I shoved him with my shoulder, but the stone statue didn’t move. Instead, his fingers tightened on my hips and a current of electricity went shooting across my body.
“Not this time.”
“Excuse me?” Red alert. Red alert! Something was off and it was standing pressed against me. Deck had never touched me, kissed me, done anything sexual, and suddenly this was everything sexual.
But being with Deck … that would be the deliverance of my world collapsing. And if mine collapsed, so would his.
“You going to kiss me, Deck? Or just stand there and get my panties wet then walk away.”
He swung me around so fast, the counter banged my hip. “What you did was stupid and foolish.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“No, I said reckless.”
Hmm, so he did. “Well, I think you said it last night. While you were forcing pills down my throat.” Actually, I think it was while I was puking—my choice and it hadn’t been fun.
His brows rose. “No. It was while I was holding your hair back while you puked in my toilet.” What a lovely image; kind of destroyed the sexual tension. Okay, maybe not. I was pulsating with sexual tension and nothing was going to kill it. “Were you going to fuck him, Georgie?”
That was Deck, straight-up and to the point. “Not your business.”
“It’s always my business.” His hands slipped up onto my waist, and then I felt his thumbs slowly stroke back and forth on my rib cage.
Holy shit. Deck—who had been around me for ten years, minus the two he went back to his team—had never touched me intimately and now he was. This wasn’t trivial baby sparks; this was a horde of emergency flares going off.
“Care to try me out?” It was a rash remark, but I was on a roll and I had nothing to lose.
“YOU KNOW THAT’S not going to happen, Georgie.”
Yeah, I did. I may have fantasized about Deck, but he always kept a spreader bar between us. Ha … now, wouldn’t that be a sweet sight between my legs. Deck and a spreader bar.
I was completely screwed up thinking shit like that, but I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself and even that was debatable. “Ever thought about tasting my pussy, Deck?” I decided my best course of action here was to make him be the one to run. His hands dropped from my waist and I huffed. Mission accomplished in seven words.
Disappointment settled deep in my stomach. I didn’t know why. I was so used to it; I should have been immune. I was to everything else. I pushed a little more, putting my hand on his rock-hard chest as I slowly trickled my finger down between his pecs. He remained stone cold and unmoving—typical Deck, not giving anything away. Pissed me off when I was an open book with pages being ripped out—and he was reading them. At least when it came to my sexual attraction to him. He read nothing else of what I’d become. Deck skipped the most important pages when he’d disappeared for those two years.
I pushed him a little more because … well, it was what I did. “You ever think of what it would feel like to have your cock inside me? Easily sliding in and out. No, it wouldn’t be easy, would it? It would be crass, rough and pounding.” I looked up at him and froze. Jesus, his eyes were blazing and not with anger; they were smoldering with desire.
Maybe—
“What I need in bed is not you, Georgie.”
Talk about having water thrown in your face. The heat I felt in my cheeks must have said it all. Such a bastard. I wanted to slap that confident, cold face so badly just to get some reaction out of him. To have him do something … anything. Grab me. Hurt me. Stop his detachment from growing like a weed.
Instead, I smiled and winked. It was a little awkward and killed me to do it, but I couldn’t let him see how much his words hurt me.
“Oh, sweetpea, I didn’t say I wanted you in bed.” No, it would be against the wall, on a table, in the shower. “Unless, of course, you were tying me up. Then we could do the bed.” Shit, that pushed something in him, because Deck’s eyes narrowed and he grabbed my arm, his fingers bruising.
“Never going to happen. You need to stop this.”
“Stop what?”
“This bullshit. The drinking. The attitude. The pretending to be someone you’re not.”
The thing was … he was so close to the truth it scared me. I couldn’t imagine what Deck would do if he ever figured it out. But I was careful and there were only two people who knew about me. I had to keep it that way. I had no choice. I’d made that decision a long time ago and there was no escape. Besides, I didn’t know how to be anything else anymore.
Deck believed I drank because of my brother’s death and he was partially right. I was this way because of what happened after my brother died, but it wasn’t the only reason.