by Megyn Ward
“It happened.” The tone of my voice sounds off, even to me. I sound angry. Maybe even a little hurt. “I took you into my room. I pinned you against the door and made you come on my fingers. That happened and it wasn’t a fucking mistake—not for me—so, don’t say that it was.”
For a second, neither of us says anything. Grace just stares at me, her hands back to rubbing themselves raw on the legs of her jeans. “Okay…” She nods at me and looks away, unsure of what to say next. Finally, she clears her throat and shrugs. “Well, I didn’t tell anyone about it, and I didn’t tell anyone about… this morning, so you don’t have to worry about—”
“I’m not the one who should be worried.” It’s a warning and I make sure she knows it. Make sure she hears the intent in my tone. That she knows exactly what’s going to happen next if she doesn’t leave. “I’m not the one who came to what is basically an abandoned building in the middle of the night to stir up shit with a guy who can’t stop thinking about what it felt like to make me come.”
“I—” her hands go still and whatever she’s about to say gets choked out by the flush that come back in full force when what I just said sinks in. “I didn’t come here to stir up shit.”
“No?” I feign confusion, tilting my head just a bit. “Because I gotta tell you, Grace—shit is definitely getting stirred.”
She opens her mouth and it hangs that way for a few seconds before she manages to form a response. “I came here for an—”
“Apology.” I nod thoughtfully. “Yeah—that’s what you said but that’s not why you’re here.”
“Is that right?” Tone sharp enough to cut, she crosses her arms over her chest, mirroring me. “Since you seem to know everything, why don’t you tell me—”
“You saw it. How hard you made me this morning.” Like this morning, I suddenly find myself standing over her and I have no idea how I got here. How I got so close to her without even realizing it, but I’m in it now. I’m here and there’s no pulling back. No retreat. “And you want to know if you can make it again.”
Her mouth falls open when I say it, her sky blue eyes going wide and round, her head tipped back so she can look up at me. “I didn’t…” She shakes her head, the tip of her tongue pushing out to lick her slightly parted lips. “I mean—”
“It’s okay, Grace…” Lifting a hand, I wrap my fingers around the back of her neck, the rough pad of my thumb stroking the long, slim column of her neck, quickening the frantic drum of her pulse at the base of her throat. “I’m kinda curious to know, myself.” Leaning in, I move over her to brush my mouth against hers, feeling something fierce and savage—something I haven’t felt in what seems like a lifetime—roll through me when she shudders in response. “So, what do you say we find out?”
Eleven
Grace
As soon as his mouth touches mine, I start to sink. Every muscle, every joint in my body go loose. Let go.
“Ryan…” That’s as far as I get, my mouth hanging open like I can’t track the question. Because I can’t. I can’t think straight because Ryan is standing over me. His hands are on me. In my hair, the pull of it causing a tingling warmth to shoot down my spine, drawing a direct of sensation from his fist to my pussy. “I didn’t come here for an apology.”
“We’re past that now,” he tells me, the tips of his fingers skimming the waistband of my jeans, teasing me. The heat between my thighs begins to pulsate. His mouth hovering, brushing against mine, every time I take breath. “Yes or no, Grace?”
“Yes.” I raise myself onto the balls of my feet after I say it, closing the space between us to skim my lips against his. “Yes, please.” I whisper it against his mouth, the end of my plea bleeding into a soft moan when the hand in my hair tightens, angling my head back even further and his mouth crashes into mine. Claims it with a hot, languid sweep of his tongue, licking and swirling inside my mouth until my arms are flung around his neck, clinging to him for dear life because I’m dying. I’m drowning and Ryan has no intention of saving me.
He breaks the kiss off on a low groan that sounds like my name. “Be sure,” Ryan says before he moves away from me completely. The sudden absence of him makes me dizzy and I open my eyes to find him gone, walking away, across the living room to disappear through a doorway into what could only be his bedroom.
Follow him.
I’m supposed to follow him.
I want to follow him.
I want to chase him down and rip his clothes off like a wild animal, but I don’t because I know what this is. Why he left me standing here alone. He’s giving me time to change my mind. Time to come to my senses and leave before things go too far. A part of him probably even wishes that I would.
I get it.
I understand.
Because there’s a part of me that wishes the same thing. The still sane part of me that’s telling me to put my coat back on and walk out the door before I lose my mind completely.
Half listening to that voice, I pick up my coat and walk it to the door. I’ve got my hand on the knob, can feel it turn in my hand.
But I can’t make myself do it.
I can’t make myself leave.
Hanging my coat on an empty hook, I pull my phone out of my pocket and tuck it into my coat pocket before kicking off my shoes and pulling off my socks. Barefoot, I cross the living room to stand in the doorway Ryan disappeared through to find him sitting on the edge of his bed, head bent and turned away from the door, the glow of the bedside lamp setting the dark red of his hair on fire while he looks at something in the open drawer of his nightstand. When he hears me, he shuts the drawer and his head comes up, a convoluted mixture of relief and anxiety moving across his face.
“I thought you left.” I can tell by his tone that I’m right—there’s a part of him that wanted me to. Because my mouth doesn’t seem to want to open, I just shake my head and he gives me one of his odd, flat smiles in response because he knows that like him, there’s a part of me that wishes I had. “Still can,” he says, like he’s reading my mind. “It’s not too late.”
Yes, it is.
It’s too late for both of us.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him. “Not unless you want me to.”
Now it’s his turn to shake his head, his dark-eyed gaze dropping down to my bare feet. “I don’t want you to go.”
Relieved and feeling pretty ridiculous about it, I cross the room, rounding the bed to stand on the other side of it, behind him.
“What if I can’t?” he says in a gruff tone without turning around to look at me. “What if this morning was just a—”
“We’ll figure it out.” Lifting my shirt over my head I drop it on the floor. “No matter what happens,” I tell him as I reach back to unhook my bra. Let it slide down my arms to join my shirt on the floor. Work my panties off my hips and slide them to the floor to step out of them. “I won’t be disappointed.”
He makes a sound in the back of his throat that tells me he doesn’t believe me. Because there’s nothing I can say to change his mind, I do the only thing I can. Tugging my jeans down over my hips, I step out of them before adding them to my pile of discarded clothes. Naked, I reach out to pull the covers back to slip between the sheets of Ryan’s bed, the cool cotton of them stiffening my nipples instantly.
Even though he knows what I’m doing, that I’m in his bed, he still hasn’t turned around. Still hasn’t moved, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do next. Like he’s trying to remember how this is supposed to work.
I’m about to open my mouth and tell him that it’s okay. That we don’t have to do this, Ryan’s arms come up, lifting the hem of his shirt along with them. Up over his head before it’s tossed on the floor.
There are scars on his back. Burn scars from the explosion he survived, still pink and new, splash up from the waistband of his track pants, twisting and snaking their way across his lower back, toward his ribcage. Higher on his back, a slash mark cuts across
his spine and a round, lumpy scar that looks like a bullet hole, high on his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he says quietly. “You don’t have to touch me if you don’t want to.”
Before I can really comprehend what he’s saying, Ryan reaches for the bedside lamp and turns out the light.
Twelve
Ryan
After plunging us both into the dark, I stay where I am, letting my hand drop down, away from the lamp and back to my lap. I know what I’m doing. I’m waiting. For Grace to make some insipid comment about the scars on my back. For her to tell me they don’t matter.
Maybe I’m just waiting for her to leave.
I don’t want her to.
I’d probably chase her down and drag her back to my bed if she tried.
So what the fuck are you waiting for, Ranger? Time to nut up or shut up.
The problem is, I psyched myself out. Looked in that fucking drawer full of condom Conner left for me. Started to wonder if I’d be able to get it up long enough to use one.
Started to worry that maybe I would.
Behind me, I hear the subtle intake of Grace’s breath, telling me she’s about to say something. Tell me it’s okay. We don’t have to do this. We can call it off if I want.
Because I’ll lose my fucking shit if she says any of the above, I force myself to move before she can make a sound.
Pulling the covers back, I force myself to lie down beside her. Dig my heels into the bed to keep myself in place when I feel her move toward me across the mattress. She nudges my arm away from my side, settling into the wedge to rest her cheek on my shoulder. Her full, soft breasts pressed against the sidewall of my chest while her hand slides across the plane of my stomach to settle itself on my hip.
We lay like this for a while. Me, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what to do with my hands. Grace, wrapped around me, feeling so goddamned good and right, I’m afraid to move. Afraid to breathe because I know I’m going to fuck this up. I’m going to push her away again. I’m going to keep pushing her away and, sooner or later, it’s gonna stick.
“Ryan?” She whispers it, her mouth brushing against shoulder.
“Hmmm.”
“How’d it happen?”
I knew she’d ask about the explosion—everyone eventually does—but that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it. It doesn’t mean I want to tell her how, as a ten-year vet with seven years as a Ranger under my belt, I still managed to fuck up so bad that I nearly got my leg and junk blown off.
Mainly because I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened that day. How I ended up this way. The last thing I remember before the explosion is boarding our transport. The rest is a yawning black hole of nothingness. Too deep and dark for me to see the bottom of it, and that deep dark scares the piss out of me. Not knowing what I did. Not being able to remember. Because the longer I stare into it, the crazier I feel.
“How’d what happen?” I don’t want to talk about it, but I will. If Grace can be brave enough to ask me, then I can be brave enough to tell her.
“This.” She lifts her head and tilts it to press her lips to the raised, red lump of scar tissue that rides high on my left shoulder. “You have one just like it on your back.”
“Through and through—bullet went in the front and came out the back,” I tell her, crippling relief and an odd sort of disappointment chasing themselves around in my gut.
“You were shot.” I can hear fear in her voice when she says it. Like it happened minutes ago, not years. Like it could happen again at any moment. “Someone shot you.”
“Yeah.” I reach up and run a self-conscious hand over the lump. “I was doing a thing and caught a bullet for my trouble.”
“Doing a thing?” I can hear a slight smile in her voice. Feel her lift her head to look up at me in the dark. “Is that your way of saying you were on a top-secret mission for the president?”
“I could tell you, Grace—but then I’ll have to kill you,” I say, the clench in my stomach loosening a little when she laughs. Finally figuring out what to do with my hands, I shift my free arm across the mattress. Taking her hand in mine, I lift it off my hip, dragging it up my stomach to its center. “Yemin,” I whisper, running her fingertips along the thin, diagonal scar that climbs the ladder of my ribcage, from my navel to nearly my armpit. “Guy caught me with the business end of his KA-BAR. Sliced me pretty good.” My breath catches at the back of my throat when her hand slips out from under mine. Her fingertips start to move on their own, skimming across my collarbone. The base of my throat. Dipping down to trace the line of my pec. Squeezing my eyes shut in the dark, I force myself to concentrate. “A KA-BAR is a—”
“It’s a knife,” she says, her fingers tracing down the center of my chest, over the thick plate of my sternum. “I know what it is—my dad’s a Marine, remember?” She finds another scar, this one shorter. Fatter, somewhere between my sternum and lower abdomen. Brushes her fingertips along the length of it. “This one?”
“Got stabbed.” I want to catch her hand. Stop her before she goes any further. Moves any lower. But I don’t. I can’t because as much as I don’t want her to touch me, I need her to. I might fucking die if she doesn’t. “Libya.” I croak it out on a harsh breath when she lifts her hand back to my shoulder, relief and disappoint churning together even faster, the splash of it like acid against the back of my throat.
But then she moves.
Braces her hand against my shoulder. Shifts herself against me. Over me. Slides her leg over my hip until she’s straddling me. It all happens so fast I don’t even realize it’s done until her hand slides down the width of my shoulder to find my hand, resting on the bed. Lifting it, she brings it up, her hands guiding my rough, blunt fingertips over the soft skin of her belly. Again, it happens too fast for me to track. So quick I can’t breathe. My heart’s hammering against my Adam’s apple so hard and fast I feel dizzy. Like I’m being choked out. Like I might actually die from this. Like I might want to, because dying this way, with Grace, soft and naked under my hands is so much better than anything I ever thought I’d get to have.
Her hand and mine stop their downward trajectory and then I feel it, the thick, hard rope of scar tissue slashed into the soft patch of skin above her pubic bone. “C-section,” She says with a quiet laugh. “Ohio.” Laying her fingers gently across the back of my wrist, she lets me feel it. Opens herself up to me. “It’s not like I fought a war or anything, but—”
“Yes you did.” I murmur it, letting my gaze travel over her in the gloom. I can make out the soft curve of her breasts. The gentle flare of her hips. “You fought the best kind of war,” I tell her, thinking briefly of Molly. “And you won.”
“So did you,” she says. I can tell by her tone she’s not talking about the bullet holes and stab wounds that could’ve killed me but didn’t. She’s talking about the wound that did. Killed the person I was. Made me into the person that I am. “I have to tell you something,” she whispers. “About me. About—”
It doesn’t matter.
I almost say it, because it’s true. Whatever she’s about to tell me doesn’t matter. Not to me. But I can tell by the way she says it that it matters to her. Whatever it is, it’s something she needs to say out loud. So I don’t say anything. I just wait.
“I don’t know who Molly’s father is,” She finally says in a rush, shoving the words out of her mouth on a harsh push of breath. “Cari, my parents—they all think I won’t name him because I’m protecting him. There were a lot of rumors going around town while I was pregnant—still going, actually. That he’s married or that he’s one of my teachers in high school. One rumor even had me getting knocked up by the pastor at our church, but the truth is that I don’t name him because I don’t know who he is. I was young and stupid and I—”
“Good.”
“Good?” Something about her tone tells me it isn’t good. That it bothers her. “Why is that good?”
Because it means I don’t have to worry about some asshole strolling into the picture, trying to take what’s mine. Because you don’t need anyone else. Just me. No one else but me.
It’s insane.
Completely crazy to feel that way. The only thing crazier would be if I actually said it out loud. But crazy or not, it’s how I feel. “Because no father is better than a shitty one—trust me on that,” I tell her because she asked me a question and expects an answer. “Whoever he is, he’s the one who fucked up, Grace. He’s the one who should regret it. Not you.”
There’s more. I can feel it. More to it than she’s telling me but I suddenly don’t care. I don’t want to think about it anymore—her past and mine.
In an instant, all that matters is now.
The press of her knees, bent and bracketing my ribcage. The inside of her thighs, hugged against my hips. The juncture of them hovering over the base of my cock, so close I can feel the heat of her. How much she wants me, the feel of it kicking up a familiar answering throb in my groin.
Pushed by instinct, I lift my hands to her hips. Fingertips digging in with the need to pull her closer. To get inside her.
Fuck her.
I need to fuck her.
Make her mine.
“Grace…” Her name comes out on a rough breath, anxiety spiking through my veins because I need something I can’t have. Something I’m too afraid to take. Shame and humiliation slice through me, tightening my grip on her. Get me ready to push her off of me so I can get away from her. “I—”