Page 15 of Liquids

“Did you love her?”

He shrugs. “I probably thought I did at the time, but it went bad and fell apart. Took a while for me to work out what she was like.”

Tell me about it. “If some guy loved me, I wouldn’t be able to walk away from it. I don’t think it’s ever happened before.” I swallow hard, trying to ease the tightness in my throat.

His eyes flick over my hair and my face, and he grabs me by the neck and pulls me into him. “You’re a good woman, Carly. You’ll find someone.”

His hand drops away and he gestures between the two of us. “This is what happens to fucked-up people who aren’t a good bet: They can never climb out of the hole they’re in. No point in fighting it—you’ve got to accept the life you’ve been dealt. Bottom of the heap.”

My throat tightens and my eyes are scratchy. “You keep saying I’m fucked up.”

Impatience dances across his face. “We’re all fucked up, babe. You’d have to be a saint to have it straight and easy. I don’t know any saints.”

I don’t know any, either. He sighs and slides his hand up my back into my hair, pulling my face toward his as he kisses me. “Think I killed the mood, didn’t I?”

My nose smarts as tears start to gather in the corner of my eyes, and goddammit, I don’t want to cry on him. I pull back and he groans.

“Fuck, I’m an asshole. I shouldn’t have said all that to you.”

“No,” I say, taking a deep breath and straightening up. “You’re not wrong, and I’d rather know what people think of me.”

He eyes me warily. “You’ve been drunk in that bar a lot, and Marni’s not quiet when she’s wasted.”

“What do guys think about her?”

“Babe, I …”

I make a face at him and he sighs. “She’s a maniac, and men don’t go for maniacs, either, because she’s going to land you in worse trouble than you’ve ever been in.”

I start to laugh because this sums her up so completely. Who sleeps in their car behind a hedge in a deserted field on a hill in the middle of nowhere? And who knew Rig was sitting in the corner observing everything and everybody? But maybe that’s what all the people who don’t talk much do. And I could smack myself on the head because, duh, of course it is. That’s what I do most of the time. You’re assessing people, looking for threats. When you’ve been in a lose-your-life kind of danger, you’d be crazy if you didn’t do that. All that watching didn’t keep me out of trouble, though, did it? And what danger has Rig been in that makes him such an expert?

All the time he was sitting being huge and dark and mysterious, he was working everyone out. I don’t understand why, but the hurt of this conversation recedes, leaving me with the sense that for the first time someone’s been straight with me about who I am and what people say about me. So much for trying to hide it. No wonder guys like Mike and Dave are looking for an easy lay and nothing more. And clearly Rig’s doing that, too, but at least he’s being honest about it.

I press my ass down into Rig, and his eyebrows rise. He’s still hard between us, and I grin as I rub against him.

He groans. “Not fucking you now, babe.”

I move a bit more. Rocking. And the friction where I’m hot and wet fires in my blood.

“Fuck,” he says.

Going up on my knees, I shimmy my panties down over my hips, shifting from one knee to the other to pull them down and off while his eyes skip from my breasts to my folds. I sink back down and I’m bare, wet, and sliding over his cock. Holy shit, that feels amazing.

His eyes close, and he’s either sinking into this or doesn’t need the extra stimulation, so I reach out and snag a condom from the drawer in the nightstand. When I come back to sit over him, he’s looking at me with dark eyes. With a half smile, I rip the packet open with my teeth and hold it in one hand while I rub over his slit with my thumb and under the sensitive head, back and forth, watching his eyes flutter closed and a red flush build in his cheeks. He opens his mouth, maybe to say something, and I roll the condom down his length.

Leaning forward and propping myself on one hand in the bed, I whisper, “Feel good?” against his lips. I shift up on my knees, holding his cock and angling it to the right position as I kiss him. His mouth chases mine when I move backward, pressing down. His tip stretches my entrance, and just like last time, I gasp as his hands land on my hips and he sits up as I try to accommodate the stretch of him. One huge hand comes up to cup my breast, and he flicks my other nipple with his tongue, groaning into my skin and rubbing his nose back and forth as it hardens.

“Goddamn,” he rumbles.

I slide my knees out farther and shimmy my hips, and he brings a hand between my legs and brushes over my clit. And that does it because I open up on a gasp, stretching as the head of his cock pushes right in.

“Oh … oh …”

“Yeah, that’s good,” he mumbles, the hand on my hip urging me down as he rubs me. I can’t conceive that I could take more, but somehow he sinks in until the hot skin of his hips is against the inside of the thighs. I let out a long, controlled sigh over his neck.

“Yeah, babe.”

I adjust around him as he kisses my throat.