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He scowled harder, as if I’d said something crazy. “Of course I do, for fuck’s sake. It’s just that it’s a bad idea.”
I crossed my arms over my breasts. “You don’t get out much, do you?” I
asked him.
He didn’t answer, which meant no.
“Here’s how it works,” I said, as if he’d spoken. “You’re single. I’m single. We’re both free, and neither of us is gay. I’m on the pill, and we’ve established we don’t have any diseases. So we go on a date. We have a few drinks. We talk, or something, and when you take me home, I give you a blow job. See? Simple.”
“Oh, my God,” he said. He looked at the ceiling again, and I realized I’d turned him on. Oh, hell yes. I dropped my gaze down his body while he wasn’t looking, taking in that chest, that stomach, those sexy worn jeans. I’d tossed the words out, but now that they’d been said I realized I wanted in there. Bad. I was literally trying to get into this man’s pants. What was wrong with me?
Max reached out and took my phone from my hand. “Give me that,” he said, his voice short. Yes, I’d definitely turned him on. He opened the texting app and texted himself so he’d have my number. “There will be no date,” he said grumpily, “and there will definitely be no blow job. Are we clear?”
“Why not?” I asked sweetly. I liked cranky, turned-on Max; he was amusing. I batted my lashes. “I’m very good.”
He made a pained sound and shoved my phone back at me. “Trust me, you don’t want any part of me.”
It was like he was leaving these openings on purpose; no way was I letting them pass by. “Just one part of you,” I said, holding up a finger and giving him a sexy smile. “That’s all I ask.”
He shook his head. “I swear to God,” he said. “What is it going to take to get rid of you?”
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “It isn’t because I’m not hot, and it isn’t because you don’t like me. So why?”
He blinked at me, and it looked like he made a decision. “You really want to know?” he asked, and when I nodded, he said, “Fine.”
He reached down to his belt and unbuckled it. I felt my eyes go wide as he undid his jeans and dropped them, right there in front of me, letting them pool on the floor at his feet.
I stared. He was wearing navy blue boxer shorts, but that wasn’t what I was looking at. My gaze traveled down, where his right leg ended below the knee, and the rest of his shin and his foot was a metal prosthetic. The leg, the real one, was twisted with scars—old ones, long healed, but so profound it looked like a shark had taken bites of his flesh a long time ago. My first thought was, My God, that must have hurt so fucking much.
I raised my gaze back to his face. His expression was blank again, carefully composed, the expression that meant this was practically killing him. “What happened?” I asked.
“Afghanistan happened,” he said, his voice stripped of any emotion. He watched me steadily and gave nothing away. “An IED happened. I came home with this, and with a case of PTSD that nearly killed me. You get it now?”
Chapter 6
Max
“That seems like rather an extreme reaction,” my counselor said. “Dropping your pants for a woman you barely know.”
“I guess,” I said, staring intently at the wall. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
We were in his office, a small, stuffy room in a boxy medical building in the wasteland of South San Francisco, far from the trolley cars and the nice Victorian houses. Like Shady Oaks, this was the kind of place tourists never saw—full of ugly industrial buildings, cheap apartments, and occasional vacant lots. My therapist’s name was Dr. Weldman. He was a black man of about fifty with dark-rimmed glasses and a demeanor that was very fucking calm, which had been helpful during the many times I’d pretty much fallen apart at the seams.
But I was calm today. I was in an uncomfortable chair that was a little too small for me. I’d turned it so I wasn’t facing the doctor, but instead could look at the wall, which was easier when you were talking about embarrassing shit. Dr. Weldman never minded when I turned the chair. He probably didn’t want to look at me either.
“Still,” he said, pursuing the subject of Gwen and my fucked-up meeting with her in my apartment two days ago. “It isn’t your usual mode of behavior, even under stress.”
“She wanted to go out with me,” I said. “She needed to know all the shit that was wrong with me first. I was doing her a favor.”
“Or perhaps you were hoping to scare her off.”
I turned my head and gave him a brief glare. “I was counting on scaring her off.”
He nodded. They always nodded like they’d already expected everything you said, these therapists. I’d gotten used to it long ago. “And why do you think that is?” he asked.
I looked at the wall again. “Like I say, I was doing her a favor,” I said. “She probably shouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Because you believe you’re not worthy of her?”
