Page 70 of A Ryan Recollection

“Six.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“Yes,” I whisper, trying to avoid his intense gaze but being unable to.

He narrows his eyes at me. “Okay. But I know you fucked other people before I met you, Jessie. Why are you being so vague about this guy? Did you love him?”

“God, no!” I wrinkle my face in disgust.

“So? Why so sketchy about him?” He pushes his body against mine, making warmth pool in my center and coil around my spine. He presses his thumb on my jawbone, tilting my chin slightly so he can stare directly into my eyes.

“I’m not being sketchy. I just don’t want you to go all Shane on him, is all.”

He frowns at my use of his name as an adjective. “I swear to God, if you don’t tell me what the fuck happened between you two right now I will drag him in here and ask him myself. And you know I’m not gonna go about that politely.”

“Promise you won’t kill him?”

“Depends what he did.”

I arch an eyebrow at him. “Nothing worth killing him for.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Now talk.”

“I was eighteen. It was a few weeks before Christmas. I needed a place to crash. I met him in a bar where I was working…”

Shane narrows his eyes in confusion.

“I pretended to be twenty-one. I had a fake ID, but the owners weren’t the kind to check anyway — you know what I mean? As long as I was a hit with the customers and I didn’t give them any trouble, they were happy to have me,” I’m babbling now.

“You’re stalling, sweetheart.”

“I’m telling you how I met him,” I say with a sigh and I don’t miss the annoyance that flashes over his face. “So, I told Jason I needed a place to stay for the holidays and he offered me one. He seemed like a nice guy so I took it.”

“And?”

I close my eyes and take a breath. This is the part he won’t like. “After a day or two, it became clear that staying there came with some…” I struggle to find the right word for a few seconds, “expectations.”

His frown deepens into a scowl. “He forced you to have sex with him?”

“I wouldn’t say forced,” I scrunch up my eyes. I am not handling this well at all. Jason is going to have his head on a spike if I don’t stop making him sound like a rapist. “He just made some suggestions about what I could do to repay him for his kindness, and because I was trying to lie low, I went along with them. But I was a willing, if not enthusiastic, participant.”

“He made you have sex so you could keep a roof over your head? That is not willing, Jessie,” he snarls.

I cup his face in my hands. “No. He never threatened to throw me out. He just suggested that I could sleep in his bed and stuff…”

“Stuff?”

“You know what I mean, Shane. Besides, he didn’t know I was on the run from the Wolf and how desperate I was for somewhere to stay. I genuinely think he thought he was helping me out and that I was into him. I mean, he was a nice looking guy with a nice place and a hot car. He was rich — or his parents were. I’m pretty sure he got laid whenever he wanted.”

“Yet he still pressured young women into sex?”

“He’s an asshole. He was then and no doubt he is now. Can we forget about him? Please?” I whisper, standing on my tiptoes to pepper soft kisses over his face.

He grunts his response, the hand on my neck now fisting in my hair while his free hand slides to my ass. He squeezes hard, making me moan, my lips twitching against his jaw. When he dips his head low and runs his nose over the soft skin of my throat, I whimper with need, rocking my hips and rubbing myself over his hardening cock.

“You belong to me, Jessie. Every fucking inch of you is mine.”

“I know, Shane.”

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