Page 80 of Scoring Eden

“Yes.” I squeeze my thighs together in a bid to alleviate the ache. “This house, our kisses, your flirting…none of it is real. You’re only looking at me like that because you haven’t had sex in a while, and you have no other option. It isn’t because you actually want me, you know? And I know that, and I’m fine with it. I don’t want you to want me.” Lie. “My body just hasn’t quite gotten on board with it yet. She’s quite a horny bitch, apparently. It’s highly inconvenient, but nothing I can’t control. Just as long as you give me a minute to get the slut back in line.”

My ears whoosh in embarrassment.

Fuck, I can’t believe I just admitted that all out loud.

He nods. “I see.”

I leave an extended pause, waiting for him to say something else. Anything else.

But he doesn’t, and the burning in my cheeks begins to sear. Shame turns to nausea, and there’s nothing else I want to do right now than run somewhere far, far away.

I can’t look at him. My chin falls to my chest to hide my face, my hair falling like a curtain around me. “Great, well, now that that’s sorted, I think we should—”

“But I do want you.”

The shock of his statement forces my gaze back up.

“At first, I thought the same as you, that I just needed to get laid. Maybe, then, I’d stop lusting after you like a teenager who’s just discovered porn.” He pushes off the door and stalks toward me.

Jealousy drops like a weight in my stomach, and I hope to God he can’t read it on my face. I’ve shown too many cards already.

“But I don’t want to fuck another woman.” There’s an edge to his voice, as if the fact makes him angry. “I haven’t even thought about it, not really. When I pass a woman in the street, I don’t look twice. When the waitress at the restaurant I went to with the boys this week slipped me her number on a napkin, I didn’t even glance at it. I haven’t looked at another woman in weeks, and yet, I can’t stop fucking looking at you.”

With every step he takes toward me, I take a step back, until my legs hit the washer, and there’s nothing to do but hold my breath as he reaches me.

He looms over me, bringing his nose just a millimeter from mine. “You have no fucking idea what you’re doing to me, do you?”

I gasp, the sound drawing his gaze to my lips.

Between us, our heartbeats drum a matching rhythm to the pulse between my legs. His breath, warm and soft, shivers against my skin. My fingers twitch at my sides, tingling with the need to touch him.

“What am I doing to you?” I breathe.

“Let me show you.” It’s barely a whisper. It’s a plea, if anything. Rough and desperate. “Please.”

It’s the last word that has me.

The minimal control I had left snaps like a twig underfoot. The reasons why we shouldn’t do this dissolve into the air, mixing with the swirling mist of our shaky breaths, drowned out by the humming of our desire.

“Yes,” I beg. “Show me.”

TWENTY-ONE

ALEX

Holy shit.

I’m kissing Eden. I’m touching her.

My hands are everywhere. Her back, her waist, her hips, her face. And she’s kissing me back, melting into me like butter, her hands just as frenzied as my own. They wind into my hair, finding the elastic that holds my topknot in place and tugging it free. When my hair tumbles around us, she moans like it’s a relief. And then…she pulls.

Fuck me.

Frenzied, I tilt her head back, using her gasp as an opportunity to slip my tongue between her lips.

Our teeth clash, and my head throbs at the scalp from where she’s pulling my hair, but it’s everything I wanted. Everything I needed. Everything I’ve thought about since the first time I saw her, drowning in dental scrubs and covered in ink.

She was as beautiful then as she is now. But the ink has been replaced with a deep-red flush that disappears beneath the neckline of her dress. I trace the edge of it, her skin like silk beneath my fingertips.