Read No Regrets for Free Online

onto me, I definitely would have responded. Then I wouldn’t have had to think about it so much—just reciprocate his advances. But, this way, I had to be the one to make a real decision and then come back to him. Or not.
    I’d never approached a man and told him I wanted sex in my life. It simply wasn’t something I did.
    I’d come no further in making a decision when our beers were done and Donna and Jo were ready to leave. Josh was still at the bar, watching the game.
    I knew he was waiting for me.
    If I went back to him, he would take me home.
    If I left the bar, he would know my answer was “no.”
    The easy thing to do was just to leave. Since I still didn’t know what it was I should do, that was what ended up happening. Donna and Jo got up to leave, so I had to too. They headed for the door, so I went with them.
    I glanced over at Josh before I left the bar, and I saw he’d turned his head to watch me go.
    He didn’t smile or look disappointed or anything really. But there was a recognition on his face. That I’d made my decision. That I needed more than he could offer me. That hot sex wasn’t enough.
    I hadn’t made a decision. It was just getting made for me, because I couldn’t seem to take an intentional step.
    I’d lived a lot of my life like that. Letting decisions happen, falling into circumstances, since they seemed to be the ones that happened. As I stood on the sidewalk outside the bar, I realized I didn’t want to keep living that way.
    There might be regrets with both decisions, but making a real decision was better than just letting things happen to me.
    “You all go on,” I said, as Donna and Jo started down the sidewalk. “I’m heading back to the bar.”
    They both looked surprised. And then excited. They obviously knew why I was going back.
    They might not know it was for a night of hot sex, but they knew it was for Josh.
    So I said goodbye and headed back inside. I nearly plowed into Josh in the doorway. He was just leaving.
    “Leslie,” he said in obvious surprise.
    “Oh. Sorry. Hi.” God, I was an idiot.
    “Were you coming back in?” he asked, his blue eyes searching my face in the streetlights.
    “Yeah.” I looked down and then up again, telling myself that he had made the invitation so there was nothing to be embarrassed about.
    He leaned in a little closer. “Did you change your mind?”
    “Yeah.” I straightened my shoulders and met his eyes. He was a couple of inches taller than me. Since I was pretty tall, this wasn’t always the case with guys. I liked that I had to look up at him.
    “You’re sure? About the no-strings thing?”
    “Yeah. I’m sure. As long as you were serious about making me come harder than I’ve ever come before.” I couldn’t believe I’d actually said that out loud. Someone else must have said that.
    He smiled. Hotly. Smugly. “I was serious.”
    “You were talking pretty dirty in there,” I said, feeling less uncertain as an uncharacteristic wildness seemed to possess me. “Do you always talk that way?”
    He lifted a hand to stroke this thumb over my cheekbone, the way he’d done a few weeks ago when he was talking about my freckles. Then he leaned down, like he would kiss me. But he said in my ear instead, “I can talk as dirty as you want.”

Five

    An hour later, I was sitting on his couch, drinking a glass of wine.
    I’d imagined us stumbling into his apartment in the middle of an embrace and falling right into bed—the way they did in books and movies. But, like last time, we were just chatting as we entered his place, and then he offered me a glass of wine.
    It would be my fourth drink of the night, but there was enough time in between them that I was slightly fuzzy but not really drunk.
    I started to feel a little awkward as he handed me the glass and then sat down with his own glass in the chair beside the couch.
    I decided he was being polite with the wine and conversation—trying to treat me like a whole person