Page 58 of Badd B*tch

"I know," she whispered. "I just needed you to know I feel all those things for you. But…I know you probably want…" she licked her lips, shook her head. "Physical…stuff. With me. And I want it too, eventually. I do. I'm not, like, some sexless nun. But since Luke, it's just been impossible for me to even think about—”

I put my finger over her lips. "You don't have to say anything, Tea. You don't need to explain. You don't owe me any explanations."

"But you—"

I rubbed my hands up and down her back. "How honest do you want me to be?"

"Brutally."

"I can do better than brutal honesty, I think." I felt her tension melting as I gently ran my hands in a slow circuit around her back, so I kept doing it. "Yes, Tea, I'm attracted to you. Immensely. And yes, I'm a dude, with a dude's needs and desires. So yes, I want you. I want to kiss you. I want to make out with you. I want to see what you look like out of that flight suit, as hot as you are in it. I want to touch you all over your hot, sexy little body. I want to do a lot of things I won’t say." Tea squirmed on my lap. "But I only want those things to happen when you're ready. When you want them—if you want them."

"You don't seem scared," she said. "You said you were."

I took her hand and flattened her palm over my thundering heart. "Feel that? I'm taking a giant leap here, Tea. The last time I felt anything even close to this for someone, I’m not gonna say it nearly broke me, but it's taken me a long time and a lot of work on myself and a lot of therapy to get over."

"Can I ask you something super personal? Like, possibly invasively so?"

I shrugged, nodded. "You can ask me anything."

"If this Emerson was the love of your life but she never loved you back, then…"

I saw where she was going and got there first. "I've had girlfriends. Not, like, long-term, but I have dated."

"Define long-term."

"More than six months."

"So you've never dated anyone longer than six months?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Not for lack of trying. There were girls I cared for, a lot, but…Well, I guess it was always obvious I had a hang-up, and no one wants to be second fiddle. Especially not to someone I've never been with and never would be. So nothing ever lasted very long."

I paused, and she let the silence unfurl between us.

“And what about you?” I asked. “Other than Luke…" I prompted.

"Other than him, my relationships—if you can call them that—were more liaisons than anything else. A hookup during shore leave. A quick thing with an officer from another ship during a training exercise. I was stationed in Annapolis for a while between deployments, and I dated a guy who worked at the Pentagon, but…" she shrugged. "It wasn't serious. More than just physical, but not serious. It couldn't be. I was always going to get deployed again and we both knew it, so it was more just…enjoying the company of someone we liked while we could, I guess.” She dropped her eyes again, letting a thick silence writhe between us, saturated with a thousand things I could feel her thinking but not saying. "What does it say about me that it's easier for me to go for a quick, meaningless hookup on shore leave than it is for me to engage emotionally with you like this?"

"I don't think that's very unusual," I said. "I think it just means it's hard for you to trust anyone, and even harder for you to be vulnerable. And I get it. From what you've said about your family and home life growing up, it didn't seem very conducive to emotional availability. And then not just being in the military but an officer, not to mention going through all that you've been through with the mission from hell?” I shrugged instead of trying to elaborate.

"I like you, Jax," she whispered. "In a way that…" she trailed off, scrubbed her face with both hands, and then locked eyes with me. "I want to be able to—"

I pulled her closer yet, wrapped my arms around her waist and crushed her to me, gazing up at her, ignoring the violent spasms of pain—my desire far outweighed it. She was above me, gazing down at me with shimmery, wet eyes and trembling lips. I nipped her lower lip, soothed it with my tongue. "Want me to stop?"

She shook her head, hair bobbing, waving, falling in front of her eyes. She tossed her head, ran her palms up and down my chest a few times. "No. I don't."

"Do you trust that I'll stop the second you say so?"

"Yes."

"Do you know that all I want is to make you feel good?"

She shook her head at this. "No, I don't know that."

"Now you do."

"You want to feel good, too, Jax. You be real with me."

"I am being real. Yes, it'd be great if you wanted to touch me. I'm sure as hell not gonna stop you if you did. But truly, what I want first and foremost is to…" I hesitated.