BACK FOR MORE by KAYLEY LORING

EXCERPT from BACK FOR MORE by KAYLEY LORING 

We sit here, silently drinking and staring at each other for a couple of minutes. It’s not even awkward, but it’s not exactly comfortable either. It’s just…strangely right.

Finally, she makes some kind of low humming sound and says, “So, have you heard from your mother at all lately?”

In the past, when she’d ask me that question, there was always sort of a mocking tone in her voice. But not now. Now she looks at me like she’s hoping I’ll say yes.

“She still sends us both birthday and Christmas cards every year.”

“From Europe?”

“Yes.”

“Still no return address?”

“Correct.”

“And you’re still not mad at her?”

“I never said I wasn’t mad at her.”

She grins and licks her lips. “Right.” She straightens her back, holds her beer bottle between her knees, and reaches behind her head to adjust her ponytail. She watches me watch as the fabric of her T-shirt stretches tighter across her breasts. When I blink and look away, she asks, “Are you still friends with Neal and Alecia?”

Neal’s my buddy from school who ended up marrying Lily’s former best friend. Or maybe she’s still her best friend—I don’t know how girl friendships work, but they haven’t seen each other in years, as far as I know.

“Yeah. Course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She grips the neck of the bottle and rests her elbows on her thighs, leaning forward. “How are they?”

“Good. They have two little kids, you know.”

“Of course I know that. I just kind of lost touch with Leesh about half a year ago because we’ve both been so busy. You haven’t mentioned that I’m back to them, have you?”

“Haven’t talked to Neal in over a week, and I doubt I’d bring it up. Why? You gonna call Leesh?”

“Of course,” she says earnestly. “Tonight, probably. Yeah. Tonight. I just… She’s not mad at me, is she?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Why can’t you just be slightly less of a dick and answer my question?”

“Why can’t you treat me like I’m your boss all of the time?”

“Maybe I would if you’d act more like a boss and less like a dick. Just tell me—I need to know how to approach her.”

“Does it really matter how you approach her now that you’re back? You kind of dropped the ball as a friend. Were you really too busy being an actress to show up for their wedding or the baby showers?”

“They didn’t have a wedding—they eloped!”

“They had a banquet thing for close friends and family eventually, once her parents calmed down.”

“For your information, Alecia and I had a little two-person Facetime celebration after they eloped. I sent them wedding presents. She told me not to come to the wedding banquet or the baby showers, or to come back for the births, because she knew it would be…difficult…for me to come back and see…my dad.”

Interesting. “I did not know that.”

“Trust me, there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“For instance?”

She pauses, about to say something, and from the look on her face it would probably blow my mind, but then she clearly changes her mind about saying it. She takes a swig of beer and then says, “For instance, I’ve sent Leesh tons of gifts from her baby registry, every few months, ever since she started cranking out kids. It’s hard to stay in touch when you’re in different cities. Oh my God—why am I explaining myself to the guy who doesn’t talk to his own mother?”

“I don’t know, Lily? Why are you explaining yourself to me?”

She huffs. “I’m done explaining. Anyway, I didn’t get the sense that Alecia was mad at me.”

I shrug. “Well, if you didn’t sense that, then I guess she wasn’t. She’s been kind of busy raising a family. Did it ever occur to you that maybe your absence didn’t have as big of an impact on her life as you’d expect?”

She places the bottle on the floor by the chair, stands up, and heads for the door. “Screw you.”

“Like a boss,” I say, like a dick, without getting up.

I hear her stomp down the hall and shut the front door—she doesn’t slam it, but she doesn’t do it quietly either.

I place my empty bottle on the floor too, stand up, and walk over to the foyer.

One, two, three…

I put my hand on the door handle and wait for the angry knock that I know is coming.

As soon as she knocks three times, I open the door, grab her arm, and pull her inside, up against the wall, my hands on her waist. My lips smash against hers as she fists my shirt, pushing against my hard chest even as one leg circles around mine to bring me in closer. She hisses and gasps and sighs as she bites my lower lip and sucks on my tongue and tilts her head to the side so I can kiss her neck while she claws at my back. She rocks her hips back and forth, rubbing herself against my thigh and creating as much friction between our jeans as there’s been between us ever since we met.

“Wesssss.” When her smooth hand touches the hot skin of my abs, I feel her go limp for a second, and then her thighs tighten around the bulge in my pants. “Oh my God,” she whispers.

I reach under her T-shirt and sweep my fingers from her hips up to her rib cage. She trembles. I grunt. She licks my neck all the way up to my earlobe and then sucks it into her mouth, twirling and flicking with her tongue.

Son of a biscuit.

This kiss is going to kill us.

Since I was sixteen, my life can be categorized as long stretches of time when I’ve been able to resist kissing her, punctuated by moments when nothing on earth can stop my mouth and tongue from colliding with hers. This collision is fueled by lust and frustration and guilt and resentment and possessiveness and impatience and annoyance and sympathy and some new thing that I can’t even name. This is not the hungry, curious kiss of a high school girl who doesn’t fully understand the consequences of teasing me. This is the hungry, furious kiss of a young woman who knows exactly what will happen if we go any further and knows exactly why it shouldn’t happen.

“We can’t do this,” she says on an exhale as she tugs on my earlobe with her teeth.

“I know.” I hike her up so both her legs can wrap around my waist. “We can’t.” I grind up against her. She writhes around, so out of control. God, if I could just be inside that energy, just once, just one time.

“Tell me why,” she groans.

“You know why.”

“Say it.”

I squeeze her ass, and she moans into my mouth. “Because I’m your boss.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re my boss’s daughter.”

“Yeah.”

“Because we’re all wrong for each other.”

“Yes. We are.”

“Because I don’t know what your father would do if he found out about us.”

“I don’t either.”

“Because you fucking left town without saying good-bye, and I hated you for it.”

“I hated me for it too.” Her hands frantically roam all over my upper body like we’ve got seven minutes in heaven and our time is almost up. And it is. One more second, and we’re both going straight to hell.

“You need to leave.” I give her one last quick, hard kiss before letting her down. I inhale the scent of her neck one last time. “Now.”

She bites her lower lip, her chest heaving, skin flushed, thighs squeezing together. “Goddammit,” she says under her breath, hands on her hips and leaning forward like she’s just finished a marathon.

Only it’s just begun. “Yeah,” I say. “Goddammit.” I walk over to the banister and grab on to it. I can’t think straight, and I can’t stand up straight. “Thanks for stopping by.”

She laughs.

I would too, if I could.

She pulls the elastic band from her hair and shakes it out, sending a waft of her shampoo over my way. “I just wanted to say…”

I sigh heavily, shaking my head. “Yes?”

She takes a step toward the door. “I had my reasons for leaving. Alecia knows that. She’s my best friend. She understands. I want to make sure you know that too.”

“I know.”

“But you’re mad at me anyway.”

“I never said I was mad at you.”

Her mouth slowly curls into a smirk as she rolls her eyes. “Right. Okay, then. I’ll be back to see Fanny again soon.” She waves her hand in the air as she finally walks out. “See you at the office, boss!”

“Lily!” I call out before she shuts the door. When she glances back over her shoulder, I say, “We really can’t do that again. I mean it.”

“No shit,” she mutters. “We won’t.”

And then she’s gone.

But not really.

She’s never really gone.

Meet Kayley

Kayley Loring has, until recently, been a borderline workaholic living in Los Angeles.  In the summer of 2017, she moved to a beautiful suburb of Portland, Oregon.  She can now breathe clean air while enjoying the great outdoors and drive around without swearing at strangers.  It’s pretty great.

When not writing funny sexy sweet romantic comedy novels, she can happily channel her obsessive energies into plant hoarding, book hoarding, and staring at male models on Instagram (for research!).  The rest of the time, she’s painting, feeding animals, eating her way through Portland with friends, cursing the many hours it takes to work off those delicious Portland meals, and trying to make her gosh-darned wavy hair behave itself.

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