Page 55 of Between Desire and Denial

“I only quote the best.” I shrugged, not pulling my foot away quite yet.

It was right then that his thumb pushed into the arch of my foot though, and I couldn’t control how the shivers shot through my body or how good the sensation felt. A moan escaped as I practically melted back down into the pillow. “Oh, gosh. That feels too good. So nope.” I tried to pull my foot away. Of course, he didn’t let me. I glared down the bed at him. “I can’t handle you doing that to me tonight, Dimitri.”

The goose bumps I felt over my skin, the way I was already breathing more rapidly, the way I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist if he kept on.

“I can’t handle not doing it.” Suddenly, his eyes were a darker green and they simmered with a heat I wanted to experience. “I’m not frustrated with my workday, Honeybee.”

“What’s frustrating you then?”

“You walking around in your skimpy pajamas, you sleeping next to me, you being everywhere in this damn house but not with me at the same time. So choose… me giving you a massageas a friend or fucking you against that headboard as your boyfriend. Which do you want?” I bit my lip now to stop myself from answering, because we both knew I’d pick the wrong one. “Jesus, Olive. Don’t tempt me if you’re not sure. Take the massage.”

“Fine. But the massage is…” I gasped when he pushed the right spot again. “Tempting enough.”

“Let’s focus on something else then. Why the fuck are you on a dating app?”

Chapter Nineteen

DIMITRI

A damndatingapp.Was she trying to kill me? I could handle a long workday, I could handle giving her time, I could handle pretending to be just her damn friend for a few weeks.

I would not endure watching her date other men though.

I fantasized about the woman having my damn children at this point. It was obsessive and not what I planned for, but it didn’t matter. I was beyond that now.

“Because that’s how people date and hook up, Dimitri,” she said like I was an imbecile. “I told you I wanted to see what people had to offer. Haven’t you used one?”

“I can honestly say I haven’t.” And she wasn’t going to be using one for long either.

“Really?” She looked shocked. “Not even in college?”

“In college I was studying and—”

“According to some, you were setting fire to buildings and hooking up with every woman you could.”

I chuckled. “The fire was an experiment gone wrong.”

“How exactly does that happen in the middle of the night?”

“My chem professor unlocked a couple doors for us to get into a restricted part of a lab late one night, and she was showingme how two chemicals can react, but then we weren’t paying attention because…” I drifted off with the story.

See, this was the difference between me and Olive. She’d tell me all about a dating app because I was truly just her friend. I wouldn’t tell her about hooking up with a woman because I didn’t see her as a friend at all. After the bathtub, I’d thought of her every second of every day. And I’d worked hard to quell the thoughts, but they weren’t going away. I knew that now.

“What?” she encouraged me but then narrowed her eyes. “You were fooling around with her?”

Her eyes darkened, I swear, and I could see how she was turned-on by talking about me being with someone else. She was insatiable. “You want me to tell you about it?”

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as if she needed to break our connection. “Stop it.” She yanked her foot out of my grasp and sat up on her side, causing the blanket to fall from her chest. She was wearing something completely different from what she normally did. It was a cute white top that barely covered her midriff. I couldn’t look away from how bouncy her tits looked or how her thighs felt so smooth next to mine. “It’s bad that I almost said yes. It’s—”

“Or maybe it’s good. You’re finding out what you want to experience. You like me talking through sex out loud, I’m happy to.”

“I would probably enjoy listening to that story, but we’re staying focused on the PG version. Weren’t you scared?”

“Of the explosion or—”

“Of breaking into the building with her and doing that?”

“I’ll only live once,” I said.