Ipush myself back until I can sit up. “Are you seriously asking if I’m okay?”
Concern furrows his brow and pulls his lips into a frown.
“I have never come so hard in my life. What the fuck are you even?” A breath laugh escapes me. My brain is circling somewhere around the explanation of sex god.
There it is again, that fucking grin of devastation. Then he disappears, returning with several water bottles and a towel to clean me up before laying it over the mess I made on his sheets.
I cover my face and groan in embarrassment. Pulling my hands away, he says, “Don’t do that. You are the sexiest, most responsive woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to, well. . . pleasure.” He shoves two water bottles at me and commands me to drink them. Considering I’m suddenly dying of thirst, I get through one then start the other before setting it down.
Ted lays back, pulling me to him, though his hard on is still jutting out from his body. When I start to reach for it, he only holds me tighter against him.
“Give yourself a minute,” he says.
I lay across his broad chest, a surprisingly comfortable place. Our bodies meld together, and a sense of belonging settles into my bones.
His fingers tangle and twirl in my curls, idly. Again, another surprising thing about him. There is some bit of playfulness under all that gruffness, and I want to tease it out even more.
“Have you always taken care of your brothers?” The question slips out of me before I can stop it. Even in a post sex explosion haze, I can’t help but pry.
I’ve tried to keep myself from getting wrapped up in Ted and focus on my own life, but the man who is so staunchly closed off opened a door for me. It’s hard not to walk through and take a peek at what’s behind the man. . . other than the bear.
For a minute I don’t think he’s going to answer. Maybe the door isn’t open after all. Despite my thirst for knowing what makes him tick, I don’t try to pull the boards off the windows like I do with other people.
“Not always.” Ted sighs heavily. Then he forces us to sit up.
“Since when?” I push a little bit. The rush I feel at potentially getting Ted to open up to me sends a unique thrill through my body even though he drained me both literally and physically.
His hand stops toying with my hair and for a heart stopping moment I think he’s going to get up and push me away.
Tell me it doesn’t matter or talk about something inconsequential like the weather, or your favorite sports team. Anything to make this less serious.
Instead, he resumes twirling my hair. “Our dad died in a fight with another pack when we were young. To be honest, I barely remember him or living in Alaska. My mother thought we’d be safe tucked away in a human city, but she couldn’t protect us from everything. My mom died when I was eighteen. It was cancer. She got diagnosed when I was thirteen. It was a long, arduous fight with lots of points of false hope that made us believe she was getting better, that she’d get through it. But it kept spreading, cropping up in new places. Sometimes. . . ” Ted trails off and I’m almost too scared to speak.
I don’t want him to stop talking. The sexual chemistry is already unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, but his raw honesty, feeling him open up to me like this. . . it’s more precious than I can say. I want to know everything about him.
Focus on yourself. You don’t need to dig for him, it doesn’t matter.
“Sometimes what?” I dare to whisper.
My body is still frozen, afraid he’ll stop talking. People confide in me all the time, but this feels so different. Ted doesn’t angle. This isn’t about gaining my sympathy or trying to romance me with a tragic backstory. He is simply raw and honest.
“I managed her medications,” he says, breezing past whatever he’d been about to say. “I made sure we had food in the house. She had good insurance that covered us for a while, but eventually it all piled up. She wanted us to stay in school, but I dropped out at sixteen to work a construction job to bring in more money.”
He sucks in a deep breath, and I sense he’s reliving some part of his past. My fingers trace through the curled dark hairs across his chest, amazed by how soft they are. I want to soothe the pain he feels, but bite down on my lip to keep from jumping in to comment or ask questions.
He is naturally opening up, and I wouldn’t stop it for anything.
“We thought she was going to get better. . . again, the medications were working, she seemed stronger than she had in months and then, she was gone.”
I couldn’t imagine the pain of having false hope ripped away so violently. If I didn’t deliberately put my focus on the silver linings in life, it would be so easy to fall prey to the idea that life is meant to be a cruel journey.
His fingers drop so they skim across my bare back, leaving little trails of fire in their wake. “I was six months away from being eighteen, I wasn’t old enough to take custody of my brothers. It was the most terrifying six months of my life. At first, I thought I could hide it. I got away with it for a couple months while madly filling out paperwork, making my mother’s arrangements, and working construction. But they still took JJ and Eli. It was only for a couple months, but I don’t know if it was my mom dying or their experience in foster care, being uprooted after everything, but when I finally got custody of them, they were different. JJ was fifteen and Eli was only twelve. I’m not sure what point they got fucked up by it all, and I did all I could, but it wasn’t enough.”
“For witchtits sake.” I can’t help but whisper the curse as a tear leaks out of my eye and lands on his chest.
I’m not supposed to give anyone my tears. It could be dangerous for some reason, but I can’t keep them at bay. The pain. So much pain. So much responsibility and burden on a kid. I would have crumbled like a pecan sandie.
“JJ started seducing girls at too young an age. For as good as his heart, he treats women like temporary fillers for whatever is empty inside him. Probably the spot where our mother was. And Eli. . . I tried to keep money issues out of his line of sight but there were only so many peanut butter sandwiches and meals of ramen I suppose before he figured out how strapped we were. Eli started gambling in middle school. The idiot thought he could help, but as you can see, that’s turned out to be a fucking disaster.” His other hand raises to scrub over his face.
