“Actually, I was terrified of you.”
He grinned again.
“Either way works for me.”
I rolled my eyes again.
Then I rolled them back and asked, “So it doesn’t creep you out that one of my best friends has a cardboard cutout of you?”
“Fuck no,” he answered immediately. “I get a cut of that shit. She probably paid for a six pack of beer.”
At his words, I burst out laughing.
When I quit laughing, Sam was smiling down at me.
Then he asked, “You got a room at home wallpapered with my pictures?”
“Uh… no,” I answered.
“You ever send me sick ass letters describing the house we’d live in, the pets we’d have, the names of all our children, goin’ into detail about how we’d make those kids?”
Ick!
“Definitely no,” I told him.
“A shrine?”
I started giggling but shook my head and repeated, “No.”
He let me go with one arm and turned us on our way again, muttering, “Then we’re good.”
I walked beside him, my arm around his waist and asked, “Have you received letters like that?”
“Yeah.”
Ohmigod.
My head jerked to look up at him. “Really?”
“Yeah, pre-Army, had a woman, she sent me at least a hundred of them.”
Okay, now that was creepy. I was now seeing there were degrees.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I told him.
“I didn’t either. I just didn’t reply. It died when I quit playin’ ball and never came back. She probably found some other guy who plays ball to fixate on.”
“Doesn’t that creep you out?”
“Absolutely.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“I don’t. Not anymore. Got an agency who reads that shit, sends me what I need to see, files the rest.”
Hmm. Interesting.
I got another arm squeeze before Sam said softly, “You should know, Tilda gets a wild hair, pictures of you and me at a restaurant in Lake Como, wrapped up together, sittin’ close…” he trailed off and I stopped dead.
This was because I knew what he meant.
She could sell them to someone or even just put them on a social network site and they’d spread like wildfire.
Oh.
My.
God.
He turned me into his arms again as I tilted my head back to look at him.
“Ohmigod,” I whispered when my eyes found his.
“That shit happens to me all the time, baby.”
I knew that. I’d seen him with a variety of babes. But none of them was me even though I wished they were me.
And now they could be!
Oh.
My.
God!
He studied me as I freaked out.
Then I asked him, “Doesn’t that freak you out?”
“No.”
“But… we barely know each other!” I cried, yes, cried and loud.
He pulled me closer, his arms getting tight and his face dipping close to mine.
Then he asked, “This feel good?”
“What?”
“Us.”
I sucked in breath at his question.
Sam kept speaking and when he did he yet again rocked my world.
“It does to me. That shit, it’s my life. I can’t care. I did, I’d lose it. So I see it or live it, then I let it go. Now, I’m worried about you ‘cause this feels good. If it feels this good now, that means it could get better. What happens tonight is close to what happened this morning, it’s definitely gonna get better. But right now, it feels good enough I give a shit about it stayin’ this good, enough to work at it, enough to make it better. And I don’t need to find a woman I finally feel good with and have her not able to handle the shit that comes with me.”
I was still holding my breath and staring at him.
“Kia.”
I kept holding my breath and staring at him.
His face got even closer and his arms gave me a squeeze.
“Kia, baby, breathe.”
I let out my breath.
What I didn’t do was speak. Sam waited but my brain was too full with the idea of “us”, I couldn’t get it together to answer.
“Baby, I need to know if you can handle the shit that comes with me,” he prompted gently.
That was when I blurted, “I liked Sampson Cooper not because he was hot and rich and cool. I liked Sampson Cooper because my husband was a dick who treated me like shit and I knew Sampson Cooper was a good man, a decent man, a loyal man and I preferred to spend my time with that man not with my husband.”
It was Sam’s turn not to speak.
I kept talking.
“But I like Sam Cooper better.”
Sam closed his eyes.
And it was my turn to give him a squeeze and when I did, he opened his eyes and I whispered, “So, yeah. Definitely yeah. I can handle the shit that comes with you just as long as it comes with you.”
I watched his eyes heat right before his hand slid up my back, into my hair, cupping the back of my head, tilting it and his mouth slammed down on mine.
Then he kissed me, not like he’d been doing all day, sweet lip touches that settled in my soul.
No.
Like he did that morning.
A hot, wet, deep kiss with lots of brilliant tongue action that made my knees get weak.
I held on and kissed him back.
It… was… brilliant.
Then he tore his mouth from mine, growled, “Hotel,” and he started us walking again.
This time faster.
A lot faster.
Oh.
Man.
Chapter Eight
Bury Him
Sam led us directly to my room, no discussion over “yours” or “mine”.
Decisive.
He was not wasting any time.
But by the time we got there, I was not so sure about “us” anymore.
In fact, I’d convinced myself this was all a huge mistake.
And I’d convinced myself of this because I’d had one lover.
Cooter.
And I found out that morning, just with the little I did with Sam, that Cooter wasn’t very good at what he did and even with experience with me and whoever else he slept with along the way, he didn’t get any better. And this was true even before he started hitting me which made me want nothing to do with my husband touching me.
The sorry fact was, I never really enjoyed sex with Cooter. I tried but never got there. We had our moments, sure. But they were few and they caused no fireworks. Sparklers, maybe, but those sputtered out and died.
There was a pocket of time I tried to be all I could be for Cooter in bed in hopes that would make him happy enough so he would be less inclined to get pissed and take it out on me.