LITMIR.BIZ

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at me and notice me watching her but she never did, so I asked, “What are you doing?” which made her jump about a foot in the air.

      She put a hand on her chest and had the good grace to look a little bit guilty.

      “Changing your sheets.”

      “Why?”

      “Uh … Why?”

      “Yes, Shaw, why are you changing my sheets at nearly three o’clock in the morning?”

      She was saved from answering when a Garth Brooks song rang from her pocket. I was starting to see she liked to pick songs for ringtones that fit the person calling. She had a brief conversation with someone I assumed was Ayden and left the phone on the nightstand next to the bed. She picked up the edge of my comforter and started to smooth it back over the big bed.

      “Ayden got a ride home. I guess your friend in the band remembered her from the Goal Line and offered to take her.”

      “That’s cool, though Jet isn’t exactly known for being a one-girl kinda guy, so I hope she isn’t reading anything into it.”

      “Like I said, she can take care of herself and honestly you aren’t really known for that, either”—she waved a hand over the bed—“so I’ll be damned if I’m going to sleep, let alone do anything else in a bed that has had more visitors than DIA without changing the sheets first.” Her bottom lip stuck out and she sounded slightly defiant.

      “Shaw.” I moved out of the doorway, making sure to shut it and turn the lock on my way to her. “No one has been in that bed since you. I told you I knew on that Saturday that something was happening between us that was different.”

      She shivered a little as I got close and I could see raw vulnerability in her eyes. It was scary to know how easily I could hurt this girl and how desperately I didn’t want that to happen.

      “I don’t know how to do this with you, Rule. I drunkenly threw myself at you and was lucky you were willing to catch me, but sober it’s hard to look at that bed and not see every single other girl who was there before me—sometimes more than one at a time.”

      She tried to make light of it but I could hear the genuine melancholy coloring her tone. I put both my hands on her face and tilted her head back so that we were eye to eye.

      “I can’t change the past, Casper, not any of it. I can’t make any of those girls or the fact you walked in on them on Sunday mornings time and time again disappear. I can’t bring Remy back or go back in time and not call him for a ride that night. There are probably a million and one regrets I have, and if they are going to be between us here or in bed, then let’s just stop it now, because I’m not going to do combat over my past when my future is finally starting to be something I want to invest in.”

      She lifted her hands up and grasped my wrists; at first I thought she was going to push me away but she didn’t. She leaned forward and let her forehead hit the center of my chest. “Rule, if this goes bad it’s gonna be so, so bad.” Her voice was just a husky whisper against my chest.

      “True, but if it’s good, it’s going to be so very, very good.” I tunneled my fingers through her hair and she let her hands fall to my shoulders. We weren’t a perfect match; she was a lot shorter than me, and I had to admit that I knew logically we made an odd pair physically, but there was just something about her. Something about the way she curved into me, the way she sighed my name like a prayer, the way she smelled like sunshine and sweetness and everything yummy all wrapped into one bite that made none of that matter. It made her the only girl I could ever remember wanting to hold on to for more than a fleeting minute of time.

      She started to pull my shirt over my head and I laughed a little when she got mad when it got stuck on my spiky hair. She made a face at me and tossed it over her shoulder onto the floor. She used a finger to poke the front tip of the spiked-up hawk and lifted an eyebrow. “You look hot with a Mohawk, Rule, but I gotta say this hair is more trouble than it’s worth.”

      She trailed her hands over my ribs and stopped to look at the artwork imprinted there. On one side was a grim reaper that ran from under my armpit to the top of my thigh. On the other side was a beautiful angel and in between them on my back was a massive Gothic cross that went from shoulder blade to shoulder blade and ended at my tailbone, scrolling from shoulder to shoulder and on an elegant banner was “Remy” in bold script. I had more inked skin than not and although I normally didn’t think anything about it, being naked next to her in all her pale, perfect-skinned glory it seemed slightly overwhelming. Her hands moved lower and before I had even kissed her she was messing with my belt buckle.

      “Remy would have loved that piece, you know? He always used to tell me he was so glad when you started getting tattooed. He said someone having the same face as him was always too weird, but then you started looking so different. He was glad it was you because there was no way he could tolerate sitting still long enough to get anything done.”

      It was true. Remy was always moving, always fidgeting and twitching. He would have never been able to sit long enough for a session, and every time I had come home with a new piece I wanted to show off, he had been the first to see it. He had promised to let me draw up something for him once I completed my apprenticeship, but he died before I finished. It was one of those million regrets I had mentioned earlier.

      Shaw was making short work of my pants and I had the sudden need to slow her down, so I picked her up like she was a little doll and tossed her onto the center of my bed. She bounced and ended up sprawled on her back spread-eagle. I toed off my boots and let my pants fall the rest of the way off, since I typically just went commando. When I crawled up over her I was naked and she was still fully dressed. Her eyes got big because I put my hands under her shirt and dropped down to plant a bunch of kisses along her throat.

      “You’re like good whiskey, Shaw. You go to a guy’s head quick and smooth. Last time we blazed through a bunch of the good stuff. Why don’t we slow it down a little this time?” I let my fingers brush over the halter top and felt her body get tight. She bent her legs so that I was cradled in between and, despite our size difference, we fit together just fine. She let her hands roam all across my back and I felt the edge of her nails bite into my skin and the press of her heels into the curve of my ass—it was awesome.

      “I was afraid last time that if we slowed down to think you would stop and I felt like I would die if you stopped.”

      I had my hands under her top now and she was making little gasping noises that made me harder than I already was. I got her shirt off by untying the laces and letting it fall around her waist in a pool of fabric and sealed her mouth shut with mine. She didn’t hesitate to kiss me back and I decided then and there that kissing Shaw was probably as close to heaven as I was ever going to get. There was just the right amount of give and take, just the right amount of tongue and teeth, just the right amount of breathless pull that made me see stars and want to tear her pants off and forge ahead like a marauder. She wasn’t kidding about liking the jewelry in my mouth. She rubbed her tongue across the barbell and rubbed her bottom lip across the hoop in a way that had my eyes drifting closed and almost making me forget that I was supposed to be showing her that there were lots of good stuff we had flashed past last time.

      “See, I don’t think we spent any time here.” I ran my thumb over her nipple and watched as it puckered instantly at my touch. “You are so pretty and pink, Shaw, and I don’t think you even know the half of it.” I let my tongue run across the base of her throat and down until I had one peak in my mouth. She tasted as sweet as she smelled, and the idea that I was the only one who got to do this to her, that she was mine, just mine, made it all even better. She muttered my name and arched up as I worked her over pretty good with my mouth on her breasts. She was undulating under me, pulling me closer to her with greedy hands and rubbing against the part of me that was fully agreeing with her that I was moving too slowly. I let go of the flesh I was torturing with a soft pop and kissed her breastbone. “See, good stuff.”

      She sighed. “Totally.” I propped my weight up on an elbow and traced a path from her throat to her belly button. The taut skin on her

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