Page 14 of A Little Love

He could smell the unmistakable odor of discharged gunpowder now. Every fine hair on the back of his neck was standing straight up.

She stared at him for almost half a minute without moving or speaking, before her expression closed to him with all the finality of a physical door slamming shut.

“Fine,” she said and stalked past him. She went into her house, and then he was treated to the real deal. Her door didn’t exactly slam, but there was a finality to the way she shut it just a little harder than normal behind her.

Nobody ever meant it when they said ‘fine’ like that. Drawing a deep breath, Nolan scrubbed his fingers through his short hair, sorely tempted to go after her, but he wasn’t fit company tonight and he knew it.

“Fine,” he agreed and turned for home. He only took a single step off the porch before her front door swung open and Tricia came stalking back out after him, angry pink flushing both cheeks and high temper filling her eyes.

“You know what,” she demanded, her tone calm in spite of her anger. “It’snotfine. Maybe one of us isn’t being very clear about what they want. On the off chance that it might be me, I’ll start.”

The boom of a bottle rocket one block over made every knot in his gut tighten hard. He stared at her and didn’t flinch, but he could feel his breaths. Each one dragged in and out of a chest so tense it hurt. His hands were fists at his sides. When she stomped two steps closer, coming toe-to-toe with him, he hadthe most appalling urge to swing at her. He popped his neck again, swallowing that urge back until he got it once more under firm control.

“I find you incredibly attractive,” she said bluntly. “I would hope that you find me attractive too. I mean, I may not be a beauty queen, but I’m not homely, right? If what you’re doing is taking it slow out of some grossly misguided attempt to give me time to get to know you, I’d like to stop now. While that might have been appropriate for the first week, we’re going on three weeks now and, frankly, I’d like some serious sex right now. So, I need you to make up your mind, please. Is physical attraction a problem here—” She stopped, one hand rising to pat the empty air between them, her eyes widening as if not only were the thought only just occurring to her but also the most abhorrent she could think of. “O-or amIjust n-not what you want, or—” she stammered and fell silent, staring up at him, unable to finish.

“Not what I want?” he echoed, hardly believing he’d just heard that come out of her mouth.

She shrugged, her anger dissolving rapidly under the tidal force of her rising uncertainty. “You want to be my Daddy, but…” She hesitated, shaking her head once. “But what about the rest of me? Not just the Little, but the Big, too. Do you want me, Nolan? Because if you don’t… I need to find someone who does.”

Another crackle of fireworks, just down the street now. So close that he could see the shower of multi-colored sparks through the cover of the maple trees that lined the street. This time he did flinch. He couldn’t do this right now. This wasn’t the kind of conversation a man could have when he wasn’t in his right frame of mind.

She must have seen him jerk, or maybe it was his prolonged silence that she misinterpreted. Either way, when she steppedback suddenly they had a Grand Canyon’s worth of space between them instead of a few weathered porch boards.

“Fine,” she said again, softly now and without any trace of her former anger. Turning on her heel, she walked into her house. This time, when she closed the door behind her, she did it very quietly.

And Nolan let her go.

For all of three seconds.

He meant to turn on his heel, too. He meant to go home, wait out the night, and come back in the morning when he was calm, cool, and rational. Then and only then, when he knew he’d regained enough of his control to converse with her like a sensible person—instead of the anxiety-ridden time bomb he could already feel ticking down towards a Chernobyl-scale explosion—then he’d come back and he’d put her fears to rest.

Another bottle rocket burst, filling the sky above a rooftop four houses down with showers of silver, blue and yellow. It was like watching glitter fall twinkling and sparkling from the heavens. And he didn’t know why that made him think of helicopters lifting off or fill his nose with not only the cloying scent of sulfur but the grossly familiar helmet smell of head-sweat and hot plastic.

Nolanmeantto go home.

But he didn’t. Because now it wasn’t just the fireworks making his skin crawl and his hair prickle and his nerves buzz with that fight or flight need to move—just fucking move; in any direction, it didn’t matter—it was the sight of Tricia, with that half sad, half lost, and all angry look in her eyes as she walked away from him.

It was that look that finally scrubbed enough nettles across his ass to get him moving, and it was the next boom of an exploding—IED; he ducked—bottle rocket that covered the equally explosive sound of his hand hitting her door. He knocked it open so hard, it hit with a reverberating bang that knocked twopicture frames right off her living room wall. One of the glass panes shattered; Tricia jumped.

She’d been standing not six feet in, motionless until that happened. Whipping around, her tear-filled eyes were huge and her face pale.

“It’s the fireworks,” she said shakily, stumbling back a step when he came towards her. “I didn’t realize… I’m s-sorry… I-I-I didn’t—” She stopped with a gasp when his hand caught her throat.

He meant to go home, but from the moment his skin touched hers, it became fireworks of a different kind, exploding not in the neighborhood around them but in the blood pounding through his veins, in his heart and in his head. He didn’t know he’d pushed her until her back hit the wall. He had no idea he was going to kiss her until his lips were suddenly, hungrily, on hers, drinking in her gasp like it was the last breath he’d ever take.

Did he want her?

She latched onto his arm, tense with his hand on her throat, though she didn’t try to pry his fingers away. When he took her hand and shoved it down between them, she didn’t fight but pressed her open palm to his swollen, raging cock when he forced her to. That he was already hard as stone was just one more thing he hadn’t known until that moment.

Did he want her to find someone else?

Were he a little less selfish, he might have been able to let her go. But he wasn’t.

He kissed her like he’d never kissed anyone before her, and like he knew he’d never be able to kiss another woman again. His grip on her throat gentled. Though it had never been so tight as to cut off her breathing, he had scared her. He could feel it in the racing of her heartbeat, just beneath his fingertips.

He tried to make himself stop, drawing back from her as far as he could, bare millimeters of space filled only by the raggednessof both their breaths. He closed his eyes, wanting so much to apologize. He owed her that much, at least. But his chest was too tight and the words refused to come.

Her hand on his cock twitched, becoming the slightest squeeze of acknowledgement. She could have hurt him; he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had, but she didn’t do that either. She turned her arm until, very slowly, she pulled out of his relaxing grip. An instant later, her fingers came to rest as light and trembling as butterfly wings upon his cheek.

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