"I'm not—" I started.

"Sit down."

His commanding tone triggered an onslaught of inconvenient memories. Stand up and take off your dress. I tried to stop the warmth from spreading, especially since this really wasn't the time to be getting turned on, but I couldn't help it. Last night he had spoken to every single secret desire. And whether re-using that same tone now was deliberate or not, we'd both be thinking the same thing.

Refusing to show weakness, I kicked off my shoes. The mattress dipped as I hopped onto the opposite side of the bed and crossed my legs in front of me to act as a barrier.

"Go on..." he said, as if daring me. "Ask the question."

I sighed and met his icy blue gaze, trying to find a clue that would help me read his mind. Our conversation on the plane had been playful, yet I'd grown frustrated with his increasingly guarded answers. Two weeks later, the tension between us had evolved into something far more intense than flirty banter and, with that, Teddy was offering me the information I'd desperately craved. Part of me was curious, but I also feared the truth. If I'd got this completely wrong, it held a lot more weight now than it did during a light-hearted game.

"I really don't care. Not anymore."

"Don't lie to me, Sophia. Ask the damn question."

My eyes drifted over the relaxed frame of his body, knees bent as his long fingers toyed with the frayed fabric of the tears in his jeans. Out of the two of us, only I appeared uncomfortable with the situation, like I was walking into a trap—or, worse, about to find out something that I didn't want to learn.

When he quirked an impatient eyebrow at me, inconvenient heat pooled between my legs. He knew exactly what he was doing, just like he'd known exactly what he was doing last night, too. Rather than intimidate me like he probably intended, I let the memories of sex fuel my confidence. If I didn't like the answers, that was my problem—not his.

"Fine. How many people have you slept with?" I asked in a bored tone.

"Want me to go through them one-by-one, as well?"

Dick.

"No, thanks. Wouldn't want to make you late for your interview tomorrow."

Teddy's lips twitched, but I couldn't read any amusement on his face, nor in the dangerous chuckle that followed.

"How about we have a wager, then?" he offered. "Since you think you already know the answer, have a guess. If you're within a ten-percent margin... That thing you begged and begged me for last night? I'll do it for the whole of the evening, until you beg me to stop instead."

As if I needed proof that his head still occupied the same space as mine. It didn't help matters, and I resented how my imagination drifted there, how the cogs in my brain were already trying to justify it on the grounds that hate sex was not as damaging to Becca as romantic sex.

He'd probably brought it up deliberately to disarm me, and I refused to give him the satisfaction.

"If you seriously think I'm going to sleep with you again after this conversation, you are even more delusional than I thought."

"Feeling confident you'll get it right, are you?" he asked, arching an eyebrow.

I shrugged. "I reckon I can guess the right number of figures."

"Seems a bit easy, don't you think?" Teddy shuffled further onto the bed, his hand stopping mere inches from my calf, and the gap between my legs tingled at the sight of his fingers within touching distance. "Need to make sure my side of the deal is equally worthy if that's the case."

"Tell me the damn number, Teddy."

He almost flinched, his cool expression pierced by a couple of surprised blinks. "Guess."

Fine. If he wanted me to humour him, I'd humour him.

"Three figures."

His lips twitched, a smug glint brightening his eyes. "Wrong. You lose."

I recoiled, surprised. "Four figures? Seriously? Where do you find the time—?"

"Single figures."

"Excuse me?" Cocking my head to the side, I studied his stony face, looking for clues that he was either lying or that I'd misheard.

"My number is lower than yours. Shocked?"

"Bullshit," I said with a laugh that lacked humour.

"Nope. So there's the girl I lost my virginity to. I was eighteen, by the way. We had a short relationship that fizzled out when my career took off. Then there was Lacey. And yes, I have slept with her after we broke up. Quite a few times, actually, since you're probably wondering. And then there's you. Third time lucky, as they say."

Game over, he shuffled off the bed and wandered back over the desk, turning around and leaning against it as his distant gaze landed on my stunned face. I didn't know where to start, but when I repeated his words in my head, one thing stood out for me.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Becca?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Her name caught in my drying throat, but Teddy still heard. He shook his head slowly, eyes not leaving mine. A nail-biting chill crept up my spine, but the palms of my hands dampened with sweat. Inside my stomach, a ball of nausea rattled from side to side, growing with each second that passed.

"You better not be lying to me," I said, unable to hide the tremble behind my words. "Becca and I have been friends for years and if I take your word for it over hers, then that friendship will come to a crashing end. Do you understand?"

For the first time since we'd restarted the stupid game, his expression softened to something that almost resembled sympathy, as if he'd made his point and saw no need to keep up the antagonistic persona.

"I understand, but I'm not lying. I'll admit that it could have gone there. It started off as just kissing, but once it began to heat up, I had to ask her to leave. I don't usually kiss my fans, and I certainly don't sleep with them. That's a PR disaster waiting to happen."

"So why Becca?" I asked.

"Because we had something in common." He huffed out a sigh and shrugged. "And the more we talked about her work with mental health charities, the more I forgot she was a fan. It was only when she said something to me mid-kiss that I suddenly remembered. And that's when I kicked her out. I honestly thought you knew that."

"She told me you'd slept together and then you'd kicked her out afterwards."

He shook his head again, his knuckles whitening as he tightened his grip on the edge of the desk. "Like I said, I don't sleep with fans. But I still didn't treat her with respect. I got carried away and should have handled the rejection better. I panicked."

I covered my face with my hands, as if that would block out the guilt, the shame, the outrage. I shouldn't take his word for it—I had to confront Becca and give her a chance to respond—but somehow I knew he wasn't lying. He'd taken far too much pleasure in proving me wrong.

"So this whole time..." he said, and my stomach constricted as I anticipated his train of thought, "...You thought Becca and I had slept together?"

"That's what she told me. And that's why I said we needed to be friends before anything else."

He nodded but I could sense the gears in his head turning as his eyes glazed over. I grappled to recall the previous conversations we'd had around Becca to work out whether I'd given myself away. If she'd lied, I was ditching the plan. But if I wasn't careful, I'd lose both of them.

How long before Ed started to question why I'd been spending so much time with him when I'd harboured so much resentment? The argument over Becca had felt inevitable before I'd known the truth, and now I'd played my hand.

Sliding off the bed, I crossed the room towards him. He didn't react nor move from his spot at the desk. If he rejected me, I'd deserve it, but I had to try—because while I'd lied to him this whole time, it was only because I'd been the victim of lies, too. Becca had played me, and I'd fallen for it, so desperate to repair our friendship that I'd agreed to a plan which risked causing more harm to me than good to her.

I didn't deserve to lose two people close to me. I couldn't. It wasn't fair. Ed didn't need to know the extent of my lie. I'd stop with the articles—they hadn't been that damaging, anyway. We could start afresh. Clean slate.

If he forgave me.

I stepped between his legs, my hands resting on the tops of his thighs, the coarse denim rough beneath my fingertips.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm so sorry."

Ed sighed, meeting my eyes but not reacting to my touch. "I'm just hurt that all this time... You thought so little of me."

"Only to start with. I barely knew you and had no reason to think Becca would lie about something like that. But the closer we got, the more I started to like you and..."

When he didn't respond, I tried a different tactic, floating my hands up his shirt, knuckles grazing the slope of his neck, fingers delving into his hair.

"Also, after last night... Well, I never would have thought someone with so little experience could be so confident with everything that we did..."

I trailed off, but it had the intended effect. Something in his guarded eyes softened, his thighs coming together to trap me between his legs, his palms flattening against my hips, urging me closer to the warmth of his body.

"Numbers don't equal experience. When you only trust one person with keeping sex private, you fall back on that same person time and time again. And you grow comfortable with them, so you try different things. And those things become more adventurous because you're seeing each other via a screen so often, but not physically. It builds up and then..."

"Explodes." I swallowed.

"Sophia," he said, meeting my gaze. "You cannot repeat this to anyone. I'm under a strict NDA with her, so if you care about me at all, then you won't say a thing."

I nodded, starting to understand why his team had freaked out so much over the article about Lacey. If they were regularly fucking but couldn't talk about it, speculative stories would be a PR nightmare.

"I won't. I promise. So when was the last time that you and her...?"

"A few months ago. Before I met you. I wasn't lying when I said it had ended."

No wonder their chemistry had been so electric on stage, though. It was genuine sexual tension, just wrapped up in a performance to hide its authenticity.

"Well, for what it's worth," I said, "last night was full of firsts for me. My number might be higher than yours, but my experience isn't." I pressed my lips together, unsure whether to open up more. Fuck it. "Thinking about—fantasising about—certain things feels safe in the comfort of your own head. Admitting them out loud to someone has always been a terrifying thought. Yet at no point last night did I feel nervous or judged."

His smile was gentle, as if he appreciated me sharing such a vulnerable confession. Perhaps it proved it had been real for me. I hoped so.

"I'm so sorry, Ed," I said again. "Not only for the Becca thing, but for walking out last night and then lashing out just now."

As my fingers sifted through his soft hair, affectionately but cautiously, he blew out a sigh.

"I'm sorry, too. I was hurt and pissed off, but the way I reacted means I can hardly take the high ground. And also... I get it. She's your friend. You'd be a fool to trust a guy you've known for weeks over a friend you've known for years."

My heart warmed at his compassion. After weeks of trying to create some kind of emotional barrier between us—friends only, then flirting but only for the benefit of the plan, then fooling around in bed but only as a one-off, then sex but not staying the night—I finally allowed myself to feel everything I wanted to feel, and without guilt.

I had to give Becca the chance to explain, but I wouldn't be as forgiving as Ed. If she came clean, it would be the final nail in the coffin that represented our dying friendship.

"The way I feel about you..." I swallowed, my mouth drying. "It's real. It was only because of Becca that..."

"I know." His fingers squeezed the flesh at my hips. "Nobody can fake orgasms that well."

The sudden return of his sense of humour settled any residual anxiety within me. I tugged at his hair, smirking.

"Not what I meant."

He cocked an eyebrow. "No? Well if you're not talking about physical feelings, then you must be talking about emotional feelings. So does that mean we're not just friends after all?"

If I hadn't nearly lost him minutes ago, I would have made him work harder for it—if only to wipe that smug grin off his face. But I couldn't pretend anymore. From now on, everything had to be real.

"Depends..." I said, leaning closer into him, "Any chance you'll come good on your earlier offer?"

The edges of his mouth curved upwards, his eyes glinting. "I might need an incentive first."

"Incentive? I'm great at incentivising. Name your price."

His touch left my hips, hands lifting to behind his head where he gripped my wrists and directed my fingers down to his belt.

"Use your imagination," he said, voice darkening.

And as I sank to my knees in front of him, I surrendered power once more. Only this time, I knew it wouldn't be the last. 

***

Thank you for reading :) xx

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So we finally know what really happened between Becca and Teddy... How do you think Becca will react when Soph calls her out on it?