Page 35 of Make You Beg

When I get to the middle of the corridor, my eyes seize on something at the bottom of the ladder to the attic.

The red puck I gifted to Maddy is there, on the floor.

She’s up there.

I’m tired, and I really need to take a shower, but I can’t miss this opportunity. I’ve been hungry for interaction.

The less she gives me, the more I want.

I’m an insatiable beast.

I climb up with the towel and my change of clothes, not giving a shit.

Once there, I toss everything on the lone desk in the room and step out of the open window.

Maddy’s sitting down on the shingles, focused on a book.

She sneaks a glance at me as I approach her.

“Reading filthy smut?” I joke, because she doesn’t know I know.

“Always.”

I cackle at her reaction.

Something inside me tickles, knowing she isn’t lying. She’s really reading about sex when I’m almost confident she’s a virgin, one with an innocent exterior and a dirty mind.

She continues to read for the next thirty seconds before inserting a bookmark into her book and shutting it.

“Sorry, I was in the middle of a chapter.”

“That’s alright.”

I take a seat beside her. “Anything good?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they get to the smutty part yet?”

“Nope, it’s a slow burn.”

“What’s a slow burn?”

Her small mouth forms an O shape.

“It’s when two characters yearn for each other until they can’t take it anymore, and then they explode. The groveling is long, their denial too. They don’t get to it right away. They wait. They avoid it. But when it hits…it hits.”

She explains it like I, too, am an avid reader who’ll get it from her confusing explanation.

I mean, heck, I might read one of her little smutty books someday to see what she likes.

“O-kay.”

“You wouldn’t get it,” she says.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re impatient. All guys are. You want to get to the good part fast. I bet you’d skip the whole plot and go straight to the smut.”