Page 24 of Call Back

“Now.”

He leaned over to his nightstand and opened the drawer to get a condom as I tugged off my panties. He rolled on the condom before turning back and covered my body with his.

I wrapped a leg around his back and lifted my hips as he entered me. He kissed me again as he thrust, and I grabbed his butt to pull him closer, needing him deeper as I climbed higher and higher. This man was what I needed—to feel safe and cherished—two feelings I’d never felt with any other man.

I gasped out his name as I came, clinging to him as he pushed deeper several more times before he gave one last thrust. He collapsed next to me, holding me close as we caught our breath.

“That was . . . fast,” he said.

I rolled to my side to face him. To my surprise, tears were burning my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked alarmed. “Do you regret this?”

“No. It’s just . . .” I chuckled as I wiped a tear from my eye. “You must be having major regrets, thinking I’m one of those women who cries after sex, but I promise you that I’m not.”

He grinned. “I just bring out the tears?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. I’m just so overwhelmed . . .”

“Good overwhelmed or bad?”

“Good,” I said, looking into his eyes. “You make me feel things I never expected to feel. Thank you.”

“Oh, Maggie.” He leaned over and cupped my cheek, kissing me with more passion than I would have expected after sex.

I wrapped my hands around his neck and held him close as I kissed him back.

He lifted his head and smiled. The happiness radiating from him was infectious, and I smiled back. This felt good; this felt normal.

Brady settled next to me again and rested his fingertips on my stomach, making lazy figure eights. “Are you working for your mother tomorrow?”

“Yeah. I’m cleaning Miss Ava’s house, then working for Momma and Tilly starting at four. I won’t be done until late because the event is up in Nashville.”

“But you’ll come here when you’re done?” he asked as his hand moved over my hip, wandering to my thigh.

I was about to answer him when his hand abruptly stopped, and I realized he’d just traced my scar.

His body stiffened slightly as he propped himself onto his elbow to study it.

I’d been so stupid. Of course Brady would notice my scar. Most of my previous boyfriends had commented on it, but they’d all accepted my excuse—that it was the relic of a freak childhood accident involving my cousin and a cookie cutter. Of course, most of my exes were self-centered assholes, purposefully selected because they wouldn’t pry, wouldn’t go too deep. I suspected Brady would want to know all the details. He’d question anything that sounded unbelievable.

“Don’t look at it.” I covered the mark with my hand. It was ugly and it wasn’t small. The two-inch long backward C had been carved high up on my thigh, and the slash through it had been deep enough that any doctor would have insisted on stitches. But when I woke up in the woods behind my house the night of my graduation—after it happened—I’d been too confused and disoriented to realize I’d been cut so badly. The next morning, my focus had been on fleeing Franklin.

“What happened?” His voice was tight and his body had tensed even more.

“Just a stupid childhood injury.”

Brady sat up and leaned over to get a better look, trying to gently move my hand to the side, but I fought him.

His gaze lifted to mine. “I just want to see it.”

“It’s ugly. I hate it.”

A soft smile washed over his face. “It’s part of you and you’re beautiful. Just let me look at it. Please?”

I sat up and moved my back up against his pillows and headboard. Feeling self-conscious and vulnerable, I reached down and pulled the sheet up to cover myself, clutching it to my breasts. “Why?”

“So I know more about you.” He lifted his leg and pointed to a white pockmark on his left calf. “My brother accidently shot me with a nail gun when I was twelve.”

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