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The smile slips off her face and I wish instantly that I could take back my words, no matter how jovially I meant them to be.
“I'm sorry,” she says, her expression grim. “I'm so damn sorry, Cole, for everything you went through when I was gone and how I've treated you since I've been back. You were so mad at me and I was being defensive, and I should never have—“
“Shush, baby,” I cut her off, climbing onto the bed on all fours and crawling up the length of her body to brush my nose against hers. “I'm sorry too. For all of it. But we don't need to talk about that now.”
“I'm scared you're going to go back to hating me.” She says it so quietly, so goddamn sadly, that I almost want to cry.
“That's not gonna happen.”
“No?”
I shake my head, then press a tiny kiss to the end of her nose. “No. I promise.”
When her smile returns, I could sing from the relief of it. I fucking hate it when she's sad. It's like all the stars have fallen out of the sky or the sun has died. I felt it back when we were kids and I feel it now too. Her smile is a treasure that should be coveted and safeguarded at all costs.
“You going to get into bed?” she asks. “Or are you planning to sleep on top of me tonight?”
She has no idea what her question does to my dick. How it weeps for her like a teenager touching a tit for the first time or Googling the word “sex“ on his parents' computer, then immediately deleting the search history.
She must see the way my eyes darken at her words, because there's a noticeable shift in the atmosphere. The air thickens and crackles with electricity. Our breathing grows labored and her body arches an inch or so closer to mine.
Fuck.
“I'm waiting for you to pick a side,” I grit through clenched teeth, pained by the effort of restraining myself. “You're kinda taking up the whole bed.”
“Oh.” She giggles and tucks a strand of scarlet hair behind her ear. “I normally favor the right, but I didn't know what you'd prefer.”
I fall to the left side of her and immediately cover my lower half with the quilt to hide the tent in my pants. “That works out pretty well, then, princess, 'cause I like the left.”
Shifting farther over to her side of the mattress, she shuffles down the bed to rest her head on the pillow. Turning to me, she whispers, “This is weird.”
“Is it?” I prop myself up by the elbow, resting my head in my hand. “Feels kinda natural to me.”
“That's what's weird. The fact that it's not weird.” She grins, then tuts at herself. “I'm not making any sense.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“It's kind of crazy that we dated for so long before I left, but this is the first time we've ever been in bed together.”
“Damn our parents and their conservative Christian values.”
“Chastity is overrated,” she says, biting the corner of her fingernail. “Maybe if they hadn't been so fixed on protecting our virtue, then I wouldn't have given my virginity to some guy on a pull-out couch whose name I can't remember.”
Jealousy erupts in my heart like molten lava before pouring through every vein and organ of my body. I fist the sheets, my knuckles turning white and my fingertips stabbing painfully into my palms.
“It should've been me,” I growl.
Thea's eyes widen at the gravel in my tone and the low, rumbling timbre of it.
“I wish it had been you,” she whispers, dropping her gaze to study some invisible piece of lint on the sheet between us. “I wish every man who has ever touched me had been you.”
“How many were there?”
I don't know why I ask. Morbid curiosity, I guess. Because there's no answer she could give me that I'd be happy with. And I know I have no right to feel anger rising as a result of her sexual experience when I've fucked my way through countless women in the last six years, but still I find myself vibrating with a murderous rage.
I want to cut off the fingers of every man who has ever touched her. I want to fuck her in front of them, make her scream my name over and over and over again so they have no doubt that Thea belongs to me.
“I don't know, five?”
