I was trying to shake off the fear after all it was just a nice night at home and Nash was gone so I should be doing my best to make her scream my name over and over again at the top of her lungs but the doubt lingered and I stayed in the shower until the water ran frigid and cold forcing me out. I ran a fuzzy towel over my head and face and secured another one loosely around my waist. I left my clothes in a heap on the floor and wandered into my room figuring she would still be out in the living room doing her homework and I would have a couple more minutes to get my shit together only the TV was off and she was sitting in the middle of my big bed sipping on the beer I had abandoned when I bolted earlier. As if that wasn’t enough she was only wearing my T-shirt that had the tattoo parlors logo on it. It looked better on her than it ever had on me and she was watching me with very serious eyes the color of new grass.
“What’s going on?”
I cleared my throat and tried to play it off. “Nothing. Why?” Only this was Shaw and she knew my bullshit better than almost anyone. She scooted to the edge of the bed and set the beer down on the night stand.
“Because you were in there forever and you already took a shower this morning. Something spooked you and you ran I want to know what it was.”
I considered lying to her, considered telling her that she was just imagining things but in the end knew that I just needed to come clean and hope that she didn’t freak out because I was so emotionally screwed up.
“All this,” I waved a hand between the two of us. “It’s so easy, so basic and thoughtless that sometimes it freaks me out. I’m not used to normal and ordinary so it makes me nervous. My life was always about trying to grab onto fleeting moments of pleasure, of feeling good and now I have that all the time with you and I get lost in my head wondering what I’m going to do to screw it up or how I’m going to keep it together if you decide to take it away. Sometimes I get sucked into my visions of what could happen and I have a really difficult time staying in the present. Watching TV with you, just being with you sooths something inside me that I didn’t even know needed soothing but it also makes something in there cower in fear. I’m sorry.”
She just watched me and I prepared myself for her to get up off the bed and walk out the door. If she did I was pretty sure towel or not I would chase her into the cold and beg until she came back. Instead she unfolded from the bed and came up to me on bare feet. My shirt covered all the good stuff but just barely. She stopped so that we weren’t touching but we were close enough to share breath.
“It scares me too Rule. I’m not used to ordinary either and I never thought I would have that with you, never thought I would have anything with you at all so it’s okay to get a little lost in your head as long as you come back and we can talk about it. I’m not going to ask you to give anything you aren’t comfortable with. People have done that to me my entire life and I’m sick of it.”
I exhaled a hard breath and unclenched the fists I hadn’t been aware I had curled up at my sides.
“What if I ask you to give me everything Shaw, what if I want it all? Won’t that make me just like all the rest of them?”
She made a noise in her throat and then broke into a smile that nearly killed me on the spot she was just so lovely and pure. “No because you don’t have to ask for anything, all of it is already yours. You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to give it to.” This girl was going to be the end of me. She put a hand on each of my sides, one splayed over the angel one splayed over the reaper and I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.
“You have to promise not to bail on me when I get lost, Shaw. You have to promise to just wait it out until I can find my way back. I need to know you’re at the end of the tunnel when everything goes black.”
“I know how to wait for you Rule and I don’t mind doing it as long as you promise not to shut me out. I can’t do this with you, be so wrapped up in you and what’s happening between us if you’re going to close the door on me when it gets to be too much. My heart can’t take that.”
“I know.” But I wasn’t sure that was a promise I could keep. My default was to return to what I knew and that was distance and space so that I could protect myself. “I can do my best Shaw but I told you all along I’m not real sure how to do this whole relationship thing and I’m scared shitless I’m going to do something to screw it up.”
She leaned forward and let her hands glide up around my back and across my shoulders. She pressed a soft, open mouthed kiss to the center of my chest and it made my entire life zero in on that tiny point of contact.
“Well you can be scared alone or we can be scared together. I prefer the second option but if you need some space to get your head around it and figure out what you want I can make that happen. I want to be with you Rule, but I’m not going to be here with you if it makes you hurt and makes you freak out. We both deserve better than that.”
I wasn’t sure at this point it was about what I deserved or not but I wasn’t stupid enough to let what I had with her get demolished under the weight of doubt I couldn’t control. I finally reached out and pulled her to me in a suffocating hug that pressed all her length against all my bare skin. I had spent plenty of time with her this morning, making her beg, turning myself inside out but that didn’t seem to matter, my c**k reacted under the towel letting her know that whatever was going on inside my head had no bearing on how my body felt about her. “I’m just messed up Shaw. I’m sorry that I get this way but the last thing I want is to chase my tail all alone.” I kissed her, letting her feel the things I couldn’t say as they burned through my blood. I wanted her always and the idea of that made my knees weak.
She let me devour her mouth, let me get my hands all tangled up rough in her hair, let me press her up against the closest wall and press an insistent erection against her all without complaint or argument. There was no gentleness, no concern for skill or whether or not I was making it feel good for her, all that existed was a blinding need to get inside her, to make her feel the emotion that was making me go crazy. I needed to syphon off some of the want and need and the only way to do it was to get it out of me and into her. Her head made a dull thunk against the wall and I felt her suck in a tense breath and still none of it gave me pause. The towel hit the floor and my t-shirt offered no resistance as I rushed through getting both of us naked. Somewhere in my head I knew I needed to slow down, needed to get control back that my hands were too hard on her, that my mouth was going to leave marks but I couldn’t pull it in.