Page 12 of Try Me

“Not enough,” he muttered and sucked in a sharp breath as I pulled my hand away.

“Not enough to give you an excuse?”

I could see the second Mark cottoned on to the fact that I was fucking with him—though at that point I wasn’t sure I was. I was more invested than I wanted to be, intrigued by his response, how he’d swayed slightly toward me. I still half expected him to take a swing.

His breath hitched as I dragged my index finger up the line of his throat, over his Adam’s apple to his jaw, where my nails whispered against stubble. The shove I was anticipating didn’t come, though he winced as I traced my fingers over the swollen flesh near his eye.

“Not enough. Period,” he grated out, breath coming faster as his gaze fixed on mine resolutely. I glimpsed the flare of arousal in it and felt the same surge through me, full speed and reckless.

That was my cue to walk away. But as my hand left his cheek behind and skimmed down his torso, Mark shifted minutely, adjusting his stance wider, and damn, I just couldn’t resist.

I stepped into the path he’d cleared for me and got closer, inhaling the boozy scent of him, then ran my knuckles over his groin.

“So this is what your problem has been? You thought I shoved drugs in Cam’s mouth and then ditched him?” Mark’s brows pinched together, but I kept going. “Or maybe youwantedto think that, Farrow, because it was the easiest option?”

We both should’ve been over it.

I was starting to get the idea neither of us were.

“Fuck,” he whispered, and I wasn’t sure if it was directed at my touch or the mention of Cam. His three-letter name seemed like a four-letter word between us now.

Mark’s eyes slammed shut, and his mouth dropped open as my nails dragged with a hiss over denim. He was hard. So damn hard. The way he’d been in his bedroom years before. I’d never touched his cock, but fuck had I wanted to.

“Maybe you called me out here for something else. Did you call me out here for something else?” I posed the question sotto voce, trying for an innocence I knew I’d never be able to pull off. It probably came out as mockery. That wouldn’t be too far off the mark either.

Mark’s throat bobbed in a rough swallow, seeming to work around the answer he initially wanted to spit out, like the truth was getting him all clogged up. He’d always had a hard time lying. “You came.” He said it like an insult, low and gravelly, even as his hips arched into my touch.

“I did.” I dropped my hand back to my side, satisfied by another curse dropping from his lips. “And now I’m going home. How about next time you ask me first before jumping to some dumbass conclusions.”

“Can you blame me?”

I shrugged with more nonchalance than I felt. “Maybe not. I’ve never been a liar, though. You of all people should know that.”

I backed up a step, then spun around and stalked in the direction I’d come. Maybe a punch would have been better than feeling Mark up and getting him riled. I wanted to hate him. I’d wanted to for years. Even now I couldn’t manage it. This was as close as I could get.

But I figured fucking with him like that was enough to ensure that we spent our final year in our usual avoidant status quo.

I was wrong.

4

Mark

Chet released me and turned, stalking off as I gaped after him, my traitorous hips still stabbing the empty air in front of me like they hadn’t gotten the message he was bailing. I one hundred percent deserved the fuckery that’d just happened, but that had no bearing on my rational mind. Or my legs, which powered after him even as I fumbled to adjust myself.

Stumbling over the grass, I dived toward him.

We went down in a heap, Chet grunting with the impact and flinging his arms up as we rolled on the ground for the second time that night. He caught my wrists and twisted as we grappled for dominance before he managed to force me onto my side between furious curses that I returned in kind.

I snagged Chet’s shoulder and shoved him as he swung a leg over my thigh. Then he threw his weight, got me onto my back, and scrambled atop me.

Squeezing his thighs around me, Chet bore down on my forearms until they were all but pinned against my chest. The air between us filled with our raspy breaths. I wondered if the thundering beat of his heart had two causes the way mine did.

I caught a quick impression of firmness as he shifted, and then he moved his hips away. His mouth hitched into a smirk I should’ve wanted to punch off his face. Instead, I flexed my fingers, snatching the fabric of his shirt and yanking him closer until his arms on my chest barricaded him inches away.

His mouth went slack, his eyes wide open and registering bald surprise, and the instinct to kiss him exerted its own gravitational force. Fear flooded me, along with arousal in equally overwhelming measures.

Not for the first time, I wondered what if nothing else would ever be enough, if I was fucked-up to want this, fucked-up that he was driving me crazy right now, even with everything that had happened between us, even with who he was.