A hand smoothed down my thigh, and judging by the way things felt, that hand was attached to a naked woman lying between my legs. A mouth kissed the head of my cock, and I shuddered at the sensation.

“You’re awake,” a familiar voice said. And those words were followed by a giggle.

Calie.

I opened my eyes and craned my head upward to see her sprawled between my legs. She grinned up at me and took my cock into her mouth before dragging her head up, then down.

Blearily, I looked around, and it was pathetic that part of me could still focus on logical shit while she was giving me a blowjob, but the fact of the matter was…I could.

And it wasn’t that she wasn’t good at it.

I just wasn’t…invested in anything but the outcome.

If I closed my eyes, it made it easier to get to the end goal, too. Closing my eyes made it easier to think about the hot, wet mouth as it slid down my cock, taking me deep, all the way to the back of her throat in a practiced glide before sliding back up and holding the tip of my penis between her lips for a teasing moment before starting it all over again.

She kept that pace up for several minutes before shifting away to close her mouth over my sac, and I arched up with a grunt as she fisted her hand over my dick and began to pump.

Calie moved up, taking the head of my cock once more, and I could feel her head bobbing up and down. I needed to stop thinking about Calie, because every time I did, the interest waned a little…and wasn’t that a bitch when the woman had my dick in her mouth?

I deliberately blanked my mind and focused on the sensation, reaching down to fist a hand in Calie’s hair. It came as something of a surprise when I found myself wishing the chin length strands of reddish brown were a brighter shade of red…and a lot shorter.

The cute girl from last night.

My dick stirred, and the waning interest wasn’t waning anymore.

Calie purred, the sound vibrating down my shaft, but I shoved out thoughts of her. It was the rudest damn thing to do, but deflating while she was giving me head wasn’t very polite either, I figured.

I didn’t entirely let myself fantasize about another woman while I was there in bed with a different woman, but every few moments, the girl from last night made an appearance.

It was frustrating, and I tightened my hand in Calie’s hair, half-thinking to pull her off. She gasped a little and said, “More.”

Hell.

I let her finish me off, and when she curled up next to me, I laid there with my eyes closed, feeling like a bigger asshole than normal. But I hadn’t asked her to stay the night. My head had been full of the cute redhead for hours, so I was almost positive I wouldn’t have asked her to stay the night – I never did.

Calie arched against me, and I felt the slick glide of her cunt grinding against my thigh. “I’m kinda hungry over here,” she said in a little girl voice that was no doubt meant to turn me on. It didn’t.

Climbing out of bed, I grabbed a pair of jeans from the foot and shot her a look. “It’s morning. Why are you here?”

“Because you didn’t kick me out?” She giggled and sat up, sitting with her legs crisscrossed, showing off the pink, wet folds between her thighs.

I kept my gaze focused on her face. “You know the rules. I don’t like it when people spend the night.”

Her lashes drooped over her eyes, and she lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You didn’t seem to mind just now.”

“I rarely mind it when a woman decides to give me a blowjob,” I said bluntly. “That doesn’t mean you can break the rules we established when we first hooked up. We talked about them, remember? I don’t stay the night at your place, you don’t stay the night at mine. Remember that talk? We’ve had it a couple of times now actually.”

Her lids flickered, and her full mouth tightened with annoyance for the briefest moment, but I didn’t let it get to me. I never made any pretenses about who or what I was, and she knew it.

She rolled onto her hands and knees in the next moment and started to crawl toward me. “Why are you so afraid of a commitment, Kane?” she asked, her voice soft, almost gentle. “It was just one night. We both had fun. It shouldn’t be such a big deal after how long we’ve been together.”

I almost laughed but told myself it wasn’t going to help anything.

Grabbing a t-shirt, I hauled it on, ignoring the small pains in my back that let me know she wasn’t lying when she said we’d had fun. She’d scratched the hell out of me. I could feel it.

“I’m not afraid of commitment, Calie,” I pointed out. “I just don’t want it.” Especially not from her. She was…clingy. And it was dawning on me lately, how manipulative she was. I didn’t care to have anybody pulling my strings, but nobody was going to do it using sex and slow, sultry smiles. I’d stopped letting my dick make decisions for me a long time ago, and I wasn’t about to go back down that road. “As to us being together…we’re not. We fuck. This isn’t exclusive.”

Something hot flashed in her eyes.

Aw, hell.

Cocking my head, I studied her face. “You do remember that I told you from the beginning this wasn’t exclusive, right? We can see other people, fuck other people, we don’t spend the night with each other, and we use protection, period.

When she didn’t answer, I turned on my heel and strode into the small bathroom attached to my bedroom.

I breathed out a sigh of relief when I found two used rubbers in the garbage can. When I came out, she was sitting in the middle of the bed, a pillow clutched to her middle. “You gloved up,” she said peevishly. “I told you that you didn’t have to. I’m clean, and it’s not that time of the month.”

“I’ve been with two other girls in the past month. For all you know, I’m not clean.” I was – I got checked every month. A friend of mine from the joint had managed to go his entire time there without getting sick with HIV, hepatitis, or any of the other shit that could grab guys like us, but then a month after he got out, he hooked up with a girl from before his time inside, and voila. He ended up with HIV. It made me nervous. I always gloved up, and I got tested regularly.

Her eyes widened, but I didn’t know if it was because of the not clean comment or because I told her that I’d been with girls other than her. “I made it clear that this wasn’t exclusive,” I said again, grinding the message in.

She stood up on the bed, glaring at me. “Why you gotta be so mean to me? Don’t you know how I feel about you?”

“Whatever you think you feel…” I shook my head. “You might want to stop feeling it. I’m not ever going to feel the same way, Calie. It’s time for you to go.”

She blinked back furious tears, although I had no idea if they were real or not. I couldn’t say it mattered much to me either. She was working me on some level, and I wasn’t going to have it.

Especially not after that crack claiming she’d told me I didn’t have to wear a rubber.

That had been rule number one, and if I’d been drunk enough last night not to remember her coming home with me, then I’d been way too drunk for her to go planting her ass at my side and inviting herself over for a sleepover she knew I wouldn’t agree to if I was sober.

It pissed me the hell off.

“It was just one night!” she shouted at me as she jumped off the bed. “What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is I don’t do one nights – at all.” I glared at her as she went to swing the pillow at me. “And I already pointed out that it’s time for you to go. I’ve got stuff to do, and I need to get to it. I’ve got plans for dinner with my family later.”

Immediately, her face changed, softening. A smile curled her lips. “You should have said so. Now I know why you’re so grumpy. You always get uptight when you have things going on. Why don’t you let me help you?” She bit her lip, an attempt at shyness that just didn’t do it for me.

I knew her. She wasn’t shy.

Another flicker flashed through my mind – the redhead from Times Square.

The nervous glint in her eyes, how she wouldn’t look straight at me for the first few seconds.

“Maybe I could even come with you,” Calie was saying. “I’ve never even met your family. You hardly ever talk about them.”

“No.” I held up a hand, cutting off anything else she might say. “I don’t talk about my family for the same reason I don’t spend the night, Calie. I’m private. My bed is mine, my home is mine, my family is mine.”

Her face tightened, the chill coming back to her eyes. She turned on her heel and took a few steps to where her clothes lay in a pile. “Well, fine. Be an asshole, Kane!”

I rolled my eyes as she continued to shout and mutter at me, and once I’d shut the door behind her ten minutes later, I wondered if maybe it was time to just stop seeing her altogether. The sex was fine, but it wasn’t good enough to merit the headache that was starting to accompany it.