No.” She crossed her arms and tore her gaze away. “If you don’t want to do this with Madi . . .”
“I do,” I insisted. “I do want to. Are you going to give me any other explanation? Something as to why no kissing is your rule?”
She pressed her lips together. “Not right now.”
“But you can still kiss Madi.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” I raked my fingers through my hair and stepped back from her. My eyes were burning. “I’ll be with Madi. She can be with you. I won’t be jealous over that. We can fuck her in the same room together. I’ll give you commands if you want.”
“That sounds good.”
“I’m not finished.” I took a step closer. “We can do all of those things, but I’m not fucking you if I can’t kiss you. I can’t do it, June. I can’t. To be able to touch you but not kiss you would kill me.”
“Fine.”
“Great. Glad we got that out of the way.”
“Yep. Me too.”
Fuck me. No one could give a cold shoulder like she could. In all the years we’d known each other, I’d only ever gotten this treatment twice. Once when I accidentally ran over her flower bed while learning how to drive, and once when I held her hair while she threw up for the first time from being drunk. Although, the second one was really her just being embarrassed by the fact that she, Avery, and Evie had all shown up on my doorstep drunk and singingPoker Face.
But, I couldn’t go along with this completely. Even agreeing to have sex in the presence of each other was probably too much, but I selfishly wanted it.
This would kill me. I knew a few weeks from now I would hate myself for saying yes.
But sometimes bad decisions were the best ones. I’d deal with the pain later.
“I should probably go,” I muttered.
“Yeah.”
My eyes burned as I started to slip on my boots. “If you ever want to have an open conversation about this, I’d like to. And I’m sorry if kissing you ruined everything, but I don’t regret it. Idon’t regret a single moment of it.” My voice hitched. “I’ve been thinking about that kiss for months, June.”
She winced as I reached for the door. “Dallas, wait.”
I paused.
“I’m sorry.” Her fingers curled into my shirt, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I care about you which is why I’m suggesting we have rules in place. You’ll be in my life forever. I don’t want to do anything wrong.”
“The only thing that feels wrong right now is not acknowledging that somethingdidchange.”
“Iknowsomething changed.”
I turned around to face her. Her eyes shone with tears. It killed me. I never wanted to make her cry. I never wanted to make her feel stressed.
I just wanted her to let me in.
June blew out a slow breath. “What doyouwant?”
I slumped back against the door. “I wantyou, June. That’s what I want. I want to touch you. I want to kiss you. I want to do all the things I’m doing with Madi with you too. Do you want that? Or do you want us to just be friends? Because it has to be one or the other.”
Now there was only an inch or so between us. I could scoop her up. I could take her to her bed and kiss her until our brains and bodies melted together.
But not until she told me that’s what she wanted.
“I want you.” Her words sounded like a confession of something dark and twisted, laced with pain and longing. “I want you. But I can’t promise anything other than sex. And kissing you again is the worst idea in the entire world.”
