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Liquid courage was overrated. Brielle was so glad she’d had full control of her senses, so happy to be fully in the moment with Archer and not have to think about everything that was bothering her. Once she started riding him on the floor of his condo, not once did thoughts of her stalled job hunt or her putrid ex Daniel flash through her mind. She didn’t worry about what had happened with Pembroke or wonder if Lilac and Gavin weren’t telling her everything she ought to know about what was bothering them. She didn’t think about screaming sisters, mothers with misdirected anger, or raised voices and slammed doors. She was so over worrying about the brusque, difficult client with whom she’d gotten off on the wrong foot. She realized it’d been days since she’d even thought about Mrs. Tanaka and her surly cats.
“You doing all right?” she asked, not sure if all theactivitywas bad for him. He hadn’t cried out in pain or anything, but he’d just taken a fall before she’d gotten carried away and she’d kind of forgotten the newness of the situation when they’d gotten into the thick of things. She laughed. There she went overthinking everything again.
“I’m fine. Better than fine.” He winced a little as he shifted, as if to contradict his own words. “What’s so funny?” He rolled over by reaching up to grab on to the bed’s handlebar, his legs falling into place after. The way his gaze roved over her naked body, she had no doubt he’d been satisfied.
Her neck ached as she lay on the white shirt she’d turned into a pillow—only after she’d climaxed and slowly, ever so slowly, rolled off of him to lie down. She realized it was unlikely he could ever do missionary, but she wasn’t so sure that was a bad thing. She chewed her lip, considering the possibilities of enjoying her new client-turned-friend-turned-sex-buddy.
Because shesowasn’t in the right frame of mind for him to be anything else.
He poked her. “Earth to Elle,” he said.
“Please,” she said, “call me ‘Bri.’Hecalled me ‘Elle.’” She regretted the words almost as soon as she’d said them. Like she needed a reminder of Daniel after a lay likethat.
“Bri,” he said, clearing his throat. He traced the line between two pieces of the hardwood floor, averting his eyes. “That guy at the comic store… He was your ex?”
Daniel was thelastthing she wanted to think about right now. But she kind of had herself to blame. “Yeah,” she said, hoping that might be the end of it.
His fingers stopped moving. “So your friend dated your ex without telling you.”
“It wasn’t so much that as me knowingwhat a huge dickhe is and thatstillnot being enough to keep her away from him.” She rolled onto her side to face Archer. “And he literally sprung the news of some fiancée on me last week, only to show up in my life with a new girlfriend a week later.” She rolled her eyes. “And I thought I could finally get away from him.”
“Maybe he made up the fiancée to make you jealous.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged, letting her hair fall down over her shoulder. “I don’t even care.”
Archer met her gaze at that. “That bad?”
“That bad.” She’d have thought the debacle at the store would have made that clear enough. “What about you? Any crazy ex-girlfriends I should know about?”
“No. Remember? No kiss before last week…”
Brielle licked her lips. “I stole your first kiss.” She laughed. “Youwouldhave no crazy ex stories. You having your pick of the litter and all.”
He leaned forward more, shifting some of his weight to the palm of his hand. “I can’t even tell when you’re joking,” he said.
“Oh,” said Brielle, wondering now that she thought about it if he thought she was sayingshewas the pick of the litter, too. She knew she was no Lilac, not that she thought she was unworthy, but she didn’t exactly have to bat them off with a stick most of the time. “Sorry.”
“No, I mean… I’ve hadnoexes. No girlfriends. Remember? Which means…”
The hard floor was starting to make her arm ache, but Brielle couldn’t tear her eyes to look away. “You were avirgin?!” She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that. D’uh.
He rolled onto his back, the loss of tension in his arm muscles obvious. She leaned over to get a better look at this face; his expression crinkled and his gaze flicked downward. “Do you regret what just happened?”
“Hell no,” said Brielle, kissing him on the cheek. “I find that rather hot,” she whispered, even if she knew that complicated things.
Because she knew from experience that former virgins tended to get alittle tooattached to their cherry-poppers. If hers hadn’t dumped her in high school, she probably would have gone mad following him around with puppy-dog eyes forever, laughing shrilly at his stupid, immature jokes, forever stifling her own feelings of apprehension and regret whenever he acted like an idiot and she felt she was supposed to support him.
But then again, she’d never known a twenty-five-year-old virgin. (Pembroke was close, but she was twenty-two. And who knew with her now…) Perhaps he’d be mature enough to handle it.
Because she didn’t want this to end anytime soon, but it couldn’t last forever, either.
They fell into a silence only broken by the sound of a phone from somewhere beneath them.
“Mine,” said Archer, shifting himself away. He reached for the grab bars above him again to pull himself into a sitting position, then tried reaching toward the pocket of his pants, which were somewhere down around his ankles.
Brielle shot up and grabbed his phone for him, gently pulling his boxers and pants higher up his legs once he took it from her. He watched her without even looking at his phone screen.
“Should I?” she asked, his boxers halfway up his legs. She realized despite what they’d just shared, this moment felt more clinical, more intrusive somehow.
