whispered my name across my neck and arched her back. Her nails dug into my shoulders as I lifted her up a little bit and tried to push all the way in. I swore and she froze as there was something most definitely in the way, but my momentum was too great and I had her too keyed up to stop. She snapped her wide eyes to mine as her mouth made a little O of surprised pain as I glared down at her.
“What the fuck, Shaw?”
She gave her head a little shake and lifted her other leg up around my hip and moved against me in a way that made me utter every swear word I knew. “Don’t stop. Rule, please don’t stop.” She was breathy and it was too late for that to be an option anyway. She felt better than anything I had ever felt in my life and there was no way I was going to stop now, not unless I wanted to walk funny until I was thirty. I let the fingers of one hand tangle in her hair and propped my weight on the other so that I wasn’t crushing her and went about having the best sex of my life with a goddamn lying virgin.
She moved just the way I wanted her to, touched me in ways that would wake me up in the middle of the night remembering them. She kissed me like she had been created to do it exactly the way I liked and matched my rhythm the way only people who’ve had lots and lots of sex together normally managed to do. Every time she whispered my name or made a sexy sound of satisfaction and delight it made me feel ten feet tall. I hadn’t had sober sex in a long time and I hadn’t had sex with someone I knew for more than a few hours in a long time, either. I couldn’t believe the difference both those things made.
I wanted it to be good for her, wanted it to turn her inside-out like it was doing to me, and since it was her first time, I wanted to make sure that it was what she was going to have to compare every guy to after me.
As we moved together she arched her back and put her hands back on my head. “Oh my God, Rule.” She was close; I could feel the little tremors all along my cock. There was no way I was going to ruin this for her so I touched her in a way that was guaranteed to make her shatter and was rewarded with big eyes and a gasp of surrender. I was super relieved because I wasn’t going to last much longer. I buried my nose in her neck and followed her over the edge. By the time we were done my arms were shaking and I was breathing like I had run a marathon. I slid out of her and rolled to my side, all ready to have the regret and despair settle on me, but her eyes had drifted closed so I got up to go into my bathroom and clean up. I pulled on a pair of sweats and grabbed a washcloth for her. When I went back into the room she was curled up on her side with her cheek resting on her folded hands, which made her look all of sixteen years old. The steady rise and fall of her chest indicated that she was asleep, so I cleaned her up the best I could without waking her and settled on the bed next to her. I crossed my arms under my head and stared up at the ceiling.
What the hell had I done? And what in the hell had Remy been doing with her for all those years if he hadn’t been sleeping with her? They had always claimed they were just friends, but no one had believed them. The love they had for each other, the protectiveness, the camaraderie they shared had often made me jealous, and now I didn’t know what the hell to think. Shaw had been a girl who fell into the “girls I can’t or won’t have sex with” category for most of my life, but now I had blown that all to smithereens and I didn’t know what to do about it. She wasn’t just some chick I could never call again, that I could shove out the door the next morning. Add in the fact that it was probably the most intense, best sex of my life, and I felt like I was losing control. I shouldn’t feel that way about Shaw; she shouldn’t be the one to rock my world like it had never been rocked before. Frankly, it weirded me out that she was better and more turned on by my ink and piercings than the majority of girls I brought home. Now I had disarray on my hands and the wrong girl in my bed and I didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
I fell asleep sometime after the sun started to come up and when I woke to the sound of my phone ringing the first thing I did was look on the other side of the bed. All the things from the night before slammed into my head. Shaw was gone. The pile of clothes I left on the floor last night were folded neatly on the end of the bed and none of her pretty little things were left. I groaned and threw an arm over my eyes while answering the call.
“What?”
My brother chuckled in my ear. “Did I interrupt something?”
When I moved to sit up, something crinkled under my hip, and I pulled it out. On a plain piece of sketch paper I’d had lying around for drawing up designs for clients she had written in her neat, girly script:
Best birthday gift ever! —Thanks!
She didn’t sign it, didn’t say she would call or ask me to call her. It was plain and simple, and I wasn’t sure if it made me elated or furious. My brother was still waiting for a response, so I shook the cobwebs in my head loose and sat up in the bed. It smelled like sex and her.
“No, I just didn’t sleep good last night.”
“That’s what happens when you bring strangers home with you—you have to make sure you sleep with one eye open so they don’t rob you or stab you while you sleep.”
I groaned. “Dude, you need to get out of the army. Not every stranger is an insurgent.”
He muttered something under his breath that I didn’t catch. “Hey, I’m gonna come to Denver for the week. My shoulder is acting up and I need to touch base with my orthopedic surgeon, plus Mom is getting on my last nerve. Shaw refused to come over for lunch today because Mom wouldn’t invite you as well. Now she’s convinced you’ve somehow corrupted her darling girl. I keep telling her she needs to see someone and Dad even agrees, but she’s just so stubborn. I guess that’s who we get it from.”
I winced a little, glad the conversation was happening over the phone. I was sure guilt colored my face. My mom would freak out to extreme levels if she had any clue just how thoroughly I had corrupted Shaw.
“How much longer before you have to go?”
“I have to be medically cleared first and I’m supposed to meet with a VA counselor to make sure that I’m not suffering from PTSD because of the accident. I have to have a clean bill of health all the way around before I go back.”
“Well, it’ll be nice to finally get a chance to hang out without all the family drama.”
“Yeah, I’ve been calling Shaw all morning to ask her if I can take her out to dinner or something for her birthday. I’m sure her moronic parents didn’t do anything again and I hate the idea that she probably had to spend it alone. You should get off your lazy ass and come with us if I get a hold of her.”
I started to choke a little. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that she most definitely hadn’t been alone, but this was Shaw and, even as close I am to Rome, he didn’t need to know what we had been doing last night.
“Naw, I think she’s had enough of me. I ran into her a few weeks ago and I see her around here and there. I think it’s a nice break for her not to have to deal with me every weekend.”
He laughed a little. “You’re probably right. I’m gonna crash with my buddy Drew since I don’t think my shoulder is up to sleeping on your shitty couch and he has the room, but I’ll hit you up when I roll into town. If I can’t get in touch with Shaw, you and I can go grab dinner somewhere and you can disgust me with all the tales of your latest conquests.”
I rubbed a hand over my tired face and shoved Shaw’s note into the nightstand. I could still feel her hands moving all over me.
“You need to get off your butt and start having some conquests of your own. You’re a hero, dude, chicks eat that stuff up.”
“I’m not like you, Rule; I’m not twenty-two and living life by the seat of my pants. Right now I want to get healthy and finish up my tour without any more dead bodies. I’ve seen the worst humanity has to offer and in the last six years I’ve buried more friends than I’ve made. I get out of the army in less than two years and I don’t know what the future holds for me so nailing every pretty girl in my path is pretty low on my priority ladder. One day you’ll understand.”