First, would Erika remember this conversation tomorrow?And if she didn’t, could I finally be truthful with her?Second, she still thought about kissing me.Abouthavingme.
And God help me, I thought about her kissing me and doing far more.I thought about it much more often than I’d ever admit to a sober version of her.
This was trouble.Big, blazing, unstoppable trouble.
I needed to leave.Before I couldn’t.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.“Why should it matter to you?”
“I need to know if it’s the same for you as it is for me.That you can’t stop remembering.That you can’t stop wondering if it’s still that good.”The look in her eyes begged for an answer.“Tell me.”She leaned into me.
I checked my phone to see what time it was.“Erika…”
She slid a fingertip along my lower lip, barely there, but enough to steal every coherent thought I had.“I’ve done a lot of kissing since you,” she murmured.Her eyes locked on mine.I hoped to God she couldn’t read how much I wanted to obliterate every single person who ever dared to kiss her.
“But you know what?”She stopped.Just held me in that charged silence.
My breath hitched.“What?”
“None of them ever even got me off,” she said, blunt and unguarded in that tipsy way that left no room for lies.
“Never?”I asked, stunned.
She shook her head.“No one kisses like you.”On a hoarse whisper she added, “No one got me off like you used to.Mouth, fingers… Damn it, you could make it happen with a few nasty words and those magic fingers.”
A knot tightened low in my stomach.“Is—Is that a good thing?”
She giggled, soft and a little embarrassed.“When other guys kiss, they use way too much tongue.Or their hands go all octopus-grope.Or they just forget about me.Maybe I just chose the wrong guys.You… You figured it out early.Somehow you justknew.”
A compliment from Erika—real, raw, and years too late—hit harder than it should have.“Do you want me to kiss you?”
She hesitated, eyes flicking between my mouth and my eyes.“I don’t know yet.”
Thank God.
I’m not going to kiss her.I’m going to stop thinking about it.
Still, she hovered close, eyes drifting over my face and landing on my lips.“You drive me absolutely nuts,” she said, poking my chest for emphasis.“Half the time I wanna toss you to the bears.And I kinda wish we’d gone all the way at least once.Just to get rid of the mystery.Now we’ll never know if we’d be amazing or totally suck at it.It’s tragic.”
She sighed dramatically.“It’ssounfair that you turned out this hot.All these muscles...”She waved a hand up and down my torso.“And you’re…ugh…actually good at adulting.Better than me.I’m a hot mess twenty-four-seven.”She pressed her forehead lightly to my chest.A beat passed before she mumbled, “How comeyougot better looking andIended up with a potty mouth and a fat ass?”
“There’s nothing wrong with your ass.You said so yourself.”
“Too many cookies and fast food.Overnights and this residency have kicked my ass.I asked my doctor a few months ago why I always feel tired and about a minute away from a panic attack.She said I had to stop doing overnights.I need more sun.My body is in an adrenal crisis.Doctor said if I don’t stop overnights, I could die.”She kissed up my neck.
“You’ve got to stop.”I craned my head away when her kisses reached my chin.If she touched her lips to mine, I was a goner.
She stopped kissing me to say, “I know I should stop the overnights, but I love emergency med so much.It’s my life.”
“You have to take care of yourself.You’re all Vinny has.”
“He’s a pretty cool kid.”
“He is.”I bit back a moan when she used her fingers to trace my ear.
She nuzzled my collarbone.“This doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you.Or maybe I do.Maybe we should.You went and screwed us up with Milly back then.Why?”
“It was a long time ago.”
