Page 67 of Down Shift (Driven 8)
“Okay?” he prompts when I don’t respond.
“Okay.”
“Uh-uh,” he says as he pulls me tighter. “You don’t get to fade away into your doubts again. I’m not going to let you. Today was . . .” He blows a breath. “A lot happened today, but I need you to hear me when I say this wasn’t a mistake. Every time I touched you, everything we did, was because I wanted to. Not because I felt sorry for you or because of your past. But because I. Wanted. To.”
“You don’t have to do . . .” Inhale confidence, Getty. Exhale doubt. I squeeze my eyes shut and repeat the mantra silently. Allow myself to really accept his words. Let them sink in. Tell myself that the feeling of his body warm and firm against mine isn’t a fluke. Somehow its fate’s fickle way of proving me wrong. That I’m capable of everything I was told I was
n’t. I work a swallow over the lump in my throat and correct myself. “What were you saying?”
And of course it’s made that much easier when I feel his mouth still pressed against my shoulder spread into a smile, because he understands me enough by now to know I’m trying to be the Getty Caster he’s encouraging me to be.
“Confidence is sexy, Socks, so you better be careful with it or we might not ever leave this bedroom.”
Chapter 19
ZANDER
“Goddamnmotherfuckingshit!” I drop the hammer and suck on my thumb. It hurts like a bitch, but that’s what I get for trying to replace roof shingles when my mind’s elsewhere.
Like back in the damn bed, cozied up against Getty and her warm, tempting, sexy-as-fuck body.
I groan. And not because of the pain in my thumb. But rather because images of last night flicker through my mind. The same damn ones that distracted me and are most likely going to give me the purple badge of honor under my thumbnail.
But hell if that badge wasn’t worth the pain.
I’m standing on the roof in the cool morning air, with the view of the harbor spread out in front of me, but all I see is her: lips swollen, thighs spread, pussy wet, nipples pink. Down, boy. And yet it’s the look in her eyes that keeps coming back to me. A combination of wounded trust and hopeful desire. Plus shy vixen. The last one she doesn’t quite see yet, but I sure as fuck can.
But it’s her eyes that I woke up remembering. As I lay there with our bodies tangled together, I kept thinking about everything she’d told me about her past—the half of which I’m sure wasn’t confessed. And what kept repeating over and over in my head was how much trust she gave me last night.
I grab the hammer and a nail. Pound it with vigor over the frustration I can’t shake.
The frustration that made me shove out of bed. Away from her warm body and hot curves and pillow creases in her cheeks. Because I needed distance. Space. I got what I wanted—Getty naked and beneath me—but I think I also got a few things I didn’t want. That I can’t have. That I don’t deserve.
Another nail. Another noncathartic pound of the hammer.
She shouldn’t trust me. Shouldn’t look at me with those chocolate eyes, a warring combination of damaged and innocent, as she puts her mistreated self in my hands, because I’m in no position to make her life better. In fact, I’m just as fucked-up as she is. Maybe even more so.
Slide a shingle over. Hold a nail. Grab the hammer.
It was just sex. Friends-with-benefits sex. Mind-blowing friends-with-benefits sex. Wake-up-and-want-to-do-it-all-over-again sex. And then possibly again. And not because we did some of the kinky shit that makes it interesting, but more so because we didn’t. It was simply her and me; trust and give-and-take and everything I said to her during it when I should have kept my mouth shut.
Pound the hammer until there is a dent in the shingle because there’s nothing left to nail in.
No one believes what anyone says during sex anyway. Just empty words to fill the quiet. To turn her on. To make her feel special. To set the mood. Words you don’t remember later because you lose yourself in the endgame.
So why do I remember every single thing I said last night? Each and every promise? Every last word?
Because I meant them.
I miss the nail. The hammer thuds into the composite material.
“Fuck.” I grit out the word. Scrunch my nose and squeeze my eyes shut while I blow out a breath.
I can’t mean them. I have a life to live. A career to pick back up. Wrongs to make right.
I warned her. Told her I couldn’t give her more than a few months of fun. Figured that would be enough, to lay it on the table before anything happened. You’d have thought I would’ve been smart enough to warn myself too.
Seems I forgot that part.
