Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
I T WAS NEARLY DARK , just the faint outline of pink around the mountains, as he took her hand and led her up the stairs into his house.
Rory felt calm. Not worried. Not nervous. Just resolute. Certain.
She had waited a long time to be with anybody.
She should’ve known that Gideon was always going to be the right one to be the first one.
How many people got to live out fantasies they’d had for so much of their lives?
This was the ultimate in not quitting, she supposed.
None of that really mattered right now, though. She wasn’t worried about what was coming in the future. She had him now. She had this. She wanted him. He kissed her like he was a dying man, and she had the cure. He kissed her like she was special. Like she mattered. His kissing her proved he would keep every promise he’d made. That if he said he was going to kiss her, he damn well would.
He pushed her up against the truck, and she sighed.
It was the way he was desperate for her. The way that this wasn’t about a list. Or parades or diary pages posted all around the school.
This wasn’t recompense for anything. It was just what they both needed. Here and now. It was what they were both desperate for.
And she wasn’t dressed up or made over. She was wearing hiking gear.
She was just...her. She was just her.
And he was Gideon.
But she knew him. Better than anyone did, maybe. He might not be a legend, but right now he was hers. And that mattered more than anything.
He picked her up, lifting her right off the ground like she weighed nothing, and carried her to the porch steps, up through the door. He slammed it behind them and set her down in the kitchen.
“I’m on the pill. Just so you know.”
He looked at her like she’d hit him in the face.
“I have been for a long time. Mostly for hormonal reasons, but I have always believed it is best to be prepared when you can be. I mean there’s an entire boys club built around that philosophy.”
“I don’t think that’s the only thing it’s built around, but yeah.”
“The point is,” she said. “I have protection.”
“Right.”
“We can use condoms, too, if you want,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “You surprised me because I didn’t think of it. Either way. And I can honestly say that’s a first. But it’s been a long time for me.”
Her heart contracted painfully. She didn’t know why hearing him say that affected her so much. Maybe because it made her feel as if they were more alike than different.
“Gideon.” She closed the distance between them and put her hands on his face. “We have new lives on the other side of this. I know we do. I need to believe that we do. That your life didn’t end with a bomb, and mine can start anytime now. And here, we have this. And maybe it’ll be just what we need. Maybe it will be enough.”
He nodded. What he understood, what she was saying, was that this didn’t mean nothing. It wasn’t about just losing her virginity. And it could mean something without her needing it to be forever.
Forever.
That word whispered across her soul. What did she know about forever?
She was a quitter. She was working on being more than that. But climbing one mountain was hardly a cure.
“Tonight, there’s nothing but this. You and me,” he said, his voice rough. “I don’t care about tomorrow. Or Boston. Or Cassidy or the mistakes I’ve made. I don’t care about anything but this.”
That was what she needed. She hadn’t realized how much.
When he kissed her, parting her lips and going deep, she shattered. It was the most amazing sensation she’d ever felt in her life. He smoothed his hands down her back to cup her ass, and she found herself arching into him, feeling the hard press of his arousal against her.
Tears pricked her eyes, but not because she was afraid, because she was sad.
She realized that she knew desperately little about sex. She hadn’t exposed herself to a lot about it because she had always felt like she was lacking in some way, and what was the point of consuming herself with it, of getting wound up and in over her head if nobody wanted her?
She just felt really sad for herself. For the girl that she’d been all those years. For Rory Sullivan who had let other people define what she could have.
From her parents to her bullies.
But he was right. There was nothing outside of this room, and no room for regrets.
“I am distressingly innocent,” she said, separating her mouth from his and pressing her forehead against his brow. “I know some things. But honestly, I have avoided learning too much about it the way that someone who is allergic to sugar would have to avoid a bakery. I want you. I want everything. But you’re going to have to teach me. Show me. I’m sorry that I’m not going to be a really good, skilled time. Especially because you’ve been celibate for a while.”
He growled, grabbed hold of her chin, and looked at her with those fierce blue eyes. And here again was a moment where he was wholly unlike any Gideon she had known before this. The intensity, the raw quality to him, and even more, the way he saw her. Now. He was so present. So utterly and completely there. Present in the moment.
It only just occurred to her he wasn’t like that years ago. He was always looking for the next thing. That added up with what he’d told her about himself.
The way he was always chasing glory. But she really understood it now. Really.
Because she felt the difference. When he said there was nothing else to him beyond this moment, he was telling the absolute truth. It wasn’t hyperbole.
The only thing was this. The only thing was them.
“You could never disappoint me,” he said, his voice rough. “I want you to understand that. I want you . I don’t want sex. I could’ve had sex at any point. This whole thing that I’ve been dealing with the last couple of years, it didn’t keep me from being able to attract women. Yeah, it might’ve made it so I had difficulty flirting in a conventional sense. But believe me when I tell you, there’s always somebody out there who wants to warm your bed because they need a place to stay for the night, or is willing to suck you off to get some of the pills that you’ve got. I didn’t want that. If I wanted sex, in the most basic way possible, I could’ve had it anytime. I didn’t. I never felt the need for it until you. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, feeling shivery and needy and altogether undone.
“Rory, when I saw you in the woods that day I thought you were an angel.”
He kissed her then like she was a revelation, and she believed it. She believed it with her whole body. She believed it with all that she was.
Maybe she was desperate. Maybe.
But she didn’t think so.
She was done telling herself to stop dreaming big. She was done telling herself not to want the things she wanted most.
There was a lesson in this. He was the original source of her desire, and he was the one she was having now.
She had always told herself that Gideon, as a dream, was too much.
Then why was he hers ? Why was he trembling almost as much as she was as he kissed her and kissed her until they were both breathless?
He moved one hand up to cup her breast, slid his thumb over her nipple, and she gasped.
She had never been touched so intimately. Of course she hadn’t; she had never even been kissed.
And she realized, with that well of anxiety rising up within her that was just so damned familiar, tonight was going to be nothing but a scroll of firsts. Touches, tastes and kisses. Her first time being possessed by another human being.
She had thought of it as a checklist item. As something simple. Lose her virginity.
It wasn’t. It could never be. Maybe that was because it was with Gideon. But whatever the reason, it felt infinitely complex, infinitely awe-inspiring and infinitely terrifying. But she wanted it all the same. Wanted him.
She clung to him because if she didn’t, she was going to melt right down to the floor.
Then he moved his hands down to push them up beneath the hemline of her T-shirt, which came off neatly over her head, his movements smooth. He might not have been with a woman in a while, but that he had been with one, with several, was evident in how easy his motions were as he divested her of her clothes. Her bra was next, and he managed it with the kind of finesse with which he did everything physical.
And she was bare in front of him, her nipples tight and hard because of the cool air, and the intensity of his gaze. And then he put his rough hands on her untouched, untried flesh, and she arched into him. Her need welled up within her, desire like she hadn’t experienced overtaking her entirely. She wanted him. She wanted this. There was no room for doubt inside her.
Not when there was Gideon. In front of her. Touching her, tasting her. He kissed his way down her neck and along her collarbone and moved his mouth down to fasten it to one tightened bud. She was unprepared for the intensity of the arousal. The sensation.
She cried out, arching against him, her entire body shaking.
“I want to touch you,” she said.
She began to pull at his shirt, getting it up over his head, the revelation of his bare torso almost more than she could bear.
His muscles were well-defined, covered by hair. His stomach rippled with strength. But there, just at his side and around toward his back, was fire-damaged skin. Rough and discolored. He looked at her, and turned around, showing her the extent of the damage. Then he put his hands on his belt, his button and zipper, and he pulled his jeans down.
She was caught between the shock and eroticism of seeing a naked man for the first time in her life, one that was thoroughly aroused by his desire for her, and what he was showing her. Where the burns and the shrapnel wounds extended down his hip, down to the top of his knee. It was such a significant portion of his body to have been burnt and damaged.
No wonder he hadn’t been able to cope without help. No wonder. No wonder he hadn’t...
And she hated Cassidy right then.
She’d never met the woman, and she never wanted to. But how could she look at him and see this pain and not understand? How could she want that symbol back more than she wanted him? This flesh and blood man who had put his body on the line for his country, for something that he believed in. This man who really was a hero. And who was altogether dear to her in ways that she could never quite express.
How could anyone turn their back on him? What she saw only made it seem miraculous that he had lived. That he wasn’t gone. That he hadn’t succumbed to the horror of it all, because she couldn’t blame him if he had.
If that was what it had done to his body, him, one of the survivors, then she knew there was more he’d left out. Because those who had died... The horror he had witnessed that day.
She reached out and she put her fingertips on his hip. On one of the deep gouges there. She looked up at his eyes. “You’re beautiful,” she said.
And he shuddered, lowering his head.
It was her turn to grip his chin and hold him steady so that she could kiss him. So that she could press her bare breasts to his chest.
He stepped out of his jeans, his shoes and everything else, completely naked. He wrapped her up in his arms and held her tightly. She was still wearing her own jeans and hiking boots but was only dimly aware when he stripped them from her body.
It was incredible. This need. This desire. Coursing through her. Arcing between them.
She wanted him.
And everything that came with him. The scars, the baggage. All of it. Because he wouldn’t be the man before her without them.
And she might’ve had a crush on Gideon Payne, the golden boy of Pyrite Falls, but the feelings that she had for the man in front of her, this damaged, half-feral man, went so much deeper.
They kissed until she was slick with desire, until her body felt hollowed out with need. They kissed until she was trembling. Until she thought she might expire from it. They kissed until she thought she would be undone. Wholly and completely.
And then, when she was slick and ready with need, he took her back to his bedroom.
It was Spartan. Unsurprising, since he wasn’t planning to stay. But she had expected some evidence at least that he lived there. But she realized, and nearly laughed, that it was his military precision.
It was still like barracks.
She was suddenly hungry to know more. About that life. About the ways he had transitioned between having a home and a wife and being overseas.
She wanted to know what his plans with Cassidy had been. Had they wanted children? Had they tried to have them? Had they eaten dinner together every night? Had coffee together in the morning? What had domestic life looked like for him, and what had his life in the military looked like? She had known this man for years, and yet it felt like she didn’t know him at all.
There were so many years between his leaving, and this one. She knew what had made him the feral thing before her, but there were other steps. She wanted to know who he’d been in that life that had been blown up along with the rest of him.
But then she couldn’t think anymore, because he laid her down on the bed and kissed every inch of her body. Because he opened her thighs wide and settled between them, and then he looked up at her. “Remember what I told you? If I said I was going to kiss you, I’d fucking do it.” She nodded, wholly incapable of speech. “I’m going to kiss you now, Rory. I’m going to kiss you right here.” He kissed her inner thigh, and she shivered. “And here.” He kissed her again. “And here.”
This time, he landed directly at the heart of her, moving his tongue through her seam, penetrating her deeply. She gasped, arching up off the bed. She wasn’t dumb, she knew about oral sex, but she hadn’t known that it was quite so...
He licked into her again, and she gripped his shoulders.
Yeah.
She hadn’t realized you could do that .
He pulled her toward him, clasping his hands over her stomach as he drew her down more firmly against his mouth, moving upward to suck that sensitized bundle of nerves between his lips before he went back down.
He made a savage, satisfied sound as he ate her, and she was lost. She forgot to wonder about the past, and she didn’t wonder about the future. Because now was all that mattered. Now, with Gideon’s mouth on her.
She grabbed hold of the sheets, balled them up in her fist and flexed her feet out, trying to root herself to the mattress. Trying to get a hold of something. Anything.
She felt lost. Utterly and completely lost. In this. In him. In all that he was.
She moved her hips in steady rhythm with his tongue. And then he unclasped his hand and put it between her legs, pushed a finger inside her as he continued to tease her with his mouth.
Then he added another, the stretching, stinging sensation foreign.
“Gideon,” she said, a plea. For what, she didn’t know. For him to stop, for him to keep going.
Definitely for him to keep going. Need was tightening inside her, her climax building.
She might be ignorant of sex, but she knew how to furtively bring herself to completion.
This was not the same. This was slick and graphic and wonderful. It was debauched and beautiful, and she couldn’t have asked for anything better.
“Come for me,” he growled.
And with an order like that, she could not resist.
She had no desire to resist.
She shattered, her internal muscles tightening around his fingers as she found her release.
She breathed hard and heavy, feeling like she had just run a marathon. And then she looked at him, and he was hard and huge and wanted her.
She reached out tentatively, curling her fingers around his erection.
She bit her lip as she tested his heat and the strength of him. He closed his eyes, his breath hissing through his teeth.
“I want...” She scooted forward, lowered her head and flicked her tongue across the tip of him.
The sound he made was short and tortured and he reached out and grabbed her hair, pulling her head back hard. “I won’t last if you do that.”
“But I want you.”
“The world has tested me enough. You can test me later. But now... I just need you. I need to have you.”
And she didn’t want to resist him. So she didn’t. She let him wrap his arms around her and pulled her body against his. She let him ease her down so that she was lying on her back and he was settled between her thighs. He kissed her, long and deep, put his hand between her legs and pushed two fingers inside her again, slowly and rhythmically moving them in and out.
He was much bigger than that. But she knew that he was trying to prepare the way.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
He gritted his teeth, the veins in his neck standing out as he pressed the head of his cock against the entrance of her body. And slowly, very slowly, he entered her.
It hurt. But it was a wonderful kind of hurt.
She had felt wrong and lonely and like parts of her didn’t line up with anyone or anything for most of her life.
But Gideon Payne fit her. This man who felt alone, ostracized, who felt like he’d been abandoned, fit her. And she fit him.
And when he was fully seated inside her, he pressed his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes before kissing her, deep and long.
She shivered, her internal muscles rippling as his tongue slid against hers. As her need began to build, past the discomfort, past the pain.
And when he began to move, the slick friction, the feeling of his possession, began to heighten her arousal. Pushing her back toward that sweet, sultry place of release.
She locked her legs around his, opening herself wider and taking him deeper as she met his every thrust with rolls of her hips. It wasn’t romantic, not in the traditional sense. Their sounds were broken, their skin sweat-slicked. The sounds of need he made were more savage than they were heartfelt. Except it was real. It was real, and it mattered.
Because this wasn’t a game.
This wasn’t something manufactured to manipulate or embarrass her. They were both beyond control. It had nothing to do with showing anyone. With being legends for the sake of it.
They were just legends for each other. In this room, in this bed.
And as her orgasm crashed over her, making her cry out in ecstasy, she knew for certain that he might not think he was a hero, but he would always be one to her.
Always.
And then, on a low growl, his control snapped. His thrusts became hard, erratic, the intensity of it pushing her up the mattress so that her head met the headboard.
He gripped her hands, his fingers threaded through hers as he thrust within her, his eyes bright, a blue flame.
And she hadn’t thought she would come again. She really would’ve said it wasn’t possible, but when he thrust into her so hard their skin slapped together, and she felt a zip of pain through her body as her head made contact with the headboard and he went deep, something in her unraveled.
There was no anxiety. There was no fear. She was enough. This moment was enough. Together. The two of them.
And this orgasm was different. It was like shattering. Like coming apart and being made new. Because when she did, so did he, his body pulsing within her as he found his release. That raw, masculine energy infusing her with a matching feminine power.
She was destroyed. And yet remained.
And they lay there, together. She watched his chest rise and fall, moved her fingertips over his bare skin. Across that sweat-slicked body, down to his scars. Back up again, so she could feel his raging heartbeat.
And somehow, this was maybe almost as wonderful as sex itself. Being naked beside him without shame.
Being able to look at him. His physical perfection and imperfection.
Everything that made him him .
He put his hand on her hip, and she wanted to purr. The security she felt with that basic, possessive touch. It was soothing and arousing all at once.
“You know if you don’t go home, your sisters are going to send out a search party,” he said, his voice rough.
As sweet nothings went for a post-sex moment, it did leave something to be desired. But...
“Snowy plover,” she said.
“Termite,” he countered.
“What?” she asked. “What did I do?”
“You misused the safe word. I’m being smart, not mean.”
“Well, I don’t want to be smart. I just want to lie here like this.”
“ I don’t want to get skinned.”
“Can I just stay for a while longer?” She felt a little bit like what he really wanted to do was separate from her so the intimacy wasn’t so intense. But maybe not. Except, maybe.
The intensity was a little much for her. But she had decided she enjoyed it. Because it was him.
“But it wasn’t just this once, was it?”
He shook his head. “I’m here for the month.”
“So am I.”
“Don’t tell Lydia.”
There was so much weight in those words. Don’t tell Lydia. She knew that it wasn’t just about the fact that they’d slept together, but about everything else he told her when they were up camping. Because she knew that was shameful for him. A secret. Something he hadn’t figured out a way to come to terms with yet.
And she was sure, and understood, that he probably didn’t want his family to worry about him, but there was more than that, and she knew it. Sensed it.
“Everything that’s happened between us in the last couple of days is between us,” she said. “You can trust me.”
“I know I can,” he said.
She kissed him, pressed her body against his, and it wasn’t even subtle, and she didn’t care. He wrapped his arms around her, and she found herself beneath him as the kiss intensified. She was ready for him again, would take him again.
“I can’t,” he said.
She felt him getting hard against her hip. “I somehow think you could.”
“No. I mean you can’t. That was your first time. We need to be reasonable. I don’t want you to get sore. It’s like any workout. Like rope climbing. You’ve got to build up some stamina.”
That was frank. And betrayed his experience in ways that she didn’t love.
“Have you slept with a lot of virgins?”
He looked a little bit sheepish. “Not since high school. And I wouldn’t ever say that there were a lot of them. But that sort of thing didn’t mean much back then. I mean, that was when a lot of people were losing it. It was just expected and part of it. This was different. I do want you to know that. It was different because it was you. And it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d been with a hundred guys. It still would’ve been special. But you weren’t. And I appreciate that. That it was me.”
He reached out and touched her cheek. “I really do, Rory. I need you to know you’re special.”
Normally, she would doubt something like that, because her experience was that those kinds of proclamations were bullshit, and would only end up harming her. But she believed him.
There was a wealth of sadness in the silence between the words, though. A wealth of regret. They could never be simple. Because they weren’t simple. Maybe he wanted to run away with her to Boston.
She had to stop herself from suggesting that. What a foolish thing to think. What a foolish thing to say.
Nothing about being with him scared her, but that thought did. It was a silly pie-in-the-sky sort of thought.
“I’ll go home. So that you don’t have to worry about Fia. She really would savage you.”
“I know. She made that very clear.”
She dressed slowly, and he watched. He watched closely. It aroused her, the way his eyes moved over her body.
It was sexy. So was he.
But she had to go.
She sighed and walked into the kitchen. He followed a minute later, still pulling his jeans on.
Then he took her hand in his, and her stomach hollowed out, her heart jumping up against her rib cage.
He walked her out like that, holding her hand, like he’d done up the mountain, and helped her into her car.
She didn’t need help. But she did need him. Needed him to give her this last bit of attention. It felt good. She felt good.
And she cried a little bit on the drive back to Sullivan’s Point; that was just a virgin’s prerogative.
Fia wasn’t downstairs when she got in, thank God. She went up to her room and took out her notebook. She stared down at the list. Assist the legend.
Get a kiss.
She had crossed off makeover , and she could cross off climb the damn mountain if she wanted to.
But what did you do when you weren’t the same person who made the list to begin with?
It hardly felt like the Summer of Rory. It felt like something bigger. With more consequence. It was no longer about her leaving town with a certain sort of reputation. It was no longer about what anyone thought of her at all.
She was happy with herself. And that thought was truly the most jarring one she’d ever had.
She had liked putting that dress on, she had liked people thinking she looked pretty, but she didn’t need it. She hadn’t figured out exactly how to dress herself because she didn’t care.
She liked to be comfortable, and she liked for things to be functional. She didn’t need to attract attention. She liked to talk about books, and segue into whatever weird thing interested her. She liked having one lifelong best friend. She loved her sisters. Who understood her without the need for explanation or apology.
She didn’t want to go out with Mike. She didn’t want to impress all those old bullies who had been mean to her.
They didn’t matter.
She was Rory Sullivan, and she was fine. And she’d had sex.
And... And... She pulled the paper out of the notebook and crumpled it up, sitting down on the bed hard as tears fell down her cheeks.
She didn’t need it. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. All she cared about was that between now and when she left for Boston she got to spend as much time with Gideon as possible. He was healing her. And she really hoped—she did—that she was offering him some healing, too. If she could do that, then nothing else mattered at all.