Ask Me Again

by Gina L. Maxwell

  Trish turned onto her side and held herself up on her forearm. “Bullshit.”

  In the dark, he made out her narrowed eyes and tense jaw. Things he wanted to soothe into relaxed states with feather-light kisses. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “Okay,” he said. “State your case.”

  “If he truly wanted her happy, then he’d go to her with his worries and insecurities and talk it out like adults. And maybe when it’s all said and done, maybe she does decide that it won’t or can’t work between them, but at least he let her make her own decision. Why do men think they have the right to make decisions for us? Do you truly see us as such feebleminded creatures that we couldn’t possibly know our own minds, our needs, our desires? I mean, how fucking arrogant can you be? It’s not only high-handed, it’s downright insulting.”

  Sparks lit up her eyes, and although her rant ended up including him—accusing him—he knew he wasn’t the one she was truly mad at.

  “Is that what he did, sweetheart?” he asked softly.

  She winced and suddenly found great interest in a loose thread on the blanket under them. Tony lifted his right hand and tucked her hair behind her ear, letting his fingers trail the edge of her jaw before tipping her chin up to meet his gaze. “Did he end things and say it was for your benefit?”

  Tears gathered in the water line of her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Hatred for the man he’d never met slithered in his gut. He had to consciously keep his hands from balling into fists that ached to physically hurt Nick as much as he’d mentally hurt Trish emotionally. But Tony wouldn’t get that chance, and even if he did, it’d only make him feel better to make the bastard pay for shattering her heart. The one thing Nick should have protected at all costs.

  But he didn’t, and now Trish was in Tony’s arms, and he’d let her stay in them for as long as she wanted.

  “Then we won’t talk about it.” Tony gathered her closer, situating her back into their movie-lounging position, and kissed her hairline by her temple as though sealing the lid on the topic.

  Her right arm rested along his left side. Turning it so the underside faced up, he ran the tips of his fingers up and down the length in slow, soothing trails. Minutes later, she surprised him by speaking.

  “We were supposed to get married. Move out of the city, away from his overbearing family. Have kids.” She paused. “Well, I wanted kids. He always pushed the topic off, saying we should only work on one part of our lives at a time. In hindsight, I don’t think he ever wanted them. At least not with me.”

  Tony had a hundred things he wanted to say. He was a fool. He didn’t have any idea how special you are. In a hundred years, a guy like him could never be good enough for you. You deserve so much more.

  Instead, he kept quiet. She wouldn’t be receptive to any of that now, and it’s probably nothing she hasn’t heard over and over again from her family and friends. At this point, it was just noise. So he gave her arm a light squeeze to let her know he was still listening, still there for her, and continued running his fingers over her satiny skin.

  “Then out of nowhere, he sits me down and tells me he decided he can’t bring himself to move out of the city. And not only the city, but he doesn’t want to move away from his neighborhood. The one he’d lived in his entire life. The one where his parents lived across the street from us in the same apartment he’d been raised in. I’d lived across the country from my family from the time I was eighteen, and at almost forty years old, he couldn’t move one goddamn hour away from his.

  “And when I got upset—rightly so, I might add, since we’d been planning this future together for several years at this point—he used it against me, saying things like, ‘See? I’m only holding you back from what you really want. I’m not good enough for you.’”

  Again, she turned into him and raised up on her elbow so her face was level with his.

  “But do you know what that really means?” she continued. “It really means that I wasn’t good enough for him.” Tony opened his mouth to reprimand her for even letting the thought cross her mind, but she kept going. “Because if I was, he would have been willing to at least compromise on things. Meet me halfway or partway or some fucking way. But I wasn’t good enough or important enough...not loved enough.”

  The sparks were gone, replaced by pools of hurt lit by the moon. It killed him that he couldn’t take the hurt away for her.

  “Jesus, come here.” He pulled her in, tucking her face into his neck and holding her tight. Warm tears streamed down his throat and dampened the collar of his T-shirt. He hated that she was crying. Even worse that she was crying over someone who cast her aside like an old pair of shoes that outgrew their purpose. Fucking asshole. “You’re right. About him not loving you enough. But it’s because he loves himself so goddamn much that he can’t see past his own ego long enough to know how lucky he was to have such an amazing woman.His shortcomings are not a reflection of you. They only prove he’s a selfish bastard who didn’t deserve you or your love.”

  She sniffled. “I know. I mean, I know that now. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.” An angry curse whispered across his neck. “Hell, that’s all I’ve been doing for the last month. And I finally realized that what hurts me the most is that his bullshit excuses about holding me back and not being good enough for me are dead on...and I wasted all those years because I couldn’t see that his love wasn’t real, that none of it was real.

  “I’m not upset that our relationship ended. I’m upset at the thought of what those wasted years could have been if I’d had the good sense to end it myself. And I’m scared that I’ll make the same mistake. That I’ll start building a life with someone only to find out later that I was wrong about him, too. I don’t trust myself when it comes to relationships anymore.”

  Tony sighed and held her tighter. “No one knows if the person they’re with will end up being the right one. It’s still a gamble for even the happiest of couples. The best you can do is place your bet when the odds are most in your favor.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess so.”

  “Either way, it’s not something you should be stressing about right now. You need to give yourself permission to take the time to figure out what it is you want to do from here.”

  Trish tucked her feet back and pushed up to sit on them. “You’re right. I need to stop obsessing over the past and even the future. To stop thinking about this shit day in and day out. I’m so damn tired of thinking, Tony.”

  “I’m not surprised.” He pushed up to a sitting position, right knee bent with his arm resting on top. “So then give yourself a break. Whether your plan is to stick around for another month or another year. I vote for the latter, by the way.”

  Finally, she smiled. Not the kind that stretched wide and accompanied laughter. But the soft kind that followed an exhausting bout of sadness. Trails of moisture still shone on her cheeks. He felt compelled to remove any evidence of her pain. He lifted his right hand and used the backs of his fingers to wipe them away. “There,” he said. “Now there’s nothing left of your past to hold you down. From this moment on, you’re going to live in the moment.”

  “You’ve always been good at the carefree thing.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth and held. He felt the weight of it sink into his lips and race down into his cock. Jesus Christ, she had no idea what she was doing to him. “Tony?”

  “Yeah?”

  She lifted her eyes to his again and then dragged her bottom lip through her teeth. It wasn’t a gesture of seduction, but one of insecurity. “Will you help me live in the moment?”

  In the background, the characters in the movie were still playing out their story. Every so often, murmurs of people talking or ordering from concessions mixed in, a good reminder of where they were and that they weren’t alone. But all he heard was the beat of his own heart and the blood rushing in his ears.

  Without thinking, he slid his h
and through her hair to cradle the back of her head and brought his mouth down on hers in a soul-crushing kiss. For years he’d imagined what a first kiss would be like between them. Soft and tender, slow as they explored one another. But anyone who lusted after someone for most of their life should come with a warning label that read “Contents under pressure. Do not puncture.” Because the moment Trish’s gaze settled on his mouth, she split him wide open, causing him to explode.

  He couldn’t think beyond each second that passed, afraid that if he started hoping for more Karma would pay him a visit and rip it all away for being greedy. But when she fisted the front of his shirt and melted into him on a barely audible whimper, Tony changed tactics. To hell with the consequences. If this was the only time he’d have her like this, he would damn sure take all he could get.

  Wrapping his arms around her waist, he hauled her onto his lap to straddle him. Since she’d come home, her wardrobe relaxed a little at a time; becoming less city and more country. She still liked her skirts, though, which he was currently thankful as hell for. Her short jean skirt bunched at the top of her thighs to allow her legs to part this wide. And that left only her panties as a barrier between him and her humid sex.

  She kept herself a little farther back from where he’d like, but he wouldn’t rush her. Refocusing his energy back to her mouth, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and angled her head, then licked the length of her lips. She opened on a sigh, giving him access to the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.

  His tongue swept in and danced with hers at the edges of his control. He groaned. She moaned. He grabbed her by her ass and squeezed, his fingertips running along the edges of her panties, conjuring wicked thoughts flashing through his mind like a synaptic seizure.

  Then she gave him a game changer. With two tiny forward movements on her knees, she centered herself directly over his cock...then lowered and rocked her hips forward to drag her hot sex back and forth.

  It was Heaven.

  It was Hell.

  Though it nearly killed him, Tony wrenched his mouth away and pressed his forehead to hers, the sound of his breaths sawing in and out of his lungs a testament to how far gone this girl made him in such a short amount of time. “Hold on, T. I need to be sure this is okay with you. That I’m not taking advantage of a situation where you’re not thinking clearly.”

  “My thoughts have never been clearer. I want this. I might even need it. I want to lose myself with you. I want you to make it so I can’t think, only feel. No strings and no expectations.”

  It stung that she felt the need to draw lines in the sand. Set parameters for their time together. Even though he knew this was nothing more than an arrangement between them, he hated feeling like they were at a conference table discussing terms. But now wasn’t the time to let his pride get in the way. She was offering him exactly what he wanted. A chance to be with her, to finally know what it’s like to have her in every way possible. He knew this is all it could be for now. She was eventually leaving for another city and nowhere in this conversation had she offered for him to leave with her.

  “Don’t worry, in a few weeks I’ll be gone again and you’ll be off the hook,” she said with a hesitant smile.

  Ouch.

  Injecting levity at the end was her way of dealing with things when she was nervous. But he wasn’t in the mood to laugh, and no doubt his face showed it. He watched as her sweet smile melted away, leaving her lower lip a prisoner of her front teeth.

  “Anthony...?”

  She only used his proper name for serious conversations. Or if he was in trouble, but then she tacked on his middle name too.

  Jesus, what the hell was his problem? He should be jumping all over this, but somehow it felt...off. It didn’t make sense. If Jason were here, he’d smack the back of Tony’s head and tell him to quit being such a pussy.

  Trish knelt up to move from his lap, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that. Forget I said—”

  Fuck that. He banded one arm around her lower back and dragged her back in, then gripped the side of her head and shut her up with a searing kiss. She went stiff at first, but as he moved his mouth over hers, she melded into his body from hips to chest. He grunted when she rocked herself against the length of his cock straining against his fly.

  He’d never been so fucking hard in his life. With every forward motion, she killed him a little more, bit by bit tipping the scales from pleasure to pain as he tried to keep from coming in his jeans. But he’d gladly suffer ten times over as long as it made her feel good and got her off. If her reactions right now were anything to go by, he’d say she was fast on her way.

  Her pace steadily increased and the fingers fisted in his hair pulled harder. His hands lowered to her ass and squeezed in encouragement, sensing she needed this more than he understood, and he wanted nothing more than to give it to her.

  A loud thud and laughter came from a couple cars down and brought the world around them back into focus. Trish buried her face on his chest and held still in his arms.

  “My God, woman, you made me lose my damn head.” No matter how badly he wanted to burrow beneath the blankets and take her right then, he refused to let their first time together be like a couple of teenagers pretending to watch a movie when the parents were home. “In the truck. I’m inviting you back to my place and you’re accepting.”

  Tony picked her up by her waist and set her off to the side, and then scooped up all the blankets in one jumbled pile before jumping over the side of the truck.

  “Assumptions and high-handed commands tend to piss me off,” she said.

  Shoving everything in the back seat of the cab, he slammed the door and turned just as she dropped down next to him. “Sweetheart, we can have angry sex if you want, as long as the end result is me sinking deep inside you and making you come so hard you forget your own name.” He gave her a crooked smirk.

  A few seconds passed as she studied him wide-eyed as though his words were taking their sweet time sinking in. Finally she snapped out of it with a hard blink and cleared her throat. “I guess I can live with that.”

  “Good. Now hop in and buckle up. I plan on breaking some traffic laws.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TRISH WATCHED THE WORLD pass in a blur from the passenger seat as Tony drove them the ten minutes back to his house. The music wasn’t blaring, but just loud enough to make conversation difficult, which was fine with her because anything she said at this point would sound like some cheesy attempt to ignore the we’re-about-to-cross-that-line elephant sitting squarely between them. Awkward silence was the next best thing, she supposed.

  It’s not that she didn’t want to follow through on what she asked him. When Tony kissed her that first time, she’d been flooded with things she couldn’t remember feeling with Nick. They’d been together so long that the excitement and passion they’d shared in the beginning of their relationship got buried under years and years of routine and comfortable compatibility.

  But Tony’s kiss... Her cheeks flushed and she reached up to touch her fingertips to her lips. She’d felt like a spring of cool water for his desert-dry mouth. Needed with a desperation she didn’t understand and yet didn’t want to waste time thinking about it. Instead, she gave herself over to the sensations washing over her and let her body take control.

  And holy shit did it ever. She’d never felt like that before, like she was acting on pure instinct. She’d rubbed herself on him like an alley cat in heat. In the middle of the outdoor theater, no less. If she wasn’t already at the center of the gossip mill, having public sex would have done the trick. Thank God for the drunk idiot who fell out of his car and gave them a much needed reality check.

  No, the awkward silence now came from being nervous. Like, really, really nervous. In the heat of the moment, she wasn’t focusing on how out of practice she was in the sexual department. Or that the practice she did have probably wasn’t worth much anyway. But now that the haze of de
sire had burned off, every insecurity she had about her sexual prowess—or lack thereof—ran in random zigzag patterns in her brain, crashing into each other and slamming against the edges of her worst dating fear. To make matters worse, there was one thing in particular she had to tell him before they got too far into things, and it could be a huge buzzkill.

  Trish was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t realize they arrived until she felt Tony throw the truck in park and kill the engine. She looked over at him. Unsure what to do with her hands, she kept them in her lap and kept her fingers busy with each other as though they had an actual purpose for being there. Tell him tell him tell him.

  Stretching his right arm along the back of the bench seat, Tony turned to face her...and then waited. Why was he waiting? Did he change his mind? Maybe he preferred aggressive women. But even if she wanted to be the aggressor, she wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about it, and even if she did, she’d feel stupid instead of sexy. Shit.

  “You’re nervous.” He always could read her better than anyone. Denying his statement would be futile. “It’s just me, T. I’d never do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

  “If there’s any man I trust implicitly in this world, Tony, it’s you.”

  “Good. Then why the nerves?”

  Oh, God. The space in the cab shrunk around her and the air grew thick. She did not want to have this conversation with him. But Tony was like a shark if he sniffed even a drop of blood in the water. He’d pursue relentlessly until he got what he wanted, which in this case, was a truthful answer.

  “I realize this isn’t the best thing to say to get in the mood, and I’ll totally understand if you think it kills the moment, but I feel it’s something you should know beforehand.”

  Tony narrowed his eyes. “Did that asshole give you an STD?”

  “What? God no, Tony, it’s nothing like that.”

  He gave her a curt nod. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “You just need to know that it’s not because of something you do or don’t do—”