Her lips wobble as she weakly nods at my suggestion. While her hand continues creeping toward the silver clip holding her hostage, I scan her body, checking her for injuries. Excluding her wide eyes that are brimming with tears and a small graze on her thigh, she appears unharmed.Thank fuck.
If only I could do something to quell the absolute terror radiating from her eyes.
Recognizing I can’t achieve that while stuck in a dangerous environment, I command, “When you’re ready, unlatch your belt. I’ll catch you—I promise.”
With the Jeep not tall enough for me to stand in, I brace my back against the roll cage and open my arms, ensuring her fall won’t be as impacting as mine. Her eagerness to escape the mangled wreckage has her landing on me sooner than I anticipated. Her knees’ brutal connection with my stomach winds me, but she fails to notice. She’s too busy scampering across the rain-sloshed ground on her hands and knees to pay me any attention.
Her wish to flee isn’t surprising, but the name she murmurs numerous times under her breath while doing it is. She keeps referring to Luca.
With my shoulders double the width of Regan’s, it takes a little more effort for me to exit the roofless Jeep. The roll cage that protected our heads as we cartwheeled through the air has crumbled inward, making the distance between the floor and roof noticeably different.
Before I can squeeze my torso through the tight opening, a set of tiny hands grips the collar of my t-shirt and yanks me backward. Regan’s tugs are so strong, before my mouth can drop in awe of her strength, she pulls me free from the wreckage.
We scamper back far enough any impending explosions won’t harm us, but not far enough for the seriousness of our crash to avoid hammering into me. Regan’s mom’s Jeep is totaled, destroyed beyond repair. No one should have survived that carnage, much less two of us.
I shift my eyes to Regan. Hers are holding the same surprise as mine. They also reveal her remorse.
“Don’t you dare,” I warn when she attempts to apologize. “Nothing that happened was your fault. It was an accident—nothing more.”
She shakes her head, disagreeing with me. “I shouldn’t have argued. I should have continued our plan of attack as we had discussed.” I only realize she isn’t referring to our accident when she adds on, “I just couldn’t back down as Luca wasn’t being fair. I didn’t date to keep up appearances, but he never once stopped. That’s why I was so angry the night of our accident. His list of men was endless.”
She snaps her lips shut so fast, it sounds like the noise the Jeep made when the hood hit the ground during our collision.
“Our accident? As in, you were in the car with Luca when he crashed?” I don’t know if the pulse pounding my eardrums is affecting my hearing, but my voice is so low, I barely heard my question.
Mercifully, Regan’s hearing isn’t as damaged as mine. “I. . . I. . .”
Hating the pain in her eyes as she struggles to conceal a truth with a lie, I tug her into my chest. I’m certain she can hear my heart racing a million miles an hour, but I don’t give a fucking shit. I saw the tree that claimed Luca’s life. His impact with the trunk was so brutal, the tree is permanently scarred. How Regan survived the carnage, I will never know.
There is only one thing I do know, thank fuck she did. If she had perished with Luca. . . I can’t consider it. It makes me sick to the stomach just thinking about it. The pain tearing at my chest is too much. I will forever live with guilt of what happened to Dane, but it will never be as strong as the gratitude I’m feeling now that Regan’s life was spared that night.
For once, I act on the prompts of both my heart and my head. Regan’s glistening eyes lift to mine when I peel her off my chest. I cup her jaw as I did in the kitchen earlier this morning so I can assess every detail of her beautiful face. My eyes drift across her forehead, taking in the scar from where we bumped heads. I absorb the crinkle in her nose as she struggles to hold in her tears, the furl of her lips. I take it all in, then I do it again just to make sure I didn’t miss a single thing.
When our eyes meet, Regan says, “No one knows.”
“It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.” Relief darts through her eyes. “I don’t care about anything that happened in your past, Rae. All I care about is that you are okay and safe.”
My eyes dance between hers that are glistening with so much moisture, they look seconds from bursting. They nearly do when I ask, “Are you okay?”
She nods, then shakes her head, then nods again. I shouldn’t smile at her confusion, but when the person you’re trying to console is on the verge of cracking, you use anything available. If my smile frustrates her enough to dry her tears, it will be worth the wrath spawned by it.
I expect Regan to react negatively to my grin, so you can imagine my surprise when it has the opposite effect. Her lips curl in a similar fashion before they do something I never anticipated: they seal over mine.
She could be kissing me to shut me up, but it doesn’t feel that way. The little moans ripping from her throat aren’t noises expelled when forced to do something against your wishes. She is kissing me because she wants to. Just like I’m returning her boldness with as much esteem as I want her mouth on mine even more than I want to wipe the hurt from her eyes.
Regan’s tongue duels with mine before she draws it into her mouth. She suckles it gently, nursing it in her mouth with playful nips and prolonged licks. I cradle her jaw and kiss her back, the movements of my tongue and lips hungry and needy. I usually take control in situations like this, but the evenness of our exchange has me holding back the urge. This isn’t about banging my chest and acting macho. It’s a mutual admiration that calls for a balance of power. A give and take.
We kiss for several minutes, slowly and lazily. We aren’t rushing for the prize at the end. We’re savoring each other, the leisured strokes of our tongues pleasing enough to diminish any need to sprint for the finish line.
That all changes a few seconds later when Regan murmurs breathlessly against my lips, “Are you as talented with your hands as you are with your mouth, Mr. Rogers?”
The sass in her tone awakens a side of me I haven’t seen in years. I’ve always been cocky and self-assured, but some of my pigheadedness disappeared when Dane was shot. He will never walk again, much less have a lazy Sunday afternoon hookup in a meadow with the woman of his dreams.
I pause for a moment, waiting for the usual negativity that overcomes me when I think of Dane. It never comes. Regan’s exploring hands as she returns to kissing me have rendered my mind blank of any thoughts that don’t include her. Furthermore, Dane lives with hishappily ever after—I’ve just now found mine after years of searching. I deserve to savor the moment.
As my fingers dive deeper into Regan’s messy locks, she swivels her tongue around mine while her hand drops to grind my cock bulging against the zipper in my jeans.
We continue going at it for several minutes before Regan unfortunately pulls back. “Why the hell did we wait so long to do this again?” She asks her question as if it has been months since we kissed instead of two days.
