Good Girl(49)

"Are you worried I'm going to be bad at it? Because in my mind I'm pretty good at it, but I can't confirm that if I can't try. Plus I want to. I want to try. I want to know what it would feel like to do that for you."

"I'll let you try. Just not tonight."

"Okay, when?"

"Wednesday," I toss out because I've lost my goddamned mind. I don't even know where Wednesday came from, but Lydia is still on her knees in front of me and I don't want to quell her natural enthusiasm for sex and it's not like I don't want the blow job. Of course I want it. Fuck.

She rolls her bottom lip between her teeth and then smiles, nodding once as if Wednesday was a reasonable answer to when she can suck my cock. Her palms are flat on her thighs, on top of the cute pajama bottoms she's wearing. Her hair is pulled off her face in a pony tail and I can make out her nipples beneath the tank top and this all seems so normal. So fucking normal having her here, as if she's always been here, as if she was always meant to be here.

I hit the remote, turning off the television, and stand, holding out my hand to pull her up from the floor. She slips her hand into mine and rises up on her knees before moving one foot out from beneath her to stand. When she's up I tug her closer and kiss her. A tiny squeal gets lost in her throat as she clearly wasn't expecting the kiss. Then she leans into me and wraps her arms around my neck to draw me closer. Her nipples are pressed against my chest, her lips softly pliant underneath mine, and her fingers are tugging at the short strands of hair on the back of my neck and this—this is making me rock-hard.

I move my hands to the back of her thighs and lift until she wraps her legs around my waist. It gives me a weird sense of peace as I walk through the living room turning off the lights with Lydia hanging onto me, a fucked-up security in knowing she'll be here all night, knowing she'll still be here in the morning. Why doesn't it feel suffocating? It should, shouldn't it? Yet Lydia's physically hanging on me and I like it. I like having her here. I like the company. I like her and her taco-themed t-shirts and her love of cheap fast food and her weird shopping habits and her glee for watching someone she doesn't even know pick out a house in a city she's never set foot in.

I want to know everything I don't know about her yet. All of it.

I just need to get to the bottom of her involvement with Vince. Whatever it is I can fix it. She's twenty-two fucking years old and thinks thrift-store shopping is fun, how much debt can she possibly be in? Canon's promised me a report by tomorrow. I'll start there.

"We're doing the sex now, right?" She's been kissing the side of my neck as I walked. Rubbing her pelvis against me with her signature dry-hump move. I like that too. I know I shouldn't. I know her eagerness is due to a lack of experience and that lack of experience is somewhat due to her age, and somewhat due to her complete cluelessness about men, but I fucking love that about her. She's not jaded yet. She doesn't know shit about seduction. She blushes when I so much as look at her and she tells me way too much. Like right now. Right now when she bounces in my arms and pulls back just far enough to look me in the eye to ask if we're doing the sex. The doubt from earlier is gone, replaced with bright enthusiasm.

I've had a lot of sex and I'm certain that not one single woman has ever asked me if we're about to do the sex.

"The kissing and your hand on my ass and this progression towards the bedroom means we're going to have sex, right? You're passing on the blow job because you've got time for real sex?" When I don't answer her immediately her eyes widen and then she blinks and says in a much softer voice that might be meant for her, "Please say yes."

"Yes, we're doing the sex, Lydia."

"Yay!"

No one's ever said that to me before either. I've heard every gratuitous compliment in the book while fucking, but never yay. And Jesus help me, I think that's the same yay she reserves for the iced coffee at Del Taco so I know it's genuine.

"Tell me something, Lydia."

"Okay." She tilts her head to the side, all wide eyes and eager anticipation.

"Tell me how you graduated from college still a virgin."

"The thing about that, Rhys," she begins but pauses as if searching for the right words.

"What's the thing?"

"I know this might come as a surprise, so prepare yourself. The thing is I was a bit of a nerd in high school."

"You don't say." I keep a straight face.

"Yeah." She nods. "It's true. And it sorta spilled over into college. I wanted to have sex, I really did. But I wanted to really feel it. Feel the connection. Feel like ripping my clothes off, but I never did. Making out was kinda fun but in an 'I'm good, you can leave your pants on' kind of way.”

"So you decided selling it was the route to go?" I ask, confused.

She glances away and bites her bottom lip, a small frown marring her forehead. "The thing about that is, I was turning into a spinster." She glances back at me as if to see what my reaction is.

"A spinster. A twenty-two-year-old spinster?"

"Yup. Can we talk about this later?"

I drop her at the foot of my bed and remove her tank top in one motion. I untie the satin ribbon bow that's holding her pajama bottoms around her waist and remove those from her as well. Then I drop to my knees and lift one of her legs over my shoulder.