by Emma Salah
“Last night was a mistake.”
His words stung. Not unexpected, but they still stung.
“And what about the time before that?” she asked. “Or the time before that? You keep making the same mistake over and over again.”
He stretched out his legs further, touching the edge of her desk. “Which is why we should stay away from each other.”
“You and I both know that’s impossible. We run in the same circles. You’re part of my family.” She rolled her eyes. “We can’t just ignore each other and we were stupid to think otherwise.”
“I guess you have a better idea, then?”
It was the perfect opening, but still she hesitated. Once she spoke, Reagan could never get the words back. Things from here on out would always be different. There would be no more burying their heads in the sand.
He wants me and he likes me. Even if it might only be friendship right now, she was sure of that if nothing else and relationships had been built on less.
Here goes nothing. She put her hands on the desk and leaned forward.
“As a matter of fact, I do have a better idea,” she said firmly. “I think we should date.”
His fingers stopped tapping. “Excuse me?”
She raised her chin. “You heard me. We should date.”
“As in go out for dinner, hold hands, have an awkward conversation getting to know one another, a platonic kiss at the end of the night followed by me sending you flowers the next day. As in that dating?”
If she wasn’t so wound up, Reagan would have laughed at his description.
Zac shook his head. “You’re not going to let go of this idea of dating me, are you? I’ve already told you, Ree. It’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He snorted. “I can think of a million reasons to why us dating would be a bad idea. Not the least of which, you and I don’t suit.”
Ouch. She tried to keep her face blank, but good god he was bad for a girl’s ego. Nobody said this was going to be easy, Reagan. Pull up your big girl panties.
“We suited last night when you fucked me. You want me, don’t deny it,” she said, sharply.
He shrugged. “Was last night good? Yeah. Do I want to have sex with you again? Of course, I do. I’m not dead. But it’s not worth losing everything over. I’ve realized that I want you as a friend more than I want to have sex with you.”
“And having sex with me would mean that we could no longer be friends?”
When he nodded so casually, she felt the brief spike of pain. Her hands curled into fists, her nails biting into her palms. Could he really get over her, them, so quickly? Had that moment been just sex, nothing less, nothing more?
Breathe, Reagan. She was finding it hard to breathe through the pain though. What is the point of doing this? she thought. This was a terrible, terrible idea. She needed to stop listening to her heart and start listening to Zac’s words. Again and again, he told her she wasn’t what he wanted. And again and again, she ignored him because of what? She couldn’t imagine him not feeling the same way that she did? That was her own arrogance speaking. No more.
Reagan opened her mouth, determined not to let the jerk see how much he’d hurt her, to give him exactly what he wanted. But then she noticed what she hadn’t before.
Zac was still clenching his jaw, his fingers gripping the arm of the chair and she knew it was to stop himself from running his hands through his hair. If this was such an easy decision for him, why was he so tense? His blue eyes never looked at her directly, focusing on some spot over her shoulder. He couldn’t even look at her. Oh! She was an idiot. She wasn’t going to listen to his words; she was going to listen to his body.
Her lips curved into a smile.
“Liar,” Reagan whispered.
“What?”
“I said that you, Zachariah Quinn, are a liar.” She walked around the desk, taking her time doing so, and came to stand in front of him.
He watched her with that same look he had last night. Like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be angry with her or keep on eye-fucking her.
“You are such a liar,” Reagan said, triumphantly.
“I’m lying? Why would you think I’m lying?”
“Uh, maybe because your eyes are currently glued to my legs?”
Said eyes finally flickered up to meet hers. The amount of heat she saw in them made her stomach clench in excitement and made her wonder how she could have ever doubted whether he still wanted her. At least physically. She brushed that thought aside. He might only want her body for now, but her plan would work. He desired her and she was going to use that to show him that there was a fine line between lust and love. She needed to stop second-guessing herself and move forward.
“Who’s eye-fucking who now?” she taunted, smugly.
He laughed. She soaked it in.
“You do have great legs,” he finally acknowledged.
“Thanks,” she said lightly, boosting herself up to sit on the edge of her desk. “I like them myself.”
“I’ve never denied wanting you, Reagan. I just don’t see how wanting you and dating you amount to the same thing.”
She lifted one leg up to place it on the arm of his chair. He moved his hand out of the way and her lace-up open-toe heel took its place. Her pencil skirt had climbed up to her thighs. She was wearing white stockings that were being held up by garters. From the way she was sitting, the thin straps were all that he could see, but it was enough. A muscle in his jaw ticked.
She had rolled her stockings on in the morning, imagining his reaction. She had turned herself on just thinking about it. And now she could hardly resist the urge to look down at the bulge in his jeans and see if he was getting hard. She was definitely wet and getting wetter thinking about Zac touching her.
“One month.”
“One month?” He raised an eyebrow.
“One month,” she reaffirmed. “Give me one month to prove to you that wanting me and dating me doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. That we just might work.”
She watched as he thought about it, trying hard to maintain the cool and unaffected look on her face. If he only knew that his response meant everything to her...oh god, she wanted to shake so badly and take back every single thing she had just said.
“And what if I get bored before the month is over?”
Taken aback, she didn’t know what to say. She’d never imagined he could get bored of her when every moment with him felt too short. Like it’d never be enough. And if he can get bored of me... Her heart stuttered with the pain of that thought.
“We’ll wait until the month is over and I guess,” she said slowly, “if you are still bored by the end of the month, then I will have my answer and you would get the satisfaction of proving me wrong.”
“One month is too long,” he said.
“Three weeks.”
He shook his head.
“Two weeks and a half?”
He shook his head again.
“Two weeks,” she said, desperately. “It can’t be any shorter than that.”
Zac stood up. About to lower her leg to the ground, he stopped her by putting a hand on her stocking-clad knee. Reagan’s heart rate kicked up a notch. His body screamed desire and it was all aimed wonderfully at her. His callused hand slid upwards, leaving goose bumps in its wake. He pushed up her pencil skirt even further, until he touched her bare skin and the straps of her garters. His fingers played with her buttons. She fought the urge to moan.
“Or,” he started, as he stepped closer in between her legs, while simultaneously putting his hand on her ass and pushing her further to the edge of the desk.
She lifted her other leg onto the arm of the chair to stop herself from toppling over. It had the effect of caging him in and pressing them together fro
m hip to chest. All his delicious heat and hard body against her.
“We could make this even more interesting.”
“Interesting, how?” she said breathlessly.
She could barely pay attention to his words, not with him touching her the way he was touching her. Especially when he began to caress her other knee.
“I think we should define exactly what you mean by dating. And how often would we be dating anyway? Will we be seeing each other every day? Will I be deciding where we go and what we will do or will you? Will we have sex or are we going to pretend that the last couple of weeks didn’t happen?”
Oh, this I have an answer to.
“Since I only have two weeks, I think I should be allowed to capitalize on every moment, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for him to answer but plowed on. “Here are the rules: we will go on a date every other day starting from tomorrow and I will arrange all the dates. Dates that will involve going out and doing things a normal couple would do. Whatever happens, happens. We will be a couple in every sense of the word. At least for the next two weeks. So that’s a definite yes to the sex.”
Her thin stockings were no barrier against the warmth of his palms.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” he murmured.
“What doesn’t seem fair?” She tipped her head back a little, already feeling drunk on his proximity.
“That you get to arrange all the dates. If you want us to date, then you need to experience what it truly means to date me and that means I should arrange the dates.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
“Fine, you can arrange one of them.”
“Fuck no. You can arrange one of them and I’ll arrange the rest of them.”
“Seventy-thirty, then.”
“Seventy me and thirty you. I will agree to that.”
“Nope. Seventy me and thirty you.”
“I repeat myself, fuck no. Sixty-forty.”
“Let’s just go fifty-fifty. I have one week and you have one week.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “That seems fair.”
They stared at each other.
“Two weeks?” he asked again.
“Two weeks,” she confirmed, resolutely.
“And once those two weeks are up, no hard feelings, right?” He watched her carefully. “I mean it, Ree. If I agree to this, you have to promise that you won’t act weird in front of your family and that they will never, ever find out about this.”
She swallowed. “Would it really be the end of the world if they knew?”
She was desperate for the answer. She understood why her family was so important to him—she knew the basics of how he had been raised. Had seen some of it firsthand when he would come around her house limping and with a busted lip. Not to mention that night at Muckberry Field. She had also once bandaged his hand when he had punched a wall in their corridor. She had never told anyone the truth and had gladly taken the blame for the sudden hole in the wall.
“How do you think your brothers would react if they found out we had kissed? Had sex? Or that we were even having this conversation?”
She gave him a weary smile. “They would go ape-shit.”
“Exactly.”
She leaned into him. “I’ve known you my whole life, Zachariah Quinn, and for roughly half my life you’ve annoyed me, filled me with more anger than I thought possible. Confused me beyond belief and teased me mercilessly. Especially, when I made the stupid mistake of dyeing my hair red.”
He twined a strand of her black hair around his finger. “You, Reagan Thomas, are not a redhead. You looked like a science experiment gone wrong.”
“See! You make me so mad! But even when you are driving me mad, I can’t forget that you are the person who made sure Anna Liu in eighth grade stopped picking on me. Or that you helped me move into my dorm freshman year and stayed with me all night, talking and eating pizza. Or that kissing you sets my whole body on fire.”
Reagan couldn’t decipher the look in his eyes. But Zac didn’t step back, so she took it as a sign that she hadn’t completely freaked him out yet.
Suddenly tired, she shook her head. “I understand that you don’t want to think dating me would be a good idea, but I think a part of you is at least intrigued. Don’t you want to see if all this combustible sexual tension between us could be more?”
Chapter Ten
Zachariah Quinn was fucked.
Every inch of his body was pressed against Reagan. He could feel her heart beating against his own. Could feel her breath tickling the side of his neck as he stared down at her.
All his plans to resist her had gone down the drain the moment she had opened her mouth. Hell, the moment he had walked into the office and laid eyes on her. And now, she was enticing him to spend every waking moment with her for the next two weeks to...what? Date?
Wait. Wait. He thought fast. This could be a good thing. What had Dean said? “All you have to do is show her all the things she would hate to have in a relationship and voila. She stops wanting to date you, the magic goes out of the mystery and you can start being around each other without wanting to tear each other’s clothes off.”
This was the key to getting Reagan to back off. To stop having this delusion of a happily-ever-after between them when it would never happen. He didn’t need to convince her, he needed to show her. And let her come to the right conclusion herself. If he kept trying to push her away, she only dug in her heels more, so he needed her to be the one to give up. To make her realize that dating him was the worst mistake of her life. She might have one week to arrange their dates, but the first week would be his and that was all he needed. One week where he could be in the driver’s seat and show her the truth. That we’re not meant to be together and all I’ll ever do is hurt her. A guy like him, with a background like his, was not built for a relationship.
“Fine,” Zac announced suddenly.
She blinked slowly, deliberately. Looking owl-like with her big, brown eyes.
“Fine?”
“Yes, fine. We’ll date for two weeks, but I’ve got some rules of my own.”
When she would have spoken, he placed a single finger on her lips.
“Uh-uh. You told me what your rules were and now I am going to tell you what mine are. Are you listening?”
She nodded.
“Good. Here’s the deal: for the next week, while it is my turn, I decide what we do, where we go and what we see on these dates. That means if I decide we’re going to a zoo, then we’re going to a fucking zoo. And...for the next week, I’m in control of our sex lives. You’ll do everything I say when it comes to sex between you and me.”
“What?” she squeaked behind his finger.
God, she’s cute. He shot her an amused look. “You heard me. If we’re feeling it at the zoo to have sex in one of the stalls, we’ll do it. If I tell you to bend over and let me fuck you, we do it. If we’re going to date then you’re going to let me try out every single fantasy I’ve ever had over the years of you and me.”
He was going to kill two birds with one stone: have Reagan realize the impossibility of things working out between them and achieve what he had always wanted to achieve—to purge Reagan out of his system. It has to work, there’s no other option and no other way. He heard Dean laughing maniacally in the back of his mind and he pushed it roughly away.
“That...” She licked her lips. “That isn’t fair. Maybe I have fantasies I want to try out.”
Holy shit.
Zac stared. He was hard just thinking about Reagan thinking about sex-induced fantasies.
“That’s good.” He cleared his throat. “I’m willing to entertain any fantasies you might want to try out—”
“How kind of you,” she said dryly, her cheeks stained red.
I’m being an asshole. He o
pened his mouth to apologize, but stopped. The whole point of this is so that she stops liking you romantically. And no matter how much it might suck, if he didn’t stop treating her like she was the most precious person in his life, she wasn’t going to stop. So he gritted his teeth.
“But you can do that in your week,” he finished. “During my week, it’s my rules and my decisions. Are we in agreement?”
Reagan looked like she wanted to say something more, her eyes shifting away from his as she thought deeply about everything. He waited patiently, letting his hands caress her soft and gorgeous skin. And those stockings and garters... She is trying to kill me.
“Okay,” she said, nodding.
Fuck yes. That meant for the next week, he wasn’t going to think about their family, or whether or not they could ever come back from this, or if this was right or wrong. For the next week, he was going to think about touching Reagan as much as possible, without feeling guilty about it. But he wasn’t just allowed to think about sinking his cock into her, or kissing her, or hearing those excited moans from her mouth, he could actually do it and he was going to enjoy having her, over and over again. Which reminded him.
“I want you. Here and now.”
“Here?” she said, breathlessly. “Now?”
“Yes.”
Zac ran his hands up her legs, until he reached her skirt, pushing it further up her thighs, making a sound when he saw her white thong. I can’t believe I get to touch her again. His hands trembled slightly. It was like the sweetest dream that never ended or a fantasy come to life. Things like this didn’t usually happen to him. Zac was more used to disappointment, not being able to buy that console because his mom was too scared of his father’s reaction, or not going to the class sleepover at the library because his dad decided he needed another lesson in discipline. His hockey career was the only thing he’d ever succeeded in and he wouldn’t have that if it wasn’t for the Thomas family—Fuck, don’t think about that. Think about her, think about Reagan. There was going to be no guilt in what happened between them.
She reached up and grabbed his shirt between her fists.
“Fuck me,” he whispered. “That is hot.”