Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(20)

“Jumps to conclusions Ellie.” His breath tickles my nose.

“Obnoxious—” I start, but I stop when our lips touch.

A shudder races through me, but it’s not a bad shudder. It’s not a good shudder either. It’s my body craving human affection while my mind recoils in fear, because the last time I was here, with Wyatt, his perfect lips rubbing mine, his hot breath lighting up my veins, it literally changed the entire course of my life.

Maybe this is what I need to do.

Maybe kissing him will end this weird limbo I’ve been in. It’ll make the pain in my leg go away. I’ll find my balance at work again. The stars will realign, the man of my dreams will walk in the front door, I’ll start running again, and I’ll be living the life I always wanted to have.

I won’t care that Patrick’s life went on perfectly with his nurse girlfriend. I won’t care that my injuries might be more than skin and bone deep. I won’t care that I have to pick a new future for myself.

My free hand loops around his neck and drifts up to rub the prickles of his short hair. He suckles my lower lip and leans me back to the pillow, deepening the kiss as we go.

This isn’t the kiss we had at Christmas.

No, this is a who are you? kiss. It’s an I’ve been worried sick over you kiss. A let’s do this right kiss.

I’ve hated this man most of my life, from the day his grandmother knocked on our door and asked Beck if he could come out and play with the short, wide-eyed, floppy brown-haired boy with the stained T-shirt, through my pre-teen years when he grew into an obnoxious know-it-all, into my teen years when he didn’t even acknowledge I existed anymore.

I shouldn’t like kissing him.

Last time he kissed me, he told me it was a mistake.

And it was. It was the biggest mistake of my life.

But now I’m stroking my tongue against his and my breasts are aching for his touch and my clit is pulsing with a desperate need for attention.

I haven’t had sex in six months.

Not since Wyatt.

Not since the accident.

I part my legs, and pain erupts in my left thigh. I break the kiss with a gasp, Wyatt and I make eye contact, and he leaps off the bed. A brief flash of terror skitters over his face before he rubs his hands into his eyes and takes one more step toward the door. “Do you have pain meds somewhere?”

“That bad, was it?” I deadpan while I rub my thigh.

He watches my hands and doesn’t even spare me a dirty look. “For your leg.”

“I’m fine.”

He mutters a curse and stalks into the bathroom. I hear him riffling through my crap, and I don’t bother telling him to stay out of my stuff since he won’t listen anyway, and a pain pill sounds like heaven.

Not quite as much heaven as him kissing me, which is a paradox I don’t want to deal with right now, but I take some comfort in knowing he’ll see my vibrator if he looks hard enough, and let him think about that all night long.

He returns, slaps a prescription bottle on the nightstand, and marches out of the room.

My body sags, and I realize I must look crazy in my pirate wench costume. My mascara’s probably running, and who knows what’s happened to my lipstick.

I’m unscrewing the bottle when he appears in the doorway again with a glass of water. I ignore it and swallow my pill whole, almost choke, because I hate taking pills dry, and then reluctantly gulp the rest of it down with a glass of water.

“Give me your phone,” I say crossly.

He hands it over wordlessly.

I hand it back because it’s password-protected and glare at him.

He unlocks it, still without saying a word, and once again gives it to me.

Once I find Beck’s number—what the fuck? They freaking talked earlier. My brother is dead—I program it into one of the burner phones, then surrender Wyatt’s phone to him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We’re the most obnoxiously polite people in the world right now.

He stares at me a beat too long.

I stare back.

You’re not a bad kisser.

“You’re on the hook for playing my boyfriend all week,” I inform him. “My smitten boyfriend who adores me. And don’t try to get out of it. You asked for this when you ruined my plans with Grady.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?” What the hell? He’s not going to argue?

“Yes. Fine.”

“I’m telling Beck.”

“So he can blab to Monica that it’s fake?”

Fucker. “So he doesn’t freak out when he sees you grabbing my ass in any of Monica’s photos.”

He smirks. “So that’s what you want from me.”

“Yes, Wyatt. I want you to be a total Neanderthal and take me on every horizontal surface in Shipwreck, and then I want you to fondle me in public until we both get arrested for indecent exposure, because you’re so manly and I just can’t resist the allure of your testosterone.”

He smirks again. “Goodnight, Ellie.”

I scowl, because he’s not taking the bait, and I’m out of other ideas to annoy him. “Goodnight, Wyatt.”

He snorts softly, which feels like him getting the last word, when he’s probably making a not-so-silent commentary on me getting the last word.