Okay to be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to decipher.
Goddamn.
Finally I said softly, “Luke.”
He gave me a half-grin and even in a lying position I felt my knees wobble.
There I was, lying in bed, Luke on top of me, still inside me, my limbs wrapped around him.
Hell and damnation.
How did I let this happen?
What happened to my vow?
How was I ever going to go back to my vibrators now?
I took my arms from around him and shoved his shoulders. “Get off.”
The grin turned full-fledged, he bent his head, touched my lips with his and then rolled off.
I hightailed to the bathroom.
Crapity, crap, crap, crap.
Now how was I going to get out of this mess?
I couldn’t just get on a spaceship and float around the earth. That was too close. I needed to beam to another galaxy. Since Star Trek technology wasn’t possible in the non-TV realm, I decided I needed to find a plastic surgeon and have my face altered so I was unrecognizable and move to Guadalajara for good measure.
Then I realized I was na**d in the bathroom and had nothing with me to put on.
I was such a dork.
A black, zip up sweatshirt was hanging on the back of the door and I fell on it like a starving man at a feast. I zipped it on and looked in the mirror.
I’m happy, Good Ava told me, grinning like a loon. This is what we’ve ALWAYS wanted.
Bad Ava had her arms crossed, was scowling and she was strangely silent. But I knew what she was thinking.
I did my morning business and walked out of the bathroom. Luke, na**d (and looking fine by the way), was heading toward it as I walked out. He nabbed me at the waist, pulled me in for a quick, hard kiss then let me go and went into the bathroom.
I stared at the door in a mini-Luke Lip Fog for a few beats. Then I found my underwear, pulled them on and wondered what to do.
I needed to get out of there and soon. I needed to find a quiet place to let my head explode. I needed to shove all this down, bury it, forget it happened.
Bad Ava’s unspoken advice was the only thing I could think of. I needed to find a way out before this all turned to shit. Like it always turned to shit.
Always.
Instead of doing any of that, I went to the kitchen, nabbed a diet, tidied the cookies, put away the forgotten in the sex-a-thon last night groceries and started to make toast.
Luke came out when I slid down the lever on the slices of bread. I heard him moving around but I stared at the toaster as if I was certain it would animate and start dancing around like all the stuff in the Beast’s house in that Disney movie and I didn’t want to miss the show.
He came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me and touched his lips to my neck. This felt good. Sweet, nice, intimate and wonderful.
Ava, Bad Ava’s sharp voice was a warning.
What? Good Ava asked innocently, as far as I’m concerned, Luke could hold us all day.
Fuckity, f**k, f**k, f**k.
“You want toast?” I asked, not moving my eyes from the toaster.
He moved closer. I pressed against the counter, he pressed against me.
“Yeah,” he said against my neck.
“Okay, I need to get the butter.”
He let me go. I got the butter and put it on the counter. I did all of this without looking at him.
I was going for a knife when he moved in again, getting in front of me, pressing my bottom to the counter this time full frontal, arms sliding around me. I tilted my head back to look at him. He was smiling down at me, amused about something.
“What’s funny?” I asked, not thinking anything was funny, at all, in the whole universe.
“I don’t know yet,” he answered.
I stared at him, blank-faced. Then I said, “What?”
“Just waitin’ to see what you’re gonna say next.”
“Why does that make you smile?”
“‘Cause I’m thinkin’ whatever it is, it’s gonna be good.”
“Why?”
“You’ve had a full ten minutes to think about how you’re gonna get out of this now that you and me are together in a way you can’t deny. I’m lookin’ forward to hearin’ what you’ve come up with.”
My blank look turned into a glare.
One, two, three, four, five, six… there, temper under control.
I took a deep breath and I blurted out the first thing that came to me, “Simple. We stop seeing each other immediately.”
He burst into laughter, his arms got tighter and his face went into my neck. He laughed into my neck for what seemed like a long time as my body went stiffer and stiffer in his arms.
“I wasn’t being funny,” I pointed out what I thought was the obvious.
His head came up and he looked at me still grinning. “Babe, you’re hilarious.”
“It’s just sex. We’re not ‘together in a way you can’t deny’,” I told him.
“Ava, after I made you come, you fell asleep with my c**k inside you. That’s about as together as two people can get.”
I did do that.
Shit!
“It’s just sex,” I pushed it.
His face got closer but he didn’t look any less amused. “It isn’t just sex and you know it,” he returned, his voice soft, gentle, affectionate.
He was right. It wasn’t.
And he was using The Voice a lot these days.
Crap!
Then I hit on a plan. It was a stupid plan but it was all I could come up with at the time. I knew he’d never go for it but at least it was something.
“We’ll be f**k buddies,” I told him.
His grin disappeared, his chin jerked down and his brows drew together. “Come again?”
“Fuck buddies. You know, like they talked about on Sex and the City. Guys you know that you sleep with. Just sex. No entanglements, no relationship, just mind-blowing sex.”
The grin came back as his face relaxed. “Mind-blowing sex?”
Oops. I probably shouldn’t have used that adjective.
“Or, you know, good sex,” I tried to cover.
His body started shaking with laughter.
I started getting angry again. “Luke!” I snapped.
His hands pulled the sweatshirt up over my behind and went in, sliding across the skin of my back.
“I could do f**k buddies,” he said and I blinked.
I thought he’d say no. In fact, I was certain he’d say no. That was why I suggested it.
“You could?” I asked.
“Yeah,” his hands started moving up my back (taking the sweatshirt with it, by the way).