Page 38 of Blue Moon

“Moon, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“Maybe I will buy you that shirt after all.”

“I’d deserve it.” Ryder sucked in a breath. “But it isn’t always like that. Painful, I mean.”

“And you know that because you’re a woman?”

“No, but I’ve been with enough women to work it out.”

“Oh.” She was biting that fucking lip again. Any harder, and she’d draw blood. “Did you…with Neve? I know you don’t like to talk about her, but…did you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did.”

Ryder hadn’t wanted to. Neve was only seventeen, and he’d said they should wait, but Neve had looked up Florida’s Romeo and Juliet law and made her case. Erase the memory of him, she’d begged. Show me it isn’t always terrible. Give me something good to think about. Eventually, she’d worn him down, and he’d slowly, carefully made love to her, held her through the fear and the relief. And now he was glad they’d done it. That they’d shared that small pleasure before life got too much for her to bear.

“And…and she was okay?” Luna asked.

More than okay. Neve had turned insatiable.

“The first time was…” Traumatic. She’d broken down in tears when dark thoughts took over, then demanded he “fuck me, you coward” when he tried to back off. “She was a little anxious.”

“But after that? It got better?”

“After that, she damn near wore my dick out.”

A bittersweet memory, those nights with Neve. She’d turned sneaking out into an art form. Through her window, across the roof of the porte cochère, down the wisteria tree that wound its way around one of the thick stone columns, and through the trees at the side of the driveway. She’d call Ryder before she left the bedroom, and he’d meet her at the end of the driveway. The Metcalfe family lived in a sprawling ranch-style home, and his bedroom was on the first floor. Piece of cake to get inside. All they had to do was keep the noise down. After she passed, his mom confessed that she’d known the whole time that Neve was staying overnight, but she wasn’t fond of the Fontaine family, so Neve got a free pass.

“How many other girlfriends have you had?”

“One.”

“But earlier, you said you’d been with women, plural. It sounded like a lot.”

“Apart from Shylah, I never dated any of them. No dinner and a movie, no long walks on the beach, no taking them home to meet the family. I was lucky if I remembered their names in the mornings.”

Or even the evening before. One time, Ryder had taken a girl for coffee at Starbucks on the way back to his place because he couldn’t remember whether she was Bailey or Hailey. At least she’d believed his excuse about wanting to stay up all night.

Luna crinkled her nose. “Isn’t that a bit…sleazy?”

“Near the base in Coronado, there’s a group of women—a club, a movement, whatever you want to call it—and they compete to see who can fuck the most Navy SEALs. It’s like a sport to them.”

“Are you serious?”

“You’ve heard of notches on the bedpost? They had bracelets. Every time they fucked a SEAL, they added a charm.”

Now there were two jackasses on mopeds weaving in and out of traffic. Bodyguard duty had been much more fun in the Caribbean, gun-toting smugglers excepted.

“Like some weird kind of trophy?” Luna asked.

“Exactly. And when we wouldn’t tell them our codenames from the Teams, they gave us their own nicknames and the charms matched those. That was fuckin’ weird. We could tell which of our buddies they’d fucked just from looking at their wrists.”

“What name did they give you?”

“Fire.”

“Because you’re hot?”

“As in ‘set the sheets on.’”

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