Page 85 of Every Step She Takes

“You,” I answer without thinking, without filter, without considering the consequences of that confession.

Her flawless calm shatters. “Me?Really?”

She’s unnerved, and it turns out that gets me hot too. Knowing I have the power to shatter her façade of cool. So, I answer honestly again. “Yes, really. You.”

She clears her throat. “Oh, um, I…” Now Mal shifts nervously on the bed, and if I’m not mistaken, she’s—

“Shit, are youblushing?”

“No.” She puts a hand to her pinkening cheek. “I just got hot earlier when you were dry humping my leg.”

I start blushing too, but I don’t feel so embarrassed about it.

“What was I doing in this masturbatory fantasy of yours?” Mal asks with a cocky head tilt against the pillow.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” Mal growls impatiently. “Tell me.”

I’m pretty sure I’d jump off a cliff if she told me to do it in that voice. “You were touching me everywhere,” I mumble. “With your hands… and… and with your mouth.”

Her jaw twitches, but she says nothing.

“And I was touching you,” I add quietly.

“Where?” she demands to know.

I close my eyes. This is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done, but I can’t stop now, not when I need her to keep using that voice. “Your breasts,” I admit.

She abruptly glances down at her chest, then back up at me. “Mybreasts?”

“Yes, Ms. Never-Wears-a-Bra.”

“I don’t wear a bra because I don’t need to.” She grabs at the absence of boobs in demonstration. “I’m flat-chested.”

“Yes, but with the showiest nipples I’ve ever seen.”

“My nipples are showy? What does that even mean?” She rubs her fingers over the ridge of her nipples under her tank top on the bed next to me. Any teasing dies in the back of my throat as I watch her touch herself. She catches me watching, and she must see something in my face that prompts her next command. “Tell me what you want.”

I want too much. “I want— I want you to take your shirt off.”

Without another word, Mal pushes herself up to her knees and pulls off the tank, ruffling her mullet in the process. On instinct, I turn away, the way I did in every locker room, at that small handful of sleepovers, terrified that someone would catch me staring.

Terrified of what it would mean if Ididstare.

“Look at me, Sadie,” Mal orders in that motherfucking growl.

And I do, taking in the knife’s edge of her clavicle, the compass tattoo on her sternum, the snaking vines across her taut stomach, and the hint of hip bones above the waistband of her shorts. I study her ropey muscles and her sun-kissed skin and, finally, her breasts. Like two small teardrops on her chest. Her areolas take up most of the real estate, and they’re more of a wine color than the dark brown of my imagination, but her nipples are even darker, even larger, swollen pebbles that make me woozy.

I lose track of time, of all sense of modesty and shame, staring at the realness of her.

“Sadie.”

The sound of my name pulls my focus back up to her face, where she’s watching me as I watch her, discovering every beautiful mystery she’s divulged to me.

“What do you want?” she demands.

“I want… I want to touch you.”