Page 3 of Hold on Tight

“That feels good,” she said, but as soon as he tried to move again, she made another noise of distress.

He kissed her, hard, and her mouth opened to him, got wetter against his, but her body got more rigid. She drew back. Some nasty animal part of him wanted to grab her and refuse to let go, but he was stern with his desperation and it subsided. His erection was doing the same. Shrinking away from her misery. In a few seconds, he’d slip out of her. The thought filled him with a kind of despair.This is all there is, the now. A few minutes ago, it had seemed like infinite space, unlimited promise. Now it was the end.

He withdrew and rolled away.

“I’m sorry.” She had tucked her face under her arm and her shoulders shook. Crying. He felt it, a hollow pain in his chest.

“Don’t be. We’ll try again.” He tried to soothe her with a hand on her hair, but she didn’t soften under his touch.

“There’s no time. We don’t have enough time.”

“We have a week,” he said, but he felt desperation lock around his ribs.

“I’m an idiot,” she said.

“This wasn’t your fault. It was your first time, right?”

She nodded.

“It’ll be better next time. I’ll make it better.”

Because he wanted to leave her with something that mattered. Something she would always have. In case she met assholes in college who took advantage, who didn’t know what they were doing, who didn’t see how amazing she was, how she deserved the best he could give her. Not like this, not halfway and awkward, but the way he would do it next time, as much a revelation as the first time she’d cried out and arched in his arms.

But she was shaking her head. “I’m not an idiot because of that. I’m an idiot because I didn’t see this coming.”

“What?”

“How I would feel—”

His chest got tight. Tighter.

“That I would fall—”

“Don’t say it,” he said.

She turned away. Her shoulders slumped. He ached to reach out and pull her in. To be a different guy with a different life, to say,We have all the time in the world.

“I was trying to prove something. To my father. To myself. But this—Do you think—” Whatever she was trying to say, it was costing her something. “Do you think there’s any chance I could see you? Next time you’re home? That we could—I don’t know—try to be together?”

Don’t get distracted. He could see his fire team leader, Sergeant Trebwylyn, in his mind’s eye. Buzzed hair, big as a Hummer, perpetually pissed off, warning them that he’d known way too many guys who’d come back from leave married. Dads-to-be. Entangled, distracted, bullet magnets.

He’d given them one job,Don’t get distracted, and Jake had managed to screw it up. He hadn’t even set foot on Afghan soil and he was already a fuckup (like your father, said that particular voice in his head). And what she was asking him for led him straight to what he’d vowed he’d never do.I will never be like my parents. The only way he knew for sure to avoid that was to never become part of a family. He’d already let himself get pulled way too far down this path. There was only one answer he could give her.

When he looked into her dark brown eyes, a stark contrast with her blond hair and fair skin, he wanted to kiss her. But if he kissed her, he’d want more of her, and if he took what he wanted, he’d be in deeper. They’d both be in deeper.

She heard what he hadn’t said into the silence.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

But I didn’t even answer yet. He wanted to take back his nonanswer, wanted to beg her for another chance.

The words were there, pressure in his chest, like that first night when he’d found himself telling her so much, for no reason other than that she was Mira, that she listened, that sheheard. A pressure stronger than lust, the need to tell her how he felt. He wanted her to know everything. He wanted her to be the only person he ever told anything to.

Don’t get distracted.

She turned away.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do this.”

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