Rayvn
I’m kissing him.
It was really happening. Shane’s lips slanted over hers, warm, alive, demanding, and she yielded. His hands cradled either side of her face, those strong, calloused fingers far more gentle than she ever could have imagined.
Every single drop of blood in her body went straight to her pounding heart and from there, lower, to the incessant ache between her legs. She felt hot and damp. No, she knew she was hot and damp. Soaking, probably. Worse, as Shane’s lips worked hers, suckling gently, sweetly, in a kiss infinitely passionate even though he wasn’t currently devouring her face, she couldn’t be ashamed. The level of want was unfamiliar. It was immediate and hard and undeniable, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it like she should.
Shane’s teeth scraped over her bottom lip and she moaned. The sound was lusty and needy, but she couldn’t regret it either. What the fuck is wrong with me? This isn’t me. I don’t let strangers, no, crass men who I don’t want to get to know, kiss me in formal settings. In any settings.
She didn’t pull away and Shane’s lips traced a pattern over hers. He took his time, learning her like he craved her. Lord, even if he was obnoxious, he kissed like she was the only woman he’d ever kissed before. The only woman he ever wanted to kiss again. We both know that isn’t the case.
Rayvn didn’t actually even like kissing. She’d always found it overrated. At the very least it was gross, at best, it was tolerable. With Shane, god… Shane was different. She actually found herself melting against him. Her body was pliable and too warm, like she was melting from the inside out. She was all hot, throbbing need in all the spots that had been entirely void of any feeling for far too long.
Suddenly her hands were sliding over his t-shirt, her fingertips tracing the rock-hard outline of solid muscle below. She dug her nails in, just to see how rock hard he really was. They sunk in through soft cotton and bit into his skin below. Skin she suddenly wanted to run her hands over. She wanted to rip off his shirt and trace more than just the outline of him. She wanted to put her lips there, to taste the warm maleness of his skin, the spicy scent of male musk. She wanted to put her cheek to his chest and feel the rasp of crisp blonde hair tickle her. Does he even have hair there? Or does he shave it off? Why am I even thinking about this?
At the feel of her nails, the kiss deepened. He kissed her faster, his lips firmer, searching. He kissed her like he loved the taste of her, like he wanted to drown himself in her.
It was too much. Far too much. This shouldn’t have happened at all.
Rayvn broke away. She gasped embarrassingly, as she tried to drag air into her screaming lungs. Her brain felt like someone had crammed a bunch of cotton and fog inside of it. All it took was a few minutes with Shane to completely scramble all her nerves, re-cross wires and send all the wrong signals firing out to everything that hadn’t felt anything in a long fucking time.
“Jesus…” she muttered.
She brought a trembling hand up to her tingling lips. They felt swollen and kissed raw and all she could think about was how much she wanted Shane’s mouth somewhere else. Everywhere else. And they were in the middle of a public place!
Shane looked equally as stunned for a moment. His breaths were as raspy and hard as hers. He glanced away and when he looked back at her, his eyes were shuttered again, back to forcing himself to feel nothing at all.
It’s a shield. So he can be like ice inside. So he doesn’t have to be as fucked up as the rest of us. She wished she could slam up walls as easily around her own heart. It would be nice to block off the pain sometimes. It would be nice not to cry herself to sleep at night or wake up, arms aching, chest on fire, cheeks slick and wet, with the last memories of holding her sweet baby girl before she was taken away from her forever. Don’t think about it. Stop. She didn’t want to cry in front of Shane.
It was too late. The tears came hot and scalding. It was irrational, that she should swing from one emotion to another so quickly. Once the dam was broken, that was it. There was no repairing the floodgates. The tears were incessant, molten, embarrassing.
Rayvn jumped off the bench. She grabbed her tote bag and threw it over her shoulder. Without a backward glance or an apology, she whirled and stalked away. She was nearly blinded by her tears, but she still found the exit. Thank god there was a back door, locked from the outside but accessible inside, so she didn’t have to pass by the staff working at the front of the building.
The door opened into the parking lot and she stumbled to her car, parked not far away. She was almost there. So very close, when Shane’s hand closed around her wrist.
“Rayvn! Rayvn, stop!”
He did the worst thing he could do. He pulled her automatically into his chest, the strong, solid, warm, alive wall of his chest. Granite arms wrapped around her and held her there. She wanted to push him away. She wanted to shove him away, this stranger she was supposed to hate. She didn’t want him to be a man who kissed her like she’d always wanted to be kissed. She didn’t want it to mean something. She was just like him now. Scared of feeling anything at all. Jaded. Broken.
She didn’t want his chest to feel safe, his arms even safer. She didn’t want to water his soft cotton t-shirt with her salty wet tears. She didn’t want him to soothe her with little circles over her back, his large hand through her hair. She didn’t want to hear those little words of comfort, offered so freely and automatically from a man who said he didn’t believe in love.
Isn’t a man who doesn’t believe in love safer than any man there is? A man who doesn’t believe in love doesn’t expect it in return. He wouldn’t demand it. The thing was, she didn’t know if she was capable of loving another person. Maybe deep down, she didn’t believe in love either. At least not for herself. She didn’t know if she could give it or receive it. She didn’t even know if it even was real. At least, real for her. Possible for her. Maybe he was right. Growing old with someone wasn’t possible any longer. He said it wasn’t possible for him. She knew it wasn’t for her either. Not anymore. She’d believed in that once. She believed she was capable of it. Now she knew better. Her heart was a wounded raw thing, capable of grief and pain and little else when it was opened right up.
“Rayvn, please tell me what’s wrong. What did I do?” Shane whispered right next to her ear. His voice was so soft, so very sweet and gentle.
She pulled away, wiping at her eyes in embarrassment. She’d never spoken her doubts out loud. She’d never said anything like it, not even to Charlotte or Laney, her best friends in the world. Of course, they knew what happened, but they didn’t really know. They couldn’t see into her heart and see the horribly wounded aftermath.
That was the worst part of grief. How very private it all was. Sometimes she thought she’d go insane with it, her inability to let it out.
She wished she could just go somewhere and scream and scream and scream. She was afraid that if she started, she’d never stop.
“Nothing.” She wiped at her cheeks with trembling hands. “I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything.”
“I must have done something. I’ve never had a woman start sobbing after I kissed her.”
“It wasn’t that.” She tried to laugh through her tears, but it came out as a horrible choked, snorting noise that was more embarrassing than the tears were in the first place.
“No- okay… well… I don’t think you’re okay to drive. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s alright with me, but let me at least drive you home. I’ll take your car and leave it there for you and get a cab back here.”
“You don’t have to do that.” She was starting to regain her equilibrium. She wiped at eyes she knew were probably swollen as hell. She’d put on mascara and eyeliner, two things she rarely wore since they always made her eyes itch after an hour. They were probably all over her face, running down her cheeks in messy black streams.
“No? Well, I think I do. I’ve fucked up two dates now. The first one I definitely think was my fault. The second… you can blame it on me too if you need to.”
“No,” she shook her head.
Dark strands of hair flew all over the place. Some stuck to her still damp cheek. She reached up and was about to swipe it away when Shane’s much larger hand closed over hers. She froze, speechless, as he gently pushed the hair back. He tucked it neatly behind her ear. His eyes burned into hers, serious, filled with emotion. He looked straight into her, into her aching, bleeding heart.
She’d tried so hard to let it heal, to force it to heal. Just when she thought she was almost there, ready to move on, the wound was reopened, the scab torn right off.
“Yes. Really. Let me see you home safe. You don’t have to talk to me. You don’t have to tell me anything. You never have to see me again. It’s fine. I just can’t put you on the road like this and trust that you’ll make it. At least let me call you a cab.”
She shook her head again, but she could feel her will faltering. She didn’t really want to get in her car and drive. Worst of all, she didn’t really want to be alone.
“Will you let me drive you?”
“Yeah,” she finally relented. The word came out like a sob.
Shane frowned. “You know, I’m not into feelings and all that. As you can tell. I don’t talk to anyone about shit. You’re the first person I’ve really ever told about my mom and what my dad did. Nina knows, and Chet knows, and other people know as well, so I’ve never really had to talk about it. The rest, it’s not any of their business. That being said, I feel pretty shitty for two dates going to hell now. Will you let me take you for a drink at least? That’s the way I usually deal with my feelings. Drown them out.”
The way he smiled at her, so sarcastically, made her want to laugh. There was something really attractive about a guy who could laugh at himself. She’d always said that. She found humor to be the number one quality in men she appreciated. When things got hard, sometimes all you could do was laugh. Her ex never could laugh. Not the way she wanted him to. It was one quality he’d never really understood.
“Drowning them out feels like a good idea right about now.” She sniffed and wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. As she suspected, it came away black. “Oh my god. I know I look like a mess right now. How can you even look at me?”
Shane’s entire face softened. She’d met a lot of assholes in her life. She’d also met a lot of nice guys and a lot of guys in between. No one, not one man, had ever looked at her the way Shane was looking at her. Certainly her ex-husband had never looked at her that way.
She couldn’t even define what it was in that look. She just felt… at peace. It was the kind of look that told her it was okay to be a hot mess. All of it was okay. The crying, the sobbing, the tears and snot, swollen eyes and nose, the running, smudged makeup, the breaking down in public, the storming out, the craziness of it, her inability to explain. Shane stood there looking at her like it was all just fine with him.
“I can look at you just fine.” He caressed her cheek with infinite softness. The rasp of his rough fingertips, the callouses from working outside all day, somehow pleasant against her tender skin.
It was the ultimate irony that the man she’d married had never looked at her that way. Shane, a man who said he didn’t believe in love, looked at her like he did.
She gave her head a little shake and offered a shaky smile. I’m being silly. All of this is silly. It’s just because I’m a huge bawl bag… I’m just imagining it. He’s not looking at me like that. He doesn’t even know me.
“Let’s get that drink,” she whispered tremulously before she dug in her tote and produced her car keys.