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“Your signed Betsy book.”
He shook his head. “You.” He moved in, backing her into the wall, and, gently cradling her face between his hands, kissed her. Kissed her softly but ardently.
And then hungrily.
He unbuttoned her top far enough for him to pull it off over her head. When her hair fell back onto her shoulders, he buried his face in it while his hands went around her and unhooked her bra. She shrugged it off.
His mouth was hot and wet and eager on her breasts. Her head fell back against the wall, but her hands were busily unbuckling, unbuttoning, freeing him. When she wrapped her fingers around him, he swore, then prayed, “God save me.”
He bunched up her skirt, stroked her thighs apart, moved aside her underpants, and caressed her until she was glazed with want and rocking against his fingers.
He broke a deep, delving kiss and rasped, “Take them off.”
Battling cloth and urgency, she removed her panties while he shoved his jeans past his hips. Then he lifted her onto his thighs and pushed into her.
For a time, they held like that, his forehead pressed against the wall, even with her chin. Their breathing was heavy and hot, loud like the beating of her pulse against her eardrums. She bent her head down and pecked kisses along his brow, against his closed eyelids, across the pale freckles that dusted his cheekbone, all the while chanting his name in fervent whispers.
“Elle,” he groaned, and began to thrust.
He was fiddling with the glittering stud that she’d replaced in her navel. “If I’d seen this beforehand, I wouldn’t have lasted the thirty seconds I did.” They were lying face-to-face in Elle’s bed. Clothing, which had been an impediment, had been done away with.
She leaned forward and bit his scruffy chin. “But it was an amazing thirty seconds.”
He arched his eyebrow and gave her a wicked smile. “Yeah? How amazing?”
She swatted his shoulder.
He bent down and flicked his tongue over the tiny jewel. “Yeah,” he growled. “It was amazing.” He nuzzled her, tickling her with his whiskers, but when he returned his head to the pillow and reached for a strand of her hair to sift through his fingers, he set teasing aside.
“I’m a selfish bastard, Elle. I always have been. But having sex with you before talking about this was possibly the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. I guess I was afraid that if I didn’t, I’d never get another opportunity.”
She angled her head back. When her hair slid out of his grasp, she took his hand, kissed the back of it, and drew it to her breast. “Before talking about what? Although I can guess.”
He sighed, lifted his gaze from the study of her beautiful breasts to her eyes. “I have to ask. Did you mean it when you told Shauna in that interview that you blamed only the person who pulled the trigger?”
“Yes.”
“Because I don’t want to fall deeper and deeper in love with you and then one day have you look at me and say, ‘If not for you, Charlie wouldn’t have died.’”
“I would never say that.”
“But would you think it?”
“No.” She leaned over him and took his face between her hands. “Listen to what I have to say, and then never ask me that again. Because if you do, it’ll be as good as calling me a liar. All right?”
He didn’t verbally respond, but he bobbed his head.
“First of all, Compton told me about the letters.”
He felt a flash of anger. “It wasn’t her place to do that.”
“No, probably not. But I’m glad she did, because I don’t believe you would have.” She reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. “It was an incredibly noble thing to do.”
He had written a letter to everyone who’d been injured in the shooting and to the families of those who hadn’t survived, apologizing for the part he’d unwittingly played in Dawn Whitley’s pursuit of vengeance.
“I wanted them to know that I never even met her father, had never had any interaction with him at all. It wasn’t as if we’d had a bitter dispute. I don’t know what he looked like. I didn’t even know his name.”
“Calder,” she said, pressing her index finger against his lips. “You don’t have to defend yourself.”
