living room. I recognized the chair and the couch. It had
been mine, once. The chair had been his and he'd been
welcome to it, but I'd paid for that couch.
The couch didn't matter.
'You want something to drink?'
I turned to look at him, this boy grown into a man. 'No. I
didn't come here to drink.'
Austin smiled. 'So, what did you come here for?'
I puled him forward by his belt. Two steps. He didn't
stumble, but he did put his hands on my upper arms. I
must have caught him by surprise. I looked up, up into his
face. But when he bent to kiss me, I turned my head.
'Let me guess,' he said into my ear. 'You didn't come here for kissing?'
'You can kiss me.' I took his hand off my arm and put it
between my legs. 'Here.'
I looked at him, then, and his expression gratified me
immensely. His fingers curled experimentaly against me
and pushed at the soft cloth of my skirt.
Austin blinked, slowly. His smile didn't fade so much as
leak away. 'Paige?'
'We both know what I came here for.' I curled my fingers
around his wrist and moved his hand down to the hem of
my skirt, then up again to replace his palm against my
panties. 'Let's not pretend anything else.'
I thought, for one brief, strange second, he was going to
turn me down. The heat of his hand seeped through my
panties, but the flash of ice in his eyes left me cold.
Suddenly I had no trouble remembering why I'd left him.
He didn't let me pul away. 'Fine. I'm not pretending.'
'Good.'
'Good.'
'Good,' he said. His fingers slipped inside my panties and found me already wet. Again, his gaze flickered. 'Fuck,
Paige.'
'Yes, please,' I said.
He'd always been bigger than me, but in the years since
we'd broken up he'd gone from a bulky footbal player's
build to the harder, leaner muscled frame of a man who
made his living working with tools. He might have quit the
construction job with his dad's company, but whatever he
was doing kept him in tight, hard shape.
At first I thought he might not kiss me. We'd done it
before, fucked without kissing each other on the mouth.
We'd fucked angry, rough. We'd done it tender-soft, too,
and sweet.
So when Austin puled me closer and brushed his lips
across mine, I was already tense and waiting. He kissed
me softly and puled away. He looked into my eyes.
'I was sure you'd bail on me.'
I frowned, not wanting to talk, and when I opened my
