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"That was incredible," he muttered, cracking a tired eye open and smiling one of his wide, toothy grins. Reaching for his cock, he carefully peeled off the condom, pulled some tissues from a box on his nightstand, and wiped himself down. He tied the condom off, grabbed some fresh tissue, wrapped it in it, and dropped the bundle to the floor.
Turning on his side, he glanced at me again, looking sated and I wondered if now we had done this, he was done with me.
A frown creased his brow and he reached up, gently smoothing my hair back from my face. "Damn, Billie. Come here," he ordered, lifting an arm to take me into his side. He kissed the top of my head, his huge hand cradling it protectively. "I can't tell you how beautiful that was. I've never had a connection with anyone like that before, so don't go second-guessing otherwise." He kissed the top of my head again and my heart clenched for his reassurance. "Let's enjoy the quiet for a while."
As we lay in silence, me wrapped in his arms. I fought back a wave of emotion when I thought of all the reasons again why Sawyer and I would never work. I must have exhausted myself in doing so because I fell asleep.
Sawyer's featherlight touch woke me as his fingertips traced the outline of my shoulder and my upper arm. Lifting my head to look at him, I was met with the same warmth in his bright hazel eyes as I had seen before.
His gaze was full of adoration and deep thoughts I couldn't decipher, but I knew one thing for sure: his eyes didn't lie. My heart soared when I read his affectionate gaze and a lump grew in my throat because it choked me to know how easily I could lose myself to him. The thought petrified me.
"Hey," he coaxed, having read something in my expression that had given away my feelings. Shifting above me, he settled his body between my legs. Caging my head between his forearms, he looked down at me and frowned. "That stuck-up fucker did a number on you, didn't he?"
"You have to understand my life with Logan was far different from this. Not spontaneous or … it was an organized life."
Closing the space between us, he brushed his lips gently over mine. "This is your life now, Billie. This is how you should have been treated. How he should have treated you. Not with the expectation of ownership and duty, but with adoration and protection. I know we're new, and I sound almost as bad as that crazy stalker who chased me into your arms, but until now I've never known exactly what I wanted from life. But now that I do, I fully intend to grab onto my opportunity with you with both hands. You get me?"
"I'm an opportunity?" I asked, blinking. My headspace had begun to feel crowded with familiar self-doubt.
"You bet, and I think you may well be the biggest opportunity I'll have in my life. I believe I've found something special in you. But first, you need to believe in yourself, darlin'. You've got to consider you're worth it, to believe you're enough for any man."
As hard as I tried to swallow back my tears in reaction to his kind words, they flowed anyway. "Cry if you want, but this is the last time you do. I won't tolerate you beating yourself up around me because of that weak man you married. When he strayed it was because of his weaknesses, not yours. Now it's up to you whether you roll over and think he was vindicated in doing what he did, or whether you know you're better than him and show him what he lost."
"How the hell did you get so smart? So emotionally mature?" I asked, sniffing until he swiped more tissues from the box and handed them to me.
"Three sisters is how," he chuckled. "I've seen those girls hurt more times than I can count. Learned all the insecurities they had about themselves and how cruel acts by selfish men gave them complexes and negative thoughts about themselves. I was only a kid at the time, but Tammy, my eldest sister, didn't go out of the house for six months at eighteen because of a horrible, immature jock. Lorna had her heart broken by a guy she'd been dating for almost two years when she found her hockey player boyfriend had another long-term girlfriend in Toronto. The worst one of all was Caitlin; three weeks before she was to be married, her ex-fiancé posted naked pictures of himself in an inbox chat on Facebook and asked what time she wanted to meet. He then followed them up with some pretty filthy messages that were meant for a woman called Meghan he worked with, the dumbfuck."
"Damn," I muttered, immediately empathizing with his sisters.
"Damn is right," he agreed, shifting to the side of me again and leaning up on one elbow with his head perched in his hand. "I've seen and done a lot of shady things in my career as a musician, but being honest with girls is the one thing I always insist on. A night is a night, it's not a promise of a happy ever after. I've always made that clear to any of the women I've been with before we'd gotten intimate. If sex without complications is offered, show me a guy that wouldn't be up for that."
My chest tightened when I heard him talk candidly about his sex life and his comment immediately put me on my guard. Did he think that would be okay? To be with me and have sex with other women he met on the road?
I felt more than a little crushed when I thought about all the experiences he'd had before me, that his life appeared carefree compared to the complications with mine. Dismayed that he was much younger than me, yet he lived a bigger life, and the thought of his band going on tour made me nervous about what I had to offer him down the line, once his novelty of me had worn off.
"What's going on in there?" he asked, gently tapping my temple twice before he trailed the back of his fingers softly from my breastbone to my navel. It tickled and a small thrill of pleasure ran through me in stark contrast to the tightness I felt in my chest. I shook my head, tempted to look away when a wave of emotion rose and caught in my throat again. Forcing my gaze to stay focused on his, I shrugged.
"I don't think I'm cut out for this," I mumbled. "I mean I've never done anything this reckless before."
"Sex, you mean?"
I chuckled. "I mean met a guy and fell into bed with him, casual sex, open kind of relationships," I muttered, stumbling to put my thoughts into words. What I had meant was I didn't want to sleep around with someone for the sake of sex, and I most definitely didn't want to share him with anyone else.
"First, you never fell into bed, I threw you. And second, I've progressed from random guy to the dating thing, to the guy you fell into bed with?"
"Isn't that what this is? What I've done?" I shrugged.
"Not for me it isn't. If all I had wanted was to get laid, I wouldn't have gone to this effort with you. As you said, there are thousands of girls out there who would have given it up easier than you did."
"And that's what I mean," I remarked, getting bolder with expressing my feelings.
"I'm not following, Billie." Stroking his index finger between my eyes, he smoothed my frown away. My lips formed a line and he drew the pad of his thumb across them, deep in thought until his eyes suddenly brightened.
"Stop. You can forget that I saw you as some kind of conquest. That isn't what's going on here. Maybe I haven't made myself clear enough for you, and perhaps we've arrived where we are way too fast. The point is when I met you last year I was instantly attracted to you, but it went deeper than that. Something that's never happened to me before. Sure, I've liked the look of many pretty girls, some I've hooked up with, but what happened that day between us felt different. It is different. Then, when I learned about your situation my chest grew so tight, and I felt the hurt that you carried. I also felt the need to protect you from whatever had caused your pain. You shared far more of your circumstance with me because of the shit circumstance you had found yourself on that day."
"You told me already."
"Leaving you sitting there at that table tore me up, Billie. After I left you, I had to find the will not to turn around and go back to check if you were okay. Then when I saw you again, all those months later and you were with that guy, I couldn't figure out how to grab my second chance to know you better."
