CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Friday

Fiona’s mother had her eyes—blue and annoyed. In fact, the woman might’ve been Fee’s older clone, they looked that much alike—a fact that Dingo knew must’ve royally chapped Fee’s ass.

One of her fav topics of discussion had been how much she hated her mom.

“She’s not here,” the woman said flatly in response to Maddie’s politely asked, “Excuse me, ma’am, is Fiona home?”

She started to close the heavy wooden front door in their faces, but Dingo asked, “Is she at her da’s, then?” He leaned on his accent because Fee had loved thinking that he was Australian, and maybe she didn’t just look like her mother—maybe they shared some similar personality traits or at least a few major likes and dislikes, too.

And sure enough, the woman stopped and looked at him. “You must be Dingo,” she said. “Fiona warned me that you might come looking for her.” She looked at Maddie. “That makes you Maddie. The thief. At least that’s what she said. I’ve learned to take the things she says with a very large grain of salt.”

Dingo often went with his gut, and right now, his gut was telling him to be as honest as possible. “Fiona stole ten thousand dollars from a drug dealer in San Diego and framed Mads here.”

Fee’s mother laughed. “And I’m supposed to just give it to you, right? Is ten thousand dollars the going price for bribing the security guards at Longfield Academy? I’ll pass, thanks.” She started to close the door again.

This time Maddie reached out to lean against it, to keep it from shutting. “Wait,” she said. “We’re not here for money. I didn’t even think that was a possibility—”

“But as long as you mention it,” Dingo started, even as Fee’s mother said, “Step back from the door! Don’t make me call nine-one-one!”

“Dingo, shush.” Maddie stepped back, intentionally bumping into Dingo, no doubt because she knew that would make him immediately leap back toward the edge of the front stoop. No touching, no kissing—sweet Christ, he’d gone and kissed her last night, and now he was struggling to think about anything else.

Maddie was focused, though, and she begged the woman. “Please, Mrs. Clark—” that was her remarried name “—we just want to talk to Fiona. That’s all.”

“Well, you can’t,” the woman said. “Her father sent her to a boarding school.” She made exaggerated air quotes. “The kind with locks on the doors.”

“Longfield Academy?” Maddie asked. “Is that here in Sacramento?”

“Honey, it’s out near Roanoke, Virginia.”

Virginia? As Maddie looked at Dingo in obvious dismay, he immediately found himself thinking maybe it would be okay if all they did was kiss and—Shit! Inwardly, he slapped himself. Snap out of it!

Meanwhile, he could tell from Maddie’s face that she was checking a mental map of the United States and trying to figure out how much money they’d need to drive to freaking Virginia. Shite, the idea of Fee living anywhere with the word virgin in the name was like a bad joke. Also? It was hard to imagine her going into lockup without kicking and screaming. In fact…“She didn’t try to run away? You know, when Daddy said boarding school?”

“The decision was sudden,” Fee’s mother said. “And unannounced. The school came out here to pick her up.”

He exchanged another look with Maddie, managing this time not to think about kissing her—except, shit, now he was thinking about it. Focus. What Fee’s mother had just told them sounded a bit like kidnapping. Violent, like. Hard to imagine Fiona hadn’t fought back—literally kicking and screaming. That must’ve been awful to witness.

Mrs. Clark must’ve known what he was thinking, because she added, “This particular school provides psychological and psychiatric support. They’ll get her off the drugs and back on the meds she needs to—hopefully—achieve some sort of balance, and, well, they started with that immediately.”

So…Fiona had been both surprised and then instantly sedated. That explained how they got her onto a plane—unless the “school” had its own private jet, which was entirely possible. As for the meds, was there truly a pill that would counteract sheer evil?

“Her father went with her,” the woman continued, and to Dingo’s surprise, her eyes filled with tears. “To get her…settled in. We both thought it was best if I stayed home. I seem to…set her off more easily.”

So yeah, everything nasty that Fee had said about her mother was probably as much of a lie as her telling Auntie Susan that the camera in the bathroom was his, and her telling Nelson that Maddie’d stolen his ten grand.

“But she was staying here,” Maddie confirmed, “with you. Right up until she…left for this school?”

Left was a good choice of verb. It was nicely neutral. Sans any screaming.

“Yes. Her father wouldn’t let her stay with him. He and wife-number-three have two-year-old twins. We didn’t have a lot of options.” She shook her head. “Look, I already know what you’re going to ask, and no, you cannot come in. We’ve already searched the house and found the drugs. They’re gone. We destroyed them.”

Maddie shook her head. “That’s not why we’re here.”

“What, then?” Mrs. Clark said. “You think she’s hidden ten thousand dollars somewhere in her bedroom? Honey, it was gone—probably already up her nose—long before she left San Diego.” She looked from Maddie to Dingo and back. “Go home. I’m sure your parents are worried about you.”

And with that she closed and locked the door with a very firm click.

According to the law office receptionist, Susan Smith, Esquire—also known as Fiona’s aunt, she of the burned-down condo—would not be in until later this afternoon.

Pete squinted in the morning sun as he followed Shayla out of the building and into the parking lot, checking the time—it was a little after 0900. “When do you think we should text Maddie, see if she’s open to talking? I don’t want to piss her off by waking her up.”

“I was thinking ten,” Shay said. “It’s respectful but not overly indulgent.”

He nodded.

She met his eyes and smiled, and it zinged right through him, confirming that he was hard. Again. Already. Hell, he’d been ready for more while they were walking around outside of her house, checking for cracks and structural damage—that was how bad he had it for this woman.

Because just a few minutes before that, shortly after they’d woken up, they’d had yet another round of heart-stopping high-octane sex. And that was on top of last night’s hat trick.

And…thinking about that wasn’t helping him right now. Pete cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what to do next.”

“Write Chapter Three?” Shay suggested. “We could do it, you know, rough and fast, and yeah, I just heard that come out of my mouth, but that’s actually writer talk, not me suggesting you pin me against the wall in your entryway, although as those words come out of my mouth, I’m finding that I like that idea, a lot.”

He laughed and grabbed her, pulling her in for an embrace, burying his nose in the curls of her fresh-smelling hair, and loving the softness of her body against his. He’d left off his uniform today but wore what he thought of as his nice shorts. No cargo pockets. A short-sleeved button-down shirt instead of a T. Shay was dressed a lot like she’d been yesterday, in a brightly printed sleeveless shirt and khaki pants that didn’t quite reach her ankles. She had some kind of sweater or jacket—in a vibrant shade of red—tucked over her handbag.

“Let’s go back, and see what happens,” she said. “You can tell me Chapter Three in the car, we can figure out whether we want to get it onto paper before or after, dot dot dot.”

Pete kissed her, and she kissed him back, her arms up around his neck, fingers in his hair. She seemed to melt against him and…He suddenly realized they were standing in the middle of a public parking lot, which was strange.

He didn’t do PDAs—public displays of affection. Well, Lisa hadn’t liked them, and…it was crazy. They’d broken up fourteen years ago, and apparently he was still living his life by her rules.

So he kissed Shay again. And yeah, you know what? Turned out he fucking liked PDAs. He liked them a lot.

As they finally got back into his truck, Shayla had clearly made note of his change of mood. He was trying to figure out how to tell her he’d been thinking about Lisa while he was kissing her without having it sound completely wrong, when she spoke.

“Hey, can I just say something?” she asked as he pulled out of the lawyer’s lot.

“Of course.” He laughed. Since when was she shy about anything?

She hesitated. “Something potentially awkward and blunt?”

Uh-oh. “Go.”

“The sex is great.”

That was blunt, but not what he’d call awkward. “I’m not sure great is a good enough word,” he said. “I mean, you’re the writer.”

She smiled. “The sex is transcendent.”

“Much better. And I agree.”

“But I know it’s not real,” she said.

He could go light. Funny. Wait, are you a witch? If it’s not real, does that mean it’s magic? Because I wholeheartedly agree about that, too. Instead, he went for a simple questioning echo. “Not real.”

“Neither one of us is looking for anything heavy,” she said. “I mean, you’ve got more than enough on your plate, with Maddie. Once she’s home…”

Pete nodded, but he wasn’t quite sure what she was saying.

“I mean, talk about complications,” Shayla continued. “Right? I know you’re going to need to focus on her, and that’s going to take up a lot of your time, and that’s okay.”

Time management was something he was very good at. But her I know you’re busy message combined with not real and not looking for anything heavy meant that management of time was secondary to the main issue.

“I just wanted you to know that we’re on the same page,” she continued. “We’re having fun—I mean, you know, when we’re together transcendently—and that’s good. It’s nice, it’s light, it’s easy. It’s right now, you know? No expectations, no pressure.”

He didn’t think he was letting anything show on his face—disappointment or dismay or whatever the hell this sinking feeling was that he was experiencing—but she took it upon herself to further expound.

“I’m saying that it’s okay with me if we, um, label this thing—this ridiculous heat between us—as friends with benefits. God, that’s such a terrible, trite expression, but it kind of…fits. Right?”

And there it was, fully blunt and awkward.

She smiled and tried to make a joke. “Although, friends with transcendental benefits does sound a little better….”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, because yeah he’d only met her a few days ago, but that just did not fit with what he knew—thought he knew—about her. No, fuck that. He knew. She was the most WYSIWYG—what-you-see-is-what-you-get—woman he’d ever met in his entire life. And this did not compute.

But she was already nodding emphatically. “Yes. Like I said, I’m on the same page.”

So opposed to being potential soul mates…“You wanna be fuck buddies,” he said, because he had to confirm it.

Shayla winced. “That might be my least favorite name for it,” she admitted.

“Transcendental sex buddies.”

She laughed a little too loudly. “Much better.”

Why didn’t he believe her?

But then, as he replayed this conversation, he knew. It’s nice, it’s light, it’s easy. It’s right now…And there it was.

Right now.

It wasn’t her. It was him. He was her Mr. Right Now. She’d talked about this concept more than once in the many online interviews that he’d read. The romance novels that Shay wrote were focused on her characters finding their Mr. or Ms. Right. But along the way, as she wrote her ongoing series of connected books, her characters sometimes shared an interlude with a Mr. Right Now. Imperfect to the point of being unacceptable—at least in terms of finding lasting happiness—and sometimes destined to be killed off, Mr. Right Now provided a sexual escape valve and/or the fodder for a rebound relationship.

When exactly had Shayla split with her ex? Pete thought it had been years, but maybe that made him even more of a Right Now, depending on how long it had been since…

“Can I ask you something,” he said, “that’s also potentially awkward?”

“Uh-oh,” Shay said. “Um, yes…?”

He went for it. “Am I the first? Since…” What was her ex-husband’s name? “Carter?”

Shayla looked surprised and then embarrassed. She laughed as she made a face. “Yeah. Is it obvious?”

“No,” he said. “I was just curious.”

And there it was. All along, she’d been dead serious about not wanting to be more than friends with him, but then that earthquake had happened, and sheer physical attraction had taken control. She liked him, but not enough to want any kind of future with him. And he really couldn’t blame her. Especially since she knew most of the story of how he’d fucked things up with Lisa, and with Maddie, too.

Hey look, here’s a man who really sucks at relationships of all kinds. Maybe if I’m lucky, he’ll be my boyfriend.

Shayla was right to keep her distance and to establish clear boundaries like this, right up front. In fact, Pete respected her—and liked her—even more for it.

The heroine’s relationship with a Mr. Right Now, Shayla had explained in one of those interviews, also provided her with a learning experience. She’d laughed and added, “and pages and pages of molten-hot sex.”

So okay. All right. He, too, could keep this thing light and easy. He’d done it plenty of times before in the years post-Lisa.

But bottom line, if having Shayla Whitman as a fuck buddy or friend with benefits was his only option?

He’d take her however he could get her.

Shay cleared her throat. “So,” she said. “Chapter Three…? It would be great if we had something to send, before I text Maddie.”

Right. Yeah. Rough and fast. Pete remembered. He, too, cleared his throat as he took the ramp onto the freeway that took them home. “Chapter Three. The Graduation Party Fucking—no, better make that Fiasco.”

It was like something out of a bad ’80s movie.

A high school graduation party on the beach. A junior boy, crazy in love with the senior girl who was his best friend.

I knew Lisa was going to the party with Brad, her boyfriend, but I’d heard rumblings of rumors that he was going to dump her that night. People were talking about it, because, well, she was a drama student. Whatever happened was going to be dramatic.

I never went to those things. Why torture myself, watching her with him?

But that night…I think Lisa must’ve been aware of the rumors, too, because she started drinking early. I bumped into her in the parking lot of the local ice cream place a few hours before the sun even set—kids went there to use the bathroom and/or get a raspberry swirl cone. That was why I was there. I still won’t say no to a good raspberry swirl.

She hugged me. “Peter Greene!” I could smell the alcohol on her—she was already trashed. She made me promise that I’d go to the beach, and that we’d dance together to “Let’s Go Crazy,” since that was “our song.” Whatever that meant, since there was no “our” anything.

So yeah, I went, and I witnessed the dumping, which was about as horrific as it could be, considering Lisa was so drunk that she had no clue what was happening. It was a cross between a breakup and a key party—and if you don’t know what a key party is, Google it. But brace yourself first.

In short, Brad—football hero that he was—was “setting Lisa free” as they went off to different colleges on different coasts. He was Notre Dame–bound, she was going to some little two-year performing arts school in LA. But to celebrate their new “freedom,” he was going to go fuck Karen Possingham, while Lisa was handed off to whichever one of Brad’s football buddies “won” her. Seriously, Brad was actually holding a raffle, and the winner got to drive her home, stopping in some dark cul-de-sac along the way.

I wanted to kill them all.

So I just went over to her, and picked her up. Brad was shouting something at me, but I ignored him. I carried her out of there and put her into my car.

And here’s where it got super-’80s-movie. Because yeah. I took her to Hiroko’s. She was so drunk, I didn’t want to take her home; get her into trouble with her parents. Hiroko already disapproved, but I trusted her, and she and I took turns with Lisa as she puked her guts up all night long.

Fast forward to the next day. Lisa finally woke up, and pieced together the horror show of the night.

I remember we were out in Hiroko’s garden, and she said, “You saved me from that douchebag. Thank you.”

I said, “You’re welcome.” I didn’t say “You’d do the same for me,” because I knew she wouldn’t’ve. But that was okay, because she was Lisa.

She hugged me, and when she didn’t let go, I asked, “Are you okay?”

That was when she kissed me.

And I’m human, so I kissed her back. And Jesus, it was nice. It was perfect. It was everything. Everything.

Except it wasn’t.

She put her hand on my thigh and started heading north, up the leg of my shorts, and I wanted—so badly—both for her to touch me and for this to be real. For her to have finally recognized that she loved me, too.

But I stopped her, because I didn’t want to be her fuck you message to Brad. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be her Karen Possingham.

Apparently, I was the first boy in the history of Lisa to say no.

And I kept saying no, because I wanted her to love me. I had to be the guy who didn’t sleep with her. So that’s what I did. In August, she went to LA. I visited her on weekends during my senior year, and I’d bring a bedroll and sleep on the floor of her dorm.

I hated acting—I liked the backstage stuff—but even though I hated performing, I auditioned for the same school, and got in. In hindsight, it wasn’t as boneheaded a decision as it looks. Even though my test scores were high, my grades were shitty because I just didn’t care, so the alternative was community college or the armed services. I was good at stage managing, and you could argue that learning how to act would help me deal with actors. But bottom line, I was majoring in Lisa.

So, in the longest ’80s movie plotline ever, in August after I graduated from high school, I moved to LA, too. I didn’t have the money for a dorm room, but that was okay, because I just moved into Lisa’s room, where I slept on the floor—assuming she didn’t have an overnight guest.

Seventeen months after I first turned Lisa down, she told me that she didn’t think she could live without me. And she asked me to be her boyfriend instead of just her friend. And then, for a while, I had everything I’d ever wanted, because Lisa loved me, too.

Shayla looked up from her computer. “Let’s delete assuming she didn’t have an overnight guest. Maddie doesn’t need to know that her mother did that to you.”

“Trust me,” Peter said, as he cut open the tape that sealed another box. “Lisa wasn’t doing it to me—she wasn’t thinking about me. At all.”

“Still.” Shay kept it to herself, but she was pretty damn certain that Lisa had hoped Peter was listening at the door.

“That change is fine with me,” he said, so she made the deletion and hit send.

“Okay, Maddie,” she murmured as she also sent Maddie a text: Just sent another email. “Send me something back.”

She and Peter were in his garage, where yesterday afternoon the SEAL candidates nicknamed Seagull and Timebomb had neatly stacked all of the boxes of Lisa and Maddie’s belongings that had previously been in the Palm Springs storage unit.

They’d made the decision to multi-task and have Shay type Peter’s Chapter Three while he opened and searched through boxes. Neither of them knew what he was hoping to find, but they both agreed that doing something was better than nothing.

Whoever had done the actual packing of those boxes hadn’t taken the time to label any of them. They’d also packed weirdly random things together, like piles of junk mail in with the coffee mugs. A small garbage pail filled with dryer lint had actually been packed in with a mound of unfolded laundry.

Maddie’s computer was indeed deceased—a casualty of the quake. So after Shay had changed into garage-rummaging clothes—an old pair of shorts and a tank top that clearly dated from 2008—she’d brought over her own laptop. She sat with it now, in a folding lawn chair, in the shade at the open door of the garage.

“What happened to make Lisa change her mind? Seventeen months after graduation,” she asked. Something must have happened.

“Her mom died,” Peter told her.

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah, it was rough. Not completely out of the blue, because she’d been ill, but…I went back to San Diego with Lisa. There were so many of her relatives in town, we ended up staying at my mother’s house. She assumed we were together, so she put us in my old room. It wasn’t a big deal, we were sharing a much smaller space in LA and I was fine with sleeping on the floor. But Lisa was really upset, and…” He cleared his throat. “We ended up sharing more than a bed—whoa! Hey! Look at this.”

He held up a book, and whoa indeed, it was Harry’s War. The familiar red, white, and blue cover was from the first hardcover edition that had come out four, no, five years ago.

But Shay was too freaked out by what Peter had just told her to really comprehend. Lisa had been upset—the way Shay had been upset after the earthquake. And sex had happened in both instances, because he was too kind and well-mannered to say no.

It was stupid of her to be freaked out—it was exactly what she already knew. She’d been in need of his comfort and pity, and she was clearly female enough so that he’d run his bar hookup pattern and—

Wait. Which was it? Pity fuck or bar hookup? Or maybe, in her case, a weird mashup of both?

“Lisa was a Shayla Whitman fan,” Peter said, pulling more of her books out of the box. His ex had what looked like ten of them, most in paperback. “I’m reading this one—” he held up Outside of the Lines “—right now.”

“What…?” Shay said.

He stacked the books in a neat pile. “Yeah, didn’t I tell you?”

“Noooo.”

“I’m pretty sure I did. I downloaded it the night we met.”

“You definitely didn’t tell me that.” Oh, my God.

“I really like it,” he said.

Oh, shit. “You don’t have to say that.”

“Well, yeah, I know,” he said. “But I mean it. It’s well written, the characters are great—I could swear that I know them, that I’ve worked with them. You got that FBI team dynamic really right. But I think what I like the best is that it’s fun. It’s wildly entertaining—every time I pick it up, I can’t put it down. It’s like reading a really good action movie, with porn thrown in.”

Whoa! Wait! “Romance is not porn,” she told him. “Porn is sex without an emotional connection. Romance is all about the emotions. I mean, yeah, insert tab A into slot B, but the end result isn’t just a balloon-drop with confetti. There are massive feelings happening, too.”

Peter nodded. “Fair enough. But it’s also true that the feelings ping-pong everywhere. They aren’t quite You complete me.”

“Well, yeah,” Shay said. “Because that’s bullshit. People—particularly women—don’t need someone else to be whole. They need someone else to stand beside them and help them be the best person that they can be. To support—and enhance who they are. Not to fill in some mythical missing piece.” She made a raspberry sound, muttering, “You complete me.”

He was laughing at her. “I suspect I hit a hot button. I apologize.”

“Believe me, I’m very familiar with the disrespect this genre gets.”

“So why not write something different?”

“Why are you a SEAL?” she countered.

Peter smiled. “Got it.”

“So, what part are you up to?” She couldn’t keep herself from asking.

“The scene in the utility closet,” he said. “During the gala at the marina?”

Oh dear.

“Your characters have a lot of sex. Not that I’m complaining. Just observing.”

“People, in general, have a lot of sex,” she pointed out.

He opened another box. “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “I’ve had more sex in the past twenty-four hours than I’ve had in the past…hell, I-don’t-know-how-many years. And your characters are even busier than we’ve been.”

Wait, what? Really? Was he saying…? Back in the truck, after that awkward friends-with-bennies conversation, he’d asked her about Carter. Was he now telling her…No, that was ridiculous. This man had definitely had sex—and a lot of it—post-Lisa. Bar hookup pattern, he’d called it. But bar hookups, by nature, were one-and-done—which made for generally shitty sex. Okay, maybe not shitty precisely, but certainly not transcendent.

“This guy Jack,” he continued.

“The book’s hero,” she said. “Romances have two main characters—the two people who fall in love and win their HEA—actually, I prefer to say earn. They earn their happily-ever-after.”

He lifted the box, which made the muscles in his arm do amazing things, and set it into the I have no clue if the contents are Lisa’s or Maddie’s pile before turning back to her. “Right, but Jack’s got this penchant for tossing Loretta up against whatever wall is nearby, and he’s always got a handy condom in his pocket.”

“Safe sex,” Shay said as Peter moved toward her. His worn-out T-shirt fit him just fine, as did his ripped and faded cargo shorts. She cleared her throat and checked her phone. Still nothing from Maddie. “A lot of my readers are young women. Girls, really. Some are younger than Maddie. The message I want to send is that strong, smart women always have protected sex. And that one of the things that makes hot guys extra hot is their respect for the safety of their partner.”

“But the wall-tossing part,” Peter said, reaching down to take the computer off of her lap. “That’s where I’m feeling the pressure to suspend a little too much disbelief.” He closed it and put it onto the concrete floor, on the far side of the boxes. “Sex like that can’t be comfortable for anyone, especially Loretta.”

“It’s not about comfort,” she said. “It’s hot. It’s I need you now, and I can’t wait. Don’t get me wrong. Beds are great. They’re lovely, and yes, you’re right, most people make love in the glorious comfort of a bed, but I write those non-bed scenes to show the height and the power of the characters’ need and emotion.”

He came over to her and held both of his hands out. “Come here.”

She put her hands into his. He had very nice hands—big hands—with long, broad fingers. He had even nicer eyes, and she met his gaze as he pulled her out of the chair so that she was standing in front of him.

He gently tugged her over to the stacked wall of unsorted boxes, and turned her so that her back was to them. But then he backed them both up about four steps as he said, “Okay, so when they’re in the utility closet, Loretta’s here.” He let go of her hand and took another few steps backward, putting a few feet of space between them. “And Jack’s here. And they’re talking, yada yada…”

Shayla laughed. “You’re not seriously going to try to mythbust a scene from a romance novel…?”

“I am, yes, so shh. You’re telling the story at this point through Jack, right?” Peter said.

“It’s called POV—point of view,” she said. “And yes, that scene’s in Jack’s, but seriously, Peter…”

“So we know what Jack’s thinking, and he’s mad at Loretta for taking that risk out on the balcony with the killer, what’s-his-name—”

“Alfred Sinclair,” Shay said. “And he’s the suspected killer. They don’t know for sure yet that he’s—”

“Right. But we know he is. And Jack’s a smart man, and in that moment when he was watching her with Sinclair on that balcony, he was terrified and now his fear has turned to anger, but he’s also relieved as fuck that she’s all right. And that’s brilliant, by the way, because relief can really bring you to your knees after a high-stress situation. Plus since we’re seeing her through his eyes, and she’s wearing that dress, and we know just how much she turns him on, so when she says Shut up and kiss me—or whatever it was she said, I’m paraphrasing—it makes total sense that he’d be, Game over.”

“Thank you.” She was delighted. “That was exactly what I was attempting to communicate with that scene.”

“What was it that she said to him…?” he asked.

“Oh, God, I don’t know,” Shay admitted. “I wrote that book a long time ago. But the subtext was definitely Shut up and kiss me.”

Peter smiled as the words left her lips, and she realized she’d played right into his ridiculous mythbusting hand. He moved toward her—fast—and kissed her, exactly as Jack had kissed Loretta in that fiery scene from Outside of the Lines.

He wrapped his arms around her, which was a good thing, because the way he was all but inhaling her—his mouth hard against hers, his tongue damn near down her throat—made her weak in the knees. He lifted her up and wrapped her legs around his waist, and God, he smelled so good and she’d been sitting there all that time, watching the play of muscles in his back and arms and dying to touch him. So now as she kissed him, she did just that, and she felt him push her back so that she bumped up against that wall and—

Whoa!

The stacked cardboard boxes shifted and moved beneath their combined weight, and Peter quickly regained his balance, stepping away, and setting her back on her feet.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought I could prove my point without any risk of hurting you. I thought the boxes would provide a little give—just not that much.”

Shayla was standing there, out of breath, with her heart practically pounding out of her chest. She could still barely stand by herself, and all she could think was that this must be what it felt like to get hit by lightning. How could he kiss her like that, and then…just…talk like normal?

“We need a real wall,” she somehow managed to say. “So I can prove my point.” She made her legs walk and she forced herself not to stagger or weave as she went toward the back of the garage, looking for…“There.” She pointed.

Hidden back behind the towering cube of unsorted boxes was a flat metal door that led to the backyard. Seagull and Timebomb had obviously taken care not to block it, instead creating a corridor with the boxes on one side, a real wall with utility shelving on the other, and the door down at the end. She put herself a few steps in front of it. “Let’s try that again.”

Peter shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not going to slam you against that.”

“You don’t slam. You connect. You use it to brace yourself, and me. Loretta. Jack does, I mean.” Oh God, she was getting a little too into this.

“You used the word slam,” he said.

“But before I did, I switched point of views,” she told him. “Right at Loretta’s line of dialogue. Kiss me—boom. New scene. For the actual sex, we’re now inside Loretta’s head. You were reading the ebook, right? Sometimes scene changes aren’t clearly marked in the e-format. I hate when that happens. Trust me, Jack doesn’t slam her. He kisses the shit out of her, yeah, but he’s always careful—in fact, he’s too careful for Loretta. She feels like he’s always holding something back. Still, when he grabs her and kisses her in this scene, it feels to Loretta like a slam. For her, that’s a really good thing, because not only does she like sex a little rough, she desperately wants this man to lose his mind over her.”

Peter was paying attention—doing that thing where he really listened—and now he moved toward her. But slowly, unlike before. He leaned in, gently touching her chin and lifting her face up toward him, but then just barely brushing his lips against hers as he said, “So he kisses her, and she kisses him back.” He moved her arms up around his neck then put his own arms around her. “And he does this—” he lifted her up, his hands supporting her derrière, same as he did before, only slowly this time as he talked them through it “—so she does this—” her legs went around him “—as meanwhile, he’s doing this.” He carried her forward—his forward—until her back gently bumped up against the metal of the door.

It was surprisingly warm. She’d expected coolness, but then realized that the midmorning sun was beating down on it, on its other side.

And there they stood—not just nose to nose, but body to body. Shay could feel him hard against her and had to work to keep from melting into a little pile of begging protoplasm.

“Okay,” he said. “It makes sense that as long as he doesn’t drive toward her like a linebacker, she won’t get hurt when she hits the wall. And I see how these mechanics work.” He shifted against her. “But he’s also gotta not drop her while they’re having sex.”

“I think that’s what makes it extra hot,” she said. Compared to him, she sounded embarrassingly out of breath, considering she was the one being held, not doing the holding. “The idea that he’s giving her this—” she now moved against him “—while he’s doing this…” She ran her hands down his shoulders and arms and chest, where he was very definitely getting a workout.

“This is extra hot?” Peter asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

He smiled and shifted all of her weight into one arm—what…? That was crazy that he could do that. But then he used his free hand to pull a condom from his pocket. “And I hear on good authority that this makes it even hotter.”

Oh, thank God. Shay laughed. “My panties just burst into flame.”

Peter laughed, too, but then he frowned. “Maybe this is where we bust the myth, because if I’m supposed to put this on with one hand, while kissing you…?”

“Of course not,” she said. “You put me down—just for a few seconds, while we…”

He did and she shucked off her shorts and her panties while he unfastened his shorts and tore open the condom wrapper. As he covered himself, Shay glanced toward the open garage bay door, but the pile of boxes shielded them completely from the street. In fact, someone could stand right in the driveway, and not know they were back here. It was really not that different from having sex in a tent.

Peter was as perceptive as always. “Want me to close that?”

“No.” What was her line? She smiled and said, “Shut up and kiss me.”

Shay was right.

This was fucking hot.

Pete held her, her back against that door as he pushed himself inside of her.

They both had their shirts on and she was still wearing her sneakers, but even that was weirdly hot, too. And the garage door being open added something dangerously sexy as well.

This kind of sex not only put Shayla completely into Pete’s hands, but also completely at his mercy. He alone controlled how slow or fast they moved—she had little to no traction, save for her ability to pull him more deeply inside of her by applying pressure around his butt with her legs. But even then, it took almost no effort for him to resist her.

Unlike Jack from her book, Pete took his time. Maybe he was showing off—look at how long I can hold you like this. But Jesus, he loved the way it felt to surround himself completely with her softness and heat, and then to pull himself almost entirely free and then do it again and again and again, while he gazed into her eyes.

The look on her face…it was killing him. Both her smile and her eyes were dreamy and satisfied—as if he didn’t even need to make her come to bring her unbelievable pleasure. And yeah, that was one page they absolutely were both on together. If he could just spend the entire rest of his life right here, doing this, feeling this…It would be more than enough.

But then she came—and proved him wrong yet again, because Jesus, making Shayla come like this was his new favorite thing in the world. And for those endlessly long seconds, as she unraveled in front of him and around him, it didn’t matter what they called their relationship. This connection, these feelings, this moment they were sharing—it was real. It was truth.

It was there, solid, beneath whatever name they gave it.

And Pete came, too.