The Dating Tutor by Melissa Frost

pressed against hers with bruising force, his much larger body pressing her down into the mattress.
    With tentative fingers, Ellie eased her hand under his shirt. She’d seen him topless hundreds of times, but she’d never had the opportunity to run her fingers over the toned muscles of his abdomen. She’d never had the urge to before now.
    When her fingers made initial contact with his skin, Alec jumped with a startled gasp. The muscles of his stomach twitched against her fingers, bunching as she lightly stroked them.
    She let out a breathless laugh against his mouth and playfully inched her fingers along the plains of his abdomen. “Ticklish?”
    “Very,” he said on a groan.
    With a giggle, she let her hand continue upward to caress along his pectoral muscles. When her fingers swept over a rough ridge of skin, she gave a small sound of surprise. Pulling her mouth slightly away from him, she said, “That’s the scar where you fell on our fence a couple years ago.”
    He’d been hopping over the metal fence that surrounded her backyard when his shoelace got caught. He’d fallen chest first on a jagged piece of metal at the top that tore into his skin deep enough to leave a scar.
    “Yeah,” he said distractedly. His mouth shifted to her jaw and he pressed a kiss just underneath her ear.
    Something about this admission fueled her attraction to him. Her hand skimmed down his chest, along his abdomen, until she came to a scar on his hip. “This is where you took a hockey skate to the side. You had everyone so worried.” Her fingers traveled along the bumpy ridge of scar tissue as she spoke.
    “Mmm-hmm…”
    When his mouth returned to hers, she kissed him hard. Kissing him was so intimate, but realizing she knew his body down to his scars meant something deeper. She loved him. Every little detail. Every scar. Her hand moved to his newest injury - the gash on his eyebrow. She let her fingers travel gently along the puffy skin as she memorized every facet of his body with her fingertips. “The hockey game…”
    Alec suddenly wrenched his mouth away from hers and sat up on his knees. Horror was written plainly across his face. “This is wrong.” He shook his head and slowly backed off of the bed. His eyes were on her as if he considered her to be a dangerous and unpredictable animal. “This is so, so wrong.”
    Fear filling her, she sat up. “What…what’s wrong?” She took a deep, shaky breath in an attempt to even out her ragged exhales.
    “This.” He waved a hand at her in what looked like disgust. “What are we doing?”
    “We’re…we’re…” She swallowed nervously as she fought for an explanation that wouldn’t make her look awful. She couldn’t betray Jake with the truth. Not yet. She would give him until graduation. She’d promised herself that.
    “This isn’t right,” Alec said with a harsh sound of frustration. “You’re someone else’s girlfriend.” He shook his head with a look of disappointment in his eyes. “You should have stopped this long before now. How long are you going to let this go, Ellie? You gonna ask me to take your virginity, too? Just so you know what you’re doing? How inappropriate are you going to let this get? I’m your best friend for God’s sake, not a…a…a booty call.”
    He backed away from her, moving toward the window. “How do you think Jake would feel if he knew what we were doing? You think he’d be okay with me lying in bed with you, with your hands exploring my bare chest?”
    She stared at him in silence. There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t expose Jake or possibly destroy their friendship. As she gazed at her visibly shaken best friend, she realized how awful she’d been to him. She’d been playing with his emotions. She’d been teasing and taunting him. Every action she’d done over the past few weeks had been hurtful to him. She hadn’t taken the time to discover how much so. “I’m…I’m sorry.” Tears welled in