Free Dirty Little Mistake (Dirty #2) by Amber Rides Page B

slid over, just enough that I could feel his erection press into my more-than-damp underwear.
    Ridley ground against me and the circular motion was almost too much to bear.  Heat rose between my thighs.
    Why hadn’t a worn a dress? Why had I bothered with underwear? Why did  –
    “More, baby?”
    Why did he have to use that word?
    Any other and I might not have been able to form the command that came out next.
    “Stop!”
     
     
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    Ridley
     
    If it hadn’t been for the force with which Brenna said the word, I might’ve thought she was kidding.  Teasing me. 
    Even through my pants, I could feel the slickness between her legs.  I knew her heart was beating as quickly as mine and her eagerness was apparent in the way she gripped my neck and the way she gasped with each kiss.
    I wanted nothing as badly as I wanted to undo those two snaps on her shirt and to unfasten her bra and push those shorts to her ankles.
    “Stop,” she said again, this time a little more softly, but with no less certainty.
    I eased away from her and she slid to the ground.  I stepped back, set to be pissed off.  When I put a bit of space between us, I saw that her face had crumpled and whatever typical guy, asshole thing I’d been about to say died in my throat.
    “What’s wrong, Pancake?”
    “I’m sorry. I just…” She shook her head like she couldn’t quite finish her sentence.
    “Hey. It’s all right. We don’t have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable,” I told her, well aware that I sounded like a high school cliché.
    “ No. It’s not that. It’s…Have you ever done something you know you’re going to regret for the rest of your life?”
    “Every weekend for the first seventeen years of my life.”
    “Ridley…”
    I shot her a crooked smile. “I refuse to believe kissing me is something you’re going to regret for the rest of your life.”
    “It’s not. And I don’t want it to be. But I’m not talking about us. Not directly anyway.”
    I nudged her shoulder. “So…You regret the kiss indirectly?”
    She still didn’t smile back. “Has one of those things you regretted ever had a different consequence? One so amazing you wouldn’t take back the mistake itself because if you hadn’t made it in the first place…you wouldn’t get that fantastic thing, too?”
    I ran a hand over my head, carefully considering her words.  God knew I was a guy with a helluva past.  Girls and fights and fucking up at every opportunity.  I didn’t dwell on it too badly.  I refused to.  My past made me who I was; the bad parts of my life were the building blocks of who I was at that very moment.  That didn’t mean there weren’t a few things I wouldn’t undo if I could. 
    I had a feeling that wasn’t what Brenna was talking about, though.
    “Why don’t you give me an example?” I suggested.
    “You remember the night o f your housewarming?” she asked without meeting my eyes.
    A dark feeling settled in my heart at her words, and I paused for several moments before answering. When I did speak, I couldn’t keep the tinge of resentment from my voice.
    “I thought we were pretending that didn’t happen.”
    This time, the long pause was hers. “For the sake of right now…Let’s pretend only parts of it happened.”
    “ Less regret that way?”
    She ignored my tone , and looked down at her hands as she spoke in a stilted way. “That was the day of my mom’s funeral. It was…I don’t want to say a sad day…But it was a hard one. Mostly because I thought I’d said goodbye years before. I spent so much time hating her that I wasn’t expecting to love her in the end.”
    Yes.  That was a kind of regret I could understand.
    She finally brought her gaze to mine, and the pain in her eyes set off every one of my protective instincts.  I wanted to pull her into my arms, to soothe away whatever regret she had, and to make sure she never had another.  Except I thought that might