Switched: Flirt New Adult Romance (22 page)

He moves me, and I think he’s going to lay me flat on the couch, but he grips my hips and throws my legs around his waist, standing up all at the same time. I’m thinking he’s Superman, because how in the hell did he do that without dropping me on my butt? Then I think, I don’t want to think. Because his hands are still gripping my hips and he’s moving me again. Up the stairs and I know I should be thinking
something
. But his tongue is suddenly in my mouth and mine in his and it feels too good.

His foot slips on the top stair, and if his bedroom door was open, we
would
have fallen on our butts. Instead my back slams against the wood and I let out this noise I’ve
never
made before, but heard on that porno I got caught watching back in eighth grade. Then Wesley makes this similar noise, only deeper and ultra sexier, and I’m grappling for the door handle before I even know I’m doing it.

The gummy bear smell intensifies when we fumble into his room, and it makes me do that noise again. The door shuts behind us and Wesley whips me around so I’m now trapped on the other side of it. He’s getting rougher, and I’m matching him touch by touch, brain still somewhere on the couch downstairs. My heart feels like it’s been running for about six hundred miles and the hairs on my arms and legs are springing up like they want Wesley to touch every single bit of skin there.

I want to take his shirt off. I want to see what’s underneath and I want him to see what’s under mine. This is totally insane, and I’m seriously wondering what universe I was plopped into. My eyes are clamped shut even when he moves from my lips to my jaw and neck. I don’t want to see all this happening because what if I look and I can tell he’s not into me? He’s into Reagan and this is still practice. Or maybe I’m some sort of backup.

Oh crap. I can’t do this with him. My brain is making its way back up to where it belongs, and I don’t have to open my eyes to see it. I know he doesn’t really want to be kissing me.

“Wesley?”

He moans against my neck, not answering. Maybe that didn’t exactly come out like a question, more of an exhale because I can barely breathe. I try again. Louder this time.

“Wesley?”

“Hmm?” he murmurs, his lips busy with frenzied kisses behind my ear, and I momentarily forget why I was trying to interrupt this.

“Um …” Then I stop talking to kiss him back. His head rests on the door behind me, while I mimic the journey his lips made. His neck smells amazing, and I can’t believe I actually
bite
him. And he groans and pushes his body tight against mine so I know he likes it. So I keep biting and nibbling, all the while internally yelling,
Kayla! You are supposed to be stopping this!

“Wesley?” I say again, before kissing him along his jaw. “Wait …”

I don’t know why I’m telling him to wait, when I’m the one who’s still going. He must think I’m crazy too, because I feel his lips turn up in a smile against my cheek. Before it disappears, I kiss that dimple on his chin.

“Wait … wait … wait …,” I plead more with myself than him. His hand slithers up from my hip and tilts my head back. Now he’s the one nibbling, biting, pulling, driving me absolutely wild, and I’m thinking I need to be in a straitjacket because why am I letting this craziness continue?

“Why?” he grunts against my skin, right before he kisses the hollow of my throat, dipping his tongue in there and making me shiver against him.

“Because.” It’s all I can manage to say. He chuckles and goes back to my lips. Apparently I’m not a very strong person. I keep letting him kiss me. I keep kissing him back. As if there was no Talon. No Reagan. Nobody but me. Him. As if Wesley was the person I’ve been pining over for years. As if we were meant to end up here, in his bedroom, now moving from the door to his unmade full-size bed. We slam down, and I keep my hands locked tight in his dirty blond hair so I don’t bite anything so hard it’ll draw blood. “Ow,” he says, but he’s smiling, so I take it I didn’t yank too hard.

I scramble up to the head of the bed. He follows slowly, dragging his lips against my chin, neck, and cleavage. When I hit the pillow, I grab that shirt of his and tug and pull, wanting the damn thing off.

We laugh like idiots when it gets stuck on his chin. I give it one good tug and it springs loose and I chuck it to the side.

Before I can even admire Wesley’s bare chest, a loud crash jolts us both so much we smack foreheads.

“Whoops, sorry,” I say as I lean over to pick up all the stuff I knocked to the floor when I threw his shirt.

“Hey,” he says, moving my wild curls out of the way before kissing the back of my neck. “Don’t worry about that stuff right now.”

I want to listen to him, to ignore the fact I just uncovered a picture of Reagan, Talon, Wesley, and me. I could easily shove it under the bed and pretend it didn’t zip my brain right back into thinking position. He’s in love with Reagan, not me. We’re going so far and so fast I wonder if he even realizes he’s not with the right girl. And just like I don’t want to do something so significant with someone who’s not Talon, I’m sure he feels the same way. Even though I haven’t wanted him to be Talon the entire time we’ve been kissing.

“Wait.” This time I say it with more conviction. And my actions are matching my words. “Wesley, wait.”

He keeps kissing my neck, lifting the hem of my shirt to tickle my stomach. I don’t blame him for not listening, since I wasn’t exactly too forceful the first time around.

“Wait, please.”

He pauses, bringing his mouth to my ear. “Why, Kayla?”

I have to clear my head of the sexy cloud he just sent in there by saying my name like that. “Because … because …”
Kayla! Get out more than that!
“You don’t want me.”

He chuckles and squeezes my middle, telling me with his whole body that he definitely wants me. At least right now. But the rest of my explanation cascades from my lips before I get too weak to say it. “And I don’t want you.”

Everything stills. Everything but his heavy breathing in my hair. He’s still clinging to me, but his grip has loosened. His mouth has stopped making magic against my skin. The world is quiet, like nothing happened in the last twenty minutes. That only Wesley and I experienced those minutes while everyone else on the planet was on pause. Now I’ve pressed play, and we’re not sure where to go from here.

“Um, yeah,” he finally says, releasing his arm from my waist. “Right.” He reaches over me to his shirt on the floor, and I press my eyelids together so I don’t see him half naked and lose my resolve.

“Sorry,” I whisper, because I am. I really am. I didn’t mean for things to get out of hand. I didn’t mean to lose focus. I can’t want Wesley. We broke up our friends so I could have Talon and he could have the girl he really wants. But thinking about that now makes me all the way sick, not just partly sick.

“Yeah, me too.” He rolls off the bed and I sit up, fixing my shirt and refusing to look him in the eyes.

So much for not being awkward.

I say the only thing I can think of. “I better go.”

“No!” His face reddens when I flick my eyes to his, and he says it again, quieter this time. “No. It’s late and I don’t want you to get in trouble with the dorm. You can crash here. I’ll take the couch.” It all falls from his mouth so fast I don’t have time to argue. He grabs a pillow and walks out, shutting the door behind him.

I feel like crying, but I don’t have the energy. I feel like running downstairs and pulling him back up here, but I don’t have the emotional strength for that. I feel so screwed up in the head. In the body, I’m wondering what the hell has happened to me. Maybe I’ve been programmed to like guys Reagan likes. I’m the worst best friend ever.

I have Talon right where I want him. Reagan is even okay with me having him. Wesley and I pulled this thing off brilliantly, and my idiot self goes and gets all confused. Why … why did I think a practice kiss would be even the teensiest bit of a good idea?

And how in the hell can I sleep in this room that smells like gummy bears and Wesley? I’m in his freaking bed. It seems like a cruel second-best situation when he’s just downstairs and I could be smelling and holding the real thing.

But Wesley is
just my friend
. He can’t be anything more when I love Talon and he loves Reagan. That’s why I stopped everything in the first place.

I also promised him no awkwardness. Fat chance of that, but maybe it’s worth a shot?

I stare at the ceiling for an hour, trying to come up with a good reason to go downstairs and be with him. Something that doesn’t involve me coming off as completely selfish. Maybe I can smooth things over. Or make things go back to normal. I could zap us back to the universe we belong to. We’ve spent nights together before. I even drooled all over his pants and he woke up with morning wood, and it wasn’t awkward. It was hilarious.

Yes, I can make things go back to normal if I let him know we’re cool. That I’m not totally freaked out by what happened. I’m keeping my promise to not be awkward.

I pop from the bed and creep down the stairs. He’s breathing like he’s asleep, but I can’t be sure. He has no blanket. There’s this sort of concerned look on his face, his brow all scrunched and his lips pursed. His arms are crossed and he’s on his back.

Tiptoeing, I find a big blanket he keeps in a bin in the closet. I wrap it around myself and watch Wesley breathe, trying to figure out if he’s actually asleep. It’d be easier if he was, because I won’t have to explain myself. I have good reasons for being down here and wanting to be with him. I have to make him feel better, right?

It hits me as I stare at him. I rationalize everything. Everything I do, I convince myself I have good reasons for it so I feel less guilty later. I never let myself do what I want just because I
want
to. I make it so I feel like I
need
to, like it’s a good idea.

Watching Wesley sleep, I know it’s a bad idea to join him. I know it’ll change things between us. Or at least for me. I know I won’t want Talon anymore. Actually, I don’t think I’ve wanted Talon for a while, but I can’t pinpoint when that all changed. I keep searching for those feelings I used to get around him. I keep hoping all of this isn’t for nothing. I suppose part of me is still hoping to find it but is worried that if I do find it, it won’t measure up to what I just felt with Wesley. I want something real, but I don’t know what that is.

So yeah, this is a bad idea. I could try to convince myself it’s really a good idea to save myself the guilt later. But for once I don’t want to rationalize this. Doing this now with him will be worth it, even later. The only reason I need right now is that I
want
this. That’s enough.

I take a deep breath and hold it as I slide next to the length of his long body. I tuck the blanket around him and snuggle against his shoulder. Then I let the air out, smiling at the feeling of having his warm body so close to mine again.

He shifts so he’s no longer on his back but on his side. His arm wraps around my head so
I can use him as a pillow and he squeezes me closer, tangling his legs with mine. We don’t say anything. I don’t dare move my lips upward. I won’t be able to control them. But I allow myself to enjoy the patterns he traces on my hip. He lets out a minty puff of air against my forehead, and I can actually hear him smile.

That’s when I laugh, pushing my face farther into his chest. I want to let loose with some smart-ass comment about us totally not being awkward, but I don’t. I let him touch that spot of skin by my hip and I control my breathing. It’s hard because I’m torn between being turned on and relaxing, switching back and forth between attacking him and sleeping so deeply I won’t remember my name in the morning.

I don’t know how long it’s been, but his voice sort of wakes me from the haze I’m in.

“Kayla?”

I’m not going to answer. I don’t really want to. It’s totally selfish of me to fake sleep so that I can stay here in his arms without hashing out anything. I don’t want to hear what he’s thinking because I’m not sure what I want to hear from him yet. So I resist the obnoxious urge to faux snore and go instead for the deep-breathing I’m-totally-asleep thing.

“Kayla?” he whispers again, and again I ignore him. He lets out this defeated sigh and I almost respond. Not verbally, but physically. My whole body wants to wiggle against him to let him know I’m here and I’m listening. It takes every bit of restraint I have to lie stone still.

His fingers leave my hip and land on my cheek. He strokes my face, twirling my curls in his hand, and I’m about to lose it.

“I … I don’t think I want to do this anymore.”

This? What’s “this”? Us? Or the plan? Which do I want him to mean more?

He stops playing with my hair and squeezes me, holding me as if I’ll slip through his fingers if he loosens his grip. I don’t mind. But it’s seriously giving me physical reactions I can’t control anymore, and my nails dig into his back before I realize it.

I don’t think I want to do this either. I just have to figure out what “this” is.

(Don’t do it! That would royally suck.)

The first thought that enters my sleepy head is I had the best dream wrapped in my worst nightmare, starting with Talon holding me while I cried, and ending with me in Wesley’s arms. I keep my eyes closed, holding on to the best parts of last night before I have to wake up and deal with the consequences of it all. My limbs slowly come alive, beginning at the tips of my toes pressed against warm flannel pajamas that aren’t mine, going up my legs twisted in the most comfortable way with another set that are much broader and stronger than my own. There’s an arm wrapped under my head, and another on my hip. A lean chest bumps against mine in a rhythmic dance with each warm breath hitting my forehead. Is there a way to mold myself to the spot? To never move again?

I peel my eyes open a bit to see if what I’m feeling is all real. Something hard drops into the pit of my stomach, but I ignore it and take an oh-so-obvious sniff of the neck I’m snuggled in.