Bet on It (36)

She drew her top lip into her mouth, gnashing her teeth into it before releasing it again, wetter and more swollen. Her eyes were as dark and alluring as ever, but Walker could see something else in their depths. Something he knew was reflected in his own gaze—need, longing, good old-fashioned want.

“What are you hungry for, exactly?” she asked in that sweet way of hers. Voice soft and floaty.

He stepped even nearer, until his sneakers were toe-to-toe with her sandals. He made sure not to step on her pretty little toes, but even this felt good. Touching her but not touching her—being close. It wasn’t enough, not nearly, but it could be. If it ended up being the closest she ever allowed him to be, he could make something of it. His dreams would still be filled with her. Thoughts of his hands on her soft skin, of her body pressed up against him, of the sweet, wet grip of her around him. If these things could only ever come to fruition in his fantasies, he could live with that. So long as he had this to feed it. The type of tension that could only exist between people who wanted madly, desperately, but couldn’t—shouldn’t—act on it. So, they settled for sitting a little too close or looking a little too long.

That was part of the fun, wasn’t it? Walker had never considered himself an expert in this department. But he figured sexual tension was more poetic when it was unresolved anyway. At least that was what he told himself in preparation for rejection.

Aja might be turned on by him, might walk on the same horny tightrope he found himself on whenever he was around her. But that didn’t mean she didn’t also understand why flipping the switch on their friendship might not be the best idea. Aja was smart. Maybe—almost certainly—smarter than him. And maybe she didn’t find herself as overcome as he did.

“I’m hungry for you.” The words were ragged, born completely out of the burning inside him.

She blew out the breath of someone who had been sucker punched in the gut.

“Are you hungry for me?” He was unable to stop himself from asking.

“Oh God.…” She shut her eyes, her shoulders falling back against her car, steadying herself. “Remember when we were at Kenny Mack’s, and I said that thing about you claiming me as your winner’s prize?”

Of course he remembered. The conversation had replayed in his mind countless times. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Was that a joke? Or were we being serious?”

He swallowed. “I don’t know if I’d call what I want to do to you a claimin’. In my mind you’d play a much more active role in the whole thing … but … yes, Aja. I think we were bein’ serious.”

He noted the exact moment when she started trembling and he clenched his fingers to keep from putting hands on her. He wouldn’t do that until he had express permission to.

She blinked up at him slowly. “I know it’s not cool or spontaneous or whatever to talk about all this … before … but I need to be clear about what we’re getting into, so I don’t drive myself up a wall overanalyzing everything. Are we doing this just the once?”

Walker hadn’t so much as kissed her yet and already he knew that he wouldn’t be satisfied with only having her the one time. Something about Aja told him that her touch had addictive qualities.

“If that’s what you want,” he told her, letting her know that he would follow her lead. “But I don’t want you to miss out on claimin’ your prize either.”

The moment was thick with suspense, but Aja’s cheek dimpled as she smiled. “Yeah, we definitely wouldn’t want that … so … twice then?”

He screwed his lips up. “We could make it a kind of tradition,” he said. “Any time one of us wins a bingo game.”

“It’s also a way for us to get out this obvious sexual tension without risking falling into something neither of us wants or needs right now.”

“A two birds–one stone kind of thing.”

“Exactly.”

Aja stared at him before finally she closed her eyes and let out a wry chuckle. “I cannot believe we’re doing this in the bingo hall parking lot. I thought—” She stopped and released another breath.

“What did you think?”

Aja opened her eyes slowly. The right one first, peeking at him, then the left.

“I thought maybe we would wait until the night before you left to acknowledge it. Whatever the hell this is”—she gestured between them—“I thought we’d do it one time and you’d leave and that would be it. I definitely didn’t think we’d try to make some kind of sex arrangement like we’re in a dirty ’80s movie or something.”

“I had more faith than that,” he chuckled. “I thought I’d be strong enough to deny it entirely. Still don’t know how the fuck I ever thought I stood a chance when you…” He trailed his gaze over her, trying to narrow down words for what she was but coming up short. “When you’re everythin’.”

Another breath, but this time, she followed it by leaning towards him and resting her forehead against his shoulder. His hand went to her back, resting in the center, waiting for her reaction. When she snuggled a little closer, he stroked his hand along the expanse.

“I’m hungry for you too, Walker,” she whispered into his shirt. “So, so hungry. There’s so much of it inside me, I don’t even know what to do with it all.”