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I take in a deep breath and let it out gratefully, some of the tension leaving my body. It helps to know he’s confused as well. I don’t feel quite so alone right now.
“I don’t know what this is,” I admit. “I don’t know where this is going. ”
Giving me a small smile, Hunter leans in and gives me a kiss. When he pulls away, he says, “No one knows where anything is going… not for sure. Who’s to say we need to know what waits for us? Maybe all we need to know is that we don’t want to stay where we are. ”
He makes it sound so simple. It’s so Que Sera Sera.
Great, now that song is freakin’ stuck in my head.
“So… is this just sex?”
“No,” he says quietly. “I told you the other night this was special. You know that, right?”
Shrugging my shoulders, I look down at the floor, not willing to let him look in my eyes, in case he sees that it was more than special to me. That would make me too vulnerable.
“At the risk of sounding too much like a girl,” he continues, “I need to tell you that the other day… making love to you, f**king you… whatever you want to call it, was different for me. So that makes it special. So that makes it more than ‘just sex’. ”
I look back up at him because his words are encouraging. “Yes. It was special. ”
He grins at me, complete relief awash in that smile. “So… that means we can keep doing it?”
“Sex?” I ask, not sure exactly what he wants to keep doing.
Hunter throws his head back and laughs, then pulls me into a hug. He rocks me back and forth, still chuckling. “Yes, Gabs. Sex, f**king, making love, getting you off, getting me off. I don’t care what we call it, but I want to keep seeing you. ”
“Seeing me?” I ask again, I’m sure sounding like an idiot.
He pulls back and looks at me suspiciously. “Are you drunk or something? You’re usually not this slow. ”
I can’t help the giggle that escapes, but then I make sure he understands me next when I say, “I don’t want anyone to know. ”
He flinches slightly, and his eyebrows scrunch inward with confusion. “Why not?”
“It’s just so awkward right now… trying to figure out what we have. I’d rather not have the glaring spotlight on us as we try to make sense of this. Just having to deal with the barrage of questions we’d get from our friends and family gives me the wiggins. ”
I punctuate my statement by shivering.
Hunter stares at me a moment, and then asks, “The wiggins?”
“Totally the wiggins,” I affirm.
“Okay… while I don’t relish the idea of keeping this a secret from our families, because f**k knows it’s going to be hard to keep my hands off you, we’ll take this slow and see where it leads before we go public. ”
My breath comes out in a massive rush. I didn’t realize how important the secrecy was to me until he agreed. “Great. Thank you. ”
He nods, taking my hand and leading me over to a seat opposite his desk. He sits down in the other chair and turns it toward me. “We need to have a serious talk. ”
I blink in surprise, because I thought we just had our serious talk. “Okay. ”
“First… have dinner with me tonight at my house?”
“Um… sure?” I say as if it’s a question, not a statement, because it’s sort of weird the way he’s asking as part of a ‘serious’ talk. I’m confused.
“Great. Second… are you on the pill?”
“What?” I ask loudly, totally not prepared for that question.
“Daft,” Hunter mutters, and then he asks again. “The pill? Are you on it?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because I want to f**k you right now, and I don’t have a damn condom on me. Plus, I don’t want anything between us. I want to feel you against me. ”
This conversation is strange, yet his words excite me because they are laced with urgency and need. I have to admit, the minute he asked me to come over for dinner tonight, I was already calculating the hours until he’d be inside me again. And now… it appears it may just be minutes.
“Okay, so here’s where we need honesty,” he barrels forward. “I trust what you tell me, and I hope you trust me. I’m clean. There’s only been one person who I’ve ever been with without a condom. It was a long-term relationship and I’ve been tested since, and since that time… I’ve not been without one. So, I swear you have nothing to fear from me. ”
My jaw hangs open, and I can’t even being to calculate how many things are unsettling about what he just said. First, we’re talking about whether or not we have cooties, and the absurd nature of it makes me want to snort in amusement. I mean, I know this is an important conversation and any couple who is considering a monogamous relationship will have it. It just catches me off guard; particularly because I’m still focused on the fact that he says he wants to f**k me right now.
Secondly, I’m thrown off by the fact that he had a serious relationship in the past. Hunter just didn’t seem the type, and now my curiosity is roused. Plus, I find myself oddly jealous that he’s been with someone else “au naturel”.
“Focus, Gabs,” he says with amusement because of my slack-jawed lack of response.
“Um… I trust you, of course. And… I don’t have anything. I mean… I’ve never been with anyone without a condom. ”
Relief washes over his face and he stands up from the chair, pulling me up with him. He draws me in tight and kisses me hard, but only briefly. When he pulls back, he takes his t-shirt off and starts unzipping his shorts.
“Get naked,” he says seriously. “I really don’t think I can wait another minute. Oh, and this is going to be kind of rough and fast, but I swear I’ll make it up to you tonight. ”
Holy shit. My insides melt, and the space between my legs clenches involuntarily. I don’t think twice before I start to kick off my boots. I’m apparently too slow because Hunter has all of his clothes shed and then he’s kneeling down at my feet, taking them off for me. When he stands up, he peels the rest of my clothes off in record time.
Then, he’s on me.
His hands are everywhere; his mouth is everywhere. His slides two fingers into me, made easy by the fact I went wet the minute he said he wanted to f**k me. Hunter kisses my mouth, my neck, my jaw… He nibbles on my ear and my bottom lip. He does all of this before I can even think to raise my hands to touch him, because he has me drowning in a rush of sensual pleasure.
“Can you take it hard and fast?” he whispers against my lips.
“Uh-huh,” I say… well, actually I moan.
“That’s my girl,” he praises me. Turning me toward his desk, he bends me over, nudging my legs apart with his own.
Settling behind me, he positions himself squarely at my entrance and I hear him take a shuddering breath, just before he pushes his way in.
My head falls forward and knocks against the desk, so torturously good is the feeling of him inside of me. My fingers involuntarily curl around some documents they were resting against, crumpling them up tight in my grip.
“Fuck,” Hunter gasps as he grips onto my hips. “Fuck, that feels good. ”
“Uh-huh,” I mutter. He pulls out and slams back into me, causing me to cry out… really loud.
“Quiet, Gabs. Don’t want Brody rushing in here to make sure I’m not murdering you,” he teases, and then he starts pumping hard.
So hard that the desk starts sliding a little, and I have to clap my hand over my mouth to keep the screams inside.
It’s just as Hunter said it would be… rough and fast, and this may now be forever my favorite pace. He slips a hand around to my front, rubbing against me and causing me to buck backward.
“Come on, Gabby,” he says urgently. “Come on. ”
Just the fact of knowing that he’s about ready to blow, and he doesn’t want to leave without me, causes my cl**ax to start. I squeeze my eyes shut as it wash
es through me, a strangled cry lodging deep in my throat.
Hunter slams in hard one more time and goes still. I feel him shuddering as he comes in me hot and hard, his breath whistling through his teeth. He collapses onto my back and says, “I’m never going to get enough of you. ”
I smile, because I know exactly what he means.
10
I wake up from a sound sleep and immediately roll over to see if Gabby has gone. The bed beside me is empty and cold, so I roll back over with a sigh as I stare into the darkness.
She’s come over for the last three nights… since that amazing, incredible sex we had on my desk. We lapsed into an easy relationship the last few days, with her coming over to eat dinner. We’d talk about anything and everything, mostly catching up on each other’s lives over the last five years. She’s insatiably curious about my surfing career, even making me show her some DVDs one night of some of my competitions. She ooh’d and aah’d, gasping if I took a spill, which I’m proud to say didn’t happen all that often. My chest and my head were swelling to epic proportions when she told me how proud she was of me, and even wistfully said she wished she could have seen me in action.
We laughed a lot, slipping back into the friendship we had enjoyed prior to that first kiss. It seemed so right, so natural, and it made me want to experience more with her.
Where we are truly compatible is in the bed though. And on the couch, the floor, the shower, and the kitchen counter. Gabby is an adventurous lover, and she now knows my body as well as I do. And let’s just say I’m on a first-name basis with all the parts of hers.
But it bugs me that the past three nights I’ve woken up to find that she’s slipped away. I’m not sure what she has against sleeping with me all night. It’s intimate, sure, and it speaks to something more than just sex. But what she and I do to each other… the way that we have no-holds-barred with our lovemaking… there’s nothing more intimate than that, so sleeping together shouldn’t be an issue.
I vow that I’ll talk to her about it tonight and, if I have to tie her to my bed, I’m getting her to stay.
But?
Fuck that… I’m going to haul her ass back here right now.
I jump out of bed, throw on my clothes, and grab my keys. Within minutes, I’m in my Jeep and headed to her apartment. I hope Savannah doesn’t mind too much when I barge my way in.
As I drive down the highway, I let my mind drift. My agent called me today under the guise of checking in, but then he finally laid it on the line. My sponsors were clamoring to get me back on the Tour next year, and they wanted a commitment. They were offering ridiculous new money as an incentive, confident that I could take the World Championship.
I wasn’t so sure, however.
True… I could probably be ready to get back in the game come next March. I could have the bar up and running, and Brody could run it probably better than I could. I had my doubts, though, about my own abilities. I was getting ready to turn twenty-nine and, while I was in the best shape of my life, there were always younger and better talent climbing the ranks. Self-doubt has never been a part of my make-up, yet here it was creeping in.
More than that, my first thought hadn’t been about the bar or even my abilities—it had been confusion over how I felt about leaving Gabby. Everything was so new and exciting right now, and if asked to make my choice today, I’m fairly confident I wouldn’t want to go. But I had no clue where this was going, and come this time next year, maybe we would be old news.
Unlikely, but maybe.
As I drive past Last Call, I give it a cursory glance. The parking lot is dark, but I make out a vehicle sitting in front of the building. I do a double-take and realize it’s Gabby’s truck.
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