No Regrets (12 page)

I crawled under the covers beside him and was surprised when he took me in his arms.

“Leslie,” he asked softly, “will you tell me the truth?”

“Yeah.” I would, if I possibly could.

“Did I try to please myself at your expense?”

I stiffened in surprise and pulled away from him slightly. “No! I keep telling you that I wanted it.”

“That’s not really what I’m asking.” He looked torn in some way—as torn as I felt. “Did I take what I wanted, without giving you what you need?”

There was a weight in my heart that made it clear that what had just happened
wasn’t
what I really needed. From him. For me. But that was my fault and not his. “You didn’t. You were great.”

It was like he hadn’t really heard me. He pulled me tighter into his arms and murmured against my hair, “I don’t like to think I’m that kind of man.”

“You aren’t.”

“I don’t want to be that kind of man.”

“Josh, you
aren’t
.”

“I’ve see the consequences of it. So many times. When someone takes what they want at the expense of other people. It breaks people.”

I did feel kind of broken, but Josh hadn’t done it to me. “Josh, listen to me,” I said against his chest. “You were amazing. I wanted this. I asked for this. You need to allow me responsibility for my own decisions. You are not that kind of man.”

I don’t know if he believed me. The lingering guilt was palpable in his body, as he held me tightly.

I was still raw and sore all over, and my eyes felt swollen from crying. But it felt good to be held, cradled this way. It was what I’d wanted all evening but had thought I shouldn’t have. There was no way to stop myself from nestling against him, though. Seeking strength. Seeking comfort.

He didn’t say anything else, and it was a relief. Just like it was a relief for my exhausted body to finally drift into sleep.

I wasn’t entirely peaceful though. I still felt a remnant of that vague ache deep in my belly.

I just wasn’t ready to think about what it meant.

For a week afterwards, I didn’t call Josh.

I felt weird and heavy about the whole thing. Not like he’d done anything wrong, but like there was something not quite right about the way we were together.

I focused on work and hung out with friends and tried to refamiliarize myself with my regular life.

I thought about Josh a lot. I missed him—and not just the sex. But there was always this resistance to picking up the phone and calling him.

I knew he’d always left it to me to initiate our times together. Since we hadn’t made arrangements to get together when he left my place the morning after we’d had anal sex, I knew he was probably just waiting for me to contact him.

But the truth was I wanted
him
to call me. I wanted him to miss me—want to see me—enough to get over his sense that I should be the one in the driver’s seat. Even if he was trying to be sensitive, since he was the one who’d laid the ground rules about the sex just being casual, I wanted him to want me enough to stop being sensitive and considerate.

Maybe it was an unfair expectation, given the way we’d established the relationship, but I felt it strongly enough that I didn’t cave. I didn’t call him.

So a week passed, and I didn’t hear from him. Then eight days. Then nine.

And finally I was resigning myself to this thing between us being over for good.

Maybe it was for the best. It had been exciting and intoxicating and pleasurable in a number of ways. But I kept thinking about the future, and there was only so long something like this could be sustained.

Then, on a Monday evening, I went to the park to run after work. I’d gone a few times and hadn’t seen Josh so I figured he was probably avoiding the times when he knew I was likely to be there.

But today I saw his old SUV, parked in the parking lot.

My heart jumped into my throat.

I parked in my normal place, in the far corner in the shade, and I walked slowly toward the running track.

Part of me wanted to turn around and run back to my car and drive away, but that would be silly.

If he’d come today, he must know there was a chance to run into me. It wasn’t like I was stalking him or trying to be places I thought he would be.

I was trying to get back into shape, and I wasn’t going to stop that because I was afraid to see him.

I’d assumed he’d be running, but he wasn’t. He was standing near the start of the track, checking something on his phone.

I swallowed hard and hesitated, wondering if I should go over to him.

It was so strange. Ten days ago, his cock had been in my butt. And today I wasn’t sure whether he even wanted to talk to me.

He looked up then and saw me, and he immediately started over.

I let out a breath of relief. At least he’d taken the initiative in that much.

“Hey,” he said, his blue eyes searching my face.

“Hey,” I said with a smile I hoped was natural.

He stopped just in front of me, still gazing intently at my face. “If you’re trying to avoid me, just say the word. I can run at a different time of day. Or somewhere else.”

“No.” I felt strangely embarrassed, so I dropped my eyes. “I’m not trying to avoid you.”

“You didn’t call.”

I looked up again, my need to see his expression—how he was feeling—stronger than my self-consciousness. “I know I didn’t.”

He looked strangely careful. Still searching. Just slightly confused. “I was worried about you.”

“Were you? I’m sorry. I just…I just felt…strange.”

“I’m really sorry about that night.” He lifted a hand, like he would touch me, but then returned it to his side again. “I should have seen that you didn’t really want it. I shouldn’t have gone through with it.”

My spine stiffened sharply. “No, no. I did want it. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He was shaking his head. “I don’t know. I sensed something strange about…about your mood, but I ignored it because…because…”

“Because why?” I felt nervous and shaky. Oddly excited.

“Because I wanted to take you like that so much. I’m sorry.”

I put a hand on his chest and closed my fingers around his soft shirt. “Josh, seriously, you don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m an adult. It was my choice. And it wasn’t bad. It really wasn’t. I just felt…”

“You felt what?” He put his hand over mine on his shirt. It felt like he was holding my hand, but he wasn’t.

“I felt strange. I don’t know how to describe it. But you weren’t thoughtless or inconsiderate or selfish or anything. I mean it. You were…great.”

He nodded, although his face still looked a little tense. “So why didn’t you call? Did you want to end this thing between us?”

I met his eyes and tried to read his expression—see if he was secretly hoping we would call this off because it was getting kind of complicated.

“I’d like to keep seeing you,” he said after a moment, in a soft, slightly hoarse voice. “But I’d completely understand if you’ve had enough.”

Something unclenched in my chest at the words—which were exactly what I’d needed to hear. “I don’t want to end it. I think I just needed a little break.”

“Completely understandable.” His expression had softened slightly too, and a little smile played at the corners of his mouth for the first time since he’d approached.

“I’m actually going out of town in two days,” I added, suddenly feeling nervous again—like I shouldn’t be feeling as happy and excited as I was. Since this was still just about casual sex. “It’s my dad’s seventieth birthday. Why don’t I call you when I get back?”

That seemed like a good idea—it would make it clear to both of us that I wasn’t jumping at the chance to be with him again, that I was keeping things in the right perspective.

“Sounds good.” He smiled at me fully, visibly pleased with sorting things out. “So did you want to run with me?”

It was a real question. He really didn’t know if I wanted to spend time with him right now.

“Yeah,” I said with an answering smile. “Let’s run.”

***

I was out of town for four days for my father’s birthday, and I called Josh the day after I returned.

We fell right back into our old routine. We got together a few times a week to run, and then we went to his place afterwards to have sex.

We didn’t try anal sex again, though, and we didn’t do as much of the power-play as we’d done before. It was starting to make me feel weird, heavy, conflicted, and I didn’t like feeling that way.

He didn’t seem to mind. He was just as enthusiastic as he’d always been, and he seemed just as satisfied afterwards.

Don’t get me wrong. The sex was still good. Great. Mind-blowing. It just didn’t feel so much like I was playing a role.

It felt more like
me
.

A few weeks later, I parked my car in my shady, corner spot at the park. I didn’t see Josh’s car in the lot yet, so I had a texted conversation with Donna, who was just starting to date a new guy.

Then, deciding I’d stretch some in preparation for the run, I got out of the car and opened the back door to grab my overnight bag so I could put it in the trunk with my purse while I ran.

The bag hadn’t been zipped, and the water bottle I’d thrown in there this morning had rolled out and under the front seat.

With a sigh, I leaned over to grab it.

The bottle had gotten wedged somehow in the mechanism, so it didn’t pull out easily.

I leaned over farther so I could see enough to unwedge the bottle.

I’d just gotten it out when strong hands grabbed my ass.

I squealed and tried to jerk away from the hands, ending up in an awkward tumble on the floor of the backseat.

The hands lifted me up and turned me over, and Josh grinned down at me.

“You ass,” I gasped, holding onto him as he straightened me up. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Well, what can you expect?” He kept his arms around me, even after I’d managed to get on my feet. “I was just walking over, minding my own business, and then there was this fantastic ass, offered so irresistibly to my view.”

“The water bottle rolled under the seat,” I explained, unable to suppress my laughter at his smug, grinning face.

“Give me no excuses.” He slid his hands down until they were cupping my bottom. “I know exactly why you were positioned that way on my approach.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, filled with an unexpected giddiness. “Why did you come over here anyway? I was headed over to the track.”

“I didn’t see you,” he explained, his eyes moving hungrily over my face. “So I figured I better come check to make sure you hadn’t hooked up with some other guy while you were waiting for me.”

“Good thing you checked.” I rubbed myself against him, loving the feel of his hard body against mine. “I saw this very good-looking guy get out of his car earlier, and I was seriously considering having a quick fuck in the back seat of his car.”

Josh gave her an exaggerated frown, his hands getting surprisingly gropey, for being in a public parking lot. “I wouldn’t like that at all.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be part of it. It would have just been me and him.” I was still smiling, but my body was reacting to the presumptuous stroking of his hands over my t-shirt and shorts.

“I definitely wouldn’t have liked that.” His eyes were getting hotter, and his face tilted down toward mine. He murmured in a familiar, thick tone, “Any backseat fucks you indulge in had better be with me.”

I was still amused, but it was quickly being replaced with an entirely different feeling—at the way his body was pressed into mine, at the heated, primal look in his eye, at the possessiveness in his words. “Oh, you know how it is. If you see a hot guy in a parking lot, then you can’t always restrain yourself.”

“I’m the only hot guy you should be seeing.” His hand actually slipped under my shirt, his fingers tweaking at my breast, over my bra.

I arched as his touch sent shivers of pleasure down to my groin.

When I didn’t answer, he said thickly, “Right?”

“Right.” I clung to his shoulders, his touch arousing me far too quickly, and quite inappropriately.

It did occur to me that his words were somehow beyond the bounds of our relationship. I’d obviously not been with anyone else since I’d started sleeping with Josh—and I thought he probably hadn’t either—but demanding it like this went past the nature of casual sex.

I liked it, though. That he didn’t want me to be with anyone but him.

I didn’t want him to be with anyone else, either.

He said, “The only man who gets to fuck you in the backseat of a car is me. Right?”

He was still fondling my nipple, under my shirt, and my knees were getting weak from the erotic stimulation, plus the erotic texture of his voice.

“Right. Just you.”

He made a guttural sound in his throat and leaned down to kiss me hard. I opened as he forced his tongue into my mouth, and I was soon making little sounds in the back of my throat as the kiss got harder and deeper.

“Okay,” I panted, finally tearing my mouth away from his. I was way too aroused now for a public park. “We better stop, or I’ll want to tear your clothes off before we can get to your place.”

“And what would be wrong with that?” He kissed me again, this time pushing me backward and then maneuvering my body so I was on my back in the backseat of my car.

I was half-giggling and half-groaning with frustration. “Seriously, Josh. I’m really turned on.”

He pressed little kisses against my mouth and rubbed his groin against my middle. “So am I.”

He was. I could feel his erection as it rubbed against me, through the thin fabric of our clothes.

“So we’re just torturing ourselves.”

“Only if you decide we need to stop.” He was gazing down at me hotly. It was impossible to mistake the look in his eyes.

And my breath caught in my throat as I realized what he was suggesting. “Right here? In the backseat?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“There are people in this park!”

“Not in this corner of the parking lot.” He gave me a predatory grin. “Don’t try to fool me. I know very well that the thought of fucking me right here, right now, turns you on.”

It did turn me on. Of course, it did. I gazed up at him, my whole body feeling like it would melt.

What I said was, “We need a condom.”

Something flickered on this face. “Shit.” He often carried one around with him, but he was in his running clothes right now. “I think I have one in my car.”

He started to pull off me, a kind of frustration evident even in the feel of his body, when I said, “I’ve got some in my bag.”

I couldn’t help but love the evident pleasure on his face when he realized we weren’t going to have to pause.

It was still hard to get used the idea. This gorgeous, sexy, younger man was so into having sex with me.

With
me
.