The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 362

Chapter 362: 362 | The Terms and Conditions of My Surrender [PS BONUS]

Her hands were already working my shorts, fingers hooking the waistband, and I caught her wrist before she got any further.

"Hold on."

"That’s the last thing I want to do." She leaned in, pressed her mouth against the corner of my jaw. "Waiting is genuinely the worst thing you could ask me to do right now."

"Felicity."

"Lukas." She mimicked my tone perfectly, low and flat, and it would have been annoying if it hadn’t landed exactly right. "What."

The movie flickered across her face in blue and gold. On screen, the Tokyo hero team had cornered the threat against a collapsed overpass, and someone was shouting something in Japanese that the subtitles rendered as a very dramatic promise about protecting the city. Her thumb traced circles against my stomach through the fabric she hadn’t quite gotten past.

"Are we still friends after this."

The circles stopped.

I felt the shift before I saw it, that quiet recalibration behind her eyes where the girl who’d just come apart in my lap reassembled herself into someone thinking two moves ahead. She sat back a few inches. Her weight settled more solidly against my thighs. The overhead light from the projector caught the sheen of sweat along her collarbone, the loose strands of blonde stuck to her temple, the flush that hadn’t faded from her chest.

"That’s the question you want to ask." Not accusatory. Just processing. "While I’m sitting here soaked through my underwear and about to return the favor. You want to know if we’re still going to eat lunch together."

"I want to know if I just traded something good for something temporary."

She stayed quiet long enough for the hero on screen to deliver his finishing blow, receive congratulations from his team, and exit frame while the orchestral score peaked and then softened into its resolution cue. Felicity’s eyes never left mine. I didn’t look away. Neither of us pretended there was somewhere else to be.

"Yeah." Her voice came out lower than I expected, steadier. "We’re still friends. That’s why I’m so obnoxious about the whole relationship label thing. I don’t want the version where we date for six months and it goes sideways and suddenly we can’t sit next to each other in Combat Theory without making it everyone else’s problem." She shifted forward slightly, enough that her breath warmed my jaw. "I want the version where we figure out something that works and I get to keep you regardless of how the rest of it plays out."

"Greedy."

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