by Lauren Rowe
“Don’t thank me. This wasn’t charity for me. Trust me.”
“No, thank you for turning the second worst day of my entire life into one of the very best.” She touches my cheek. “I know we’re going to part ways tomorrow after we get to Vegas. I totally understand that. But I just want you to know, Aiden, I’ll never forget tonight as long as I live.”
Chapter Seven
Aiden
Thursday, 3:22 a.m.
“Aiden,” Savvy whispers, pulling me out of my dream. She presses her body against mine. Her skin is shockingly cold. “Aiden,” she whispers again.
I jolt awake. “Holy shit.”
She giggles. “I’m freeeeeezing.”
“Yeah, I can feel that.”
“I got up to use the bathroom and brush my teeth and guzzle a gallon of water, and now my teeth are chattering. The air conditioning is on full blast. Icicles are forming in here. Gimme your body heat. Gah.”
Laughing, I wrap my arms around her and pull her into me—and when I surmise she’s naked, and her nipples are rock hard, my dick begins tingling. “Hello,” I say suggestively.
“Hello,” she whispers, mimicking my tone. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m sober now.” She nuzzles the tip of her cold nose across my jawline. “And now I want to go back for seconds.”
“No regrets about what we did in our drunken state?”
“Not a one. In fact, I just sent Derek all our mini-pornos.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. Every single one of them. My ruby ring is a star! And guess what else?” Her warm hand finds its way to my hard-on underneath the covers. She begins stroking me. “Sending those videos to Derek…feeling like I finally got to punch back for once in my life…it turned me on like crazy.”
I put my hand on Savvy’s to stop her movement. “Hang on a sec, baby.” Shit. I want nothing more than to fuck her again. But now that I’m completely sober, I feel the need to make things extra clear. “I’m having a blast with you, Savvy,” I say. “Tonight’s been one of the best of my life.”
She pulls her hand off me. Clearly, she thinks I’m about to humiliate her in some way.
“Hey,” I say softly. “Don’t worry. Now that we’re both sober, I just want to be clear this is a one-night thing. My life is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. As amazing as our chemistry has been, I still won’t be able to hang out with you after we get to Vegas.”
Her body language next to me is tight. “You’ve got a girlfriend.”
“No. Nothing like that. It’s the timing, Savvy. I met you at the worst possible time. You said you want a guy to be straight with you at all times, right up front, right? So I’m just making sure we’re good.”
“What’s going on with you, Aiden? Why is this such a bad time in your life?”
I exhale. “I don’t want to drag you into my mess. Just believe me when I say I’d pursue something with you beyond a one-night fling if I could. I truly would. I’ve never met anyone like you. Our connection is blowing my mind. But I just can’t do it right now. I know casual sex isn’t something you’re accustomed to. I just want to make sure you’re clear every step of the way.”
“Maybe I could help you with whatever problem you’re having.”
“You can’t help me.”
“You’re a fugitive from the law, aren’t you? You’re wanted by the FBI?”
“No. It’s nothing like that.” It’s a true statement, technically. Yeah, I’m an ex-con, but I’m not currently wanted by any branch of law enforcement. I’ve done my time, and I’m a straight arrow these days. In fact, I haven’t so much as jay-walked since I got out of the pen three years ago. I continue, “I’ve just got a personal emergency I need to handle. It’s time-sensitive and fucked up, and I have to figure it out on my own. I can’t even begin to think about trying to live a normal, happy life until I do that.”
“Do you work for the mob? Are you a drug runner? Please tell me, Aiden. I might be able to help you.”
I pause for a long moment, considering how much I want to tell her. “It’s my father,” I say tentatively. “He owes some money, and I’m the only one who can help him get it. That’s really all I can say.”
“He’s in trouble with loan sharks?”
I sigh. Jesus God, she’s persistent. “I don’t want to talk about it, Savvy. Okay? Please.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. And then she snuggles up close, slides her naked thigh over my hip and her palm to my naked ass, and sighs audibly. “All right. Thank you for making things clear. I admit I was starting to have fantasies of us having sex in my bed in LA.”
Me too, I think. But, of course, I don’t say it.
We lie in silence for a long moment, our limbs intertwined. I’m stroking her naked back. She’s running her fingertips across my abs.
“Okay,” she finally says. “If tonight is truly our one and only hurrah, then I say let’s make our minutes count. Let’s have another round of amazing sex.”
Wordlessly, I pull her to me and kiss her and caress her until she’s panting and moaning against me. When I know I’ve got her right where I want her, I reach between her legs and massage her hard, swollen tip. In no time flat, she’s coming against my hand and moaning my name, and I’m losing my mind and wishing, so badly, I could do this to her beyond tonight. But I can’t. Of course not.
My heart racing and my dick pulsing, I grab a condom off the nightstand, get myself covered, and sink myself inside her. Soon, we’re on fire again, every bit as much as we were the first time. I thrust into her harder and harder, my body barreling toward release, until sweat is dripping down my back, and she’s gasping for air and clawing at my shoulders, and my mind is not my own.
“Aiden,” Savvy gasps out, her nails dragging down my back, her heart pounding with mine. “I’m… Oh, God.” She arches her back forcefully, widens her legs, and comes so hard I feel liquid trickle against my balls. And that’s it. I can’t hang on. With a loud groan, I explode into her…so forcefully I’m suddenly seeing little white stars.
When our bodies quiet down, I roll off her and peel my condom off. My mind is racing. My heart aches. I suddenly feel an acute pang of regret. Of lost opportunity. Why’d I have to meet this incredible girl now?
“Do you feel that thing when we get going really good?” Savvy asks.
“That electricity?” I reply. “Yeah. It’s crazy.”
“It’s insane. I got so turned on that time, I think I peed a little bit. Sorry.”
“That wasn’t pee.” I explain the phenomenon of female ejaculation to her, and she marvels and gasps and expresses absolute shock. I rise up onto my elbow and look down at her pretty face in the moonlight and stroke her cheek with my thumb. “What the hell are you doing to me, Savannah Valentine?” I whisper.
Her features melt. She pulls me to her for a kiss. And the moment my lips meet hers, my chest aches with regret yet again. Goddamnit, I don’t want to say goodbye to this incredible girl tomorrow. But I can’t in good conscience not say goodbye to her. There’s no umbrella big enough to protect her from the shitstorm that is my life.
But the thing is…
What if she’s right about maybe being able to help me? Maybe I should tell her what’s going on, just in case. She’s smart about things I’m not. Maybe she’ll have an idea.
No.
I’m being a dick to even think that way. Savvy is squeaky clean. Whether she’s smart or not, I can’t be selfish. I’ve got to keep her pristine.
And yet…
Fuck!
I want so badly to see where this thing between us might lead. What if my Plan A in Vegas works out for me, and I don’t have to do Plan B on Saturday night? I could go to Savvy’s reunion and fuck her all night long afterward… No, Aiden. You can’t drag Savvy into your bullshit. You can’t. And you can’t give her false hope, either. Because the odds are high Plan A won’t work out for me and I’ll be forced to report
for duty at the birthday party on Saturday night.
But what if I were to bare my soul to her, the same way she’s done with me, and she still wants me? What if I can have my cake and eat it, too?
“I’m a felon,” I whisper, out of nowhere, shocking myself.
Savvy stares at me, her eyes wide.
Shit. “Bank robbery,” I continue, my chest tight. “I got out of prison three years ago. I served two years of a three-year sentence. I drove the getaway car for my father when he did the actual robberies. Two of them. I would have driven my father three times, but he never came out of the third bank.” My heart is racing. Why am I telling her this? What the fuck am I doing? “I got out early for good behavior,” I ramble on, unable to stop myself. “And I haven’t had so much as a speeding ticket since I got out. I swear I’ve been on the straight and narrow since I got out three years ago, Savvy. But…yeah. I’m a felon.” I press my lips together and wait, my heart thudding in my ears and my stomach turning somersaults.
Savvy blinks slowly, processing everything I’ve just said. “Am I an idiot to be lying here with you? Are you going to steal from me? Harm me?”
My heart stops. “No, I’d never lay a pinky on you or any other woman. And I’m not going to steal from you, either. If I wanted to do that, I could have done it ten different times tonight. You left your purse with me when you went to the bathroom in the taco place, remember?”
She stares into my eyes in the moonlight for a long beat, her expression unreadable to me. “Did anyone get hurt during the bank robberies?”
“No. My dad never had a weapon. He just slipped the tellers a note. Tellers are trained to give up all the cash in their drawer in any kind of robbery, whether there’s a weapon involved or not. Doing it that way limited his haul from any particular robbery to whatever happened to be in the particular teller’s drawer. Usually, five to seven grand. But that was fine because the reason we were robbing banks in the first place was to help my father’s brother. He needed money for medical treatments, and each treatment cost around five grand.”
“Medical treatments for what?”
“For brain cancer. My Uncle Jimmy was my father’s younger brother—my father’s only family before I knocked on his door at fourteen. Dad and Jimmy grew up together in foster care. So when Jimmy got sick and needed money, Dad decided to do whatever he had to do. He tried everything he could to get the money Jimmy needed legally, but nothing panned out. So, finally, Dad was like, ‘Fuck it. I’ll rob some fucking banks, then.’”
“I’m not impressed your father involved his teenage son in his plan.”
“He didn’t want me to help him. He refused at first. But I knew he’d get caught if he didn’t have a quick getaway, and the most important thing was helping Jimmy. That was more important to both of us than the risk.”
“Did your father serve his time at the same prison as you?”
“No. We were separated. And he served five years, not two. He had three charges against him, unlike me. The actual robberies plus an attempt. Plus, my father had some priors, unlike me. Stupid shit from when he was younger. He got out of prison a couple months ago.”
“And he’s already in trouble?”
“Pretty sure I mentioned my dad’s a royal fuck-up.”
“And what about Jimmy?”
“He died a few months after Dad and I got arrested.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t really my loss. It was my dad’s. He was decimated.”
Savvy inches closer to me and strokes my arm…and every molecule in my body exalts at her touch. Does this mean she’s not scared of me? That, at least for tonight, in her bed, she accepts me for who I am? For a long moment, I lie quietly with Savvy, reveling in her touch, my heart racing, waiting for her to talk again.
Finally, Savvy says, “Was prison horrible?”
“Yes, but not in the ways you’re probably thinking. In movies, they always show guys covering their assholes at every turn, afraid to shower or bend down. But it’s not like that. Guys don’t get raped in prison the way they show in movies. I mean, they do get raped, but not nearly as much as people think. Most sex in prison is consensual. Actually, most of the time, it’s with guards.”
She grimaces. “Did you have sex with guards?”
“No. I had sex with nobody but me. I kept to myself the whole two years.”
She studies my face.
“It’s true.”
“Were you scared?”
“Yes. But not too much. As strange as it sounds, prisoners have a strong moral code. If you’re in there for hurting a woman or child, then good luck. You’re gonna get fucked up the ass and beaten to a pulp and maybe a lot worse. But if you robbed banks with your father to get money for your sick uncle’s chemo, they pretty much leave you alone. I was especially golden because once I’d earned the privilege of going to the rec room each week, I fell into teaching guitar to a bunch of pretty scary dudes. One of them made it known I was his friend. After that, everyone pretty much left me alone. I mean, yeah, things got dicey sometimes. Several times, I shit a brick the size of Nebraska. But most of the time, prison was just painfully boring. The hardest part was the head-game of it all. Trying to survive being locked up without going crazy. I wouldn’t have minded it so much if I’d had access to a guitar or piano more than a few hours a week. If I could have made music twenty-four-seven while locked up, I would have been just fine.”
“So what did you do to pass the time, if you couldn’t make music?”
“I worked out.”
“That explains it.”
“I also had a job. I was assigned to cleaning toilets. Believe it or not, that was a great job for me because I was alone. And that meant I could think and write songs in my head as I worked. I came out of prison with three full albums’ worth of songs in my head. I also figured out I’m dyslexic in prison. That was a good thing.”
“How did you figure that out?”
“This woman doing a research study about dyslexia came to the prison to find test subjects. Get this—twenty percent of the general population has dyslexia, but forty-eight percent of the prison population has it.”
“Wow.”
“So word got out this woman was interviewing guys to see if they were dyslexic. And I was like, well, I’m not dyslexic, obviously—I’m just an idiot. But, hey, everyone says she’s got cookies, so I’ll talk to her.”
Savvy chuckles.
“And the minute she started asking me questions, she knew. She was like, ‘Aiden, honey, you’re textbook.’”
“Oh, my gosh.”
“My mind was blown. Before that moment, I truly thought I was stupid. But it turns out I’m not. I’m actually really smart.”
“Of course, you are. I could have told you that, just from talking to you.”
“I always knew I was smart about life and music and people,” I say. “But when it came to school stuff—the stuff that people typically measure to tell if you’re smart—I always felt like the stupidest guy in every room. And Gramps was always like, ‘I was terrible in school, too. All you need is music and you’ll be fine, Aidy.’ So I didn’t worry about it.”
“I wonder if your grandfather was dyslexic, too?”
“Oh, yeah. In retrospect, I have no doubt he was. But at the time, all I knew was that, when I was playing music, I felt like a genius. I could write bass lines to go with guitar lines to go with piano lines, all in my head. But ask me to do a standardized reading comprehension test, and I couldn’t do it.”
“Was your dyslexia treated in prison, or just diagnosed?”
“Treatment was part of the gig. The reward for participating in the research study. Well, that and cookies.”
Savvy laughs.
“It was awesome. I met with Dr. Finelli—the woman doing the research project—twice a week for a year. That was the max allowed, and I took full advantage. She even came to visit me sometimes during visiting hours to help me, just
because she cared about me. And once those letters and numbers started unscrambling inside my brain, I was a new man. I started reading everything I could get my hands on. Classics. Mysteries. Music biographies. Music theory. I was in prison, yeah. And dying to play my guitar. But my mind finally felt free.”
Savvy lifts her head from my chest and beams a beautiful smile at me. “I just got goose bumps, Aiden.”
We share a smile.
“Thank you for telling me all of this.”
“Thank you for not kicking me out of your bed after hearing the truth about me.”
“Of course not.”
“Are you still willing to drive me to Vegas tomorrow?” I ask.
“Of course.” She drags the pad of her fingertip across my lower lip. “Frankly, it turns me on to find out I’ve slept with an actual felon. Before you, I thought sleeping with a ‘bad boy’ meant sleeping with a guy who’d gotten an A minus in calculus.”
I laugh.
Savvy continues. “I’d rather be lying here with you—an honest felon—than a dude with no criminal history who lies shamelessly to my face to get me into bed.”
My heart is leaping. “I’ve had a fantastic time with you,” I whisper. “I’ll never forget tonight.”
“Same,” she whispers. “You’re imprinted on my heart forever.”
Chapter Eight
Aiden
Thursday, 9:13 a.m.
I open my eyes to find Savvy sitting at a small table across the room, showered and dressed and clacking on the keyboard of a laptop. Her brow is furrowed. Her lips are pursed. She’s in the zone. And she looks sexy as hell.
“Good morning, Savvy Who Isn’t Savvy,” I say, folding my arms behind my head and smiling at her.
Savvy looks up, and her pretty face lights up. “Good morning, Aiden Who Isn’t Ugly. How are you feeling?”
“Good. Not hung over at all. You?”
“Good. A teeny bit hung over, but not too bad. I drank a ton of water and took some ibuprofen in the middle of the night, thankfully.”