Page 31 of Raw & Vulnerable

“You never told me…” her voice fades sleepily and exhaustion finally begins to take her. “…why you went to prison…what did you do? You…ever…going to tell me…?”

He strokes her soft, blonde hair carefully, relishing the feeling of the locks between his fingers. Gage doesn’t answer her question, but he cuddles her until she fades into her dreams.

Then, when she’s asleep, he answers.

He says it to the quiet room, the words falling on deaf ears by design.

Chapter 13

Like every day, Minnie wakes up just before dawn. She’s an early riser, perhaps because she lives her life like a prey animal. She wakes, before the sun, as if someone has touched her shoulder. As if someone just slammed a door in the house.

None of these things happen, yet she wakes none the less.

It’s still dark and she can distinctly smell a certain maleness surrounding her. It takes less than two seconds for her to remember that she’s not in her own bed, in her own home, which gives her a moment of panic. Are the doors locked? The windows?

Then, she sees him sleeping beside her. The tension in her muscles eases slightly, soothed by the sight of him. He seems younger when he’s asleep, when his fierce eyes aren’t looking around with that ‘I dare you to try it’ expression on his face.

His chest rises and falls calmly, deep in sleep still. Minnie doesn’t fool herself; if she’s too loud she will probably wake him up. He can’t be that deep of a sleeper, considering his time in prison. She considers that perhaps he’s faking sleep, maybe he’s already aware of her wakefulness and is just allowing her the time to let herself out.

It was supposed to be a fling, wasn’t it? He never said otherwise. Just a one-night stand. A silly experiment. I should go before he wakes up and it gets awkward, she thinks.

She’s never had casual sex before, but she’s seen it in the movies. She knows the drill.

Her contacts are dry as heck in her eyes and she wishes she had packed her glasses in her purse, considering she knew she’d be in bed with him for at least a few hours, if all went well after the bar. The resounding ache between her thighs reminds her ofhow wellthings went.

She checks her phone and makes a sharp noise under her breath. She’s got five minutes until her sister shows up. Extracting herself carefully from the tangle of his legs, not wanting to leave, Minnie looks around for her clothes, picking up what she can find.

When she’s dressed, she gives one last, lingering look at him, sprawled naked in his sheets. She’d rather stay in bed with him, but he never said he wanted anything more than a night inside of her. Carefully, she unlocks the door and slips outside his bedroom, feeling vaguely like a criminal herself.

The hall is silent. All the other doors are shut tight. Minnie tiptoes past them, wondering who sleeps behind each door. The stairs are creaky and she mentally winces, cursing out the old stairs. No matter how light she is, there is no avoiding the slight noise, seemingly loud in the silent house, full of sleeping people.

When she finally gets to the bottom of the stairs, she crosses the foyer to the front door. As her hand lands on the handle, she feels eyes on her. Turning her head, she catches sight of a slim figure standing in the doorway to the kitchen, the crunch of a water bottle in hand.

The figure comes closer, clearly heading back for the stairs, seemingly uncaring that she’s sneaking out the front door. When he gets closer, she sees that it’s the particularly unpleasant strawberry blonde, the one with the scratchy voice.

“Dining and dashing, huh? Classy.” He sounds exhausted, irritable. Hungover, if the water bottle in his hand is anything to go by.

Mustering her slim self-confidence, mostly because Minnie is really rubbed the wrong way by this guy, she lifts her chin up. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to stay.”

He makes an ugly little sound, turning to start on up the stairs. “You’renot. Bye, you uptight bitch.”

Nostrils flaring slightly, Minnie walks out the front door, mentally beating him over the head with a very large encyclopedia. For a moment, she has a sense of panic, wondering if her sister remembered or forgot to come get her, but then she sees her black Mercedes.

Sighing in relief, Minnie rushes over and hops inside, noting the tired look in her sister’s eyes, completely absent the usual makeup that makes them pop. “Ariel, your hair…”

It’s sticking up all over the place. Wild, platinum strands. “You all good, Mouse? He treat you right or do I need to go in there and give him a piece of my mind? I swear to God, I’ll fight a dude.”

Minnie feels a smile pull at her lips, one she can’t quite stop. Her sister takes being a protectorveryseriously. “He was perfectly fine.”

“Would you recommend ten out of ten? Nice hickey, by the way.”

Nodding, feeling like bursting out with joy, just remembering the feelings he cultivated in her, Minnie settles for grinning. “I would, actually. Can we go now? Before his whole household wakes up?”

“You got it. This neighborhood is kinda scary, by the way.” Her sister pulls away from the curb, executing a sloppy three-point turn. It’s clear that she’s eager to get back to bed, but Minnie is wide awake.

When they get back to Minnie’s cozy townhome, Ariel throws herself back into the second bedroom without another word, assured that her sister is safe and sound. Minnie goes about watering her plants, saying good morning to each of them, feeling bright and sunny.

Her mind can’t stop running over the feeling of his lips on hers, the way his crooked grin felt against her skin, his teeth teasing her throat. The way she tingled as he sucked hard on her neck, his tongue tasting her.

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