Page 95 of Fighting Chance

“Why do you want me to do it?” he asks suddenly.

“Because I trust you,” I find myself saying. “And you…you’re fun, Kieran. You make me feel alive.”

His eyes close at that. “And because I’m experienced?”

“That too,” I answer honestly.

If I did this with him, I’d know what I was getting. I’d go infully aware that he doesn’t see me as anything other than one night. Would it shatter me to walk away after that? To have to work with him, to see him hanging out with Grayson and Bella and always being there teasing and flirting? Yes.

Maybe I’m a masochist.

But I would rather experience this, live out the absolute need in the romance books I’ve read and be left heartbroken at the end, than never.

If Kieran knew that he makes me feel things and that I wanted to say no to the man at the bar because he came to mind, he would run. Maybe even fire me, say I was deranged like some of the puck bunnies.

I don’t want to be that in his eyes. I like that he looks at me like I’m different. It makes me feel special. I adore our banter and I don’t want to lose that.

And I’m not ready—don’t think I ever will be—to tell him that I may have developed some type of…crush? That doesn’t seem right, but either way, however I feel about him, I’m not strong enough if he crushed me.

Kieran can never know.

I just want to experience this with him, I want to fall into the feelings he invokes within me.

I would rather crash and burn than to never live at all.

“Not necessarily.” I hedge.

His eyes flash open at that.

With my heart on my sleeve, I confess, “I don’t want to be the twenty-five-year-old virgin anymore. I read about love and sex and intimacy but never experience it. Do you know what it feels like to yearn to be touched?”

His rough voice dances along my skin. “I know all about yearning, Layla.”

“It’s painful,” I whisper.

“Very.”

“I understand if you don’t want to muddy the lines, but you barged in here like a caveman because you hate the fact that I’ve said no to you, so I thought we could satisfy both our cravings?—”

His eyes twinkle. “Youcrave me, sunshine?”

“Be serious for a second.”

“Oh, I am. I believe the topic of you craving me is a very serious one.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to hear that you won’t just be using me,” he says, and the rough admission has my heart leaping into my throat.

“You’re not a foolish man, Kieran,” I whisper hoarsely.

“I need to hear it.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and say, “I want you, Kieran. Any woman would have to be blind not to want you.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, his eyes flaring, before he smirks down at me. “Now…can I take you on that date? To go over the list of firsts you want me toteachyou.”

Chapter 20