“I couldn’t think of anyone else I could talk to about it, honestly,” she says, sighing.
“Still feeling lonely?” The idea that a woman as gorgeous as Lara could be lonely for any amount of time, when I know for a fact that all she’d have to do is crook her finger and give someone a little look and any straight single man with sense and the ability to see would come running, is almost hilarious to me.
“A little,” she admits. She takes another sip of her wine.
I take a longer pull of my beer. Just being around Lara like this, with both of us alone, is enough to remind me of not just what we were like as teenagers dating, but also of what kissing her recently had been like. In spite of her saying before that we can’t make good decisions for Riley together if things get physical between us, I haven’t been able to shake how exciting it had felt to kiss her, and how much I want to kiss her again.
“It’s lonely for me, too,” I say. I can’t quite look at Lara when I say it. It feels so pathetic to admit it. I know it’s not wrong for me to miss Alexis, and I do. I miss her at least some part of every hour of every day since she’s been gone. But more than that, in particular, I miss being with someone.
“We talked about this. We can’t get physical,” Lara says, as if she’s reading my mind.
I smile at her. “Why not? I mean, being serious, really thinking about it. Why not? What is getting physical going to really make happen?” I set down my beer and force myself to meet her gaze right on.
“It’s going to make everything complicated, and you know it,” Lara says.
“Why does it have to?” I shrug off that idea.
“Because we have history. And Alexis has only been dead for, like, five months. You’re not thinking straight.”
“All I know is that we’ve both had a frustrating night, and for once neither of us is taking care of Riley,” I point out.
“That doesn’t mean we should do anything,” Lara insists.
“You’re lonely and so am I. We’re both tense. Why not?” I lean in closer to her, and I see Lara tense up a little bit, but I can also see that she’s not exactly, at least on a purely physical level, against what’s happening between us.
“Because we shouldn’t,” Lara says, but she doesn’t sound convinced.
“If you can tell me right now, in all honesty, that you don’t want to, I’ll finish my beer, wish you a good night and go home,” I tell her.
The silence drags out between us for a long few seconds, and I start to think she’s actually going to tell me that she doesn’t want it, that I’ve misread all the cues I’ve gotten from her.
“It’s wrong and I shouldn’t,” Lara says quietly. “It’s wrong, but I want to.”
I don’t say anything. Instead I finish leaning in and kiss her, full on the lips. For just an instant Lara tenses, and the next second, when she begins kissing me back, I realize that it was in surprise, not because she’s going to tell me to stop. I feel her move on the couch slightly and open my eyes a crack to see she’s putting her wine glass aside so it doesn’t spill. After that we’re both involved, kissing each other more and more heavily.
I try to take it a little bit slow, to give Lara a chance to tell me to stop, or that she doesn’t want to go any further. I start with my hands on her waist, feeling the tension in her body, and then work up to her breasts gradually, over the top of her shirt. When Lara doesn’t stop me, I cup her breasts a little more obviously, giving them a quick squeeze.
It’s almost weird in a way. Memories flood back into my brain about what it had been like with Lara before, versus the subtle little changes that have happened to her body since, the little ways she’s more confident in kissing me or touching me. Her hands move over me in quick little movements, sliding down my chest and hesitating just a bit at my abdomen before dipping down to the front of my jeans. My cock has already started to throb, hardening from just kissing her and knowing that she might want more.
I get my hands up under her shirt, and Lara reaches down to tug my T-shirt free of my jeans. I can feel the heat of her body getting more and more turned on by the moment, even as she moans against my lips. After a few moments I get brave again and slip my hands around to Lara’s back, to unhook her bra under her shirt. She breaks away from my lips and I think she’s going to tell me to stop, but instead she pulls my T-shirt up along my body, and I realize she’s taking it off me altogether.
I make my own move, tugging Lara’s shirt up along her ribs, over her head. We both stop for just a second, looking at each other. I am almost certain that Lara is going to tell me we can’t go ahead, that we need to stop.
“Do you want me to stop, Lara?”
Lara thinks about this for a moment and then shakes her head.
“No, I want you,” she says.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lara
I pull Ethan in for a deeper kiss, and feel his hands moving over my body, tracing over my curves. I can’t help but notice that in the time since we broke up, Ethan’s added muscle to his body. He’s strong, broad across the chest and back, with thick upper arms. He gives my breasts another quick squeeze and then reaches around to unhook my bra, lifting it away from me almost before I realize what he’s doing.
He pulls me back and down on top
