Page 90 of Charming Like Us

I love them.I’d give him a hundred corny, sappy nicknames if I could.

But I listen to the signs that read:

Danger!

Warning!

Going too fucking far, Oliveira!

I can’t lie to the guy though. “Just don’t call me Ozzy.”

“Why not?”

“My college boyfriend wore that one down.”

“Noted.” He stiffens, and we both slide further back on the bunkbed, leaning against the wall. Our legs are scrunched up towards our chests. Knees bent.

I cut through an awkward tension by wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

He smiles weakly over at me. “I thought I fucked that up between us.”

“No.” I shake my head at him. “Just so you’re aware, being a top or bottom has nothing to do with being dominant or submissive. Dominant bottoms exist.”

He nods with another smile. “Good to know.” He tracks a hand from my kneecap down to my thigh, breathes in, and then retracts, like the intensity and swelling feelings are too much. My skin is still tingling from the touch, and I listen as he explains, “I can’t say what I’m into yet…being a top or bottom, I guess I won’t figure it out until I have sex.”

I push back curly strands out of my eyes.

I want to tell Highland right here that I do prefer to top. That the last time I bottomed was over ten-years ago. I want to tell him that I’ll take care of him if he’s nervous, and I’d never pressure him to do anything he’s not ready to do.

But I’m a coward and too afraid of his reaction to those words. So I don’t utter a single one. He could either run scared because he doesn’t think we’re sexually compatible. Or worse, he could believe we are.

And then what? We have mind-blowing sex, the best sex of my life? We find out we’retoo goodtogether in every aspect. Too perfect for each other, a match orchestrated by a twenty-one-year-old genius named Charlie Cobalt and maybe even a higher power.

Fate.

The stars in the sky.

Aligning for him and me.

And then Jack could call this a stepping-stone.Short-term fling.Maybe that’s all I’m good for while I’m in security.

Insecurities are such assholes, and I know I’m riding this one hard and dry.

So I swallow the pit in my throat, and I hug him closer and kiss the freckle on his temple. His lip rises at me.

He places his large hand back on my thigh.

“So,” I say, “when exactly did you know you were into me, Highland?”

He chokes on a sound that I think was supposed to be a laugh. “When I met you.”

I rock back, my skull touching the wall. “That was…five yearsago.”

His fingers rake through his thick hair. “I didn’t know what it meant—my feelings for you. I couldn’t process them beyond the fact that they were so different than anything I’d felt before.” His Adam’s apple bobs.

My mind races back to that time and place. I met him around the same time I became Charlie’s bodyguard.

Jack Highland was just twenty-two and a production assistant forWe Are Calloway.