Never Sweeter(26)
“Holy shit, Letty, come on. Where is your head, girl?”
“I don’t know. I just blew a hole in it with my imaginary gun. My brains are all over your comforter right now. Can we please just not talk about this?”
“Yeah. Yeah of course we can,” he said, as casual as anything.
He was lying, however.
She could see the urge to ask shivering underneath the surface of his face.
It was in his tense jaw, and his suddenly tight lips.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
“Just be quiet and let me try really hard not to.”
“Goddamn it, Tate. You know you’re the last person I want to talk about my sex life with. Like, I get that yours is really amazing and adventurous, but I’d rather not have my face rubbed in that right now.”
“What makes you think my sex life is amazing and adventurous?”
“Well, you sure make it sound that way.”
“Because I know what it takes to make a girl come? Honey, your bar is super low on the amazing-sex front. Like, you should be coming as the bare fucking minimum. That’s rock-bottom standardgetting the person you’re with off. Otherwise what’s the fucking point in doing it?”
“Maybe people just enjoy being close.”
“Did you?”
She didn’t answer.
She couldn’t.
And that was enough to tell him all he needed to know.
“Yeah, you didn’t even get that out of it, did you.”
“I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“So let’s talk about me instead. You want to know about my amazing sex life? Last girl I hooked up with escaped out the bathroom window while I was waiting naked in bed.”
“What? Bullshit. Bull. Shit. Why would anyone do that to you?” she gasped, only realizing at the last possible second what she’d just implied.
“Well, I’m flattered, Letty.”
“Hang on, I didn’t”
“No really, it’s cool you think I’m worth sticking around for.”
“I don’t think you’re worth sticking around for. I misspoke.”
“Are you sure? Because that bullshit sounded pretty insistent.”
“I meant that no one would do that to anybody. Not specifically you.”
“Okay, whatever you say.”
“It’s a weird thing to do, all right?”
“Especially to me. Handsome and wonderful Tate Sullivan.”
She wasn’t sure what was worse: his singsong tone or the gestures that accompanied it.
He actually ran his fingers through his hairthen licked his hand and ran it down over his body.
He was a perfect nightmare of unbelievable awesomeness.
“You can’t have been that handsome and wonderful if she ran out on you.”
“She ran out on me because I have a can of Pringles in my pants.”
“Well, what the hell were you doing keeping them there?”
“No, Letty. No, honey. Not literally Pringles.”
There was a pregnant pause after that.
And when it gave birth…
Oh god, when she realized…
“Did you seriously just tell me that your dick is enormous?”
“That may possibly have been the gist of my point.”
“Oh gross. Shut up,” she said, then did the only possible thing she could. Asking further questions about this was not an option. Thinking about it was an abomination.
So she grabbed the pillow between them and whacked him with it.
“You did not just hit me with a pillow. You did not, oh my god.”
His tone told her to expect retaliation. It was so jam-packed with faux outrage and unstoppable good humor that it was bound to happen. She just wasn’t prepared for the way it happened. He didn’t whump her back with the cushion to the left of him. There was no wrestling for the pillow still clutched in her fists.
Instead, he went ahead and tackled her.
He got her around the middle and sent her sprawling back across the bed, hands in places she never expected them to be. One was pretty close to her right boob. Another grazed her butt, pretty distinctly. Yet the weird thing was, she couldn’t seem to conjure up any fear. Far from it, in fact: she was laughing as he did it, and even harder when she felt his fingers needling at her rib cage.
He was tickling her.
The bastard was tickling her.
And it was fucking awesome. He had to be the best tickler the world had ever known. He got her to make the sorts of sounds she didn’t know she was capable of, high and ridiculous and completely abandoned to the moment. Then just when she couldn’t take any more, just when her stomach started cramping and tears were leaking out of her eyes, he backed off. He knelt over the tight little ball she’d made of her body, grinning so wildly she was afraid for his face.