cover the top of her swollen breasts. She looked like every naughty dream I had ever had of her and I couldn’t believe I was trying to talk her out of doing this with me. Her eyes suddenly got glassy and I knew she was going to cry. She went to crawl past me off the bed but I trapped her in my arms and rolled her so that we were once again lined up.
“Don’t cry.”
“You never wanted me.”
I was stunned I just let my mouth fall open. “Uh … I’m pretty sure you can feel the proof that that’s not true. In fact, you just had your hot little hands all over it.”
She shook her head and her silky blond hair rubbed across my chest. “That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?” She wiggled a little against me and reached an arm up for my nightstand drawer. If it had been anyone else I would have freaked out, but this was Shaw. Anything that was in that drawer wouldn’t surprise her or freak her out; including the loaded gun I kept in there. I heard the cellophane wrapper and felt her hands back below my waist. I wasn’t sure I remembered ever having a condom put on me or it ever feeling so good.
“Rule, it’s my birthday and my life is a freaking mess most of the time. Can you just for once do something nice for me, please?”
What red-blooded American male would turn down a dead-sexy, naked blonde who asked him to please do it to her? Not me, no way, no how, so I kissed her again, let my tongue slide against hers and lifted her leg up over my hip. I liked to think I knew what I was doing in this department—after all I had more practice than I cared to admit—but for some reason with her I felt like what I was doing was all new. She kissed me back and gasped softly as I started to slide in. She was tight and tiny, hot and wet, and I thought I was going to die if I didn’t get to get all the way in in the next second.
She 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
