spell on them to make them attack her sons while we’re making out. Zen almost lost a leg the last time he had a girl over while he was housesitting.”
I let him take my hand and lead me across the room. “Well, Kirby always said she didn’t want to be a grandmother until she’s at least sixty.”
“She also gave me a jar full of condoms on my sixteenth birthday,” he says, starting up the stairs.
“Smart Mom,” I say. “But she was what? Two years too late?”
His blue eyes glitter at me over his shoulder, making my stomach flip. “One. I was fifteen my first time. What about you?”
Well, shit…
There it is. The question I don’t want to answer, the information I would have gladly withheld until this night is over and whatever is going to happen between Panic and I has already happened.
But when he just lays it right out there like that, I’m compelled to answer truthfully. That’s the type of person I am. I’m a truthteller, even when it’s hard or…embarrassing.
More like mortifying, a voice whispers in my head as we reach the top of the stairs and turn left toward Panic’s childhood bedroom. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t give you whiplash on his way out the door.
The inner voice is probably right, but that’s not a good enough reason to lie, especially not to someone I care about as much as Panic. For all the weirdness of the past five years, when we were kids, he was more than a friend. He was my family, my kindred spirit, one of the people I knew would always “get it.”
Get…me.
It’s more than the fact that we both have famous parents or spent a significant portion of our childhoods on the road seeing the world. It’s more than the kiddie pool we shared as toddlers or the hundreds of popsicles on his mom’s back porch with the other kids. There’s always been something special between Panic and me, a connection I’m tired of pretending died the day he decided he didn’t want to kiss me back.