Page 67 of Lick
“Was there?”
“A little. The briefest of touches, maybe. But then I got weirded out and stopped it.”
He took another swig of beer. “Your ear tips are doing the pink thing again.”
“I bet they are.” I laughed and ducked my head. “I didn’t cheat. I never told anyone about that kiss. I was going to take it to my grave. You should feel honored by my trust in you.”
“Yeah, but telling me something I’m likely to find a huge turn-on is cheating. You were meant to tell me something terrible. The rules were clear. Go again and give me something bad this time.”
“It’s a huge turn-on, huh?”
“Next time I hit the shower I’m definitely using that story.”
I bit my tongue and looked away. Memories from this morning of David soaping up my hands and then putting them on him assailed my mind. The thought of him masturbating to my brief bout of teen sexual experimentation… “honored” wasn’t quite the right word. But I couldn’t say I wasn’t pleased by the notion. “Well, remember to make me older. Fifteen is a bit skeevy.”
“You only kissed her.”
“You’ll leave it at that in your head? You’ll respect accuracy and legalities, and not take it any further between Amanda and me?”
“Fine, I’ll make you older. And wildly fucking curious.” He pulled me closer, using the hands-on-my-butt method again, and I put my arms around him.
“Now, go again, and do it right this time.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He gave the side of my neck a lingering kiss. “You weren’t lying about Amanda, were you?”
“No.”
“Good. I like that story. You should tell it to me often. Now go again.”
I ummed and ahhed, procrastinating my little heart out. David rested his forehead against mine with a heavy sigh. “Just fucking tell me something.”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Bullshit.”
“I can’t,” I whined. Not anything I wanted to share, anyway.
“Tell me.”
I groaned and bumped my forehead against his ever so lightly. “David, come on, you’re the last person I want to make myself look bad in front of.”
He drew back, inspecting me down the length of his nose. “You’re worried about what I think of you?”
“Of course I am.”
“You’re honest and good, baby. Nothing you might have done is gonna be that bad.”
“But honest isn’t always good,” I said, trying to explain. “I’ve opened my mouth plenty of times when I shouldn’t have. Given people my opinion when I should have kept quiet. I react first and think later. Look at what happened in Vegas, between us. I didn’t ask any of the right questions that morning. I’m always going to regret that.”
“Vegas was a pretty extreme situation.” His hand rubbed my back, reassuring me. “You got nothing to worry about.”
“You asked me how I felt when you had that groupie hanging off you in LA. I dealt with it then. But the fact is, if that happened now and some woman tried to come on to you, I’d probably get stabby. I’m not always going to react well to the rock star hoopla that surrounds you. What happens then?”
He made a noise in his throat. “I dunno, I finally have to realize that you’re human? That you fuck up sometimes just like everybody else?”
I didn’t answer.
