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Like she feels safe enough to be tired around me. To let her guard down.
I wasn’t lying when I said it’s the best I’ve slept in months. No pills. No alcohol. Just hard ground, fresh air.” And her. The only thing that’s come close to working.
It would take too much time for me to reach her if something went wrong over there. I wouldn’t hear the noise. See the lights.
He leans in close to my ear, lips brushing against the shell, and whispers, “You look fucking beautiful.”
His palm drags up my spine, the pressure just enough to distract me.
He has no business giving me all this panty-melting focus with everyone watching.
All I know is I don’t want her sharing moments like this—quiet and unfiltered, safe and trusting—with some other jackass. I want to be the only jackass who gets this version of her.
“Not a big fan of sharing something once I decide it’s mine.”
“I’ll start leaving the back door unlocked for when you decide you want to find out if I’m a prude or not.”
I know an angry man. I grew up in a house full of them. But with Beau, even when he’s angry, I feel safe.
“Do you know my Bailey?”
“Sugar, put your hand back in my pocket.” Bailey doesn’t even move her eyes my way when she says, “Why? I think she’s buying it just fine.” My lips dust over the shell of her ear. “I don’t give a fuck about her. I just like it.”
Who knew doing nice things for Bailey would become the thing that gets my body humming after months of numbness?
Beau’s hand tightens on my leg. I hope it leaves marks.
I don’t know how else to put it. He’s not even touching me, and in this moment, I know exactly what he’s promising. Touch. Pleasure. Experience.
Fantasy and reality, so close yet still so far apart. Yet here is that house, that man. They’re right there. And they’re real.
When I start to doze off, I hear feet padding against the polished concrete floors. Casual and unhurried—unlike my heart rate, which is through the fucking roof.
My gaze has just cleared the back of the couch and landed on Naked Beau. Fully naked. Head-to-toe naked.
not before his voice cuts through the silent house. “Sugar, there’s a spare bedroom upstairs on the left.”
The pained moans spilling from his lips make my stomach drop. He’s having a nightmare. A painful, stressful, frantic nightmare. And I have no idea what to do.
I shouldn’t have dragged her into my arms. Not when we’re here, alone, in the dark. Not when I’m unraveled the way I am right now.
“Tell me how to make you feel okay,” I say, my voice rumbling across the top of her head. She hasn’t lifted her face, hasn’t chanced looking me in the eye. I think we both might think more clearly if she did. “Don’t stop touching me.”
“And I’d feel even better if you let me reach into these flimsy fucking shorts and make you come on my fingers.”
This arrangement? It’s a glorified bet. And she deserves better. I should have stopped.
Two nights of me wrapping my hand around his doorknob because I couldn’t handle listening to him shout.
Since Harvey put the announcement in the paper, all eyes have been on us, but our eyes haven’t been on each other.
Or maybe it’s just me being awkward because I can’t masturbate without thinking of that night.
“What time is it?” I check my watch. Again. “It’s 2:04.” “Why would I want to go swimming now?” My head tilts as I consider what to say to him next. “Because it seems a lot more fun than hitting 2:11 and screaming in your bed. For both of us.”
The water swishes as she spins in place like whatever innocent but filthy mermaid she’s portraying.
She’s going to be the death of me.
“Because everyone treats me like I did something heroic by refusing to turn back, and that’s . . . that’s not what it was.”
The worst part of it all is that for all my obsessive mental preparation, I never let myself analyze what it would feel like to be out, living life as a civilian. To be . . .”
Bailey makes 2:11 better.
Knowing that I’m not going to make it back on that transport. And even though I know it, I turn around to go get Micah, but when I do, all I see is endless, thick black. The kind that swallows you, the kind you get lost in forever.
And then do something rather than wallowing around in misery.”
The two of us, in the water together, stripped down in more ways than one.
He follows me out, and I can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “But I prefer to be woken up by you.”
Now I know that this town is a lost cause and you’re too good for it.”
My head shakes. “There isn’t even sex in this for you. You made it clear you didn’t want any more of that, so—” He cuts me off. “I wanted more.”
Proximity to Bailey has an intoxicating effect.
She sounds bratty. The tilt of her head makes me want to fist that thick ponytail, give it a tug, and tell her to watch her fucking tone.
“Felt pretty impulsive when you came that hard on my fingers, Bailey.”
“Since I’m so impulsive, I’ll probably break the wrist of every fucker who so much as looks at you.”
But not before I stop at her chair, fist her ponytail, tug her head back to drop a kiss to her forehead, and say, “Let’s go give ‘em something to talk about, sugar tits.”
But when she looks at me with this intensity, our surroundings melt away.
It makes me furious. It makes me want to lay Bailey in the middle of their table and kiss her senseless just to prove a fucking point.
When he hands me the raccoon, I instantly pass it over to Bailey, amused by the way it reaches from beneath her chin down to her knees.
“Talk shit about my fiancée again. I fucking dare you.”
Being impulsive has never felt this good.
A light knock. Butterflies in my stomach. “Bailey?” My heart pounds. This isn’t the routine.
