My heart pounds against my ribs as my need to kiss her hits me like a tsunami.
“Kitty Kat, please,” I breathe, barely holding on to my restraint.
I know how sweet she tastes, how addictive she is, and I know that if I start, I’m not going to stop.
And that’s not the reason I came here tonight.
Or at least, that’s what I keep trying to tell myself.
“You’re not going to leave, are you?” she whispers.
“No. Not a fucking chance.”
She twists out of my hold, but not before I catch the flash of disappointment in her eyes.
“You’d better go and start the fire then. I’ll get us something to drink.”
She’s gone before I get a chance to say anything else, so I duck back out the front door and walk around the side of the house, grabbing some wood that’s been stacked up under a shelter as I go.
By the time she emerges with two bottles of beer and a blanket, the fire is raging and I was starting to think that she’d changed her mind about joining me.
“Thought you’d decided to run, Kitty Kat,” I say, resting back into the outside sectional and none too discreetly running my eyes down the length of her body.
Her pants are skintight, taunting me with her curves and her blouse is unbuttoned just enough to be the ultimate tease.
She glares at me as I take my fill, her anger levels only escalating.
“Why are you here, Styx? And don’t give me the ‘we need to talk’ bullshit. You talked the other night, you’ve tried to explain but it’s getting you nowhere. And now you’re sitting there looking at me like—”
“I miss you,” I say again. “I miss hanging out with you.”
“You should have thought about that before lying to me.”
She falls down on the other end of the couch, drops one of the bottles of beer to the ground, making her intentions more than clear, and lifts the other to her lips.
“I didn’t lie to you, Kat. Everything I said… I want it. All of it, but—”
“But Diesel is more important. Yeah, I got the memo. I thought you’d have come up with something new by now, you know.”
“No one is more important to me than you, Kat. But what you need right now is—”
“How about you let me decide what I need, Styx. My life is shit. I’m more than aware of that fact. What I really don’t need is you blowing hot and cold, giving me some kind of hope that shit might get better and then dropping me faster than a red-hot rock.”
Reaching out, I brush my knuckles down her exposed arm. Without realizing it, I moved closer during her rant. My need to be in touching distance is apparently too much to deny.
Her skin erupts in goose bumps and fire burns through my veins as my rough knuckles brush her satin skin.
“I never dropped you, Kitty Kat. I was giving you—”
“Fuck space, Styx,” she spits, the orange glow from the fire lighting up her face, making the anger, the hurt that’s darkening her eyes even more obvious.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Kitty Kat. That was never my intention.'“
“What did you think would happen when you promise me a future and then change your mind the second my brother offers you an olive branch?”
“You’re right, Kat. Your life is hard right now. And I don’t want to cause issues with you and D. You know as well as I do that this… us… he’s not going to approve and—”
“He’s fucking my best friend, Styx. With two other guys, I might add,” she seethes. “His opinion on who I’m hooking up with means jack to me right now.”