Slow Burn

Chapter 3

My eyelids are closed but it’s still so damn bright from the sunlight streaming into the room. I squeeze my eyes tighter to try to block it out, trying to clear the haze from my thoughts. I struggle to remember details from last night. How is it possible that I drank enough I can’t remember, but my head isn’t pounding like a damn tom drum?

I decide to snuggle farther into the down comforter, not wanting to wake up just yet. Wanting to forgo the headache that will inevitably hit me at full force the minute my body acknowledges it’s awake. But the fog starts to dissipate, and my thoughts replay the perfection of yesterday and what an incredible day it was. Smiles and laughter and love. Dancing and drinking and … oh fuck.

… fuck playing it safe …

… here comes three …

The words flicker through my mind and now I’m completely alert and cringe from the sun when my eyes flash open. I blink against the harsh light, and when I can focus, I’m staring straight at Becks. Oh shit!

His head is angled to the side on his pillow, the lines of his face relaxed and his hair sticking up every which way. There’s a five o’clock shadow where I’m used to seeing his clean-shaven skin, and I vaguely recall the feel of it grazing against my abdomen. My eyes admiringly trace the line of his throat down his chest to that sexy-as-hell infinity zone, which disappears beneath the sheet right where I want to look the most. The sight of him undressed is even more overpowering now that I am completely sober.

I admire the view momentarily and wonder if I pull the sheets a little tighter around me, will they slip far enough off of him to grant me the view I want? I start to slowly draw them toward me when last night comes flooding back to me in full high-definition color.

Whispered words and moaned sighs. The heady combination of playful teasing, unfettered need, and insatiable desire. His adept hands and skillful mouth creating an ache so intense, I felt as if my body was on fire.

I remember how he gave me exactly what I wanted—to feel physically so that I could be numb to emotion. How when I looked into his eyes, I pleaded with him to bring me to the brink, push me into that oblivion of sensation. And when he finally entered me, he was a considerate yet demanding lover who left me breathless, sated, and confused.

My thighs tense, and my core clenches as I recall all of the sensations he evoked in me. I lay my head back down on the pillow and close my eyes to try to push away the desire that’s already burning anew.

It was a onetime thing.

Sex without strings.

Exactly how I wanted it.

So why is my mind focusing on what he murmured into the silent room as I lay curled up against him when he thought I’d drifted off to sleep? His sighed words were laced with frustrated confusion. “Goddamn strings.”

The alcohol-blurred details continue to play behind my closed eyelids like a slide show, and all I keep thinking is: What the fuck was I thinking? But I know I wasn’t really thinking at all. I was so busy trying to mask my grief that I selfishly never considered the harm I might do to him in the end.

Fuck. Damn. Shit.

I also can’t help but think what a truly good guy he is. This is all my fault—even though my mind is floating with fuzzy bits of our time together, I can still piece together the fact that Becks tried to do the right thing. He tried to put me to bed, let me sleep it off, prevent me from getting behind the wheel.

This is on me. Completely on me. Why couldn’t I have followed through with my plan to leave and go screw around with someone who wouldn’t have given a shit if I left in the morning without another word? Why last night of all nights did I need to feel something just a little bit more? Was I afraid that the dam I’d built around my heartache might break and maybe, just maybe, I wanted someone around who I knew would take care of me if it did?

And so I used him.

Used a good man who didn’t deserve to be used. Guilt eats at me until I force myself to open my eyes again and face Becks. I take in his handsome face and all-American good looks. He’s the quintessential good guy—most definitely not my stereotypical go-to tattooed bad boy. I study him for a minute, my eyes drifting back down to where the sheet rests low on his hips … because he may not be my type but that doesn’t mean I can’t admire his hotter-than-hell physique. Soon my mind wanders back to the feel of his muscles bunching beneath my fingers, and I can’t help but wonder if I could ever get used to him. To this.

I am so used to thriving on the wild, volatile but fun-as-fuck drama-filled relationships—well, if you can really call them relationships—with the rebels in my past.

I can’t help my hushed chuckle when the thought hits me: Who would’ve thought that Ry would have spent the night—shit, married—the reckless bad boy, while I spent it with the Southern gentleman? Talk about switching places. Something was most definitely screwy with the world.

When I look up, I startle as I meet Becks’s blue eyes. We stare at each other for a moment as we struggle with the awkwardness and figure out where to go from here. He looks at me from beneath half-closed eyelids and says, “Morning.” He yawns softly but never takes his eyes from mine as if he’s waiting to gauge my reaction before saying anything else.

“Good morning,” I murmur back, my fingers tracing idle lines on the sheet. A slow, sluggish smile turns up one corner of his mouth, and my heart stutters in my chest.

And panic starts closing in on my throat.

I don’t want to feel the warmth that just spread throughout my body at that lazy, boyish grin of his. I don’t want to feel the contentment I feel right now. And most of all, I don’t want to see that look in his eyes that tells me this could be so much more if I let it.

That’s what Lexi did.

And look where that left her and Danny. And Maddie.

I shake myself from my thoughts and try to swallow the lump of anxiety taking hold. I avert my eyes quickly as I calm my overactive imagination and stop freaking the fuck out. I remind myself that I took my batteries out of my biological clock and put them in my vibrator for a reason.

I can do this. I may not remember all of last night, but I recall telling him that it would be sex without strings. He understood up front what this was. No matter what the fuck last night was, it was just a physical connection between two willing adults. So why am I afraid to look up from my fidgeting fingers and meet his eyes?

“Hey?” The rasp of his voice, laced with concern, pulls at me until I can’t stand it anymore. I look up to his eyes. “What are you thinking …?” His voice trails off as I find mine.

I gather the sheet around my chest, “Becks,” I say his name with a shy smile on my face, “this is okay.” I shake my head for emphasis. “We may have been drunk last night, but, one, I’m never too drunk to not remember and enjoy … and boy, did I enjoy.” I can’t resist adding that last part because, casual or not, the man’s got some moves. Number three was definitely more earth shifting than number two. And hell if four wasn’t pretty damn good too. My comment causes the lazy smile on his face to spread into a sheepish grin, which instantly has me wanting to melt into him. And I can’t. It’s not an option, regardless of how much my insides are warmed by the thoughts I refuse to welcome.

“We agreed no strings. No complications,” I say, shrugging my shoulders to let him know that I’m more than okay with this. Something flickers in his eyes, and I can’t quite get a read on it, so I continue. “I’m not the typical, clingy female that—”

“You’re anything but typical,” he murmurs sleepily.

I just stare at him for a beat before I tell myself to get my point across before I say something stupid. “Thanks, but all I was trying to say is that I’m not the type of girl to turn into a psycho stalker after a night of casual sex.”

“Coming four times is not exactly casual sex,” he teases with a playful smirk, which has me laughing nervously.

“Becks, I just don’t want this to be awkward….” I shake my head, needing to say this to remove the guilt from my conscience. “I’m sorry that I pushed you last night … I didn’t mean for …” I sigh out loud as the thoughts I want to convey aren’t forming into the words I need.

“No one pushes me to do anything. Especially sex.”

His eyes search mine like he wants to say something else but he doesn’t. So I continue blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. “Thank you for taking care of me.” I cringe and avert my eyes immediately, embarrassed but glad I said it.

He continues staring at me for a moment with his quiet intensity, before nodding his head subtly and shifting to sit up. “Well, I’m glad we got that straight,” he says, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed so that his back is facing me. He scrubs a hand through his bed head, leaving it sticking up all over the place, before rising slowly. “No strings,” he repeats, standing up completely naked before walking toward the bathroom. I swear he mumbles something about a lasso, but I’m too busy looking at the view to care.

I may want no strings, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate one last lingering glance of that fine ass of his before he closes the bathroom door.

I smile smugly, understanding why Colton says Becks is the best pit crew chief in the business. He sure as hell kept my motor revving with perfection last night.

I roll over on my back and stare at the ceiling as the toilet flushes, and then the shower starts. I hear the muted sounds of the ocean outside and stare at the shadows playing across the ceiling. I exhale as my thoughts turn to last night, my mind recalling and my skin remembering all too well his touch, his taste, his scent.

And then I start giggling. Wave after wave of laughter rolls through me as I realize that this is the first time in a long time I’ve woken up without the constant grief from Lexi’s death heavy on my thoughts and smothering my spirit.

I wipe the smudges from under my eyes, asking myself why today I finally feel like I can get through this: the grief, the loneliness of Lexi being gone.

And even though my mind keeps wandering to the fine-as-fuck man occupying the shower, I push those thoughts away, push him away. There is no possible way I could suddenly feel all of this because of him, and how he treated me last night or how he made me feel.

It was just the physical release that did this to me. It had to be.

Whatever. Who cares about the why, right? Because I’ll take the four orgasms he gave me and do my walk of shame with an enthusiastic bounce in my step.

“So, how do you like running your own business? You keeping busy?”

Becks’s question pulls me from my thoughts as the world outside flies by the passenger side window. I shift in my seat so I can study his profile. God sure as hell didn’t skimp in the looks department on him. So why am I all of a sudden just noticing it?

“It’s pretty cool working for myself.” I shrug, glad he’s keeping this casual and trying to avoid any awkwardness. “I have a couple events coming up with that company Scandalous that bought some of the older nightclubs around town to revamp them. They hired me to do the promotion for the reopenings, and if they like how things turn out, they’ll retain me as their premier promotion company.”

“So, you’ll have a high-profile client that will attract other clients. Nice,” he says, drawing out the last word and absently nodding his head.

“I haven’t clinched the deal yet. This chick doesn’t count her chickens.”

He snorts out a laugh. “Well, you should start counting because we both know it’ll be a success just because it’s you.”

A part of me is pleased he thinks so favorably of me, even after last night. He flicks on the blinker and glances over at me, before looking back to the highway in front of him.

“So what’s your story?”

I furrow my brows as I stare at him, thinking the question odd since we’ve known each other more than a year, but then I realize in all that time, aside from superficial questions, Becks and I have never spoken about our pasts, how we got where we are. And then it bugs me because I can’t figure out why he’s asking me. I mean this is supposed to be casual, so we shouldn’t weigh it down with any history.

“Becks,” I sigh out his name. “Look, I appreciate you trying to make this situation so it’s not awkward, but we don’t have to do the whole ‘twenty questions about your past’ thing.”

He chuckles low and shakes his head like he’s trying to process what I just said. “You must have dated some real winners in your past. First of all,” he says, looking over to me and then back to the road as I try to not appear irritated by his comment. “I’m not asking you because I feel obligated. I find you intriguing and am curious about what got you here to this point, so humor me….”

“And second?” I ask, a little taken aback by his interest.

“Second? Hm. Second, I don’t have a clue what I was going to say because those sexy legs of yours distracted me.” He laughs, and how can I be anything but flattered? “But I assure you it was damn good.”

“Smooth,” I tease, enjoying the ease between us.

“Oh, there’s still a whole helluva lot of rough.” He smirks and reaches over to pat my knee. “So humor me?”

I sigh loudly, not getting the point of this exercise since there isn’t a future between us. “Grew up in Long Beach. Pretty normal childhood. One sister, Lexi,” I say as if he didn’t already know and glance over at him to see if he noticed the waver in my voice, but he’s looking at the road ahead of us. “Was okay in school, nothing stellar. My mom got sick my junior year and—”

“Sick?”

“Breast cancer,” I tell him as I watch the shock flicker across his face that more than one person in my immediate family has been afflicted with the devastation of this disease. “She was in and out of treatment, surgeries, whatnot well into my senior year but I managed to get into UCLA.” I smile at the memory of how torn I was because Lexi went to Arizona for school. How I’d wanted to follow her and fulfill our goals of getting an apartment and living on our own together, but I wasn’t accepted there. “I walked into the dorm freshman year and there was this brown-haired girl with curious eyes and a shy smile sitting opposite of me.”

“Rylee.”

“Yep. My parents left after I’d unpacked, and Ry and I have been inseparable ever since. We went through the freshman fifteen together, boyfriends, heartbreaks, so much during those four years and everything life threw at us after. I graduated with a degree in PR and got lucky right off the bat with an internship at a company called PRX. Worked my way up from gofer to managing my own events. I loved my job there and was able to build a decent reputation after proving that the cute little blonde was more than just a decoration.”

“That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.” The words on my tongue falter at his oddly satisfying compliment. “So, why leave and start HaLex, then?”

The smile tugs at the corners of my mouth while my heart aches with the sadness of the truth. “Because Lexi and I always wanted to do something together…. Even when we were little, we’d pretend to have a business where we scheduled our Barbies for photo shoots or had our Cabbage Patch Kids doing commercials.” I laugh at the memories that flicker through my mind. “So, we decided with her business degree and my established connections we’d try it. What did we have to lose? I had a few clients offer to give me some smaller jobs, so I quit PRX … and two months later, Lex was diagnosed.”

“Had …”

I shrug, try to act like it’s no big deal when in fact it was my whole world tumbling down. “Yeah, well … now …” I let the thought drift off, unsure exactly what else there is to tell of my heartbreak. I clear my throat of the emotion, and the car falls into silence.

“Your mom is okay now?”

The shards of heartbreak spike anew. “She was in remission for four years and then it relapsed. The second time was bad.” Chills chase one another over my skin. “Double mastectomy, endless chemo and radiation … just bad.”

He reaches out and holds my hand in his, a silent show of support that’s unexpectedly welcome when I’m so used to shunning it. I appreciate his avoidance of the word sorry, the most overused word on the face of the earth when someone becomes ill or dies. The quiet falls again, both of us lost in our thoughts.

After a bit Becks brushes his thumb back and forth over the top of my hand, and while it’s a simple, nonverbal acknowledgment of my grief, it’s also a subtle reminder of the damn good sex we had last night. My body reacts without thought, that ache between my thighs reawakening unexpectedly. I steal a glance over at him, but his attention is focused completely on the road ahead of us.

Does he feel it too?

Ah crap. Lock it down, Montgomery. No need to be thinking with your crotch when this was a onetime deal. It’s not a budding flower, for God’s sake. Think snapdragon. Think Venus flytrap. Think shutting it down to prevent his dick from dominating your thoughts.

“Last night …” It’s all he says, his voice trailing off as he glances behind him to change lanes.

Dick dominance gone.

Hello, awkwardness.

No need to cool the ache of desire between my thighs now because that sure as hell was the jolt I needed to pull my thoughts and body from the edge of desire.

I feign that I need to scratch my other arm, an excuse to pull my hand from his and break our connection.

His sigh tells me he sees right through my bluff, so I stare at him, waiting for him to look my way again. I need him to see the expression on my face that says I’m totally cool with what happened. But he doesn’t look at me—not even a glance—so that I can figure out what it is he’s getting at.

“Was it about Lexi? I mean, you’ve got to talk to someone eventually or else—”

“Nope,” I’m quick to respond, a knee-jerk reaction. I’m not doing this right now. Don’t want to; don’t need to. Please, don’t ruin my feel-good mood, Becks. “Sometimes don’t you just want to have a little fun without complications? You know how it goes, Becks. Shit, vibrators are cool and fun, but nothing gives more satisfaction than the mighty tongue.”

He barks out a laugh, and I know I’ve chased the question away for now. “I don’t know from your perspective, but from mine, tongues are most definitely welcome.” He glances over at me with a suggestive look before shaking his head and laughing again.

“What?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “You know it’s true.” I’m about to make another smart-ass remark, but I stop when I realize we’ve just pulled into my driveway.

I grab my overnight bag from between my feet on the floor and reach for the door handle when his voice stops me. “Are you going to be okay?”

His question can be taken several ways. Am I going to ever be okay with Lexi’s death? Am I going to be okay with Rylee gone? Am I going to be okay no longer having the two people I relied on the most in my life every day?

I opt for the question I’m comfortable answering. “Okay? You mean living on my own? It’s not like Ry’s really been staying here for a while anyway…. Now it’s just official.” I say the words calmly, but a bittersweet feeling comes over me at the thought that my best friend will never be my roomie again. Talk about a year of changes. Shit. It’s time for the whirlwind to calm some so I can catch up to everything. “It’ll be nice to live on my own for a bit. To be able to walk around naked when I want … stuff like that.” I flash him a smile as I open the door and start to scoot out of the SUV with my overnight bag in one hand.

I feel like I should say something else—some parting wisdom, but nothing comes to mind. I begin to stand up when I realize my phone is still in the center console and reach back in for it. Becks grabs my wrist and startles me. My eyes flash up to meet his, and I can see the sincerity in them, the kindness, the honesty, and I’m unable to look away, no matter how much I want to. I can see so many things in his eyes, and I don’t want him to say any of them, so I try to pull my hand back, but he just holds tight.

“You know you can call me if you ever need me, right? For anything,” he says in that slow, even cadence of his that pulls at so many things deep within me, and I can’t think of a witty retort to lighten the mood.

“Okay. Thanks.” It’s all I can manage. With our eyes locked on each other’s, I reach down and fumble for my phone before exiting the car. I shut the door and exhale a sigh of relief, as I turn my back and head toward my house.