32. Thad
Last night changed everything.
The memories come back to me even before I’m fully conscious again—Helen’s beautiful, supple body moving under me, her warmth, her trust, her readiness. I could replay it a hundred times in my mind and still find some new detail to snag my attention, something I missed before that suddenly comes into sharp relief. It wasn’t my first encounter, not by a long shot. I’m my father’s son, as my mother likes to point out, and I’ve never lacked for attention. In the past, my partners have been more like Vera—dangerous, sleek, confident girls who came after me. There was never any mystery about if it was going to happen, only when. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve always enjoyed myself, a lot, but it felt more like a team sport we were playing together, two athletes who knew the rules of the game and had played with many others before, showing off our best moves.
Nothing with Helen has been like that. She is not dangerous by any stretch of the imagination. Whenever I’ve tried to treat this like a game and assumed she’d understand the rules, she thwarts me at every turn. She is sunny when I expect her to be sexy. Wholesome where I’m used to dangerous.
But as easy as it would be to peg her as the good girl, I also can’t fully explain to myself why last night was so hot. It was obvious she wasn’t as experienced, didn’t know the game, so to speak…but it also didn’t feel like a game. We weren’t competing. I wasn’t trying to impress her and prove to her I wasn’t like any guy she’d had before because—hey, there’s never been any guy before.
I was supposed to be the one who knew what I was doing, but I was in uncharted territory, too. Because if it wasn’t about showing off, winning some challenge, then what were we doing? I was kissing her because I wanted to kiss her, not prove to her I was the best kisser she’d ever been with. I wasn’t trying to surprise her with any new moves, I was just trying to make her feel good, because I felt like she deserved it. And I wanted to be the one to make her feel that way.
What the hell is happening to me?
I even came inside my underwear like a teenager feeling up my first girlfriend, and I’m glad I have time to quickly clean myself up and change before I see her again. Any moment, Helen is going to come out of the bathroom, and I have no idea what to say to her. What I should say to her or even what I want to say to her. The right thing to do in this scenario would probably be to not feel up an ex-nun without having a clear idea the outcome I want. But since we’ve already crossed that bridge, I think the decent thing to do is to solidify that we’re together now. You don’t one-night-stand a nun.
So…we’re together now. Okay. I try to wrap my head around that, what it will mean. Helen is my girlfriend. My girlfriend whose brother I’m about to send back to prison—for his own good, but still. Moving past that, we put Dean in jail, drive back to Chicago, and…stay in each other’s lives. Go to church together, probably, which I can deal with. Bonus points since it’ll drive my megachurch-going Dad crazy that I’m switching over to the Catholics. And all the other stuff couples do, too—movies, food, markets, learning what we each like.
Spending some nights at her place and some at mine. Trading off who gets to pick movies. Old classic film noirs when I get to choose, of course, and probably rom-coms when it’s her turn. I can deal with that.
I’ll impress her with my gumbo. I can cook other things all right, but that’s the one recipe I’m confident will knock her socks off. I know she likes to bake, so I’ll have to spend more time at the gym to keep myself in fighting shape. I wonder if she’d like to come with me. I imagine those curves in spandex, heads turning as she walks across the gym floor. Knowing Helen, she’ll be totally oblivious and think the dude at the weights who’s trying to get in her pants is just a nice, helpful guy.
But with Helen, I know I’ll never really have to worry on that front. There’s something in her that’s genuinely kind, guileless. I know instinctively that she would never hurt me, and in turn that makes me determined to never hurt her, or let anyone else get the chance.
I imagine lazy Sundays, sleeping in, then not sleeping but still staying in bed. This is all new to her, so I won’t rush things, but I think I’ll honestly enjoy that. Taking our time to get to know each other, figuring out what she likes, what she needs. Getting to see those red lacy panties in person, getting to be the one to take them off. Knowing when I find sexy pictures on her phone that she’s taking them for me.
Holy shit. My heart is hammering in my chest with how much I want it all. I don’t know how it blindsided me like this, how I didn’t see it crawling up on me.
Helen’s my woman. My sweet, awkward, sexy woman.
As if on cue, the bathroom door opens and Helen peers into the room, staring at the sight of me awake. Her head disappears from view, then reappears a moment later, and somehow I know she was in there coaching herself to come out and talk to me. “Um. Hi. Good morning.”
I grin back at her, unable to hide my good mood. “Good morning.”
Helen does a little double take, like she’s taken aback by my cheerfulness. I guess I must’ve been a pretty sour bastard this whole trip if the sight of me smiling is confusing to her. I’ll have to make it up to her.
“Hi,” she says again, which lets me know she’s nervous. It’s kind of cute, how nervous she is. “Can you close your eyes?”
I frown in confusion, and my face must be so much more used to frowning than smiling because I feel my muscles relaxing instinctively. “Why?”
Helen’s floating head blushes pink. “I need to run back to the bed and I’m not wearing any pants.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Are you serious?” A few hours ago we were basically naked together, but now she can’t let me see her without pants on.
“Yes.”
“Nah,” I return, propping up my pillows so I can settle back against the headboard. “Think I’d rather enjoy the show.”
“Thaddeus!”
She’s never used my full name before. I think it’s probably meant to sound intimidating, but she’s about as intimidating as a baby chicken. I just grin at her, waggling my eyebrows. “Come on. Don’t be shy. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll take off my pants, too.”
The sound she makes is kind of a weird half gasp, half strangled growl. The bathroom door shuts again. A moment later, it reopens and she edges into the room, eying me warily. She holds one of the white bathroom towels tightly around her waist, obscuring her bottom half.
If she’d just walked out wearing that in the first place, I don’t think I would have made any kind of fuss. But the theatrics of it all—that look she’s giving me and the way she’s gripping the towel and edging along the wall like she’s waiting for me to grab her and tear that towel off… Well, it makes me want to grab her and tear that towel off.
“Sister Helen,” I tease her, “you know you can’t play hide-and-seek with a bounty hunter. It triggers my feral instincts—like if you run from a dog, it has to chase you. If you hide from a bounty hunter, he has to come find you.”
I give her my best smolder—the one my fans used to make into wallpapers for their computer screens. I guess I still got it, since she blushes, and I see her nipples start to pebble underneath her shirt.
No, strike that. My shirt. I was just playing around up until now, but the recognition of that makes my dick instinctively harden. My shirt on my woman. I’m going to get that towel off her if it’s the last thing I do.
Helen must see the shift in my eyes because she puts even more distance between us, and a sofa. “Wait just a minute, Thad. Let me put on some pants and then we can talk…”
“We can talk after,” I promise her, already off the bed and calculating the swiftest route across the room to get to her.
She still looks a little wary, but I can tell she’s intrigued, too, by the way she bites her lower lip. “After what?”
“After I give you at least one more orgasm. Maybe two.”
I give her just long enough to process that before I jump into action, hurdling over the sofa, grabbing her, and dragging her back down onto the cushions with me. I’m quick, but I don’t think it’s my imagination that she didn’t try all that hard to get away from me. Her eyes are a vivid, electric blue as I hold her gaze, reaching down to tug the towel away.
“Thad,” she moans, but makes no move to push me away.
What I really want to do is use this towel to tie her wrists over her head and make good on my promise. But I’m guessing that’ll probably be too much, too fast, so I temper down the urge and kiss her, slowly, easing her into the moment as I feel her body shift and open up beneath me. I slide my thigh between her parted legs, pressing it against her core, and she gasps into my mouth.
My head is already spinning and we haven’t even really done anything yet. My mind is racing through all the different ways to make her feel good, to try something she’s never experienced before. It’s like when you show a movie you love to someone who’s never seen it, and you have to keep yourself from looking at them during all the best parts, just to see their reaction.
I already know in this scenario, I won’t be able to keep myself from looking at her during the best parts, just to see her reaction.
Last night I paid a lot of attention to her breasts, and I’m more than half tempted to do the same this morning. They’re spectacular breasts. I could spend all day touching them, holding them, rubbing them, sucking them. But she was going through such trouble to cover up her panties with that damn towel—maybe because last night we barely scratched the surface with just how good I can make her feel down there.
I think we better rectify that situation pretty quick.
Taking my time, I trail my hand down the length of her body, teasing up the soft skin of her thighs around her panty line, dipping a finger into the waistband, listening to her soft, urgent gasps, feeling the way she’s already pressing into me. “Is this off-limits? Is that why you were hiding it from me?”
“N-no,” she stammers, swallowing heavily. “I just didn’t know if…if that was a one-time thing or…I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”
That draws me up short, and I still my hand. Is that what I’m being right now? Presumptuous? “Did you want it to be a one-time thing?”
Her eyes, which were at half-mast just moments before, fly wide open, searching mine. “Do you?”
“I assumed it wouldn’t be,” I tell her, not really thinking through the words, just speaking honestly. “I mean, with someone else, maybe, but not you.”
I expect her to take that as a compliment, because that’s how it’s intended, but she frowns at me, her gaze intent. “What do you mean?”
I feel like I’ve accidentally stumbled into some dangerous territory, but I don’t know how. I figure the best course is to just stay honest, as honest as I can. “Well, I know you aren’t very experienced, because of the whole nun thing.”
Her frown only deepens. “So you only want to keep fooling around with me because I’m not very experienced. You feel…sorry for me?”
“No! God no.” I wince, remembering her earlier reactions to taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Gosh no.” Now that just sounds stupid coming out of a grown man’s mouth, but I barrel on: “You’re a good person. A good girl. A guy doesn’t mess around with a good girl if he doesn’t mean it.”
She looks at me like I’m speaking gibberish—which, for the record, I’m not. I think it’s totally fine if men, women, aliens, cows, want to have no-strings-attached fun, but if you sleep with a virgin ex-nun, then you go into it knowing that it’s not a casual encounter. There are partners with whom you both know the score, and it’s just messing around, and then there are partners you fall in love with.
Helen is in the falling-in-love-with category.
It’s a compliment, but she really doesn’t seem to take it that way. She puts a hand to my chest, forcing me back, and sits up, drawing in her legs. “Do you actually want to pursue something with me, or do you just think you should because I’m a ‘good’ girl?” She actually puts air quotes around the word “good,” and I might find it adorable, if I weren’t so totally confused about what’s happening.
I honestly have no idea how to answer this. It feels like a trick question. Yes, I want to be with her, and yes, I think she’s a good person. It’s part of why I want to be with her. I’m not sure how one of these things is an insult, but it clearly is, and I’m walking through some kind of land mine that I don’t totally understand.
Which is why I maybe give the worst answer of all time to a woman who asks if you want to be with her: “Yeah,” I say, and shrug.
Take notes, Shakespeare. It was practically a whole goddam sonnet in one word.
The look she gives me is like a tiny kitten whose tail I’ve just stepped on. Before I can stop her, she’s off the couch, retreating from me. “Wait—” I try, but she holds up her hands, stopping me.
“It’s okay. Really. It’s totally fine. You don’t have to…I mean, you don’t owe me anything. I knew this wasn’t going to be a thing. Not long-term, anyway.”
I’m the one to draw up short this time, blinking at her. “You did?” The whole time that I was thinking about us as a possibility, I for some reason took it as a given that she would want to be in a relationship with me, too. Not that I think I’m some great prize, or anything—Vera made the opposite clear to me when she left me for my father, thank you very much—but more so because of Helen’s lack of experience. Her innate goodness. I assumed she’d want to be in a relationship, and if for some reason she wanted it to be with me, then who was I to argue?
But the more I think about it, the more I realize how shortsighted I was. She doesn’t have any experience, or at least she didn’t before last night. Maybe I’m the kind of guy you just play around and have fun with, not the kind you want to have lazy Sunday mornings with. Again, there is the glaring example of my fiancée leaving me for my father but still sending me thirst traps.
Helen is the one to shrug this time, not quite looking at me. “We’re so different.” Her gaze finally meets mine, and she looks at me expectantly, like she’s waiting to see if I’ll take the bait.
I get it. She wants to make sure I understand we’re not compatible. She’s a good woman, the kind of woman you marry. And I’m…a bounty hunter.
I nod curtly to show I understand. “Got it.”
For a second, we both linger, neither of us seeming sure what to do. I clear my throat. “We should probably get on the road, try to make up for lost time…”
We still have about two and a half hours before we make it to New Orleans, after all. Nearly three hours, stuck together, in the car. That had been difficult enough when I was just attracted to her, but now I have real feelings for her. Now I know what she looks like when she’s sleeping and the sounds she makes when she’s turned on and the way her breasts feel in my hands.
Great. It’s gonna be one hell of a day.