“I don’t want to do that, either,” I admit somewhat sheepishly.
“You’re mixing signals, Grady,” she warns. “It’s not very fair.” She shakes her head as she shoves at my shoulders. I lift off of her, and she scoots back so that she’s facing me, sitting up with her back against the armrest. “What is this thing you’re doing, Grady? I’m confused.”
She crosses her legs in front of her, and now I can see the tops of her stockings and the little white garters that hold them up.
I swipe a hand down my face. “Jesus Christ,” I mutter. “You’re going to kill me.”
She picks up a throw pillow and thumps my head with it. “I’m going to kill you for real if you don’t tell me what’s wrong with you.”
I bury my face in my hands and let out a groan. “Arrgh!”
“Grady,” she says on a sigh, “I kind of feel like you and I aren’t on the same page. I’m not even sure we’re reading the same book.”
“We are,” I assure her. “We’re reading the same book. And we’re on the same page. I just need to turn the pages slowly.” I stare at her, willing her to understand.
I grab her feet and pull her legs onto my lap. Her stockings are so silky under my fingers and I run my hand up the inside of her calf. Goose bumps erupt on her arms.
“Please tell me you’re not a forty-year-old virgin, Grady,” she says, her voice small. “Because I am most definitely not a virgin.”
“No, I’m not a virgin. But I kind of feel like one with you.” I lift my eyes and look into her face. “I feel like I don’t know which way is up.” I take a deep breath. “And I’m really, really scared that you’re going to make me fall so far in love with you that I can’t ever get back, and then you’re going to break my fucking heart. And I’ve had so much fun with you lately. I like having you back as my best friend, and if I lose that, I’ll lose everything.” I stop for a moment. “I’m scared that if I fuck you, which I really, really want to do, it’ll break us. And I desperately don’t want to break us.”
“Grady,” she says quietly. She takes my hand. “I didn’t ask you to fuck me. I just asked you to come in for hot chocolate.” She grins at me.
“That’s all?” I hang my head, feeling like a dog who just got caught eating from the table.
“That’s all,” she says. She leans over, picks up her mug, and takes a sip. “Yum,” she says with a grin.
“You suck so bad, Clifford.”
She grins even bigger. “I really like having you back in my life,” she says. “And if you’re afraid to go too fast, then we can go really slowly.” She shrugs. “Bok-bok-bkak,” she says, making a clucking chicken sound.
I pick up the throw pillow and hit her with it. “I hate you, Clifford.”
“Yet all you can think about is my garters,” she states.
I look down and find that my fingers have inched all the way up to her thigh, where they’re casually teasing the edge of one stocking. “You should take these things off,” I mutter, and I unhook the little hooks on her right leg. I grab the edge of her stocking and start to roll it down, and I keep going all the way to the bottom of her foot, where I roll it right off. “That’s so much better,” I say, and I reach for the other one. A subtle blush spreads across her chest, but she doesn’t complain. In fact, she wiggles her leg into the right position so I can unhook the second stocking. I roll it down like the first, all the way off her toes, and drop it on the floor.
“For somebody who doesn’t want to fuck me, you sure are keen on getting my clothes off.”
“I’ve been thinking about those stupid stockings ever since I saw them this morning,” I grumble. “I hate those things.”
Her foot nudges my dick, and her eyes go wide. She grins. “Doesn’t feel like you hate them,” she says.
“He has a mind of his own,” I inform her.
She laughs so hard that her chest rocks with it. “He does, does he?”
“Yeah, he never listens to good old common sense. I keep telling him no, not tonight, but sadly, he’s on a path of self-destruction.”
She points toward my lap. “We’re still talking about your dick, right?”
I nod. “He’s incorrigible, really. If you grabbed him right now, he’d follow you anywhere.”
“We’re still talking about your dick, right?” she asks again, her eyebrows shootin
g up high.
I shrug. “Him too.” I run my hand up her shin to her knee. She parts her thighs a little, and I edge her skirt up a little higher on her thigh. “You’re going to own me,” I suddenly admit. And though the sentiment sounds foreign to me, I feel it, deep inside. “When I finally get to fuck you, you’re going to own me. So you had better decide before we do it if that’s what you want.” I look her in the eye.