I’m lying in bed with a man who just rocked my world off of its axis. My breathing is labored—though much better than I was five minutes ago, with my orgasm still shattering through my body. Noah is lying beside me, having rolled to his side, his leg draped over my legs, his arm lying over my stomach and his head sharing my pillow.

He’s close, so close his breathing is ruffling against my hair and I just came…hard and I did that not once, but twice. I’m warm all over and my heart is beating hard in my chest and doing it happily.

Still, it’s over now and I have so much running through my brain that I don’t know how to process it. I just slept with a man that I like—who is mostly an ass, but when he’s not it’s off the charts good. I just had two of the best orgasms I’ve ever experienced in my life. I’m not an expert on sex, but I’m pretty sure what I just had could probably go down in the book of world records for being the best orgasms ever.

They were that good.

That doesn’t change the fact that now that it’s over instead of enjoying the after, I’m panicking inside. I need a little space. I have to sort through the mush that is my brain and figure out what I’m doing. Noah said I shouldn’t run. He wanted me to go meet with the judge and get the restraining order in place. I don’t think an order will work, not against Tony and not against my brother. But, they might slow them down if they catch up with me before I cross the state line. It’s also good to have a paper trail in case they catch up with me when I hit Mexico.

I’ve decided to go to Mexico—not because I necessarily want to, but because it seems like another country is a good idea where Tony is involved. I know some Spanish and I hear American money goes farther there—although I have no idea if that’s true, but it sounds nice. That’s the extent of my planning, but it’s there. First, I need to disengage myself from the neighbor I just tumbled around with in bed. I can’t afford to let him stay here with me, because he makes me want to stay even more. He makes me long for… normal.

There’s one thing I do know… my life has never been and will never be normal.

“Can hear your mind working from here, Gorgeous,” Noah’s voice says, the words startling me almost as much as the way his finger is drawing lines against my stomach.

“I… Um…” Shit. I have no idea what to say.

“I’ve fucked a lot of women,” he starts and my body goes solid. On the scale of post sex talk this is not good. It’s like on the scale of negative a million on most desired post sex conversations. “Don’t think I’ve ever been with one that had freckles like yours,” he says and it must be said that I didn’t exactly like that comment either. I’m horribly self-conscious about my freckles. His finger keeps drifting across my stomach and he seems oblivious to the upset that he has delivered. I look down and watch his finger dance across my stomach and my breath stalls so quickly in my throat that it feels like my heart is swelling and trying not to beat.

Noah is drawing lines from freckle to freckle. Slow, easy lines, and his eyes are glued to the paths he creates.

“Fucking love them, Gorgeous,” he says and okay, that’s better and maybe if he hadn’t begun this with how many women he’s fucked I’d really love it. Right now, I’m only envisioning a sea of a million women standing in line for Noah’s dick and I’m the last one in the line.

Shit.

“Um… maybe…”

“I’m not going anywhere Rory,” he says, like he can read my thoughts. Since that’s exactly what I was going to suggest, maybe he can—but I’ll never admit it, not completely.

“I wasn’t going to—”

“Yes, you were,” he says interrupting me again.

“Noah, you can’t tell me what I think,” I grumble, annoyed with him.

“You telling me that’s not what you were thinking?” he asks and I let out a large sigh.

“I was just thinking you should go back to the couch before Ryan wakes up,” I tell him, kind of lying, but whatever.

“Gorgeous, Ryan has to get up at six thirty in the morning for school. He’s not going to move until I go wake him.”

“You can’t be sure—”

“If your moans didn’t wake him up, he’s good,” Noah says and mortification spreads quicker than lightning through me.

“Noah! I didn’t moan!” I hiss.

“Sweetheart, you did.”

“Well, even if I did,” I start, because I’m pretty sure I definitely moaned… a lot. “I—”

“And you were loud,” he says, interrupting me again and countering my denial that even if I moaned I was quiet.

“Are you ever going to let me finish a sentence,” I growl.

“When you give me an honest one, sure,” he says and then he kisses my shoulder. That kiss feels almost as good as the way he keeps drawing imaginary lines on my stomach and for a moment I’m at a loss of words.

“Haven’t had better, Rory,” he says and there goes that icky feeling again.

“I’m kind of not digging the whole I’ve-had-a-million-lovers after sex talk, Noah.”

I feel his body jerking beside me and I look over at him and he’s laughing. He’s doing it quietly, but enough so the laugh lines around his eyes have crinkled and it’s jarring his body. Normally, I’d like it, but considering what he’s laughing at… right now… not so much.

“I never said a million, Gorgeous,” he denies and I find myself staring at the ceiling and probably rolling my eyes.

“You said a lot,” I remind him.

“A lot can mean different things to different people.”

“Okay so, how many?” I ask, looking at him.

He looks surprised, and I am too, this is not how this conversation was supposed to be going. I was supposed to be extricating myself from Noah and this house—not have a deep conversation about how many lovers came before me.

“You really want to do this now?”

“You ever hear the saying that you don’t just have sex with a man, but you have sex with every partner he ever had?” I ask him, completely serious.

“Never heard it, but then again I don’t fuck men. Which means, I might have missed that bulletin,” he says, sitting up so that he’s leaning on the headboard and pulling me so my head is on his stomach—whether that’s what I want or not evidently.

“Whatever. It just means a man has… a lot… of women then he increases his chances to catch things, which increases my chances. Which means—”

“Picking up what it means, Rory. Not understanding why you’re worried. We did use a rubber,” he says and now he sounds annoyed. I’m annoyed with him, so that works. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss his laugh or the way his face relaxed during said laughter.

“Condoms only work ninety-eight percent of the time,” I tell him.

“Yeah?” he asks, and now he looks like he’s fighting a smile.

“Yeah. So, that leaves two percent of the time that it doesn’t. That two percent doesn’t sound like much—”

“It doesn’t,” he confirms.

“But say your…a lot… means a million girls. Two percent of a million is freaking scary.”

“Get your point,” he says, his eyes staring at me closely.

“So how many?”

“Don’t know,” he says, watching me closely—a bit too closely.

“You don’t know?” I gasp, not being able to wrap my head around that answer.

“Never counted, Gorgeous. I was too busy enjoying.”

“You can’t even… say… give a ballpark kind of figure?”

“I don’t see how this is important,” he grumbles and I’m trying to stop myself from yelling at him. If I do that we’ll probably wake up Ryan and I need to be out of this bed before that happens.

“It’s important,” I insist.

“Why? You don’t see me asking how many men you’ve slept with before me,” he reasons.

“Well if you did, the answer would be three.”

“Three?” he looks like he doesn’t believe me. That’s easy to understand since he has laid more women than there are orange groves in Florida.

“Three,” I confirm. “My best friend in high school—”

“Alright Rory!” he praises—the pig. I instantly know what he’s thinking. “I didn’t know you liked—”

“He was a man—or a boy as it were,” I tell him, ripping away any fantasy of girl on girl action he may be harboring.

“Your best friend was male?”

“Girls didn’t like me,” I tell him simply.

“They wouldn’t.”

“That’s not nice,” I whisper, his words hurting me.

“You’re too pretty. Women are usually bitches, they don’t like competition.

“Women are bitches?”

“Most of the time,” he says.

“You don’t sound like you like women very much for a man who admittedly has banged a lot of them.”

“You don’t have to like someone to fuck them, Rory,” he says and admittedly this is true, but I’m not really digging how that makes me feel either.

“If you didn’t, then why would you bother?”

“You saying you’d never fuck someone if it meant you’d get compensation out of it?”

“I’m assuming you mean other than orgasms?”

“You’re assuming right.”

“No.”

“I think everyone would,” he shrugs, sounding so jaded it’s almost painful.

“I wouldn’t,” I stubbornly argue, wondering how in the world we started this conversation.

“Maybe you just haven’t found your trigger yet,” he argues.

“My…trigger?”

“A reason why you would sleep with someone other than just enjoying the sex.”

“Love?”

“Get real, Gorgeous.”

“I’m getting that’s a negative,” I whisper, because the look on his face leaves no doubt that he’s not digging my response.

“A big ass one.”

“I take it you don’t think love exists?” I ask and for some reason that makes me sad.

“I know it does. I’ve seen it. Feel it for my son. I just know that shit is fucking rare and doesn’t happen that often.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I whisper.

“You love every man you fucked?”

“Can we call it something else besides fucked?”

I’m practically pleading with him. I’m feeling uncomfortable here, and meanwhile he’s just sitting up, leaning back against the headboard like we’re discussing the weather. I sit up too and I make sure I have the sheet wrapped tight around me. This isn’t a conversation that you want to remain naked and exposed for. It hasn’t been from the first moment he opened his mouth.

“Call’em like I see’em, Rory.”

“Right,” I frown.

“I’m not always easy to take, but I’m always truthful, Gorgeous.”

“You are?”

“I will be—at least until you make that impossible,” he answers and I frown.

“How would I do that?”

“I asked a question first,” he responds and I frown.

“I loved my best friend, although not like… that. It was more…like a safe place to experiment,” I tell him. “We were both seventeen and all of our friends had done it… we figured… why not?” I shrug, finding it hard to explain to a man who apparently has a lot of sex why I chose to have my first partner.

“And the other two?”

“Grady, I loved.”

“Grady? Jesus, what kind of name is Grady?”

“It’s a nice name,” I defend—although to be honest, I don’t feel like defending Grady… about anything.

“If you’re a ninety-year-old overweight, corn farmer in Iowa, who wears suspenders and chews on a blade of grass while milking your cow because you know it’s the only tit you’re going to have in your hands for the foreseeable future… maybe,” Noah answers.

I look up at him, taking in all of his words and doing my best to try and stifle my laughter. I’m thinking Noah doesn’t need any encouragement at this point.

“Some people might not like the name Noah,” I tell him, and I might be able to keep from laughing, but I can’t stop my smile when I look up at him.

“Probably, Gorgeous, but could you see me in suspenders milking a cow?”

“Umm… probably not,” I agree softly, giving into a full smile. He grins down at me and those crinkles around his eyes deepen and I feel an excited flutter in my stomach. “And can you see this Grady doing that?” It must be said that I could, though I didn’t confirm it. I’m pretty sure Noah, however, could read between the lines. “What happened to old Grady?”

“He had a permanent case of HIHA disease,” I tell him on a sigh.

“What’s HIHA?”

“Head in his ass,” I explain.

“Oh… I see.”

“I’m afraid it was terminal,” I answer, nodding my head. “It got so bad I couldn’t be in the same room with him for the smell.”

“Shoveled a lot of shit your way I take it,” Noah says.

“Loads and loads. So much the stench was toxic,” I confirm.

“Sorry, Gorgeous,” he says, giving me a squeeze.

“It’s okay except that’s the reason I ended up with Tony.”

“Not love?”

“I never loved Tony. Not ever. I thought I could be happy with him, but I soon found out…”

“That he’s a fucking dickweed?”

“That he wasn’t the nice man he pretended to be,” I whisper.

“Alright then, before you get lost in shit you don’t need to get lost in,” Noah interjects, and before I realize what he has planned he’s shifted on the bed and pulled me down so I’m lying flat on the mattress—all in one very quick movement.

“I—”

“Not going to count the women I’ve fucked, Gorgeous. Not now, not ever. They weren’t numbers, they were people, and at the time they gave me something I needed—even if that need was just getting my balls emptied,” he states and I have to blink at the plain way he lays it out. “That said, there’s only been three women I’ve taken to my bed who mattered at all to me,” he says and I find myself staring up into his eyes, getting lost in the way emotions reflected in the deep brown.

“Three?” I whisper, reaching up to smooth out the groove on his forehead, not liking it there—even if I can’t explain why.

“Ryan’s mother was a lying bitch. I got way too drunk, wore a condom but the woman was a lying bitch and those are a lot like cockroaches, they find a way to procreate no matter what you do.” The way he says that hits me hard, because he has Ryan and he’s not—

“But, Noah. You have a child and….” I trail off, not sure how to make my point.

“Wouldn’t give the world for my son, Rory. He’s the sole reason I’m still breathing on this earth. If it meant the outcome would be me having that boy as mine, I’d crawl back in bed with that bitch a million more times.”

“Gotcha,” I say softly, thinking that Noah might be the most plain-spoken man I’ve ever met. I don’t think he could pretend to be sweet if he tried. But, in saying that, the way he feels about his son bleeds through his words and somehow wraps around my heart. In that moment, I’m thinking I’d rather have a man who speaks plain, but is capable of loving someone so deep you hear it in the vibration of his voice.

Not that I could have Noah… I’m leaving… but still…

“Second woman, had me fooled. I didn’t love her, but I liked her. I gave her pieces of me and I trusted her with my boy.”

“What happened to her?” I ask, frowning.

“She put me in a position I didn’t want to be in. A position that fucked with my head and sucked for me, but in the end sucked a lot more for her.”

“Not sure I understand…”

“She’s gone, that’s all you need to know, other than one thing.”

“What’s that?” I ask, my gaze glued to his eyes which seem to fill with fire.

“No one hurts my child. I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect Ryan and I’ll do it not giving a fuck what it is or who it’s to.”

I lick my lips, and swallow at the intensity of his words. I didn’t know this mysterious woman, but just reading between the lines I think I hate her.

“Is that what happened to woman number three?” I ask shyly.

His face relaxes and he studies me closer. I feel like he’s searching for something, but I have no idea what.

“Woman number three is a gorgeous red-head who makes my cock ache. Not sure what’s going to happen with her yet.”

“I… oh wow…” I breathe, going instantly soft.

“Rory,” he growls, his hand moving across my thigh and up toward my pussy.

“Yeah?” I ask, my lips parting as I feel his fingers skate against my entrance.

“You’re wet,” he growls.

As his fingers push inside of me and my body softens for his invasion, I hold his gaze with mine. I forget that I’m supposed to be getting him out of the room and I even forget that I plan on leaving the state today. I forget everything but the feel of Noah’s fingers thrusting deep inside of me, the look in his eyes and the pleasure that’s beginning to spread through my body.

“Maybe you could help me out with that,” I whisper, my eyes pleading for more.

“Fuck, yeah,” he growls right before he claims my lips and then gets busy helping me out….