Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
“I fucked up.”
Sloane turned toward his rumbling voice. She pulled the sheet with her, feeling oddly vulnerable. Just the sheet, not the comforter. The sheet wasn’t thick like the comforter, and it felt lighter, softer against her skin. Less like it’s holding me down.
Preston stood beside the bed. A very naked Preston. With a very big dick. He was aroused. Again. They’d just had some amazing sex, but he was already fully erect once more. Of course, her eyes would immediately get locked on his cock. “Don’t you mean, you fucked me?”
“I didn’t have a condom on when I was inside you. Not when we were downstairs.”
He’d just gone into the bathroom to ditch his condom. The one he’d taken from the nightstand drawer right before he truly gave her what had to be the fucking of a lifetime. She could still feel him in her. Her legs clamped together.
“I get checked out regularly,” he told her. “I don’t regularly have sex without a condom. In fact, you’re the first lover I’ve ever been bareback with.”
“I get checked out, too. I’m all about those regular doctor’s visits, but you don’t have to worry, either, because—”
“Because you’re a virgin? Yeah, I fucking got that clue.”
She sat up in the bed. Pressed the sheet a little tighter to her chest. “You seem mad.” He did. “Why do you seem mad?”
“Because I’m not the guy you save yourself for!”
She raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“You save yourself for some idiot white knight. For some prick who is gonna get down on one knee and vow to love you forever. You don’t save yourself for the villain. You don’t do that. You don’t offer him heaven when you know he’s going straight back to hell.”
Sloane rolled back her shoulders. “A lot to unpack there...”
He slapped his hands down on the bed. “Why did you let me be the first? Why did you want me to be first?”
“So, let’s back up a bit. I do actually have some sexual experience. Not loads, granted. And not experience with the actual sex act.”
“Obviously.” A snarl. “Something that would have been exceedingly helpful to know beforehand.”
Why? The end result would have been the same.
Incredible pleasure. Besides, had she asked him for a whole sexual resume?
“Aren’t guys supposed to like this? Aren’t you supposed to get some primitive, territorial high or something?
” She’d read a paper about this very thing while she’d been doing grad work.
A rumble—a growl—came from him. Certainly sounded pretty primitive to her.
What was the big deal? “Look, if it makes you feel better, I’ve had orgasms before.”
Another growl.
“I’ve been intimate with other men.” What did he want? Details? “I’ve had guys finger me before. I’ve had boyfriends who put their mouths—”
“Not helping.” His hands flew to her shoulders as he lunged over the bed. Over her. “Now you just have me wanting to hunt down the bastards and kick their asses.”
Her eyes went wide. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Come on.” His fingers flexed against her.
“You’re the one with the background in psychology.
You’re the one who just talked about being primitive.
Tell me, Sloane, why do you think I’d want to break the hand of every man who’d touched you?
Especially the fingers that dipped between your thighs. Break them.”
Sloane could not look away from his glittering, green stare. “Jealousy?” He was actually jealous? Of her exes?
Jaw locked, Preston nodded. He also let her go. Went back to looming by the side of the bed.
Her head cocked as she angled more toward him. Squinting, Sloane asked, “You get that they are exes for a reason, don’t you? If they’d been fantastic, we’d still be together.”
Another growl.
“You are very growly tonight,” she pointed out.
“You are very much virginy tonight!”
That wasn’t a word. She had to smile. “Not anymore.”
“Sloane!”
He was truly upset. Interesting. “You have some aversion to virgins?” It would have been helpful if he’d mentioned that bit before.
“I have an aversion to hurting you. If you’d told me, I could have used more care. I could have made sure that you were good and ready downstairs—”
“Oh, I was.”
“I could have made sure there was no pain for you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Now she reached for his hand. “You didn’t.”
His gaze got caught on their locked hands. “I’m so much bigger than you.”
Granted, he was.
“You’re delicate.”
Nah. She wasn’t. She might look delicate, but deep down, she wasn’t. You couldn’t be delicate and live through the things that she had.
“Breakable,” he charged.
Others had tried to break her. She was still right there. Maybe with a few scars but not broken.
All gruff and grim, Preston told her, “I don’t ever want to be the person who breaks something as beautiful as you.”
That was nice. “This guilt is completely unnecessary.” She tugged his hand. A yawn stretched her mouth. “I’m exhausted. Come into this bed with me. Curl up with me, and let’s see if we can actually manage to sleep in a bed or if we’ll just wind up in the chair downstairs again.”
“Sloane…”
A long-suffering sigh escaped her. “Ask me why.”
His gaze had left their joined hands. Had lifted to pin her. A little furrow—a cute one—dug between his brows.
“Ask me why,” she repeated.
“Why, what?”
Not quite what she’d meant, but good enough. “Trust.”
“I am fucking lost.”
Kind of adorably so. But what she had to say wasn’t so adorable.
Though, really, it was only fair that she reveal some of her secrets to him considering the way she’d ripped into his past. “When I was sixteen, I thought Cody Crenshaw would be my first lover.” Her gaze swept over Preston.
He’d put on a pair of blue pajama pants before he came out of the bathroom, but his chest was bare.
Muscled. Washboard abs. Power. Strength.
Sometimes, strength scared her. A man’s power scared her.
Arms grabbing her from behind. Breath hot on her ear. “Now we can be together. Just like you wanted.”
She tightened her hold on Preston’s hand. His power didn’t scare her. It tempted her. “He was the first guy I loved or…thought I loved.” At sixteen, everything had been so intense. Overwhelming.
Cody had been very, very good at charming her. At charming everyone. Until he didn’t get what he wanted.
“But I was nervous. Uncertain.” She’d been so unsure of herself. Spoiler, sometimes, she still was. “When Cody and I were alone, things would be perfect one moment, but in the next instant, something would change. He’d change.”
“Did he hurt you?” Then, “Fuck, of course, he hurt you. He killed your parents. He’s the prick who gave you the scar on your leg.
” Then he was in the bed with her. Sliding beside her.
Wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close as they eased down on the mattress.
“I’m a bastard.” Rough. “You don’t have to explain any damn thing to me.
You don’t have to tell me about your past. You sure as shit don’t need to relive your pain for me. ”
“Why not? You had to relive your pain with me.” He’d literally been buried a second time.
“Seems only fair I do the same for you.” Her head turned on the pillow.
He was right beside her, watching her. “At first, Cody seemed like a dream.” Didn’t all nightmares start that way, though?
As a dream? “Cody came from money. His grandfather had been a senator. In the small town I grew up in, people talked about his family the way most people talk about the Kennedy dynasty.”
Preston didn’t push her. Didn’t ask for more. But she gave him more. “He transferred to my school when I was a junior. He’d been at some elite private school, but his family switched him, and everyone at my high school seemed to instantly fall in love with him.”
“Including you.”
She nodded. “He wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before. He was confident, and he had no hesitations about anything. He knew who he was. He knew what he wanted.”
“The jerk wanted you.”
“He overwhelmed me.” Truth. “Everywhere I was, he was there. Anything I wanted, he gave it to me. At first, it was so amazing. So great. I’d never had anyone so focused on me before.
When I was with him, I felt special. Everything was perfect.
” She stopped talking. Counted the beats of her heart.
One. Two. Three. “Then things began to slip. To change. He was pushing me. Telling me that we were going to be together forever.” She could still see his boyish grin flashing in her mind.
Those dimples. Those damn dimples. “He was pushing me to have sex with him. Pushing me for promises of forever. Saying we should run away together. I…I wasn’t ready.
I started to pull back a bit from him, and he—he thought I was pulling back because of my family.
That they were the ones in the way. So he eliminated what he saw as the problem for us. ”
“Sloane…”
“Later, I’d learn that he transferred to my school because his family was trying to cover up the mess he’d left at his elite private academy.
They knew what he’d done there.” She felt hollow as she talked about this part.
The warm glow that she’d gotten from sex with Preston?
Gone. “They knew he’d murdered his girlfriend and her parents—stabbed them all.
They knew, and they covered it up. They are still covering up his crimes.
I was the one to find out the truth about his past. I was the one who went to that private school in Baton Rouge and talked to the people who’d known him there.
I was the one who got the information even though his parents had paid nearly everyone at his old school to just shut up and say that he was some model kid. ”
“They covered up three murders?”