The next time would be better. They would explore each other the next time.
Her eyes were shards of green glass embedded in oak. She caught his face in her hands. “Ryder ... I want ... I want you to leave marks on my body. I want ... oh god ...”
He found her mouth, stifling her cries as he drove into her again and again in hard pounding thrusts.
Scout felt her insides crumble into twinkling shards of ice, heat that chilled her to the bone. Pressure was building inside her. Scout clawed his back. She whimpered. Her legs parted wider and Ryder cried out, animal-like. She waited, listening to his breathing, realizing he was in another place that he’d found inside her.
It was over.
Ryder didn’t speak. He seemed to clench down on something deep within himself and then began pumping again, this time with exquisite slowness, inside her.
Something was happening. Overtaking her. Her legs began to shake and she seemed to lose consciousness.
“Ryder ... oh god ... what are you doing to me?”
There was a burst of color behind her eyes, her back arched and she climaxed hard and explosive with a cry that she’d never heard before.
Shaking, she held him. Met his eyes with a question.
“Congratulations,” he said hoarsely. “You are no longer a virgin.”
Chapter Nine: Friends With Benefits
RYDER REACHED to the foot of the cot and drew a musty white sheet over their naked bodies.
“Are you cold?” she asked.
“No, but I thought you might be.”
Scout, on her back, stared at the moon-washed ceiling. They lay side-by-side like stiff soldiers in a box. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean do we talk or eat or smoke a cigarette or what? What do you usually do with the women you sleep with?”
“We don’t smoke cigarettes.” His mouth pulled sideways to a smile. “We eat or talk and then I go home.”
“Shut up. You do not. You go home?”
He shrugged. “You want the truth or do you want me to start lying to you?”
“Let’s agree to lie to the rest of the world if we have to, but never to each other.”
“Agreed.”
“Then I think you’re a shit for leaving a girl after having sex with her. I don’t like knowing this about you. When I think of all the mean things I’ve said about your girlfriends over the years. Those poor girls—I’m glad I wasn’t one of them. It’s a good thing we dealt with my virginity tonight when you have no chance of escape.”
“Hey,” he murmured in the dark beside her. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
Her eyes widened. “How do you mean?”
“Are you sore ... or ...?”
“A little sore—it’s not too bad,” she said hurriedly. The pain had been mind-boggling. It was a wonder there was a human race if that’s what it took, Scout thought. But she was also ecstatic and fulfilled and deeply in love with the man lying beside her. Losing her virginity was probably going to be the least painful memory she would have of this night, Scout thought ruefully. Ryder was already slipping away.
He shifted.
“Where are you going?” She propped herself up on one elbow, trying to keep the alarm out of her face.
“To get us some water. We have to stay hydrated. And you need to wash up.”
Her thighs were sticky. Cheeks burning, Scout lay back on the cot and pulled the sheet up to her neck. “Where is there water around here?”
“I stowed a five gallon thermos in the corner. It’s stale but it’ll do the job.”
He rummaged through the metal chest and retrieved a square of towel. Ryder soaked it and then filled their cups. He returned to her side and handed her a cup of water. Scout didn’t realize how thirsty she was. She drained it in one go. Ryder set his on the crate and lifted the sheet to her midriff. He cleaned her legs and thighs and then gently wiped the traces of him from her vulva.
Scout choked. “Do you do this for all your women?”
Ryder’s mouth pulled sideways, grinning like she’d seen him do a million times, but he didn’t answer. “Not too much blood. I thought it would be worse.”
“It never crossed my mind there’d be blood.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not anymore.”
“Still, we’d better eat. There won’t be time in the morning.”
He was already moving around the lookout, unpacking tins and opening them. Avoiding her, Scout thought. Moonlight kissed his naked body and she tried not to stare but she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. She’d never seen Ryder naked before, not even when they were children. His back and shoulders were bigger than she remembered. Maybe he looked larger naked than he did in clothes.
She stood up and pulled on his green twill shirt. It came down to her thighs covering her nicely. The night birds were singing. The heat had lifted. “Do you want some help?” she asked.
He was spooning beans into bowls at the table. “You could slice the meat.” He glanced at her. “You look cute in that.”
Happy pleasure surged through her, making her brave. “You look good too.”
Ryder ducked his head. “Stop ogling me, you pervert and toss me my pants.”
Scout handed him his jeans with a sidelong glance, remembering the night she babysat the Lacroix twins—brats, both of them. Ryder was the only one who could control them. She had called him at the farm, begging him to come over and give her a hand just as Denis Lacroix set fire to the wastepaper basket. It was either the ear-splitting wail of the smoke alarm going off or Scout’s hysteria that brought Ryder to the door in less than twenty minutes.
He barreled into the house swinging a fire extinguisher and barking orders at the terrified twins. Within minutes order had been restored. The smoldering basket was pitched into the fire pit in the yard and Ryder had calmed the twins down with jokes and stories. Still shaking from the near-disaster, Scout sat down on the bottom step and waited for him to tuck the twins in bed. She heard his footfall on the landing above her and looked up.
And that’s when it happened.
Scout’s breath caught in her chest. His toffee-colored hair was mussed and hanging in his eyes as he loped down the stairs toward her. He had a black smudge of soot on his cheek and a grin on his face. She stared awestruck, meeting his gray-green eyes like she had never seen them before. Her young eyes swept his body from his shoulders, broad after a summer of splitting firewood, to his long jean-clad legs and bronzed strong hands. Ryder Dean had turned into a man.
“Whatever they’re paying you,” he was saying, “it’s not enough. You’ll have to learn how to use a fire extinguisher if you’re going to keep babysitting those boys.”
The change in his voice registered on Scout’s consciousness for the first time. When had he become a baritone? Startled and shaken, Scout did something she figured no self-respecting girl should ever do around a boy—she burst into tears.
“Whoa, Scout, are you crying?”
“Don’t be an ass,” she snapped and pushed past him to run up the stairs. Anything to escape his sight. Scout locked herself in the bathroom and hung out of the window, sucking in deep breaths of cold spring air until she felt her breathing slow to normal.
“Hey, Scout?”
Why did he always sound worried when he said her name? “What?” she answered, crabbily.
“There’s a good show on TV. I can make popcorn.”
“You don’t have to stay, Ryder. I can manage everything now.”
Silence on the other side of the door. He always stuck around when she was babysitting. “Uh, okay,” he mumbled finally and she heard him go back down the stairs.
“Smart, Scout,” she hissed at her reflection in the mirror. What was he supposed to do at the farm with that booze hound, Grady, hanging around? It wasn’t Ryder’s fault he’d changed. Somewhere in that tall broad-shouldered stranger lurked her best friend—she couldn’t just aba
ndon him. Scout yanked the bathroom door open and yelled, “Wait!”
Ryder stood in the foyer. “You want popcorn?” he asked just as if nothing had happened.
Scout raked her fingers through her hair, tugging a little at the roots. “Yeah,” she said, and threw herself on the couch. “Nothing’s changed,” she chanted to herself as Ryder slouched off to the kitchen. “Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed.”
She was fifteen-years-old and everything had changed. They were growing up and she was just too stubborn to allow it.
Scout turned away from watching Ryder pull on his pants. “One slice or two?” Her hand held a plastic knife poised over the cube of meat.
“Three. I love Spam.”
She made a gagging noise. “You were always weird about food. You were the only kid in school who enjoyed cafeteria lunches.” A ball was forming in her chest. “I wish we could run away, Ryder. I don’t want to leave here. Maybe we could stay until the food runs out.”
“You know we can’t, and you know why. You have to deal with this. You have to tell me everything you know about Noel if we’re going to figure this thing out.”
He’s already moved on, she thought. He got her out of his system and he feels better, but this is the end of the fantasy. Ryder wants his real life back. “All right,” she said, resigned. Scout handed him a bowl of baked beans and what passed for ham. “Where should we begin?”
“You’re asking me? You were intimate with the guy—he must have confided in you. What did you talk about when you were together?”
“Well, of course we talked about our plans and he confided in me. Like couples do. He traveled a lot. We didn’t get much time alone except when he came in to do the books at the shop. We talked about the kind of house we wanted to buy and how many kids we were going to have. That kind of thing.” She set her fork down, her appetite gone.
“Did anything out of the ordinary happen when he was there? A phone call or a visitor?”
“No, but the shop was the only place he was ever alone. He used my computer to do his business. Wait—if Noel was laundering the mob money though the antique store that would explain why he said I was the key. My financial records are password protected. Noel insisted I keep it a secret even from him. He said he wanted to earn my trust. I had to be there to type in the password but then I often left him alone to work.”
“And after you were married you would have given him the password. Then he would collect the money—”
“And skip town with a million bucks of mob money that he’d hidden in a file on my computer.” She looked at him, round-eyed. “Noel never had any intention of buying a house or having children with me. It was all a smokescreen to keep me on board, to keep me happy. He was using me.”
“If there is a file on your computer and you’re the only one with the password, you’ll have a tough time convincing the FBI you didn’t know anything about it. We’ll leave at first light, get the computer and take it to the police. It’s the only way.” Ryder rose and began clearing the dishes. He sloshed a cup of water over them and set them on the rail to dry.
It was hard to read his expression in the moonlight but Scout could sense a change had come over him. “Ryder, what is it? I feel like I’m never going to see you again once this is over. Something’s changed.”
He wouldn’t look at her. “Nothing’s changed. Not with me anyway. I don’t change from moment to moment, but you—well I guess you haven’t changed either.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He turned and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “We agreed to the truth between us. Can you handle hearing it about yourself? You were going to marry a guy you hardly knew, a man with dangerous connections. You gave him full access to your finances, to your home, to your parents because he was rich, he was older and he told you what you wanted to hear.”
“I made a mistake.” She stood up, wary. “I’ve apologized. I admit I wanted it to be right with Noel so much that I didn’t see what was wrong. But he isn’t my concern at the moment. Ryder, I have to know what this means for us. Is this a deal-breaker for you? I’m not talking about marriage or kids—I know you don’t want the same things I do. But our friendship, Ryder ... is it strong enough to survive that I almost married Noel?”
“You wanted to marry me at Christmas and six months later, you’re walking down the aisle to marry another guy. How can I trust you? If I refuse to go along with your plans you find someone else. It’s easy for you.”
“Easy? Do you think it was easy not seeing you or talking to you or hearing from you for the past six months? You punished me because I wasn’t afraid to have a life and you were. You packed up some tinned food and disappeared into the woods and I was left behind pretending to be okay. I was not okay. You must have known how much you were hurting me. I know you did! It’s easy for you to walk away. You have girlfriends and sports and the forestry service. It’s always been easy for you to leave me behind. I feel like this friendship has been held together with spit since high school.”
She was shaking but not with tears. Crying wasn’t going to help anything and some good had to come out of this or what was the point in saying these things to each other? It wasn’t about winning anymore, it was about fixing it. Seeing her wedding from Ryder’s perspective helped her understand him better. Ryder felt disposable in her life, maybe from the beginning. Nothing could be further from the truth. But it was up to him now. Ryder had to tell her what he wanted. He had to say the words so she could give him everything.
“I don’t want to fight,” he groaned, rubbing his face in his hands. Scout tensed, shivering in the heat. “We’re both tired and you’ve been through enough for one day.”
“Yes.”
“You take the cot. I’ll sleep on the floor. One of us should keep watch.”
“All right.”
He sat down, away from her and leaned against the wall. The moon was bright and seemed to shine like a spotlight on the cot where Scout had curled up. She laid on her side, staring into the darkness, the sheet partially exposing her leg.
The whine of insects filled the silence and soft still night settled around them.
“It’s not that I don’t want what you want, Scout,” Ryder said quietly. “You said it years ago—I hated you for saying it but it was the truth. I don’t want kids because my parents died. I was too young to be left alone and Grady wasn’t fit to raise a kid. No child should have to go through that. I don’t want to take the risk of doing it to a kid of mine.”
“People die, Ryder. We could die tomorrow. We could get shot and left for dead in the woods by those criminals. We could survive this night only to die next week. Anything can happen. I used to think being optimistic meant believing nothing bad would happen. Now I think being optimistic means knowing something bad might happen but if it does, we won’t lose hope. If you had a son and you died suddenly, it would be very hard on him, but he would be courageous and good like you are and he would get through it. Just like you did.”
Ryder jumped to his feet and paced the room. The wind, the night and everything he wanted from her pressed in on him. He turned and strode deliberately, determinedly to the cot where she lay. Being parted from her was making his guts ache. She would blame it on the Spam if he told her so he said: “Move over. The floor is too hard.”
Her eyes seemed to cloud over as she wriggled against the wall to make room. Ryder climbed in beside her. The cotton twill of the shirt she was wearing—his shirt—rubbed against his chest. Her bare feet bumped against his. “Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“Not bad. You?”
He slid his arm under her and she shifted against him, giving them both more room. Scout’s head rested on his chest. Her hand flattened against his stomach. “That’s better,” he said.
Night sounds closed over them. The forest never slept. A cooling breeze curled in through the window and the moon painted silver light over the walls of the lookout.
Ryder couldn’t sleep. He knew he wouldn’t sleep all night. He had to keep watch. But he wasn’t at peace. He had a confession to make and he knew he had to make it before she fell asleep, before they were back in Mandrake Falls and the moment was lost. He had to tell her.
“When I saw you coming down the aisle in that dress today,” he began haltingly. “The truth is, it felt like the end for us. You asked if the wedding was a deal-breaker. If it had gone through, it would have been. Scout, I’m used to having you to myself. I couldn’t share you with a husband. That’s the real reason I was pissed about Noel. He could’ve been a saint and I still would’ve hated you for marrying him. The truth is I don’t want you to marry anyone. I want you for myself and I don’t know what to do with that because one day, you will get married.”
She didn’t speak. He wondered if she’d stopped breathing or maybe she fell asleep.
A small moan escaped her. “Maybe I will marry one day. Maybe I won’t. We should be what we can be to each other tonight and not worry about the rest. We don’t know anything except what we want from each other right now. I want you to be happy, Ryder.”
“I want you to be happy too.”
“Then tell me what you want.”
He tilted her face to his. “I want this.” Ryder kissed her gently. He kissed her cheek and her eyes and her hair. He was already hard under his jeans. She stroked his face and returned his kisses, gently, an affectionate friend, and he held back wondering if that’s all she would give him this time. He had no right to ask for more.
As though reading his mind, her mouth found his. She kissed him deeply. “Do you remember the first time we camped out overnight alone? You were seventeen and I was still sixteen. Walter and Lydia gave us the Talk, remember? I never told you this but I didn’t sleep that whole night. I sat up hoping you’d suggest we find out what Lydia and Walter were warning us against. That’s the first time I had sexual thoughts about you.”
He unbuttoned the shirt she was wearing and slid it down her shoulders, exposing her. His brain fogged with lust. “The first time for me was the day you almost burned down the gymnasium. You were smoking in the equipment room and somehow managed to set fire to the towels. The sprinkler system came on just as I ran in. You were freaking out. I don’t think you realized your tee shirt was soaked through. You weren’t wearing a bra. I’d seen a girl’s breasts before, but God, yours drove me crazy. I couldn’t stop thinking about them.”
The Jilting: Summer (Mandrake Falls Series Romance Book 1) Page 9