Page 42 of Forbidden Wish
They could forget it ever happened. Erase the memory and… except that wasn’t what she wanted. Whatever was happening between them, wherever it might go, it felt worthwhile. Profound. Like more than just a one-night stand or sex for the sake of sex.
But she was in his home. He’d offered it to her for protection. She couldn’t now make him regret that decision by pressuring him. His friendship with Ford was the most enduring of either of their lives. She didn’t have a friend like that. One she’d known her whole life who’d go to the ends of the earth for her. Both men meant so much to her, but she couldn’t damage or diminish what they meant to each other by getting between them.
“You’re quiet,” he said, his deep voice gruff. “What’s in your head?”
“Ford,” she said because it was honest. “I don’t want this to hurt him. To hurt your friendship. You’ll resent me. Both of you will.”
“Yeah,” he said, surprising her with his agreement. “If we screw around for fun, it will fuck our friendship.”
“He never has to know,” she said and sat up. “We’ll swear to each other it won’t ever happen—”
“Hey,” he said, catching her wrist before she could rise, sitting up next to her. When their eyes met, he scooped a hand around her cheek. “I made a choice.”
“It shouldn’t be that. I don’t want you to choose me over him.”
“I choose both of you. This doesn’t end anything, it begins something. This is the start of us. Yeah, it might be rough going for a while… And we should be on a steady footing before we tell Ford, so he knows this isn’t just hooking up without commitment…”
“Is it?” she asked. “Because if that’s all you want—”
“What do you want, Genny?”
That was a helluva question. Way to put her on the spot. One thing was certain.
“I don’t want that to be the last time we do that,” she said, fixating on the plump temptation of his lower lip. “I don’t want our last kiss to be our last…”
He leaned in to kiss her slow. “That’s what we start with.”
“You’re so calm.”
“Freaking out won’t change anything,” he said. “Want to lie down?”
How long did they have? Probably not long. They couldn’t take the risk of anyone discovering them. If she’d made as much noise as she thought, their secret may not be a secret anymore.
In answer to his question, she crawled across the bed to lie on the far side while he settled next to her.
“So this is Jagger Dunn’s bedroom?” she asked, glancing around.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Smiling, she couldn’t believe how important it felt to be there when just last week, she’d never even thought about it.
There was a stair up to the bed, and no headboard. Everything was basic, simple. Not austere, just as required, nothing more than that.
A few clothes on the chair in the corner might indicate a guy in a hurry. The few bottles on the dresser spoke of a man who knew what he liked. She wouldn’t call him sloppy. No way, not Jagg.
“It’s crazy how much I want to be here,” she said, swiping her hair from her face, wondering which door led to what. “How much this means to me. How did this sneak up on us?”
“Maybe it didn’t,” he said. On his side, looming over her, he stroked her stomach. “You’re hot. Any guy with eyes can see that.”
True, as she’d told him, his attractiveness wasn’t exactly a secret either. “You were in this box. Like this never gonna happen box.”
“Hustle opened the lid and let that all out.”
Yeah. She ran her fingers from his cheek up to his hair. “I have to go back.”
“To Hustle?”
She nodded. “I know you think it’s dangerous.”
