Even though Carrie was wearing sandals, she made quick work of the steep climb. There was no one else at the top of the hill. It was all grass, no trees, a hill a couple kids could easily climb. It was obviously put there for some sort of architectural feature, like people designed parks with lakes and trees that weren’t naturally there.
“It’s really hot out tonight.” Carrie folded her dress around her and sat on the grass. She stared out towards the water.
Sean tried not to notice the way her dress clung to her body, the slight sheen of sweat glistening on her skin. It probably wasn’t even sweat. It was just the constant way people walked around in Miami in the summer heat. As soon as he left any air conditioned space, he was instantly soaked from the hot air that always seemed to be perpetually damp.
“It’s always hot in Miami.” He sat down next to her, but kept far enough way that there was no danger of accidentally touching her. He didn’t know what would happen if even so much as grazed her body. He hadn’t forgotten the way she felt, her leg pressed against his, in the park a few nights ago.
“You’re right. I guess that’s why people move here.” She raised a brow in question, obviously waiting for him.
“I… Carrie- there are- I-”
He had to stop. How could he tell her that she needed to get away from him? That it was inevitable that he was going to have to leave. He couldn’t tell her about his past. He couldn’t tell her anything. Anything but lies. Anything he didn’t say was also a lie.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. Like I said the other night, we all have a past. I’m just- I’m glad that you’re here now.” She looked at him and blushed deeply before she turned her head and glanced back out at the water.
So many lights glistened below. Headlights, the lights burning in houses, streetlights, shops, boats on the water. The whole city came alive with light as it darkened.
“It’s not- it’s not that I don’t want to.”
“I understand. It’s that you can’t. You don’t even know me. You don’t owe me any explanation.”
“Carrie, I…” he trailed off and they sat in silence for a few minutes.
When she let out a long, shuddering sigh, he turned to her. “Sean, I think we both know this isn’t a good idea. We’re probably not right for each other. We both obviously have a past and reasons we shouldn’t get involved in this. I’m sneaking out. You- you can’t even tell me why you left Detroit. I know there was something… I know there is something you can’t tell me. I know it and…”
She’s going to tell me to take a hike. She’s going to leave. Here it is. She actually has the strength to do everything I can’t. It hurt. It hurt thinking about her not being there beside him.
“Carrie, I haven’t been with anyone in a long time. It wasn’t- I just couldn’t before. I- I’m fucked up in a lot of ways. Ways you know nothing about. Ways that you couldn’t even dream of. I left Detroit because I had to and I can’t go back. I left behind people I love, family and… I’m not sure when I can ever see them again. They don’t know where I am. They know that I’m safe and that’s it. I can’t tell you anything more than that- but- please, don’t go. Not yet. I know you have to and I know it’s not right that you even came here. I know all that shit and I know I should leave you alone, because I’m the last person on earth you’re ever going to need. I always thought I was strong and that I was fucking tough, but you’ve proved to me that I’m weak. I’m weak, because I can’t do the right thing. I’m… I’ve never been completely alone before, but that’s not why I need you…”
Carrie blinked at him. And then, out of nowhere, she laughed. She laughed so hard that her shoulders shook. The sweet, melodic sound echoed in the night around them.
“Oh my god. I was going to say that I don’t care. We can sit in silence here, if that’s what you want. I wasn’t going to leave.”
He breathed out hard. His stomach felt like he’d eaten a pile of stones for lunch and they were currently trying to digest through. It hurt, whatever he was feeling inside, all the shit he wasn’t used to feeling. All he could do was sit there, frozen, staring at her.
Carrie slowly smiled and lord, it was beautiful. “I’m not used to fixing people. I’ve never tried it before. I don’t really know what I’m doing. I… I don’t think you want to be fixed. I just- I just want to be here. I want to be what I can, in this moment, because it feels good. It feels right, even if we both know it’s not.”
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know any of it.
“I…”
“Tell me it doesn’t feel right.”
“It does feel right,” he ground out. “But-”
“Yeah. Don’t say the rest. We both know it’s not. That’s okay. Just for tonight, can’t be it be okay?”
“I don’t know.” The words came out jumbled, in a rush.
Carrie’s lips bloomed into a full-on smile and just like that, he lost his mind. He lost every single reservation, every single ounce of common sense. His breath came out again, raspy and hard and she kept right on looking at him. Her eyes were tender and soft and she looked at him like she actually saw him. She didn’t know him, didn’t know him at all, but she saw what he was. What he wanted to be. What he could have been if he hadn’t fucked everything up so badly. No one had ever looked at him like that.
It hurt. It fucking cut him to bits inside. Beneath all those jagged ribbons, the shreds and tears, he sensed, because he didn’t know, that she could heal him. If he let her. Which he wouldn’t, because he couldn’t. She had the power to reach in and touch all those spots that had been wounded and raw for such a very long time.
“So, I was wondering…” Carrie changed tracks. Her smile faltered, but her eyes went right on shimmering, like the lights below them. “You asked me, a few nights ago, if you could kiss me. I said yes, but you didn’t. I’ve been thinking about that, ever since that night.” She blinked hard. “I really haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, actually. It’s been pretty damn haunting.”
He turned so hard his neck hurt. This is my chance. Probably my one and only chance. What harm would it really do? He’d denied himself a lot of things over his lifetime. He didn’t know if he had the strength to deny one more.
“But I can see that you’re not going to do it. You’re going to sit there, frozen, unable to move, just like you’re unable to actually tell me everything you have locked inside. So I was wondering, would it be okay if I kissed you?”
Chapter 9
The First Move
Carrie
Sean sat there looking stunned. She could tell he wasn’t expecting her to make the first move. To make any kind of move. It was also glaringly clear to her that if she didn’t, he never would. There was a line between them, invisible, but there just the same, that he was afraid to cross.
He said nothing. He didn’t move. His leather jacket strained tight over his shoulders. He sat ramrod straight, his denim clad legs out on front of him, his boots facing up to the sky.
She waited. He said nothing. She breathed in. She breathed out. Still nothing. So she moved. She got her legs under her and scooted over, nearly tripping on her dress in the process. She threw her hands out to keep from falling over and came into contact with a warm, soft leather shoulder. She closed her fingers over it and it was hard under the leather. Hard and striated and alive. Her hand burned with the contact, but she didn’t pull away.
Sea green eyes met hers when she looked into Sean’s face. He was silent. So very silent. He didn’t even take a breath. His mouth was a hard line, his lips pressed together tightly, uninviting. His eyes begged her not to. He tried to push her away without moving a muscle.
He finally blinked and blonde lashes swept up and down. An illicit shiver of pleasure raced up her spine.
“You’re so beautiful.” Those husky words weren’t what she was expecting to hear. His eyes locked with hers and his shoulders flexed under her hand.
“Am I?” she
whispered. “Am I really?”
He nodded briefly, just once, and her heart danced a wicked beat in her chest. She shivered again, violently. Her gaze roamed his face. It wasn’t perfectly. There were lines bracketing his eyes and mouth, a hard one carved into his forehead, like he was far more used to frowning than laughing. He had a scar at the edge of his jawline, a short, white line that hinted at a deep cut. His lips were pressed back into that hard, uninviting line. His brow was so strong, his eyes hard and flinty. His nose had a slight lump at the bridge, like it had been broken before, but maybe he was just born with it. All of it, it could have added up to make him hard, even fearsome to other people, but to her, he was absolutely perfect.
She leaned in, bringing their faces close. She had no idea what she was doing. She was never the aggressor. Her stomach was already tight with knots, but it lurched and swayed. Her heartbeat was so rapid it was painful. It made it nearly impossible to breathe. He finally did though. One short breath blew out. Her cheek tingled where the air rushed by.
Carrie closed her eyes. She brought their mouths together, the briefest contact. Just a brush of lip on lip.
Something went wild in her brain it was like the fuses blew or crossed or the synapses did something crazy. Her mouth opened at the same time Sean’s did and what was just a surface level contact turned into something hold and wild, searching and searing.
A big strong hand reached up and tangled in her hair. Pain sluiced through her skull when his fingers snagged on the curls. She’d used too much damn hairspray and it was sticky and knotted already. She liked the short burst of pain mixed with the pleasure. Lord, the pleasure.
Her mouth opened under his, her lips parting as he kissed her breathless. Hot waves of pleasure swept over her, tangled her up inside, took her under, stole her breath. She ached inside, as his lips plundered hers, moved against hers, taught her what it was to really be alive. She ached because she knew she was always going to want it. This. The incredible sensation of having everything at once. Of having it all.
Sean’s hand cupped her jaw as his tongue swept in and out of her mouth. He ate at her, nipped at her lips. He twisted her up inside and he nipped her again, so hard she nearly tasted blood. Pain bloomed in her mouth, but she craved it. She’d never been kissed like that before, kissed by a man. It was raw and visceral and almost animal. It was desperate and irrational, lord it was beautiful. She was on fire, burning up from the inside out.
She gave him everything she had, bringing her hands up and tangling them around his neck. She moved until she was in his lap and she felt the hardness of him pressing against her bare thigh after her dress rode up. God, he was huge, even through the thick denim. She ached, pulsed for him. She knew she was soaking wet. Her nipples were so hard and sensitive it hurt when she brought them together and ground them against Sean’s leather jacket.
Carrie trembled. The shaking started, hard and violent, and wouldn’t cease. Sean’s hands came to her waist. He gripped her hips and slammed her against him, rubbing her hard over the bulge in his jeans. He slid her up and down, harder each time. The friction inside of her got the better of her. She cried out with the sheer pleasure of it, the gorgeous rhythm he was creating.
And just like that, he let her go.
“Why?” she panted. His hands closed over her hips and she thought, for a second, hoped like hell, that he’d continue what he’d started. He didn’t. She had no breath left, no words. His fingers bit into her hips as he untangled their limbs and lifted her off him like she weighed nothing at all.
“I can’t. You can’t. You don’t know- you don’t know anything about me, Carrie. It’s not safe.”
“Sean!” She nearly wailed his name in despair. “I… I do know. I know that it felt like, like… like I was being healed.”
“Healed…” He stared off into the distance, down below, at the world that she didn’t want to return to.
“I feel like you’re going to disappear on me.” She was so desperate, so desperate just to hold him there and have that moment, that brief span of time that was just hers and his and no one else’s.
He slowly shook his head. He shifted and stood and turned away. When he looked back at her, she already knew she was right. He was going to disappear. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was like he was a ghost. A shell. Something and someone she didn’t truly know or understand.
“I’m not going to disappear. You know where I am.”
She sat frozen, unable to move, unable to do or say anything at all, locked in the horrible regret of having him leave. She let him walk off, disappear down the hill, because she had to. She didn’t get up and watch him go. She didn’t trail after him and plead or watch him mount up his bike and leave. She didn’t have to. She waited, aching over something that was never hers and shouldn’t have been. A short while later the roar of his bike started up. It grew thinner and thinner. Or was that her heartbeats?
Carrie lifted a hand, a lead hand, weighted down, to her tingling lips. She wanted to hold that kiss, amazingly brutal and brief as it was, hold it in the secret part of herself, for the rest of her life. She’d cherish it, the first kiss that ever truly meant something to her.
She wasn’t just trying to justify it to herself. Sean wasn’t a bad decision. He was everything. Everything when she needed it most. And if that wasn’t right in the present, maybe it could be one day.
Chapter 10
Drive Her Away
Sean
He knew he was in for it Friday afternoon when Carrie came to pick up her dad. He’d decided, after their last meeting, that he needed to make it clear that it couldn’t continue. Not to her, but to himself. Though it nearly killed him, he’d gone home after work on Thursday and proceeded to slam back an entire bottle of whiskey. He was far too drunk to get on his bike and that was the point. He’d kept himself away. He’d kept Carrie safe, even if it meant hurting her. Even if it meant hurting himself.
He knew for her it was probably just the sting of rejection. They didn’t know each other well enough for it to be more than that. For him though… it was so much more. It was a loss of the one connection he’d truly shared with anyone. It was the loss of… god, he couldn’t even put a name on it. Whatever it was he felt, it tore him up inside. Something inside of him had been broken for a very long time and Carrie- she was like a balm for it.
Because Sean couldn’t stand to see her, to see the hurt written all over her face, the betrayal that would probably be there, he tried to take off early on Friday afternoon. He was just getting his shit together in his bay when he turned and there she was.
He could tell right away that she was pissed.
She stalked across the shop right up to him. She had on a pair of skinny jeans, ankle boots and a tank top that had a heart on it. It was hard to take her serious when she looked so fucking cute.
But she was. Serious. Dead fucking serious.
She planted her hands on her hips and twin spots of red appeared on her cheekbones. Her eyes narrowed into mere slits. “Where were you last night?” she hissed through gritted teeth.
Sean glanced around the garage, but so far, none of the other guys seemed to have noticed that Carrie was there. They were all involved in doing a few inspections on fleet trucks and were swamped in work. It was probably the only thing that saved him from having to do some major explaining.
He closed the distance between himself and Carrie. He stopped a few inches away, sure that was a safe distance. He should have known better. One deep inhale filled up his lungs with that beautiful floral perfume she wore. It reminded him of how soft she was, how plump and ripe her lips were, how fucking astoundingly amazing it was to kiss her. What she did to him physically and… and whatever other parts of him that she touched.
It actually hurt to be near her because it reminded him of how much he stood to lose already. After just two nights. Two nights and one kiss.
“I wasn’t aware that I had anywhere I had to be,” he ground o
ut. He knew he was hurting her. He knew it, but he had to. He never should have got her involved with him. He shouldn’t have said more than two words to her. Anyone who meant anything to him was in danger. She didn’t even know it and it wasn’t fair to her.
“What do you mean had to? I just thought…” she looked up at him in confusion. “If you didn’t want to come, you could have told me.”
“How could I have done that? It’s not like I have your number or you have mine. It’s not like we have anything, actually. I thought I made that pretty clear when I walked out last time. I was done. I was just- whatever this is, it’s not going to work. It’s just better that we stop while we’re ahead.”
“Well that’s something. Being ahead.”
“No,” he sighed in frustration. “That’s not what I meant. You’re not listening. Look, I thought maybe I was interested, but I’m not. I’m just not.” Fuck, I’m an asshole. Why didn’t I just have the strength to stay away?
It killed him to see how he wounded her. He could hardly bear the pain in her eyes. He wanted to take her into his arms and tell her it wasn’t true. To kiss her until they both couldn’t breathe. To make her understand, to tell her everything. He wanted to bare his soul to her, to give her all of him. That scared him shitless and not just because it wasn’t safe for her.
“Oh really? It didn’t feel like that a few nights ago. You didn’t say anything like that. I think you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re just scared. You’re scared that you felt something and then you stood me up.”
“No. No, really, you’re reading too much into this.”
He could see that he stunned her. He knew the exact second his words sank in. All because he was good at fucking lying. He was good at playing a part. He’d had to for so many years, to keep himself safe, to keep himself alive, that it just came natural, like a second skin. He was used to hiding behind it, used to walling himself up and shutting out all the horrible shit around him. He’d never had to shut out something good before. Carrie was something good. She was something beautiful and healing and incredible. And it hurt. It hurt so damn much to lie to her face. It hurt to hurt her.
Hard and Dirty: Bad Boy MC Romance Page 5