Page 50 of Slide

“It wasn’t a dream, okay? It was a nightmare,” she blurted.

His thumb, still gently gliding across her bottom lip, stilled. The ice in his gaze slowly melted. “What do you mean nightmare?”

God, she wasn’t going to talk about this, not with Adam, not with anyone. “A bad dream, you know? Not pleasant.”

His scowl got deeper. “Not in the mood for your smart mouth right now. Tell me why you’re having nightmares about this guy? Is it because he was married, that he had kids?”

She turned away.

He took her chin between his thumb and finger and turned her back toward him. “Talk to me.”

She let out a steadying breath. “There’s nothing to talk about, okay? It was a messy situation. It ended. There’s nothing more to say.”

“There is if you’re calling that asshole’s name out in your sleep. Something’s worrying you.” He shook his head. “You’ve been acting differently since you got back. Tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“Why?” She twisted her head, pulling away from his hold. “We’re fucking, Adam, that’s it. That’s all you want. That’s all I want. Just because you say we’re friends, doesn’t make it true. In fact, we both know it’s a load of horseshit. Before this”—she motioned between them—“we argued, that’s it. There were no heart-to-heart chats. Not any that you partook in anyway. I have no desire to change the status of our relationship. When we get back to LA, we’ll go back to hating each other and that’s fine with me. That’s the way I want it.”

Lies, all of it. She’d never hated Adam, even when she desperately wished she could.

Some emotion sliced through his gaze, something she refused to think about or acknowledge.

“I’ve never hated you,” he rasped.

“No?” The word flew from her mouth before she could think better of it, and then her lips kept on flapping. “You could’ve fooled me. Every single time I ever tried to get close, just a little bit…God, just to be a friend to you, you shut me down.”

He flinched, mouth opening then shutting again, and opening once more.

“Shut up.”

He blinked “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.” She didn’t want to have this conversation. She didn’t want to know his deepest, darkest secrets, not anymore. She’d given up on all that. Adam would never be capable of giving her more than this, and that was fine. She’d resigned herself to that. And if she was honest, after everything, she sure as hell didn’t want to reveal her ugly truth either. “Don’t. Just save it.”

“Lucy—”

She grabbed his bare ass, digging her nails into the hard flesh. “Shut the hell up and kiss me.”

He narrowed his eyes, wariness there she wanted no part of, but she also didn’t miss the heat burning from them, the fire that was always there for her.

“Hang on a damn minute. We haven’t finished—”

“Yes, we have.” Leaning toward him, she wrapped her mouth around one of his small brown nipples and sunk her teeth in lightly, giving it a tug.

His hips snapped forward. “Fuck.”

“Exactly,” she said against his now damp skin.

“You’re a demanding little she-devil, aren’t you?”

He’d tried to inject some lightness to his voice for her, she knew, but there was still a weightiness there she loathed.

She didn’t want to talk this out, confess her mistakes, have Adam tell her that none of it was her fault. She didn’t want to be absolved of her transgressions. She didn’t deserve it. What she did want was to live in the moment. To forget, just for a little while. That was why she came on this road trip. That’s why she chose Adam to be the one to help her.

If anyone knew how to live in the now, it was him.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her bare skin against his, sliding one knee up and over his hip. Oh shit. So damn hard. She felt a tremble travel through his big body. “Why are you fighting it?” She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his hot, rigid flesh. “Stop playing goddamn hard to get and fuck me.”

He froze, chest expanding sharply, before releasing a rough breath.