Caught between what he wanted—sweet Lord, he’d never wanted anyone as much as he wanted her—and what he knew was the right thing to do, Rafe made himself say, "If it’s fun you’re looking for, if you really want to be wild, we can find other ways. If you’ve never been on a motorcycle, I’ll take you out on mine." It would be hell to have her br**sts and thighs pressed against him during the ride, but he’d find a way to deal with it.
Her cheeks were already flushed from their impromptu swim, but now that he’d offered to take her out on his bike in lieu of sleeping with her, they suddenly flushed an even deeper rose. "Wow. A ride on your bike. I proposition you, and that’s what you’re offering me instead?" She swallowed hard, looking embarrassed suddenly by how open she’d been with him. "When we were in the water, and last night, even this morning, I thought you wanted me. But if you don’t, then maybe we can both just pretend this whole conversation never happened."
Jesus, he couldn’t stand for her to think he didn’t want her, that she wasn’t the most desirable woman he’d ever seen in his life. "Of course I want you, Brooke. Who the hell in their right mind wouldn’t? I’ve been fighting with myself every single second since I saw you in your bikini last night not to reach out and touch you and make you mine."
She blinked up at him, her clear pleasure at his words mingling now with confusion. "Then if you want me so bad—and you know I want you just as much—why are you fighting so hard not to take me?"
Damn it, he’d wanted to stick with the next-door-neighbor excuse. With the it’s-less-complicated-if-we-just-stay-friends line. She wasn’t holding his screwdriver hostage anymore, but when someone was brave enough to call you on your bullshit, you had to have the balls to give her a straight answer.
"Last night, you called me wild. You’re right. I am."
He let that sink in for a moment, let her realize he wasn’t just talking about riding motorcycles and jumping off rope swings into the lake. He was talking about sex. Raw, make-her-blush-down-to-her-brightly-painted-toes sex.
"I’ve already told you, wild is exactly what I want."
Trying to make her understand, he said, "I promise you wouldn’t like the things I want to do to you."
When a new flash of interest flared even hotter in her eyes, he suddenly realized he’d just said exactly the wrong thing. Before he could take it back, she asked, "You mean kinky things?"
Even hearing the word kinky fall from her sweet lips had him on the verge of losing it.
The purely honest answer would have been yes. But he’d already been stupid enough to say the wrong thing once. More than once, probably, since everything with Brooke was getting more and more mixed up in his head by the second. He couldn’t live with himself if he dirtied her up. She deserved the white picket fence and the perfect guy who worked a normal job and came home with nothing heavier on his mind than whether his cousin Ryan’s baseball team, the San Francisco Hawks, was going to win the World Series again.
The truth he didn’t want to admit to himself, or to her, was that there was nothing more he wanted than to be kinky with Brooke. God, even thinking about what it would be like to watch the pure and raw reaction in her eyes as he pushed her to the very edge of pleasure, and then beyond—past where she thought she could go—made him harder than he’d ever been in his life.
But the fact that she was his friend—and that she was beloved by his parents and siblings, as well—made it way too risky.
If it all went wrong, none of them would ever forgive him. And Rafe would never forgive himself. Not when he knew from the start that he didn’t have a damn thing to give her...and would only end up hurting her in the end.
"So I guess that means you don’t think I can handle being blindfolded or tied up or calling you sir."
"I don’t want you to call me sir!" He hoped she didn’t notice that he hadn’t said anything about blindfolding or tying her up. The truth was that right this second, those two things were at the very top of his one-handed fantasies list.
"Good," she said, "because even though it might be kind of hot in the moment, I’m thinking it would also be a little weird."
"It’s not going to be hot or weird, because you and I are not going to be anything more than friends!"
The roar of his voice echoed back at him off the surface of the lake. Jesus, he needed to get a grip, needed to somehow figure out how to turn this boat in the direction it should have been sailing all along, rather than standing there reeling at the things Brooke was saying to him.
But before he could, she was asking, "What makes you think you know what the other guys I’ve been with have been like? How do you know none of them have been kinky?"
Clearly, she wasn’t going to let him off the hook without an honest answer...something he couldn’t help but respect after dealing with cheaters and liars for the past seven years. "I know because you can hardly say the word without blushing."
"And you can’t say the word kinky at all," she pointed out in that too-calm voice. "So obviously what we can or can’t say doesn’t mean much of anything, does it?"
"Brooke," he tried again, "I think we’ve gotten off track here. You know I care about you."
"I care about you, too."
"I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you in any way."
He expected her to finally understand and agree that they shouldn’t go down this road. Instead, for the first time since they’d begun this crazy discussion, she looked hurt by what he’d said.
"Do I really seem that weak? That soft? That naïve? So innocent, so pathetic, that you really think you can hurt me that easily?"
"I’ve never thought you were weak," he argued. "And you could never be pathetic."
"But the rest of it stands, doesn’t it?"
Damn it, over the past fifteen minutes the uncharted waters he’d been trying to steer out of had only gotten deeper. "I don’t know a lot of people who are soft, Brooke. Or who have managed to hold on to any kind of innocence at all. I don’t want to be the person who changes you."
"It’s hard to believe that in all the years I’ve known you, I never realized just how arrogant you are. Do you really think you could have so much power over me? Or that you could be solely responsible for changing who I am?"