by Callie James
“That’s just the pain of knowing what happened to you.” His raw apprehension made me ache for him. I pressed my hand to his jaw. Kissed him. “I want to be with all of you, Sam. Do you have any idea how important this is to me?”
“Sorry.” He swallowed hard. “I’m totally killing the mood.”
“No, you’re not. I’m self-conscious, too. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what you expect from me. And I’m about to be completely naked in front of you.”
“Yeah, completely naked and perfect.”
“I have at least a hundred flaws I could point out to you,” I said, knowing he had to have felt the tremble in my hands. “Nothing like what you’re worried about, but it’s still important to me. We have to trust each other, Sam.”
He let out a breath and gripped his shirt, hesitating and looking as though he might get physically sick. When he finally pulled the material over his head, my gaze immediately shifted to his torso and the two, pale lines of scar tissue that traveled mid-chest through his abdomen and faded under his jeans. I touched one, trailing a finger across it. Uniformed dots lined the scars in various spots. Sutures. My fingertip passed over a mangled section of skin. I pictured metal ripping one line through another. Stitches hadn’t been able to fix the damage. Not completely. The marks looked painful and wrong on such a perfect body. Still, they were such a secondary vision to his muscular physique. Everything faded against his dark skin, those nice shoulders and sculpted abdomen. He was sinewy and lean, with definition showing more muscles than I knew existed. He was breathtaking.
I couldn’t stop a growing smile.
“What?” he asked.
I lifted my gaze to see his Adam’s apple bob as he waited for an answer. “I don’t know how to word what I’m feeling.”
The worry line deepened across his brow.
“Let’s just say you don’t look like a high school student,” I explained, my voice shaking as I lifted my cold fingertips to brush his sculpted pectoral and the scar that ran through it. The muscle flexed and I smiled again, thinking tons of things I shouldn’t be thinking. I suppressed nervous laughter by clearing my throat. “You’re beautiful, Sam. Really.”
He made a sound in his throat—a combination of laughter and doubt that yanked my attention from his body. “Seriously?” he said. Those intense eyes searched mine as heat flooded my face. He started to smile. “You’re blushing.”
I pushed my hands to my cheeks. Knew I had to look blotchy red to feel this hot. “Oh, wow. I am. Don’t look at me.”
I tried to step back from his arms but bumped my heel against the wall instead, nearly losing my balance. He stepped into my space, a hand going to the wall behind me as he grinned broadly. “Why? I like looking at you. You’re gorgeous.”
“Because this is embarrassing,” I said, ducking under his arm then and diving onto the bed. I pulled the blankets over my head. “I’m all blotchy. Don’t look at me!”
That contagious laugh of his made me grin as the bed dipped under his weight. He attempted to pry my grip from the covers. “We’ve practically done this how many times? You can’t possibly be shy. Even if you’re all blotchy.”
“I am shy, so don’t laugh.” I brought the blankets down to my chin to see him sitting on the bed wearing nothing but jeans. My gaze slid down those shoulders and a large symbol tattooed across his bicep. For the first time, I noticed the raised scar running a line from shoulder to elbow under the ink. “I’m kind of terrified.”
“You want to back out?”
Ah, my last chance to stay a virgin forever. “No. I want this with you. I just …can’t believe we’re finally doing this.”
His smile faded. “Me, too.” Leaning down, he pushed the blankets aside and kissed me. The narrow bed gave us little room, and I snuggled closer when he shifted next to me and propped up on his elbow.
“You’re shivering.”
“Sorry,” I said, gripping my elbows. Only an idiot would hold herself when she had a body like Sam’s to hold against her. “I can’t help it.”
“Don’t be nervous.” He kissed me. “I want this to be perfect for you.”
My mind raced to a million little things that could make this experience anything but perfect. “I noticed you locked the door. Jonas doesn’t come back at night, does he?”
He shook his head, kissing my throat while he undid the front clasp of my bra. “I thought it would make you feel more secure if I locked the door. So you know no one will interrupt us.” The clasp loosened, unsnapped and I looked at the ceiling, trying to keep my breaths from turning into short, nervous pants as he peeled back the material. The slight tremor in his hand told me he was nervous, too.
He continued to kiss me, and eventually my underwear followed my bra to the floor. “Linda,” he murmured between kisses.
I could barely think. “Who?”
“Not who. You. You’re beautiful,” he said, gliding his hand over my skin and creating a trail of goose bumps across my abdomen and down my hip. He kissed me as his fingers went lower. When he finally touched me as he hadn’t before, I inhaled sharply.
He stopped.
I refused to let my nerves ruin this for both of us, so I purposely shifted a little and dropped my hip, waiting for him to touch me again.
When he did, I tried focusing on his lips and the similar way we kissed. No matter how hard I tried, my attention kept shifting back to his hand and fingers. Those sensations. After a while, I forgot to be embarrassed and turned my body completely into his.
“Perfect,” he whispered, kissing me and pulling my thigh higher. We’d done this with our clothes on several times already. This felt better.
“Why aren’t you undressing?” I whispered.
“I will,” he said, lowering his mouth to my throat as his hand continued to create sensations I couldn’t ignore. He pulled me flush against him. Told me I was beautiful. That he wanted me to close my eyes and relax.
I closed my eyes but couldn’t relax. Everything felt too intense. Too fast. My heart rate. My thoughts. How did I end up in a gym with Sam Guerra? Was I truly ready for this? Did he love me?
I held tightly to his shoulders. My body felt too hot, too coiled, and way too tense.
“Trust me, hermosa,” he whispered again.
It was too much and I sucked in a breath, grabbing his wrist. “Sam—” The sensation hit before I could ask him to stop, and then I didn’t want him to stop. I gasped as a bone-weary fatigue that had plagued me for weeks slipped away in waves. I buried my face in his shoulder, holding myself against him until everything stopped and all I could hear was our breathing.
Reality crept back and I became aware of Sam’s smooth arm still under my head, his lips kissing my shoulder. The entire experience had left me feeling akin to a deflated balloon. A deliriously sated, deflated balloon. Embarrassed, I met his gaze, unable to stop a shy smile. I didn’t know what to say. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“What?”
“That.”
He smiled. “I want to hear you say it.”
My cheeks heated. “No.” His growing grin told me he was trying to make me blush more. I felt on fire and knew that I was. It was everything I could do not to press my face to his shoulder. “I mean, most of my friends don’t even know if they’ve … if they’ve …”
“Come?” His gaze slid over me and I felt my cheeks burn hotter.
“Yeah. That was…” Amazing, I wanted to say. Instead, I just swallowed hard and blushed longer. I doubted I’d ever be able to talk as candidly about sex as Cindy did. “I don’t think guys usually do that. Just how much experience do you have?”
“Enough,” he said. “And none. Does that make sense?”
“No.”
“All I know,” he said, a smile curling his mouth as he pressed me back on the bed to hover over me, “is that I want to be the only one you ever look at like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I�
��m it for you. Because … I want to be.”
“You are it for me,” I whispered, pressing my hand to his chest to feel his heart beating rapidly. “I told you, I’ve never felt like this.”
He studied me, still looking unsure.
My hand drifted along his side. “Can I touch you wherever I want?” I asked.
“Anywhere.”
I let my hands slide down his stomach and ribs, eventually reaching his back. He stiffened slightly, but he didn’t stop me as I brushed my fingertips across the hard ridges of welted skin.
He watched my reaction, which was impossible to hide as I blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry,” I said, brushing a tear back before it fell. “I’m doing that teary thing again.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s worse than I imagined,” I said softly.
“I know.”
The scarring was tremendous. It bothered me, but not in the way he probably thought. I reached up and kissed his neck as another tear fell and slipped into my hairline. The yummy, soapy scent of his skin surrounded me, and then his hand moved under my hips, sliding me under him.
When I let my legs glide along his, he moaned and pushed his hands into my hair, kissing me as only Sam could before he reached over the side of the bed for his wallet.
Making love with Sam turned out to be a series of starts and stops that I’d never imagined when fantasizing about this moment. That he was gentle didn’t matter. It hurt more than I’d expected and even after I got used to it, I couldn’t stop my mind from racing a million miles an hour.
I’d thought the entire episode would be intense and over in a minute. It’s how my girlfriends had described their experiences. But Sam went slowly, as though it were our last time together. It all would have been intensely romantic, too, had my addled brain stopped thought hopping for two seconds to enjoy it. I couldn’t grasp I was doing it, my first time, with the school’s biggest badass, Sam Guerra. How did I even get here? What would people think if they knew? What would Ryan think? Or Adam?
Holy cow, my parents…Daddy would have had a stroke.
“Hermosa—” He pulled me back to the moment with the soft whisper in my ear. He always spoke in a mix of Spanish and English whenever we made out. I often wondered why, but I didn’t want to ask for fear he’d stop. I loved to hear it, even when I didn’t understand it. I closed my eyes, feeling everything. Being here with him. What we were doing. My skin against his. It was almost too much. I couldn’t help the tears that blurred everything around me. I was so in love with him. Every touch between us felt special and filled with meaning. I wanted him to feel the same. Sometimes, I thought maybe he did. And when he called me his love—mi amore—I imagined he’d said he loved me instead.
He hadn’t, but I pretended he did, and when he kissed me again, everything felt infinitely better.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sam
I returned later, holding everything we’d dropped by the exit door plus two bottled waters. She was asleep under the blankets, with one of those sculpted arms wrapped around my pillow. I could only stare at her. She’d come back. What the hell had just happened? The whole experience had been unreal.
Fantastic and unreal.
Crossing the floor, I sat on the bed, feeling like an inexperienced kid again. When her eyes fluttered open, she smiled until a dimple poked into her cheek. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” She quickly propped up on her elbow, her dangling, gold earrings shining in the light as she reached for a bottle. I’d already downed one and dropped the other bottle I held to the floor. She unscrewed the cap and took a sip, her gaze sliding from mine to halt briefly on my bare back. Ignoring my first impulse to shift and remove the worst from her view, I forced myself to stay still. To let her look as long as she needed. The small indent between her eyebrows deepened as her mouth curled down. Her gaze returned to mine and she forced a small smile. “Did you want to take me home right away?” She twisted the bottle cap, tightening it before dropping it onto the floor.
“Did you want me to?”
She stretched out on the bed looking content to stay forever. “What I want is sleep. And you next to me.” I smiled because I felt the same way. “Can I sleep here with you? Or do you have trouble sleeping with someone else?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never slept with someone else.”
Her dimples deepened. “Is that a yes?”
“Yeah, that’s a yes.” Like she had to ask.
“How long until we have to get up?”
“Five hours before Jonas gets here to open. We can go at five-thirty to avoid running into him, if you’re worried about it.”
“I vote early, but only because Jonas is important to you and I probably won’t sleep much anyway,” she said.
“Because Jonas is important to me?”
“I don’t want him to think the worst of me.”
“He wouldn’t.”
She scooted back, leaving enough room for me to lie next to her. I discarded my jeans and slid under the blankets to wrap my arms around that warm, amazing body.
“Lately I sleep in ten-minute intervals,” she whispered, yawning. “Although I think we found a cure for my insomnia. Five minutes ago, every cell in my body was buzzing, and now I can barely stay awake.”
“Good,” I said, grinning.
She gave my chest a soft slap, sighing and sounding sated as she curled into me. “It’s like jetlag.”
“Sex and jetlag? Seriously?”
“After sex,” she mumbled, closing her eyes. “Silly.”
I brushed my hand down her arm, too awake and freaked out to let her sleep. “Now that we’ve crossed that line, I’m going to want you like this all the time. You know that, don’t you?”
“Mhm.” She kept her eyes closed, smiling. “Our schedules are insane though. We’ll have to do some serious maneuvering to find a way to be together. I can get out on Friday night. And you have Saturday off. That’s two nights.”
I liked where this was going.
“I wonder,” she murmured, sounding sleepy, “what the Ridgeview rumor mill would say about this. I heard from several people that I dumped you. Ryan said guys were talking in the locker room, saying you dumped me. Given our reputations, they’ll think we got back together because we like to tear each other apart.”
She wasn’t wrong about the rumor part. Reaching behind me, I grabbed my phone to check I had the alarm set for the right time. “I know how I got my reputation,” I said. “Hell, I helped create it. But yours? I still don’t get it.”
“It’s a long story.” She rubbed the shadows under her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let me be happy, Sam.”
I dropped my phone to the floor and flipped back around, kissing her forehead. “You’re happy?”
“Mhm.”
A warm satisfaction burned through me. “You know I don’t give a damn what people say, but that particular rumor pisses me off. Especially given the reality. I would have asked you weeks ago, but I didn’t want you to take my curiosity the wrong way.”
“The wrong way?”
“Like I was expecting … I don’t know. Someone wilder.”
She opened her eyes and pulled her head off the pillow, rising onto her elbow. “Did it bother you? That this was my first time?” Her gaze dropped to the bed shyly. “I know it’s probably better for the guy if the girl has more experience.”
“No it isn’t.” Was she trying to change the subject? “That’s not why I asked.”
She searched my eyes, a lazy smile curling her mouth. “Mm.” She kissed me once and dropped her head to the pillow again. “I’m tired. It feels like you drugged me. You’re a drug, Sam Guerra.”
She looked rumpled and cute, and she was trying to change the subject. “Give me the short version and I’ll let you sleep.”
“Promises, promises.” She rolled onto her back. “Okay. But no questions or I’ll stop talking.”
“Fine. No questions.”
>
“Short version. It was the end of Freshman year, my dad asked me to attend the Spring Fling dance with a boy, who happened to be his supervisor’s son. I told my dad I didn’t want to go. He said it was important.” She shrugged. “So I went. Later in his truck, the boy tried to kiss me and I didn’t let him. He got mad. That’s when he tried to force …things.”
“Wait.” I stiffened. “He what?”
“No questions, remember?”
I pulled back to look at her. “You’re going to hold me to that? Seriously?”
She put her hand on my chest. “Sam, don’t.”
“What do you mean don’t? Don’t get mad? How about pissed?” I rose on my elbow and looked down at her. “Who the hell did this?”
She threaded her fingers with mine and said, “He tried to force me, but I scratched him and bit clear through the hand he had over my mouth. He let me go and I slid from the truck while he bled all over his precious leather seat. I ran to the nearest store and called a friend—Jon, actually—to pick me up. Then the first Monday back at school, the … boy… told everyone who would listen that I liked it rough to explain the scratch marks on his neck. Nobody bothered to ask him about the hospital bandage on his hand. He must have had at least twenty stitches.” She frowned and I noticed the tremble in her chin. “And that’s the short version of how I went from a bookworm nobody to a hellcat hot mess overnight.”
Why did she think she had to act so calm about this with me? I sure as hell wasn’t. “Peyton, tell me who—”
She put three fingertips to my mouth, stopping me cold. “A month later he graduated, and two weeks after, he died in a car accident. Drinking and driving.”
I knew instantly who did this to her. It must have shown on my face because she slowly removed her hand from my mouth.
“Jason Thompson,” I said on an exhale, depressed now because I couldn’t kill him. The son of a bitch was already dead. Damn, he had to have outweighed her by seventy pounds, most of that muscle. And where the hell had I been?
“What?” she said. “Why that face? He didn’t hurt me, Sam. It never got that far.”