by Cara McKenna
“I just felt like . . . Like, shit, this sex is insane. And if I don’t remind myself constantly that it’s just sex, I’ll start trying to make it mean something more. It’s hard to not get attached to someone, when they can make you feel that good. And you’re so attracted to them. Plus a part of me didn’t want to like you, that way. You make me feel weaker than I’m comfortable feeling . . .”
I trailed off, but it didn’t matter. His lips were there to take the place of words. Our kiss was tender and slow, excruciatingly personal. It took all my will to pull away after a couple minutes. I cleared my throat.
He stared at me with something like awe lighting his gaze. When he kissed me, he seemed so, so close, I felt a tingle behind my nose. But I wouldn’t cry. This was too nice to mess up with crying, and Kelly and I communicated best with our bodies.
His mouth explored mine, and in no hurry. He’d kissed me this way before, for a moment here, a moment there, little glimpses of tender passion. But this time it stretched out for glorious minutes, a kiss erotic and romantic enough for the movies. He held my face in one hand, fingertips stoking the vulnerable hollow behind my ear.
I wriggled closer and found him hard, but for once he seemed immune to the demands of his cock. All this was different. I could feel it. And it felt better than the sex, almost. And way better than resisting this thing between us.
The kiss seemed to strip me bare, past my clothes, through my skin, until Kelly held my heart in his hands, held my hope. I felt more naked and quivering and helpless than I ever had, faced with violence or danger. Was this love, turning me inside out? It felt as wonderful as it did scary.
After five minutes of possibly the best human contact I’d ever experienced, I pulled away. I took a deep breath of the warm silence hovering between our mouths, then another.
Kelly stroked my hair. “You look like you’ve got something to say.”
“Why do you like me?”
His smile was pure surprise, and it crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes in a way that made my loins melt. “Why do I like you?”
I shuffled back a little and put my hand on his arm. “At the risk of sounding like a presumptuous jerk, I got the impression you . . . I don’t know. That you weren’t really after something . . . you know. Serious.”
“Well,” he said slowly, “at the risk of sounding like a dick, I wasn’t. I never am. It happens, from time to time, usually because a woman sees something in me that she decides needs saving. Or thawing, maybe. And I’m not just a walking cock, despite how I advertise. I want more than just sex, if the woman seems special. But like I told you when we first talked, my domineering shtick doesn’t usually fly, past a couple weeks. Not once a woman realizes getting bossed around isn’t hot, in the long run. It’s not a sustainable way for two people to relate. Especially with the kind of girls I like. You scrappy types. It might work a date or two or five, sure. Not much longer.”
“You only bossed me around for a night, really. Like, properly.”
“Yeah.” Kelly nodded, averting his eyes. “I dunno quite why that was. Why I liked you better, speaking your mind.”
I smiled, a bit cocky. “Maybe you like my mind.”
He tugged me closer. “I think you know I do. But back to your original question, about why I like you?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe because like me, you grew up with nobody really fighting for you. Right?”
I nodded.
“Surrounded by people who were too beat down to give a shit, even if it wasn’t their fault. Nobody showed you how it felt, to be cared about. Or wanted. But I know if anybody got between you and your sister or your nephew, you’d kick and scratch and bite to defend your own.”
“Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t . . . But yeah, it’s in there.”
“You grew up into a better person than the ones that raised you,” Kelly said. “And that’s unusual, with people like us. Me, I’m an okay guy, brought up by a violent drunk and a passive shell of a mom. I’m better than they raised me to be. That’s gotta be rare.” Kelly smiled and stroked my hair. “So that’s why. Because you’ve got something special in you, something that won’t stay buried, no matter how many times experience tries to say it’s fighting a losing battle. That’s what made both of us take these jobs, I bet. Believing maybe we could fix something ugly in the world, try to be of use to the people everybody else has given up on.”
The first tear escaped, rolling hot down my cheek. I’d never thought about it that way. I’d taken my job because I needed to be near my sister, but what he said was right, too. I didn’t want to give up on those people, no matter how nasty and ungrateful they sometimes were. I wanted to believe they were like Kelly, if you just dug deep enough—a hard exterior hiding a vulnerable core.
“I got that same streak in me,” he said, “and I want it in my life. In a woman. I want to fill in the gaps, fight all the battles you can’t, because of whatever—your size or your gender. Maybe that’s sexist, but it’s what I want. I just want to feel needed by somebody who deserves whatever I got to offer.”
I laughed, looking down to hide my reddening face. Kelly tipped my chin back up with a crooked finger. “I’m not afraid of your tears.”
“I am, maybe.”
“Don’t be.”
My lips felt swollen, nostrils stinging. I cleared my throat. “When this all started, I thought you saw me as some little woodland creature, one who’d give you a good chase before you eventually brought me down and tore me to pieces. Sex-wise.”
Kelly laughed.
“Maybe we were two dogs all along, and all you wanted was to get in the pit with me.”
“Maybe. Even if I wasn’t, that’s what I got.”
I slid my hand down his arm to stroke his knuckles. I paused, one of his fingers feeling odd. I rubbed the spot—a strange, smooth divot—and pulled back to examine it. “You got your ring off.”
“I bit the bullet and took a pair of clippers to it when I got home from the hospital.”
“Oh, what a shame.” Such a personal inheritance, marred forever.
He shrugged. “I’ll get some jeweler to weld it back together someday, should the need arise.”
“I guess it’ll wind up with a scar,” I mused, tracing my fingertip along the mark on his neck. “Why’d you bother?”
“It just felt like something I ought to get around to. Like maybe it was keeping me from considering myself fully . . . I dunno. Open to stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“You know. Letting somebody in or whatever.”
I took a deep breath and asked, “Do you think there’s enough of this ‘something’ between us to actually be, you know . . . something more? For us to be a couple?”
“Would you like us to be?”
I pursed my lips and nodded.
“Okay then.”
“Jeez, that was easy. What about work? We don’t work in some office where we can afford to be distracted.”
“You really think I give a fuck about some HR clause?”
I smiled.
He kissed my forehead, a gesture fast becoming my favorite thing. “We’ll keep our mouths shut about it. But someday, if somebody catches us speaking too closely in the parking lot or the break room, fuck what they think. By then they’ll have seen us both doing our jobs perfectly well for who knows how many weeks or months. No one’s really going to fire us, not if us dating isn’t threatening the residents’ care. Certainly not Dennis or your number-one fan, Dr. Morris.”
After a pause, he said, “When you asked before, why it is I like you, I left something out.”
“Oh?”
He grinned down at me, eyes narrowed and sinister. “You are fucking attractive.”
I blushed. “I’m okay, I guess.”
/> “I think you’re sexy. Real sexy.”
“Usually if I get called anything nice, it’s ‘cute.’”
“Nah. You got this way of pursing your lips at work, when you’re thinking about shit . . .” Kelly fake-shuddered with arousal, eyes rolling up. “All that you got going on with the big eyes and the pink cheeks, I can see through that act. You’re a raccoon underneath that bunny costume. I like your claws as much as your whiskers.”
I laughed.
He flopped down beside me with a sigh. “Can I crash here? I’m fucking exhausted.”
“Of course.”
Settling in, he pulled me tighter against him.
“You’re not even going to try to take advantage of me?” I asked. “You really must be wrecked.”
Eyes shut, he smirked.
“Here,” I said, turning in his arms. “Let me guarantee you a good, deep sleep.”
His eyes opened just as my fingers found the waist of his pants, and his lips parted. I thought for a second he’d stop me, but the hand he reached out merely stroked my arm, making all its tiny hairs rise. When I got his button open he did the rest, lowering his fly and wrestling his pants away. For a minute or more I fondled him through his shorts, until he was stiff and thick and his breaths had grown sharp and hungry. He pushed his waistband down, releasing his bare length into my palm. He felt just like he should, big and powerful. Only this time I got to wield it. I got to be the one doing.
It was nothing like the things we’d done before. The angle was awkward, the eye contact intense and intimate and humbling. He let me watch every stage of his arousal as it transformed his expression from intrigued to dirty to desperate. As he neared orgasm, he cupped my ear, fingers fidgeting in my hair. No orders this time, just a series of near-silent grunts as I stroked him closer to the edge. Then—
“Please.”
He needn’t have begged. Just now, watching him was as hot as fucking him, and I was as antsy for his release as he was.
“Yes. Please.” Again his eyes shut, expression pure and perfect agony. His twitching arm and hips told me he was a goner.
He came with the softest, sweetest moan, filling my cupped hand in three long spurts.
“Good.” I left him panting, slipping away to tidy my palm with a tissue. He moved so I could free the covers and we kicked our way between the sheets. I hadn’t even realized how chilly the room had grown until we were enveloped by all that warmth.
“You need something?” he asked.
I kissed his temple. “No, I’m perfect.” Perfectly satisfied, and perfectly exhausted, same as him.
“I’ll get you back,” he mumbled, already fading. “Don’t you worry.”
“I’m sure you will. Thanks for making it sound like a threat.”
“Mmm,” he hummed with a smile, and rolled over. I switched off the reading lamp and draped my arm around his waist.
“I’m gonna fall in love with you,” Kelly said. His words hung in the darkness, bright as candle flames.
“You think so?”
“Yeah. And I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with anybody. Not beyond that dumb kind you feel when you’re young.”
For a long moment I just nibbled my lip, dumbstruck. When I did speak, all that came out was a soft, “Wow.”
“I’ve never loved anybody, for the right reasons,” he said quietly. “I love my mom, but I don’t respect her. I loved my grandfather, but I also never really felt like I knew him. A part of me might even love Don, but I can’t ever tell him that . . .
“If I fall in love with you, it’ll be because I know you inside and out, and because you’re somebody I want to be a better person for—instead of in spite of.”
What he said gave me chills. It felt like he’d opened some secret door and let me come inside and handle the softest parts of him, off-limits to the rest of the world. It meant far more than the bones of any dusty secrets I might exhume on my own.
“There’s nothing I can say that’ll be anywhere as nice as what you just said.”
“Just let me say it first.”
I smiled, unseen. “As you command.”
After a pause he added, “You know, it’s not so bad, needing someone. And not even needing someone . . . Letting someone help you.”
“Are you saying this to me, or yourself?”
“You . . . And maybe me.”
“I’d rather want someone than need them,” I decided. “But you’re right. It’s nice to have someone to fall back on, when things suddenly go to shit.” I’d had that in Kelly, that night at the ER. I just hadn’t known it until he strode into the waiting room.
“Someone to rely on,” Kelly murmured. “Some man who’d bust his ass so you could work through your RN, full-time. Or something more. If you wanted that.”
I blinked in the darkness. “He’d have to be an awfully rich man, if I tricked myself into thinking I was cut out for medical school.”
“Nah. Just some loner with his house already paid off and inexpensive tastes.”
These were thoughts for another time. For another year. I had plenty to learn as I found my feet at Larkhaven in the coming months. Just as much to learn as I fumbled my way into a romance with this strange and startling man.
I squeezed his fingers. “I don’t know what I want yet, for the future. I just know I want . . . I want you to need me back,” I whispered. “For more than just sex.”
“Sweetheart, I already do. I need you for what you let me be for you last night.”
“Oh.”
“I’m nothing without people relying on me. You ever feel tempted to offer me a foot rub, save your energy and ask me to fix something instead.”
“If it makes you so happy, I’ll break stuff on purpose.”
“No.” He turned around and kissed my forehead, then coaxed me to flip so he could do the spooning, hugging me tight. “There’s always something broken. No need to make trouble when there’s plenty already waiting. Just lemme fix what I can, when you can’t do the job yourself.”
“I will,” I promised. He already was. Fixing that ache in my chest, just being here, holding me. Chiseling a few bricks out of his cold gray tower, just enough for me to slip inside and feel shielded from the wind and rain.
With a shallow, yielding noise, he went slack, muscles surrendering their duties, his arm a warm weight against my waist.
“Goodnight, Kel.”
Gently, I turned enough to kiss his jaw and feel his stubble against my lips, its usual rasp softened by an extra day’s growth. From the rest and routine he’d sacrificed, to come and be with me, to let us see each other for the helpless, frightened humans we were.
We got a little something between us.
So little. No thicker than a layer of cotton now. The thinnest membrane of latex when I’d next welcome his body inside mine. Barely anything at all, with those stubborn barriers demolished, just us two, lying here as the dust settled.
Just us two, stripped and spent, hearts beating together in the dark.
With the most heartfelt thanks to my dear friends and talented peers—Ruthie Knox, Charlotte Stein, Edie Harris, Serena Bell, Del Dryden, and Shelley Ann Clark—for their energy, time, and input.
Thanks also to my editor, Jesse Feldman, for seeking me out and inviting me to New York, and to my agent, Laura Bradford, for pushing me there in her wheelbarrow.
And with extra big thanks to my kick-ass mom and to Mary Ann Rivers (and unwitting colleagues), for their expertise. If I bungled any clinical details in this book, may the blame lay firmly on my own shoulders.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at
Cara McKenna’s next novel,
UNBOUND
Available October 2013 from InterMix
Three W
eeks Ago
From: Merry
To: Lauren, Kat
Subject: Farewell drinks?
Hey gals! Anybody free for pre-vaca drinks tomorrow? I figure it’s pretty likely I’ll get taken captive as a sex slave by some rippling, kilted Highlander next week, never to return. Promise you’ll keep San Fran warm for me.
I’ve got a zillion things still to wrap up at work, but I should be free by 7:30. Any takers? So hoping to see you guys one more time before I fly out.
Mer
From: Lauren
To: Merry, Kat
Subject: re: Farewell drinks?
Wouldn’t miss it—I could use a drink this week. Or three. Just tell me where.
L
From: Kat
To: Merry, Lauren
Subject: re: Farewell drinks?
Hell yeah. See you then!
Kat
From: Lauren
To: Merry, Kat
Subject: re: Farewell drinks?
Is it totally cunty that I’m sort of looking forward to Merry being gone for a month? Probably. But I swear she lost her old personality, right along with the weight. If it gets any worse she’ll start tossing her hair and giggling every time someone tells her how great she looks. My last nerve. She is on it. Bon voyage.
Okay, yeah. That WAS cunty. Whatever. See you tomorrow!
Cuntily yours,
Lauren
Merry blinked at her phone’s screen, just as another message alert pinged.
From: Kat
To: Merry
Subject: re: Farewell drinks?
Uhhh . . . o_O I’m guessing Lauren didn’t mean to reply all. And I don’t think she knows she did. Shall we just let her keep thinking that, or . . . ??? Anyhow, I can’t wait to see you tomorrow!
Awkwardly,
Kat
Merry frowned, considering her reply.
She wasn’t hurt.
Well, yeah, she was. But not surprised. Lauren’s default setting was snide, but it stung Merry to have her suspicions confirmed. She’d lost ninety-two pounds, but clearly she’d gained something else—readmission to the joys of high-school bitchery! Nothing like a Reply-All faux-pas to make thirty-one feel like fifteen.