“I take it back. You are way more beautiful than the Stang.”
She rolled her eyes at me and spread her legs a little farther apart so that I could settle more fully into her.
“I feel like I got the raw end of the deal in the checking-out-the-goods department, pretty boy. You’ve now seen me naked twice, and yet somehow you have managed to stay mostly clothed, both times.”
I lifted an eyebrow at her and grinned. Her eyes zeroed in on my dimple and I felt her response where we were still joined. I was stoked that it was as easy for me to get to her as it was for her to get to me.
“Not all of me is that pretty.” I put her hand on the scar on my chest. “Novak’s guys did a number on my leg when they went after Bax and Dovie. I was lucky they didn’t kill me, but they left me with a lifelong reminder of what happens when you think you can take on the Point and win.”
She made a face at me and started to wiggle underneath me. It felt awesome but clearly she wanted up. I groaned and pulled out of her heat and let her climb to her feet. She grabbed my hands and pulled me to my feet. I was going to ask her what she was doing but she was suddenly very much all up in my personal space, pulling my jeans and boxers the rest of the way down my legs. The sight of a sexy, naked blonde on her hands and knees in front of me wasn’t something my recently satisfied cock could ignore, and she lifted both her eyebrows up at me when it twitched in her direction. I would’ve shrugged it off, smiled at her and tried to play it smooth because she really was that hot, but I couldn’t breathe because she bent her head next to the mangled side of my knee, the part where the scar tissue was the ugliest, the thickest and knobbiest, and pressed the softest, lightest kiss to it. It did something to the center of my chest, made my heart kick hard enough that I was surprised my ribs didn’t crack from the force.
She trailed her fingers along the outside of my thigh, kissed the part of my abs that flexed and tightened right below my belly button, and got to her feet in front of me. She twisted her arms back up around my neck and pressed her cheek to the center of my chest. I don’t think I had ever been embraced with such care. I put my hands around her back and stroked my fingers up and down her spine.
“I’m glad you’re not absolutely physically perfect, Race. Trying to handle all the obvious perfection is distracting and hard as it is. Knowing there are parts of you that aren’t flawless makes you so much more human.”
I backed her onto the couch again. Covered her with my less than perfect body and started kissing her again.
“More parts of me are flawed than not, Bry. Stick around long enough and you’ll see.”
She must not have been in any hurry to go because when I wrapped a hand around her knee and put it up over my hip, she slid the other one to the side of my hips of her own volition, making room for me to be able to slide right back inside her body. Her eyes fluttered closed and a tiny smile danced over her mouth. She arched up into me and whispered against the side of my neck, “Thank you for taking care of me tonight.”
She didn’t have a clue. As I started to move again, started to make her more and more mine, she didn’t even know the lengths I would end up going to in order to take care of her, and neither did I.
Chapter 9
Brysen
I SPENT THE NIGHT with Race. Not that it was a hardship to have his very talented hands and mouth all over every part of me for most of the night. But in the bright light of the daytime, the fact that I had just put everything down, walked away from what I knew made the most sense, and took something for myself made me feel a little overwhelmed. It was the first time in forever that I actually felt like myself, like I had some part of a life I actually wanted within my grasp, and I didn’t want to squander it. Even the fact that I had let him make love to me over and over again without protection was something I should be kicking myself over, but I was on the pill, responsible for my own choices. If I never had the chance to be with Race again, at least I knew I had had all of him, and it was better than anything else in the world had ever been. I think the thrill of it, the little unknown that came with being with a guy like him, added to the way it was so easy for him to work me all up.
He had rolled off of me this morning when his phone went off. He had mumbled words like payout, and the spread. He had pulled on a pair of jeans minus underwear, which was just dead sexy, kissed me hard on the mouth, and told me that Bax was getting the BMW squared away, and disappeared in a flurry of golden gloriousness and hasty good-byes. I didn’t know if I would see him again anytime soon, and frankly I was all right with that because I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to handle this major change in our relationship. We had never really been friends, didn’t know each other beyond the powerful attraction that seemed to pull us together, but the more bits and pieces of him I uncovered, the more I realized he was so much like me. His life looked one way, but underneath the surface there was so much more, so many other things going on. I hadn’t meant to blurt out my entire sad tale to him the night before, but after I had, I felt like a small portion of the burden was off my shoulders. It was a relief to have someone else out in the world knowing why I was doing what I was doing at home, that my sacrifice might go unnoticed on the home front by those it was for, but Race would know, and that mattered somehow.
I took a quick shower with the demon-hot water and cringed when I had to put on my dirty clothes from the night before. My face was scrubbed clean of makeup, my hair was damp, and I had a very prominent bite mark right on the center of my throat. I looked like the very image of “the morning after,” and I couldn’t say that I hated it. My eyes were big in my face, but there was a shine to them that had been missing for a long time—and maybe even a bit of the old me lurking back in the blue depths.