Accidental Bride(35)
It was going well. Really well. Kelly couldn’t remember when she’d had a better day.
They’d had a relaxing morning and a delicious breakfast. Then they’d gone hiking up to see a couple of the waterfalls in the area. On their way back, they’d stopped to look at a few more old houses for sale, and then they’d spent the rest of the afternoon taking it easy on the grounds of the bed and breakfast.
There was a bench swing next to the lake, which they’d sat in for more than an hour.
It felt kind of like a real honeymoon. Kelly felt happy, relaxed, really close to Peter.
And she wanted to be closer still.
Reminding herself for the hundredth time that they were just friends wasn’t helping at all anymore. She wondered what Peter would do if she just jumped him as soon as he walked out of the bathroom.
She didn’t, of course. He walked out in his pajama pants, with bare chest and bare feet, and her heart did a silly little skip while the rest of her body clenched in excitement.
Even more when he smiled at her.
“Are you tired?” he asked, walking over to the table where he’d left his phone.
“Not really. It’s been a really great day.”
His smiled warmed. “Good. I think so too.”
Their gazes held for a minute, and then she started to feel awkward and nervous, so she reached over to the television remote. “I guess we can watch some TV, if you don’t want to go to sleep right away.”
He cleared his throat as he climbed into the bed beside her. “Sure.”
She turned the television on and started flipping channels, but nothing she saw held much interest to her.
When she landed on a commercial for personal lubricant that was supposed to transform regular sex into high drama, complete with rousing orchestra and fireworks, she glanced over at Peter, trying not to imagine herself trying out that lubricant with him.
He gave her his little eyebrow arch. “If you’re looking for a testimonial, you’re out of luck. I’ve never tried that stuff.”
She burst into helpless giggles. “I wasn’t asking!”
“My mistake.”
“I wonder how many people go out and buy it, hoping their ordinary sex life magically transforms into mind-blowing pleasure.”
“You’ve never been tempted?” The timbre of his voice shifted slightly.
She knew very well she should redirect the course of this conversation. She and Peter didn’t talk about sex, and they definitely shouldn’t start now. Not when he was in bed with her, half-naked and sexy with slightly rumpled hair and that clever amusement in his eyes. But she heard herself saying anyway, “Well, I don’t have a sex life—ordinary or not—that needs transforming.”
She stared at the television as she realized what she’d just said, torn between a rising excitement and embarrassment.
From her peripheral vision, she saw Peter turned his head so his eyes rested on her face. “No sex life at all?”
She was sitting up in bed, just like he was, but she pulled the covers up over her a little more. “Well, not currently. But it’s not like I’m a virgin or anything, though.”
“You’re not?”
Despite her self-consciousness, she looked over to meet his eyes. “You thought I was?”
“I didn’t know. I wondered. You haven’t dated anyone since I’ve known you, so I thought it might be a possibility.”
Of course, he’d wondered. Everyone probably wondered. Poor, boring, undesirable Kelly. “I haven’t dated anyone—ever really. But I did have sex before.”
“How did that happen?” He sounded like he really wanted to know.
There was no reason not to tell him. She’d told him almost everything else. “I was sixteen. He was part of the group of friends I hung out with in high school. We never really dated, but we started hanging out alone more. And then we…we just had sex.”
“You don’t sound like it was something you wanted.”
She heard the caution in his tone, and she straightened up immediately. “It wasn’t like that. Nothing like that. I did want to do it. I mean, I thought I did. We had sex four times, and every time I was a willing participant. It just…it just wasn’t very good.”
“Well, you both were sixteen. What did you expect?”
She gave a soft chuckle. “I know. I just thought it would be…be different. But it was always over before I could really process it. We’d be playing video games or something, and then he’d start kissing me, and then before I knew it, my pants were off and it was happening and then it was over. And afterwards I would always get this sick feeling, like I wished I hadn’t done it.”