Page 46

Chapter Six

Suddenly, reality shot back into focus. And Sam was very aware of the fact that she was in wet jeans. That the water was still running. That she was half-naked in the arms of her best friend after having dry-humped...well, wet-humped maybe was the better term, all things considered. Whatever.

Gut-wrenching regret and humiliation were all the same no matter what you called the thing that brought them about.

She pulled away from him slowly, her eyes locked shut. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want him to see her. She wanted to sink beneath the water and hide until Jace left the room.

But she was frozen. Completely.

Jace was the one who moved first.

He stood, water pitching around them, splashing over her bare stomach, up to her breasts.

She managed to open her eyes and look up at him.

His jeans were molded to his legs, to the bulge right behind his zipper.

Droplets ran down his chest. And up higher.

..up higher was what she really didn’t want to see .

His eyes were shadowed, his jaw set. At his sides, his hands were clenched. He didn’t look happy, that was for sure.

Well, she wasn’t all that happy either. Considering the release she’d just had, she was battling between horror, anger at herself, anger at him and a sweet sort of languor that made her feel boneless and warm and wonderful.

It didn’t make any sense that satisfaction and terror could exist side by side.

But right now they did. Her body was all happy and smoking a cigarette. Her mind was completely freaking out.

It was quiet in the bathroom now. Except for the water that was still running. Cold now, and she was still in it as it got higher.

Awkward silence had passed to devastating silence, and they were just sort of staring at each other, letting it get worse.

Hell. It couldn’t get worse. Could it get worse?

It was getting worse. He was still standing there, staring at her. And she was just staring at him. And she felt like she was looking at a stranger. Because was it really Jace who had taken her to heaven like that? Her best friend, the man she’d known since she was sixteen?

Yes. Yes, it had been.

And now, after speaking millions upon millions of words to the man with total ease over the course of the past fourteen years, she couldn’t think of one to say after getting a mind-bending orgasm from him.

Not one.

Except maybe...

“Thanks.”

“What?”

He didn’t look happy that that was the word she’d said. Damn. Bad choice. Yes, judging by the stormy look in his dark eyes, it had been a bad choice.

“I don’t know,” she said, sitting up, suddenly so embarrassed she thought she might die of it. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know.” She climbed out of the tub, her jeans stuck tight to her legs, and scrambled for her shirt.

“Why the hell did you...thank me?”

“Because the orgasm was good?” She tugged her shirt over her head. “It seemed polite.”

“Polite?”

“I don’t know. What’s the protocol for this situation?”

“There is no protocol.” He let out a string of curse words, each progressively more crass than the last, ending in a word combination she never could have conceived of. “There is no protocol.”

“I was afraid of that. Farmer’s Almanac has nothing? No? Okay.”

Jace was still shirtless, still standing in the tub in water that hit him mid-shin. His expression was starting to resemble that of man who’d been punched in the stomach with the end of a two-by-four.

It was like watching him go through the stages of grief. Denial was the part that had him frozen in the tub, and she had a feeling anger would be next. But she didn’t know whether the anger would be directed at himself or her.

And she didn’t really want to stick around to find out.

“It’s been a long day,” she said, starting to edge out of the bathroom, wondering if Jace would be pissed about the water on the floor.

Too damn bad. She was not hanging around to clean it up.

That was what had caused this mess in the first place.

It confirmed her deepest suspicion that nothing truly good ever came of housework.

“Yeah,” he said, looking down, probably realizing he was still standing in the tub.

“I’m going to go to bed.” It was five o’clock. Even she didn’t buy her BS. But darn it all, she would huddle up in her room until Jace went to work the next morning if she had to. Because she couldn’t deal with this just yet. Just yet or maybe never.

So she would do what she’d done when she was a kid and reality sucked. She would cover her head with a blanket and imagine she was somewhere else. Just like she’d done nearly every time they’d moved.

Or on particularly cold, frightening nights sleeping in their car.

As scary as that had been, she was pretty sure this was worse. Because this had rocked her foundation.

If she ruined things with Jace, there was no one else.

Mrs. Brown was in Florida. Her mother probably didn’t even remember which city she’d left her only child in all those years ago.

And Poppy was wonderful, but she didn’t make Sam watch Die Hard or drink beer with cupcakes.

She needed Jace. She needed this to not have happened.

“Good night,” she said, not looking at him and as she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Jace was still trying to catch his breath, and Sam was already gone.

It was probably a good thing because the moment he caught his breath, if she was still here, he would have done one of two things.

He would have started yelling. Or he would have pushed her back down into the water and wrestled those jeans off of her no matter how hard it was to peel wet denim from skin.

He breathed in deep, finally, his chest pitching sharply with the motion, and stepped out of the tub.

Dammit. What had he just done?

Years of pent-up lust had exploded, and it had gotten all over Sam. Had he been in a shower by himself, great, fine. He’d have guiltily jacked off to her image. And it wouldn’t have been the first time.

Even those moments, moments of pure fantasy, made him feel like dirt.

But this was inexcusable. He’d expended his fantasies all over her. Well, the denim had caught most of it.

He winced. What kind of asshole did that to his best friend?

In fairness, she’d kissed him back. And she’d really seemed to enjoy everything that had happened in the tub. But he should have stopped. He should have known better. He should have done better.

He looked around the bathroom. It was a mess. Evidence of the dog’s bath all over the place, and puddles from their water fight splashed across the floor.

But for some reason the thought of cleaning didn’t relax him.

Whether he cleaned the bathroom or not, what had just happened would have still just happened.

Because no matter how much control he took over his surroundings, in this situation he had no control at all. And it made him feel like the entire theory for his life wasn’t quite as sound as he’d always believed .

He had to figure out a way to get control. At the moment, a little dog hair was the least of his worries.