Page 25 of Imperfect Match (Imperfect Match 1)
“Thank you!” she squeals, throwing her arms around my neck. She comes at me with so much force, in fact, that she knocks me over backward. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” And somehow we’re horizontal again, chest to chest, only it’s me trapped beneath her this time.
She picks up her head and looks down at me. Can she feel how fast and hard my heart is beating? For a moment, I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m suffocating, like there’s not enough oxygen in the room and it’s affecting my brain, which must be true because there’s no other explanation for what I do next.
I kiss her.
I reach up, take her face in my hands, and lift my head so my lips meet hers.
She’s startled, and I feel her little gasp. But she doesn’t back off or get up or even tell me to stop, which is what I’m sort of hoping she does at this point, because clearly I am not thinking straight.
But neither is she. Instead of breaking it off, she tilts her head and kisses me back, pressing her mouth more firmly to mine. A tiny sound escapes the back of her throat—part sigh, part moan, part what the hell are we doing—and it turns me on so much I thread my fingers into her hair and kiss her harder, deeper.
I know it’s wrong, but I can’t stop.
I open my lips wider and stroke her tongue with mine, and she lets me. I tighten my fists in her hair, tilting her head back so I can kiss my way down her throat, and she lets me. I taste her skin, breathe her in, and it’s familiar because it’s Willow, but it’s also crazy weird because it’s Willow, and she’s letting me do things to her I’ve only fantasized about. My blood is pumping hot and fast through my veins, and my dick is telling me to move. God, it would be so easy to reach beneath that dress and—
“Oh my God.” Willow suddenly comes to her senses and backs off me, scrambling to her feet. “I’m so sorry, Reid.”
“What?” Dazed, I prop myself on my elbows and shake my head. Did she just apologize?
“I’m so sorry. I should not have done that.” Backed against the wall, she puts both hands over her stomach, takes a deep breath, and lets it out.
“Done what?” I’m still confused somehow.
“Kissed you.”
“You didn’t kiss me. I kissed you.”
She shakes her head. “No, you didn’t. I threw myself at you after you said you’d go to the fertility clinic with me. I just got … carried away.”
“That’s not how I remember it.” I sit up and adjust the crotch of my pants, where my erection is bulging uncomfortably. “I made the first move.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
She presses her lips together. “Jesus, Reid. Let’s not fight about this. Either way, it was a mistake.”
It wasn’t a fucking mistake. It was everything. Mistakes are when you leave the toilet seat up and fall in later when you’re half asleep. Mistakes are forgetting to lock the door or drinking too much the night before a meeting. This date tonight is a mistake.
Not kissing Willow.
“I don’t think it was a mistake, Wills.”
I can see the wheels turning in her head. She’s trying to find a way to explain this. “Either way, this is us and we aren’t this way.”
“Why aren’t we?”
She shakes her head and takes a step back. “Because you’re Reid, and I’m ... I’m your best friend. This is crazy. It’s just all this baby talk, and you’re going on a date tonight, with an incredible girl …”
The last thing I want is to go on this date. I want to pull Willow back into my arms and shut her up with my mouth. I want to strip her down, taste her, touch her, and make sense of what the hell is going on.
“That has nothing to do with what just happened here.”
Willow sighs, pulling her blond hair to the side. “Please don’t make more of that than it was. It was only a kiss, and it was just a heat of the moment thing. You and I ... we would never work. Let’s just chalk that up to both of us being sexually frustrated.”
I would love nothing more than to argue with her, but I know her—better than she knows herself some days—and she’s not backing down. Heat of the moment would be a good explanation if I hadn’t been thinking about doing that exact thing all week. And if she felt nothing, she wouldn’t have kissed me back.
But Willow is an analyzer. She is going to nuke that kiss until she can’t take it anymore.
