Too Late

by C. Hoover

  Good thing my father taught me not to let a woman’s tears fool me.

  I lean in toward her until I’m a mere two inches from her. I scroll over her eyes, her mouth, every fucking lying part of her goddamn face. “You just said his name, Sloan. I had your fucking nipple in my mouth, trying to please you. But then you whispered his fucking name. You said Carter.”

  Sloan shakes her head. She’s so adamant about it, shaking it with such intensity, I ease my grip around her throat so she can speak. After inhaling a gasp of air, she blurts out, “I didn’t say Carter, you fucking dipshit. I said harder. I was awake and could feel you kissing me. I wanted you to do it harder.”

  I stare at her.

  I let her words sink in.

  I let her explanation massage the ache in my chest until I can breathe again.

  I slowly slide my hand away from her throat, down her neck.

  Fuck.

  I’m being paranoid.

  Why would I ever think she’d dream about another guy when she sleeps next to me? She wouldn’t cheat on me. She can’t. She has no one else. It would be the worst mistake she ever made and she knows it.

  I need to get her out of this house. Away from all these people. I’m more certain now than I was ten minutes ago that I need to make her a mother. Make her a wife. Give her a place of our own where other men are never around to make me this fucking paranoid.

  Sloan leans forward and reaches to the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head. She tosses it on the floor and then pushes me back against the headboard, sliding onto my lap.

  And just like that, I’m hard again.

  She presses her breast against my mouth and offers herself to me. I take her nipple in my mouth again and I give her what she wants. I suck her harder. So hard it hurts her. I want her to feel the ache my mouth left on her for the rest of the fucking day.

  She wraps her hands in my hair, pulling me against her as she moans and says my name. She says, ”Asa.”

  She says it three times.

  My name.

  I grab her hips and lift her slightly until she’s positioned right over my dick. I bring her back down until I’m buried inside her, almost certain I’ve never been this deep. God, she feels good. It feels so good when I don’t hate her.

  I didn’t like how it felt to hate her.

  “You’re mine, Sloan,” I say, dragging my lips up her neck and to her mouth.

  She whispers, “Yours, Asa.”

  I slide my tongue in her mouth until she moans, and then I pull away from her. I grip her throat again with my right hand and guide her hips up and down with my left. She winces a little when I squeeze her throat, and it makes me wonder if I hurt her neck earlier. I move my hand and can already see a handprint. There’s even a little bruising.

  Fuck. I did. I hurt her a lot more than I intended to.

  I lean in and kiss her softly on the neck, giving her a silent apology. Then I look into her eyes as she rides me. “I want to marry you, Sloan. I want to make you mine forever.”

  She doesn’t say anything right away. Her whole body stiffens and she stops moving against me. “What did you say?” she asks, her voice shaky.

  I grin and rub my hands down her back, gripping her ass. “I said marry me, baby. Be my wife.”

  I lift her off of me and push her onto her back. I slide back inside of her, relishing the fact that I don’t have on a condom. I move in and out, savoring every sensation while she stares up at me, speechless.

  “I’ll buy you a ring while you’re at school today. The biggest one I can find. I just need you to say yes first.”

  A tear falls out of her eye and that’s when I know for sure that she loves me. The thought of spending forever with me just made her cry.

  I somehow find a way to push into her even harder this time and she winces. I want to be as deep inside of her as I can reach. I want her to feel every piece of me. I want her to feel how much I love her. Her fingers dig into the flesh of my arms as she pushes against me, her body’s natural reaction to the pressure between her legs. I don’t care how many times we’ve done this, I know it still hurts her sometimes. She’s so tight and I barely fit inside her, having to force myself against her so hard it makes her wince and push against me.

  Just like she’s doing now. I probably shouldn’t like it when she’s in pain, but I do. I fucking love it when my dick hurts her. I like knowing that even when the sex is over, she’ll feel me inside of her for hours with every movement she makes.

  God, I love this girl.

  I speak between thrusts, staring straight down at her tear-filled eyes. “I love you, Sloan. So fucking much. I need to hear you say yes.”

  I groan, feeling how close I am to finishing. Finishing inside her. Experiencing something with her that we’ve never experienced together before. I kiss the side of her head and then lower my mouth to her ear. “I need to hear you say yes, baby.”

  She finally releases a quiet, “Yes.”

  That word makes me so goddamn happy, it only takes one more thrust for me to come. And I release inside her. Deep inside her. Inside my fiancée.

  My legs shake and my whole body jerks against her like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’m shaking—practically trembling when I’m finished, but she’s still in shock. She remains completely still, unable to move or speak beneath me. I know that felt as good to her as it did to me. She’s just still in shock because she wasn’t expecting a proposal. Especially in the middle of the fucking night. Or morning. However you look at it.

  I pull out of her and roll onto my side. I immediately bring my hand between her legs, wanting to feel what I left inside her. Warmth trickles out of her and I spread it around with my hand, touching her, circling my fingers against her wetness.

  I already want to fuck her again. But that can wait. Right now I just want to make her come and then fall asleep next to her. Next to my fiancée. My naked fiancée who’s going to start sleeping on her fucking stomach.

  She closes her eyes while I touch her. Squeezes them shut, actually. I watch her face while I continue to stroke her. I wait for the moans to pass the lips that just spoke the word yes to me when I asked her to marry me.

  I didn’t even have to convince her. This is already so much easier than I thought it would be.

  Asa and Sloan, happily ever fucking after.

  Fuck my father and his bullshit philosophies on love.

  “I’m not telling you again. I don’t want her involved.”

  Dalton—Ryan—clenches his fists and leans back in the chair, frustrated with me. “She’s already involved, Luke. You’re not putting her in danger—she lived there before we ever got involved.” He leans forward again. “This wasn’t an issue in the last job. Remember Carrie?”

  I remember Carrie. “Carrie was your project. Not mine. I’ve never gotten involved with a girl for the sake of an assignment, Ryan.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “But you’ll get involved with one while you’re on a job, just not for the job? You’ll allow your feelings for her to put us both in danger?”

  I push my chair back and stand up. “I’m not putting us in danger. Nothing is going on. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat that.”

  I hate that he’s right, but I’ll never admit that to him. I face the one-way mirror of the interrogation room and stare at myself. I look tired. I run a hand through my hair and close my eyes.

  “Do you really believe that whatever is going on with her is innocent? That it isn’t putting us at risk in some way?” Ryan says. “Did you not attack Jon—Asa’s best friend—because he was kissing Sloan last night?”

  I find his reflection in the mirror and I eye him hard. “Kissing her?” I spin around and face him. “He was about to rape her, Ryan! What’d you want me to do, walk back outside and double down on the fucking poker game?”

  I face the mirror again and watch him. He knows he would have done the same thing if he had walked in on that.

  It�
��s fitting that we’re doing this inside an interrogation room at a nearby precinct, because this case review is starting to feel just like an interrogation.

  We’re both quiet for a while. I run my hands down my face and sigh.

  “How is leading this girl to believe I have feelings for her going to help this case?”

  Ryan shrugs. “I don’t know. It might not help. But it’s worth a shot. Especially since you already seem to have some sort of friendship with her that she values. Her guard would be down around you. She might tell you things in confidence that we don’t already know.”

  He stands up and walks around the table, then leans against it.

  Technically, he’s my superior. I have to remind myself of that sometimes with the way we have to interact and with as many undercover jobs as we’ve done together. He’s been doing this about five years longer than I have and I know he knows what he’s talking about. As much as I don’t want to admit it.

  “I’m not asking you to fall in love with the chick. I’m not even asking you to pretend you love her. All I’m asking is that you take advantage of her feelings for you. For the sake of this investigation.”

  “And how do I do that?” I ask. “Asa is always around. It would be more dangerous for us to get her involved.”

  “There are ways,” Ryan says. “You have class with her today. Start there. I know she goes to visit her brother on Sundays. Go with her this Sunday.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure Asa would be absolutely fine with that.”

  “He won’t know. He mentioned something to Jon about us all going to the casino Sunday. We’ll be gone all day. Just pretend you have something else to do and offer to go with Sloan instead. You’ll get a full day with her, uninterrupted and unmonitored by anyone who knows him.”

  I know I should tell him no. But the truth of the matter is, I’d offer to go with Sloan whether it helped the case or hurt it. That’s how pathetic I’ve become at my job lately. Nothing should come before the job. Especially someone on the other side of the job.

  “Fine,” I say. I grab my jacket and pull it on. Before I open the door to exit, I pause. I slowly turn and face him. “How did you know I have class with her?”

  Ryan grins. “She’s the hottie from Spanish, Luke. I’m not an idiot.” He grabs his own jacket and pulls it on. “Why the fuck do you think you were signed up for that class?”

  I’m still shaking when I walk into the building. It’s been hours since the incident with Asa, but I’m still sick over it. I’ve never been that scared. Not even last night when Jon was on top of me with a knife to my throat.

  I can’t believe I said Carter’s name out loud while I slept. Not only could I have gotten myself in a serious situation with Asa—I could have been responsible for whatever Asa would have done to Carter.

  I don’t know how I recovered from that one as well as I did. And thank fuck Carter’s name rhymes with harder.

  But one thing I’m not relieved about is what happened afterward. The things Asa said to me. Him bringing marriage into it.

  Him not using a condom.

  I don’t know what Asa does when I’m not around. I’ve never been told he cheats on me other than what Jon said last night, but I don’t even know what he meant by that. I’ve also never caught him cheating, but I don’t trust him enough to put my health and my life at risk.

  But that happened this morning and it’s at the forefront of my mind. The second it turned 8:oo a.m., I called my doctor and made an appointment for next week to be tested. I’m on the pill and I take it religiously, so I’m not at all worried about him getting me pregnant. But I am worried about everything else he could give me.

  I’ll try not to think about it until next week. And I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that doesn’t happen again. I was just honestly too scared for my life to say anything this morning. I’ve never seen him look at me with so much hatred as he did when he thought he heard me moan Carter’s name.

  When he did hear me moan Carter’s name.

  Before I walk to class to face Carter, I stop by the bathroom and try to calm myself down. Now that I’m not in the same house with Asa, I can breathe easier. But I have no idea how to ensure I don’t talk in my sleep again. If it means just never sleeping in the presence of Asa again, I’ll figure out a way to do that.

  When I’m finished in the bathroom and walk out into the hallway, the first thing I see is Carter, propped up near the door of our classroom.

  He’s waiting for me.

  When he sees me, he stands up straight and waits for me to reach him.

  “You okay?” he says, his eyes immediately falling to my neck. There are bruises there from what Jon did to me last night, but it’ll probably look even worse by the end of today, thanks to what Asa did this morning.

  God, what kind of fucking life am I living right now that I’m choked by two different men in the span of twelve hours?

  “I’m fine,” I say unconvincingly.

  Carter lifts his hand and touches a finger to my throat. “It’s bruised,” he says. “Did Asa notice?”

  He runs the back of one of his fingers across my neck. I know it’s out of concern, but whenever he makes any sort of contact with me at all—no matter the reason—I seem to forget just how capable I am of actually feeling things. I’ve learned to numb myself over the past couple of years with Asa, and Carter negates all that effort.

  “He noticed, but he wasn’t suspicious. He thought he did it himself.”

  My words cause Carter to flinch. His eyes flick back to mine. “Sloan,” he whispers, shaking his head. He pulls his hand away from my neck and runs it through his hair. I can see the roll of his throat as he swallows back what looks like pure hatred at the thought of Asa’s hands on me. He’s obviously worried about me, which I completely understand. But he also knows why I stay, and he doesn’t seem to judge me for it. He actually understands my situation and sympathizes with it. I like that about him—his empathy.

  Something Asa has probably never felt for anyone his whole life.

  Carter lays a gentle hand on my elbow. “Come on. Let’s get our seats.” He makes an attempt to direct me toward the door, but I pull back.

  “Carter, wait.”

  He turns around to face me again, stepping aside to let two students enter. I glance down the hallway to the left and then to the right. “I have to tell you something.”

  Concern overtakes whatever residual anger he felt. He nods and leads me down the hallway, away from the door, looking for somewhere more private. We pass another door and he checks the window, then the doorknob. It turns, so he pulls open the door and leads me inside.

  It’s an empty music room, flanked with various instruments against one wall and several desks arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. When the door closes behind us and we finally have privacy, I expect Carter to ask me what I need to tell him. Instead, as soon as I turn around, he pulls me to him, wrapping his arms tightly around me, cradling my head against his shoulder.

  He hugs me.

  That’s all he does. He hugs me tightly without a word, yet I can feel everything he’s saying. And I realize that since last night—since everything that happened with Jon—he’s probably been worried sick about me. He probably wanted to hug me and reassure me last night. As soon as he saw me this morning. But simple hugs aren’t so simple in my life.

  I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his shirt, inhaling the subtle hint of his cologne. He smells like the beach. I close my eyes and wish we were there. Away from all this bullshit.

  We stand in silence for several minutes, neither of us moving. After a while, I can’t tell who is hugging whom—who is holding whom. It’s like we’re both barely suspended, clinging to each other, afraid we might fall down if either of us lets go.

  “I said your name in my sleep,” I whisper, slicing through the silence.

  Carter immediately pulls back and looks at me. “Did he hear you?”

>   I nod. “Yes. But I think I covered it pretty well. I told him he misheard me—that I said something else. But he was really angry right after it happened, Carter. Angrier than I’ve ever seen him. And I just...I thought you should know. I think we need to be more careful. I mean, I know there’s nothing really going on between us, but—”

  Carter interrupts and says, “Isn’t there, though? I know we technically haven’t acted on it, but this isn’t innocent, Sloan. If Asa even knew I had class with you...”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  Carter nods, knowing what this means. He can’t talk to me at the house. Hell, he shouldn’t even look my direction anymore. After what happened early this morning, Asa will be suspicious, even though he believed me. The last thing I want to do is cause trouble for Carter, but it seems I’ve already done that.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to him.

  “Why are you apologizing? Because you had a dream about me?”

  I nod.

  Carter lifts a hand to my cheek and the corner of his mouth lifts into a grin. “If we’re apologizing for that, then I owe you about a dozen apologies already.”

  I bite my cheek to hide my smile. He drops his hand and presses it against the small of my back. “We’ll be late if we don’t hurry.”

  I laugh a little at the thought of being tardy. What weight does being late for class hold against all the other shit that’s going on in our lives? Very, very little. But he’s right.

  I follow him out the door and back down the hallway toward the classroom. Before we walk inside, he leans down and whispers, “For what it’s worth, you look really beautiful today. I kind of can’t catch my breath.”

  He keeps walking, despite the fact that his words have frozen my feet to the floor.

  That’s all those were. Words. A few simple words strung together, but they held just enough power to physically stop me in my tracks.

  My hand goes up to my mouth as I quietly inhale. I force away the smile that wants to break out and I somehow force my feet to walk into the classroom. I glance up and see Carter pulling two chairs out on the top row, so I make my way up to him.