Yeah. As badly as I want my hands on this girl, I must fight my urges.
But even as I vow to myself that I won’t touch Lyssa, I can already sense myself caving…
CHAPTER THREE
Lyssa
Ohhh, this is a horrible turn of events.
As I watch my best friend hightail it to the safety of an upstairs bedroom, I can feel John’s burning gaze sweeping down my neck and settling on my breasts. Throughout the course of the meal, I’ve become astonishingly wet. So much so that the seam of my shorts is soaked and I can’t stop riding my hips forward and back, trying to give my clit friction from the stitched ridge of denim.
This is bananas.
In my entire high school and college career, I kissed a sum total of two boys. One of them had just eaten an onion bagel. Hello mood killer. The other grabbed my hand and shoved it against his crotch, before we’d even been kissing longer than ten seconds. Hello jumping the gun. Truth be told, I didn’t even want to kiss those dumb boys. It was more a product of peer pressure than anything else. Guys my own age have never interested me. Guys any age, really.
When I was attacked, any budding interest I had in the opposite sex was cut off. The thought of letting anyone make me vulnerable was scary.
It’s almost like my body has been accumulating my missing sexual impulses and has decided to unleash it all for this mammoth of a man. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m aching in places I’ve never touched, even with my own fingers. I’m uncomfortable in my clothes and I just want…to sit on his lap and confess to everything. The lie I’ve been perpetuating with Mason. The attraction I’m battling. And then I want him to hush me, kiss me and make everything better.
Is it crazy to think he would?
John will make everything better. I won’t mind being vulnerable for him.
He’ll treat me with care.
My brain and my hormones seem so positive of these facts.
John is Mason’s father. I’m supposed to be Mason’s girlfriend. If I can’t pull off one measly night on my best friend’s behalf, I’d be a terrible person. I can’t let Mason down. Not after all the times he ran interference for me at bars and parties, or at school.
I rise from table table and carry my empty bowl to the sink. John stands and joins me in the kitchen, towering over me with his giant, muscle-packed frame. “Leave this here,” he rumbles. “I’ll clean it later.”
“You cooked. I can clean.”
He makes quick work of tying back his mass of hair, securing it with the rubber band around his wrist. “No. You’re a guest.”
I let him take the bowl out of my hands and with nothing else to do, I fiddle with the hem of my tank top. “Do you…have a lot of overnight guests?’
Shoot me now.
I seriously can’t believe I just asked him that. Why not just wave a freaking banner with Hot for John emblazoned across the front?
His deep brown eyes twinkle with amusement and my heart wings up into my throat. Good gravy, he’s stupidly hot and male and…God, beautiful on top of it. There’s a scent of the outdoors clinging to him, something that calls burning firewood and earth to mind. Who knew that would appeal to me on such a level?
“I don’t have guests, Lyssa.” His gaze meanders over my breasts and lower, tightening the flesh between my thighs. “Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to treat one.”
“Oh.” Is he telling me he knows hot to treat a woman or am I imagining it? “That’s good of y-you.”
For a brief moment in time, I swear he’s going to advance the final few inches separating us and kiss me. And I want it. God, I want it. My apparent weakness for this man makes me a bad friend, but I think if he ordered me onto my knees right now, my body would obey before my mind issued a protest. I’m almost shaking, I’m so turned on. By his size, his voice, his hands, his eyes, his scent.
I should find somewhere to hide until tomorrow, but I stay rooted to the spot, my neck tilted back so I don’t have to break our heated eye contact.
“Um…” Battle back, Lyssa. Come on. “Do you want to show me your stick?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Sticks. Plural. Walking sticks.” I press my hands to my face. “Can we do a fifteen-second rewind?”
“Sure thing, sweetness. It never happened.” He gives me a curious look, before turning and exiting the kitchen. “I can pretend if you can.”
My brain doesn’t have the room to interpret his odd tone, because I’m perched on the edge of implosion after hearing John call me sweetness. Is it possible for an endearment to cause an orgasm? Signs point to yes.