Part 6 (2/2)
”Okay,” he said without taking his eyes off her.
Okay? That was all he had to say?
She'd expected irony, incomprehension, repulsion, at best confusion. Instead he was accepting her explanation as if it were the most logical thing in the world.
She cleared her throat. ”I'm telling you that because, well, me and my body...” G.o.d, she didn't know how to say this. ”Look, I'm better now, I maintain a weight loss of seventy pounds, and the food is in its place, but my body...well, my body...” G.o.d, she wasn't making any sense. ”I'm just...I don't know, warning you? I'm not the most confident person when it comes to my physique.”
She waited for him to say something. Nada. His face was inscrutable.
”What I'm trying to say here is that s.e.x implies a level of exposure that, for obvious reasons, I find difficult to deal with. The guys I had s.e.x with didn't blow my socks off, but it's mainly my fault, not theirs. I'm kind of...handicapped.” Much as it pained her to admit it, there was a reason why she'd always ended up with mellower specimens with as much s.e.x appeal as a trip to the dentist. If you wanted to win big, you had to risk big. She wasn't able to do that.
He wasn't talking, so she took it as a rejection.
”If you want to pull out of your s.e.x-for-fake-dates offer, I totally understand.”
He frowned. ”Why would I want to do that?”
Oh G.o.d, the guy looked genuinely puzzled, like all that she had said to him was nothing.
”Oh, I don't know, maybe because I'm a...a...” ...nutcase that, left to her own devices, can't stop eating even if her life depends on it? ”And my body isn't...isn't...” ...acceptable or what you're used to? No help came from him. He was just intently staring at her, waiting for her to spell it out. ”Oh G.o.d, forget it. Let's go with the others.”
”Come here, Christy,” he said in that deep voice of his. As she came closer, he pulled her to him and kissed her, thoroughly, possessively. He held her head with both hands, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. ”You had some issues, and you learned how to deal with them. I'm okay with that. I don't see why what you told me should in any way change my mind about f.u.c.king you.”
No? Boy, the man was shortsighted. ”Don't say I didn't warn you, mist-”
He silenced her with another of his mind-blowing kisses. ”Come on, let's get my keys from Max and go for a spin,” he said, dragging her toward the others.
On the way there, he turned to her. ”I have one question though.”
She swallowed hard. Here it was. ”Yes?”
”Why on earth didn't you have s.e.x with your fiance?”
Of all the things she'd expected him to say, that wasn't it.
She shrugged. ”We did have s.e.x at the beginning. It just wasn't working for me. Then we got engaged, and we were very busy...both working extra hours...”
Christy's relations.h.i.+p to s.e.x had always been weird. She'd been a late bloomer. She'd had other things on her mind, like slowly killing herself, for example. No time for little pesky things like dating or love or s.e.x, G.o.d forbid. It'd taken her forever to get her act together, but when she finally did, she thought she was ready for intimacy. She had a brand-new life, one that was working out pretty fine. Surely she could make intimate relations.h.i.+ps work too. Everyone else did. Besides, she was past all her s.h.i.+t. She had successfully rewritten herself; she was a new person, right?
Wrong. It hadn't worked. She had a new life, true, but that old one had left a bunch of roadblocks she didn't know how to get around, let alone eliminate.
”When he suggested we wait until after the marriage, that it'd be romantic, I agreed. It suited me just fine. I thought we'd ease into the intimacy with the marriage...that it'd get less awkward.”
He stared at her for a long second, then shook his head.
”Mental,” he said under his breath and continued dragging her along.
After a short ride, Cole turned the engine off and set the kickstand. They were in one of his favorite spots in the whole of Alden: a secluded viewpoint atop a hill near his home with a great backdrop of the lake, now illuminated by the fireworks.
She was perched at his back, her arms wrapped around him in a tight embrace. For a couple of seconds he stood still, letting her heat sink into him. Having her close felt good. d.a.m.n good. After taking off his helmet, he covered her hands with his and gave a squeeze. ”We're here, honey. You're missing the fireworks.”
Breaking the embrace, she got off the bike. He missed her closeness right away.
”Oh, wow. Beautiful,” she said in a whisper, taking off the helmet, her hair spilling all over her shoulders.
That long neck, that mane of brown hair falling over her like a thick cape, those bangs almost reaching her eyes. The swell of her t.i.ts straining over her s.h.i.+rt. Man, he could come just from looking at her.
”You cold, baby?” It was summer, but at night it got chillier, especially while riding a bike. She shook her head, but she s.h.i.+vered and hugged herself. ”Come sit here with me so I can keep you warm.”
She looked at him doubtfully, then glanced around, probably searching for a bench. No bench, just trees and dirt. He sat back and, offering her an innocent smile, patted the leather seat in front of him.
As she came to sit, he took both helmets, placed them on the handlebars, and then surrounded her with his arms. At first she was stiff, but soon her body relaxed and burrowed into his, like a d.a.m.n kitten seeking heat.
”So weirdly quiet here, don't you think? Without your giggling, bouncing, t.i.ts-on-a-stick horde of groupies around hara.s.sing you,” she said with a smile on her lips.
Yes, it was.
He so missed his days in the marines. He could put his men in line with a glare, but these women? He could glare at them until h.e.l.l froze over, but it didn't make any difference.
”If you'd played along, sweetheart, there would have been less hara.s.sing.”
She snorted and looked at him, those d.a.m.n witch eyes turning his insides into mush. ”Play along? What was I supposed to do, strip and jump on top of you?”
”For example,” he whispered, tightening his embrace. Now that he'd broken his don't-get-within-one-hundred-yards-of-Christy rule, he couldn't stop himself from reaching for her at all times.
She laughed, totally relaxed. He liked that. She'd been so stiff after their last conversation. And he'd known she'd felt uncomfortable on that picnic, so taking her away from there had been a priority. He didn't understand much about eating disorders, but Christy had seemed very agitated, and he hadn't wanted to add to it by asking. Besides, he'd seen in her eyes she thought he was going to mock her; at the very least she thought he wouldn't understand her issues, which he didn't. But he wasn't a total moron, and he'd seen plenty of soldiers battle addiction. Some of them got discharged because of it, others got into it full-blown after the military. Some were hooked on a substance like drugs or alcohol, whereas others were simply adrenaline junkies. How had she put it? Medicating her feelings with food? Yes, medicating one's feelings with a substance or a behavior was something he could easily relate to. It had actually taken him twelve years of blowing things up and risking his neck in the marines to work through his s.h.i.+t.
”Your performance today at the picnic left a lot to be desired, but I'll let it go as it was the first. Next date I expect, one, more skin showing, and two, more pa.s.sion.”
Her giggles rumbled through his chest. ”Dream on. You just keep teasing me, and I'll tell Rose you call me by her name when we have s.e.x. Let's see how that helps your case.”
He chuckled and, moving her long hair aside with his chin, nuzzled her neck. She smelled like warm, sweet woman. Vanilla and cherries. He wasn't going to be able to eat cherry pie again without getting a hard-on. ”I can f.u.c.king a.s.sure you, when we have s.e.x, her name will be the last thing on earth coming out of my mouth.”
She pretended she didn't hear him, but he felt her legs tightening and her heartbeat picking up. She wanted him. Maybe not as much as he wanted her, but he could get her there.
”Let's get real here,” she said. ”The fake-date scam won't work. You don't need a date; you need a bodyguard. A seven-foot, three-hundred-pound lump of pure muscle. A possessive-looking bald guy clad in black leather. Maybe that would derail them.”
”So your solution to the situation is for me to pretend to be gay? Sorry, baby, it won't work.”
”How come? Ah, I see. You've hooked up with too many women in town for them to believe you've gone YMCA all of a sudden.”
He said nothing. Since first becoming s.e.xually active and discovering how great s.e.x was at burning adrenaline, he'd never had trouble getting women. Then he'd enlisted in the marines after that juvenile rescue operation that had landed his sorry a.s.s in jail, and he'd only visited Alden while on leave. There had been plenty of meaningless, no-strings-attached s.e.x then. Lately though, he'd tended to go outside of Alden for his exploits. It was...less complicated.
”I have nothing against gay people. I have my quirks like anybody else, but I'm one hundred percent straight.”
Christy visibly tensed. ”Quirks?” she asked, suddenly out of breath. ”What quirks?”
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