Page 82 of Avenged

He pulled me down onto the bed with him, and then ran his fingers along my side, causing me to shiver all over again.

“Are you okay?”

I stopped and internally did a check over my body and how it was feeling. All it felt was sated and slightly sore from lack of use, but not from the muscles that usually reminded me they were there with twangs and aches and knife-like tugs.

“I’m fine. I’m more than fine,” I said with a smile, and he must have believed it, because his face lit up in return, smiling like only Truck was capable of smiling… Truck.

“The rain has stopped,” he said, and I listened. It had. No more pattering on the roof or the porch in the backyard we could see from his bedroom window. “Do you want to go back to the festival?”

I shook my head. I had no desire to go anywhere. I didn’t want to leave the bed, or him, or the arms that surrounded me.

“You still have a bunch of tickets left,” he said softly.

“There’s nothing there that could beat this.”

I kissed him again, and he returned it, the fury of my nerve endings quickly returning, asking for more, asking to be brought to the tipping point again. And he acquiesced, kissing me so deeply I wasn’t sure if I’d ever return to the same person I was before today. All the superheroes I sketched and penned needed to be created from this moment. This sort of passion. This feeling that nothing else on this earth mattered but the stroke of his hand and the stroke of mine.

But as my kisses started to get more heated, he seemed to withdraw, turning our heated kiss into gentle pecks. I opened my eyes, hoping I wouldn’t see regret in his. Hoping he wasn’t going to say we shouldn’t have done what we’d done. Hoping he wouldn’t remind me about the contract we’d signed, saying there would be no kissing and no sex.

“What?” I asked.

His eyes were not regretful, but there was a wariness to them that hadn’t been there in the kitchen.

“Nothing. I’m just enjoying lying here with you. I’ve got you naked, just like I’ve wanted to since the day I met you.” He said it with a tease to his voice that was layered over the thickness of desire from earlier. He was pretending.

“You haven’t wanted this since the day we met,” I said, wondering what was going through his head. Why he was suddenly wary and gentle when before he’d been only passion and need.

“Damn straight I did,” he said with a new fierceness. It thrilled me, but he was still holding back.

“What are you going to do with me here in your bed?” I rubbed a hand over his chest and back down to where he was growing harder again, as if we hadn’t just drowned ourselves in each other with mindless desire.

He groaned and pulled my hand from where it had encircled him, kissing the palm, and setting it back down on his chest. I pulled myself from him, sitting so my legs were still touching him but where I could see him more clearly.

“Do you regret it?”

Surprise crossed his face. “Hell no. Not for even one moment.”

He reached out a finger and ran it along my cheek.

“Then what?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve pulled back. It’s like you’re afraid to let me touch you.”

“I am.” Shock settled through my bones, and it must have registered on my face, because he continued. “I’m not afraid of you, but of me.”

“Why would you be scared of yourself?”

“Like I’ve said, it’s almost impossible to stop male bodies once they get going, Jers.”

It registered in my brain finally—his words from before of not wanting to hurt me. My broken body being at the front of his brain. I knew for certain it was the reason he didn’t want me touching him now. I couldn’t blame him. He’d seen me writhe in pain. He’d heard Dr. Price’s words about sex and oils. But I didn’t want him to stop me touching him. I didn’t want him to stop himself from touching me in every way he normally would touch the woman that was in his bed. I didn’t want some quieter, tamer version of Truck. I wanted him. The him he was at his core.

“If you’re not going to treat me…treat this”—I waved a hand between us—“the same way you would with any other woman, then I don’t want it either.”

He closed his eyes, shutting me out for a moment, but when he opened them, there was desire there. There was also still a hesitancy I hated more than I hated the pain that normally accompanied my days.

“If I did it like I normally do…like I want to…I’d devour you and never stop.”

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