The Marked Men Series Books 1–6: Rule, Jet, Rome, Nash, Rowdy, Asa. Jay Crownover
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just be an early-in-the-relationship infatuation, but there was something that made me think that if this all went away I would never be the same.
The last few weeks had been amazing. I liked having her in my house and in my life, and I enjoyed making a place for myself in hers. My friends all adored her, and I couldn’t begrudge them the little crushes they’d developed. She was just so endearingly oblivious to her appeal; it was hard not to fall for. I could tell when we left the shop that Cora was a fan. That meant a lot because she was kind of like a big sister, and I trusted her instincts when it came to people. It was what made her such a good shop manager. Shaw was already part of my family, and after I gave her the rundown of what happened on my visit home, she wasted no time in firing off a scathing email to my mother, letting her know in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t stand for that behavior and pleading with her to seek help. She had my back, and I wondered again how long she had been fighting for me before I pulled my head out and noticed. It always made me feel like shit.
The quiet moments were settling, and made me feel like I was building a foundation for something great. The passionate moments, the moments where she looked at me like I was a present she had always wanted to unwrap, were enough to make me think I had found the one person who would never bore me in bed. The thing about being the only guy she had ever been with was that I got to teach her everything, and Shaw had always been an A-plus student. Whether it was fast or slow, gentle or rough, a quickie that blew my mind or an all-night session that had her running late for class the next morning—there was no doubt that we were sexually compatible. She was starting to figure out her own preferences; she liked it a little rougher and dirtier than I would have figured her to, for instance. She also managed to find humor in the act when it was awkward or not going the way one of us intended. I couldn’t remember ever having as much fun in bed in my life. I didn’t know it was possible, but she even made sex better and the thought of losing any of it just made me want to fall into a hole and never climb out.
I was trying to shake off the fear. After all, it was just a nice night at home and Nash was gone, so I should be doing my best to make her scream my name over and over again at the top of her lungs. But the doubt lingered and I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, forcing me to get out. I ran a fuzzy towel over my head and face and secured another one loosely around my waist. I left my clothes in a heap on the floor and wandered into my room, figuring she would still be out in the living room doing her homework and I would have a couple more minutes to get my shit together. Only the TV was off and she was sitting in the middle of my big bed, sipping on the beer I had abandoned when I bolted earlier. As if that wasn’t enough, she was only wearing my T-shirt that had the tattoo shop’s logo on it. It looked better on her than it ever had on me, and she was watching me with very serious eyes the color of new grass.
“What’s going on?”
I cleared my throat and tried to play it off. “Nothing. Why?” Only this was Shaw and she knew my bullshit better than almost anyone. She scooted to the edge of the bed and set the beer down on the nightstand.
“Because you were in there forever and you already took a shower this morning. Something spooked you and you ran. I want to know what it was.”
I considered lying to her, considered telling her that she was just imagining things, but in the end knew that I just needed to come clean and hope that she didn’t freak out because I was so emotionally screwed up.
“All this.” I waved a hand between the two of us. “It’s so easy, so smooth and simple, that sometimes it freaks me out. I’m not used to normal and ordinary, so it makes me nervous. My life was always about trying to grab on to fleeting moments of pleasure, of feeling good, and now I have that all the time with you, and I get lost in my head wondering what I’m going to do to screw it up, or how I’m going to keep it together if you decide to take it away. Sometimes I get sucked into my visions of what could happen and I have a really difficult time staying in the present. Watching TV with you, just being with you, soothes something inside me that I didn’t even know needed soothing, but it also makes something in there cower in fear. I’m sorry.”
She just watched me and I prepared myself for her to get up off the bed and walk out the door. If she did I was pretty sure that, towel or not, I would chase her into the cold and beg until she came back. Instead, she unfolded from the bed and came up to me on bare feet. My shirt covered all the good stuff but just barely. She stopped so that we weren’t touching but we were close enough to share a breath.
“It scares me, too, Rule. I’m not used to ordinary, either, and I never thought I would have that with you, never thought I would have anything with you at all, so it’s okay to get a little lost in your head, as long as you come back and we can talk about it. I’m not going to ask you to give anything you aren’t comfortable with. People have done that to me my entire life and I’m sick of it.”
I exhaled a hard breath and unclenched the fists I hadn’t been aware I had curled up at my sides.
“What if I ask you to give me everything, Shaw? What if I want it all? Won’t that make me just like all the rest of them?”
She made a noise in her throat and then broke into a smile that nearly killed me on the spot. She was just so lovely and pure. “No, because you don’t have to ask for anything. All of it is already yours. You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to give it to.”
This girl was going to be the end of me. She put a hand on each of my sides, one splayed over the angel, one splayed over the reaper, and I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.
“You have to promise not to bail on me when I get lost, Shaw. You have to promise to just wait it out until I can find my way back. I need to know you’re at the end of the tunnel when everything goes black.”
“I know how to wait for you, Rule, and I don’t mind doing it as long as you promise not to shut me out. I can’t do this with you, be so wrapped up in you and what’s happening between us, if you’re going to close the door on me when it gets to be too much. My heart can’t take that.”
“I know.” But I wasn’t sure that was a promise I could keep. My default was to return to what I knew, and that was distance and space, so that I could protect myself. “I can do my best, Shaw, but I told you all along I’m not real sure how to do this whole relationship thing and I’m scared shitless I’m going to do something to screw it up.”
She leaned forward and let her hands glide up around my back and across my shoulders. She pressed a soft, openmouthed kiss to the center of my chest and it made my entire life zero in on that tiny point of contact.
“Well, you can be scared alone or we can be scared together. I prefer the second option, but if you need some space to get your head around it and figure out what you want, I can make that happen. I want to be with you, Rule, but I’m not going to be here with you if it makes you hurt and makes you freak out. We both deserve better than that.”
I wasn’t sure at this point if it was about what I deserved or not, but I wasn’t stupid enough to let what I had with her get demolished under the weight of doubt I couldn’t control. I finally reached out and pulled her to me in a suffocating hug that pressed her length against all my bare skin. I had spent plenty of time with her this morning, making her beg, turning myself inside out, but that didn’t seem to matter, my cock reacted under the towel, letting her know that whatever was going on inside my head had no bearing on how my body felt about her.
“I’m just messed up, Shaw. I’m sorry that I get this way but the last thing I want is to chase my tail all alone.” I kissed her, letting her feel the things I couldn’t say as they burned through my blood. I wanted her always and the idea of that made my knees weak.
She let me devour her mouth, let me get my hands all tangled up rough in her hair, let me press her up against the closest wall and push an insistent erection against her all without complaint or argument. There was no gentleness, no concern for skill or whether or not I was making it feel good for her, all that existed was a blinding need to get inside her, to make her feel the emotion that was making me go crazy. I needed to syphon off some of the want and need, and the only