Forged by Sacrifice Kindle rev 100519

by Evans, LJ

“I’m not going to bite.” Her eyes flicked to my mouth, and I smiled, liking that she was thinking about kissing me. I added, “Not unless you want me to.”

  “Mac―”

  “No.”

  “You do that a lot. Cut me off.”

  “Because you were going to say that we agreed to one night.”

  She pushed at her hair again, looking away.

  I continued, “But I don’t want just one night, Georgie. I told you that before we even went to Delaware. And I don’t know how you could think, after what we shared last night, my opinion would have changed.”

  She looked back at me, and I could swear she was holding her breath, and that gave me hope.

  “You know, in my humble opinion, I think Descartes would be proud of us.”

  Surprise registered across her face. “What?”

  “Well, you say he wants us to test our perceptions. To validate that our senses aren’t deceiving us.” I sat up, arms leaning on my knees. Not quite moving, yet not wanting to give her any cause to disappear again. “And I would say we’ve tested ourselves several times. That what we feel…the chemistry we have when we’re together…it’s repeatable. Not a one-time thing.”

  She didn’t deny it but watched me warily. I got up slowly, still trying to prevent her from skittering away. I eased my body next to hers.

  “But he also said there wasn’t really anything that could, for sure, separate the waking state from the dream state. That’s what he meant by the whole, ‘How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?’ thing, right? So, I’m thinking that even if we’re wrong, even if we’re living some weird dream, does it matter?” I asked as I allowed myself to run a hand over her shoulder and slide it under the strap of her sundress. Gentle swirls.

  “What happens when we wake?” she breathed out.

  “There isn’t a certainty that we will, is there? Couldn’t we live our entire lives in this dream?”

  “Morning always comes,” she said, looking at me with eyes full of uncertainty but also desire.

  “We fit, Georgie.”

  “I’d feel guilty if my life backfired on yours,” she said.

  “You’re jumping like fifty-thousand steps ahead of where we’re at. Right now, what we have, what we feel…it isn’t anything I’ve ever felt. I want to explore it. I want to continue to explore you.” I ran my hand along her cheek, and she slanted her face into the caress, chocolate-lensed eyes closing. “I want to explore what makes you the proud, independent woman you are, but also why you hide your white streak and why you’re afraid to let anyone too close. I want to know what made you risk everything to follow a dream that you had when you could have just lived the comfortable life you had in New York. And yes, I want to explore more how you liked it when I kissed you right here.”

  I chanced bending slightly to kiss the spot where her ear and jaw met, and she shivered but didn’t push me away.

  “And I want to find more of those spots on your body.”

  “I think you found them all,” she said, voice quivering.

  I couldn’t help the grin that appeared on my face. “Do you want to make a bet?

  She smiled, her real, wide, gorgeous smile that hit me hard in the chest. It was her first one of the night. “You’re saying that you can find an erogenous zone on my body that I don’t already know about?”

  “I’m saying there’s a good chance I can find one, but that no matter what, it’ll be a lot of fun to find out.”

  She considered me for a moment and then twisted her face to kiss the palm of my hand, bringing her own hands up and holding me there. Then, she kissed my wrist before moving my hand down to her waist. I gripped it firmly as she moved her body up tight against mine, our curves realigning again.

  “What do I get if I win?” she asked.

  “I think you should be hoping I win.” I smiled, and she laughed softly, arms going around my neck.

  “Maybe we should make the bet about who can find a new spot on each other’s body first.”

  I grinned at her. “I like this bet.”

  “What do I get if I win?” she asked again.

  “What do you want?” I asked huskily, her body distracting me from much thought other than putting my lips and tongue on every single part of her.

  “Hmm. A favor. Granted without question.”

  “What is this favor?”

  “A future favor. One I don’t know yet.”

  I let my hands journey from her waist up to the curve of her breasts, and her eyes fluttered closed and then opened.

  “Why am I always having to agree to your terms before I can kiss you?” I asked and moved my hips slightly against hers, making her breath hitch.

  “What do you want if you win?” she asked just as she put her lips at the corner of mine. The scent of her filled my nostrils, and my movements went from gentle caresses to demands fueled by aching need.

  “A favor. Granted without question,” I told her back, because I had a feeling I’d never be able to deny her anything but that her walls were going to have me finding ways to climb across them repeatedly.

  “Fair enough. Erogenous zones for favors. Should we shake on it?”

  “No, we’ll kiss on it.” I turned my lips to capture hers, the ache I felt requiring to be appeased. I forced her lips open, tongue taking control, not with a fevered pace but one that still commanded attention.

  She returned the kiss. Her pace and ferocity matching my own as we made our way down the hallway to my bedroom. The bedroom I hoped she’d stay inside for more than just a night. That we would have many nights tangled up in my sheets. And my heart enlarged at that thought. A thought I’d never had for another woman. I wanted to keep her.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  Movement woke me, soft arms pulling away from me, and I muttered a protest, pulling her back. Our second night of lovemaking had been as long and as satisfying as the first. I was pretty sure I’d won our bet when I’d kissed the inside juncture of her thigh and pelvic bone before licking it and hearing her moan.

  “No running,” I told her.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” she said with laughter in her voice.

  “Bathroom and then come back to bed,” I said.

  “Don’t be bossy. I’ll definitely leave,” she tossed at me.

  “You liked it when I was bossy last night,” I told her, and even in the faint light of my room with the shutters closed, I could see her blush, and I kissed her. Unable to help myself. Not able to get enough of everything her soft lips and soft fingers offered me.

  She pulled away from my kiss. “If you don’t let me up, I’m going to pee in your bed.”

  I chuckled and let go. “I forgot I was talking to the bed wetter.”

  “Har-har. I shouldn’t have told you that,” she said. I watched as her naked, graceful body disappeared into my bathroom. I threw the covers off and found her dress, underwear, and bra that we’d discarded on the floor last night.

  I looked around my room, trying to decide where would be the last place she would look for them. I opened my closet quietly, found my Navy uniform hanging there, tucked the items inside the pockets and jacket, and then returned to the bed just as the toilet flushed.

  I was lying on my back, hands behind my head, when she emerged.

  She stood, looking at me, unashamedly naked. I loved that she didn’t hide her body from me. I loved that, unlike many women I’d been with, she didn’t try to cover up immediately. She was beautiful―hair mussed, lips burned red from kisses―making my morning wood come to full attention.

  “You look as if you’ve been up to mischief,” she said.

  “Who, me?” I asked, but I couldn’t keep the humor out of my voice.

  And just like I expected, she looked around for her clothes. On not finding them, her hands went to her hips. “Mac, what did you do with my clothes?”

  “You said you were coming back t
o bed.”

  “You told me to come back to bed. I never agreed,” she said, coming closer. I lunged and pulled her long limbs back onto the mattress with me. She squealed, laughing and gently fighting me all at the same time.

  I had her pinned on the bed before she could blink. She was smiling up at me, my face inches from hers. “I won our bet,” I said, and I kissed her jaw and her cheeks and then her lips. She kissed me back before pulling our mouths apart.

  “Is this your favor?”

  “Hardly,” I told her. “This is me doing you more favors.”

  “Your sister is right; you’re an egomaniac,” she said, eyes full of joy. “Besides, I believe we agreed it was a tie. We both owe a favor.”

  “Most politicians are egomaniacs,” I told her as my kisses journeyed to her neck and down so I could take a nipple into my mouth, and her body went limp.

  “Don’t say it,” she said, voice raspy.

  “What?” I mumbled, mouth full of her, journeying to the other nipple while my hand kept the first company.

  “Pol-politician,” she moaned. “God, Mac. Don’t stop.”

  And I didn’t, ignoring her warning about the word that scared her, and instead, paying attention to her body and every inch of it that I still couldn’t get enough of. That I couldn’t ever imagine getting tired of. I understood Eli for the first time in years. If he felt even a tenth of what I felt when I was with Georgie, I wouldn’t blame him for giving up everything to live in a tiny town, working two jobs, because the woman he cherished owned a bar.

  I didn’t let that thought stop me. I didn’t get hung up on it. Instead, I continued to worship the woman who was beneath me until I could make her say my name in that aching way she said it that was not only full of desire but also hopes and dreams.

  Georgie

  HURTS 2B HUMAN

  “Like we're buckled and preparing before the crash

  Like we're walking down a road of broken glass.”

  “You can count on me

  You know I'd have your back.”

  Performed by P!nk & Khalid

  Written by Moore / Izquierdo / Hartley / Khalid / Harris / Geiger

  Mac and I spent Sunday in his room. He hadn’t returned my clothes. I didn’t complain. I knew that if I had, he would have given them back. There was not a threatening bone in Mac’s body. Not when it was directed at me. If I’d wanted to leave the room, I could have wrapped a towel around my body and gone down the hall to the loft. If Dani was in the apartment, she would have given me hell, but I still could have done it.

  Truth was, I didn’t want to.

  I liked that Mac ordered food on his phone and only left the room to answer the door when the delivery boy showed up. I liked that, as soon as he came back, he lost his sweats and joined me in my nakedness, wrapped in his sheets.

  I’d never spent a day like that with a man. Lazily lounging in each other’s arms until one or both of us found the need curling through our bellies again and then reaching out to languidly enjoy each other once more. The TV was on in the background, movies that Mac or I chose when the name hit our fancy on the guide.

  Our scents and bodies tangled together into something new. Something that belonged to both of us instead of just one of us. That thread that joined us pulling tauter. Harder to escape. Harder to cut without pain.

  Mac never said the word politician again, and I pushed all the thoughts of his future aside, knowing the guilt would hit me eventually but being too selfish at the moment to care. Not when his thoughts and his words filled me up like a sponge that had sat too long, dry and hard. Now I was soft, bending to his curves, fitting us together.

  He tugged gently at my hair, winding the white streak on his finger as The Sting played.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “About what?”

  His eyes drifted to my white streak. I looked away to the screen where a youngish Paul Newman was pulling a con—blue eyes, not unlike the blue eyes that were looking at me right then. I could still feel Mac’s stare even though I’d looked away. I could tell he was trying to figure out all my puzzle pieces. He was worming his way into my heart, because he wanted to unwrap every layer of my skin and see what was left.

  He’d acted like I’d had a choice the night before when he’d talked Descartes, reality, and dreams. But the truth was, there hadn’t been a choice for me to make. I would be his if he’d have me, and when he couldn’t or wouldn’t, I’d try to live with what remained. I’d pick up the pieces and sew them together as best as I could, but it would be like the white streak in my hair—a mark that wouldn’t go away.

  “You said it happened the night your dad was arrested,” he prodded, bringing me back to his current question, his current attack on the things I’d always kept inside me.

  “I was only six. Dad wasn’t there. They’d obviously waited until he left to raid the house. I was dead asleep, but the noise and the raised voices woke me. They weren’t the normal lull of Mom and Dad’s arguments. I’d already started to get up when my bedroom door burst open and men in SWAT gear burst in. They had face guards on—I don’t know why. Like they expected smoke bombs to go off or something. But everyone was yelling, and there were scary men in my room, and my heart was about ready to explode from my chest.”

  “I can’t imagine waking up like that as a child.” Mac’s voice was laced with concern and tenderness, as if he could protect that small child I’d been. My heart flipped.

  “Anyway, they took Mom, and some social services lady stayed with me until Grandma could come get me.”

  “And the streak just appeared?”

  I laughed. “This isn’t cartoon land. No, we didn’t realize anything about it until it started to grow out. But it’s never gone back to being black.”

  “Your hair isn’t really black. It’s like a thousand different colors. Purples and blues and even reds.”

  “And white.” I smiled up at him.

  “And white.” He kissed the strands and then kissed me. Tenderly. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling me.”

  I shrugged and turned back to the TV. “This movie isn’t really that great.”

  Mac laughed. “But he had so much class. It’s hard not to admire what he stood for.”

  “Wait, Paul Newman stood for something other than salad dressing?” I teased.

  “Salad dressing whose profits go to charities.”

  This got me interested. “So, this is someone you really admire?”

  He shrugged a little, embarrassed almost. It was kind of cute and sexy all at the same time. “Tell me,” I repeated his words back to him.

  “I’ve just read some articles about him. About how he saw the failings of our nation and that they were not because of leadership, necessarily, but because we’d lost our way as a community.” Mac reached for the drawer by his bed where the condoms were kept. That we’d used repeatedly over the last two days.

  Instead of pulling out a condom, he pulled out a notebook. Masculine black leather with a gorgeous silver engraving of M.R.W. on the cover. He flipped through it and handed it to me. There were words written in writing that must have been his. It was bold, tall, and slightly slanted. Like Mac, in many ways. Bold with bends you didn’t expect.

  The page was entitled, “Quotes by Newman.”

  There were several on the page with a couple underlined. One of them read: “I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried—tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out. From The Films of Paul Newman by Lawrence J. Quirk.”

  And a second one read: “It’s kind of like those little electric bumper cars where you drive around and see if you can hit the other guy. That’s exactly what the country is like now. You no longer have the sense of community. Of
loyalty. It’s lost its sense of group. It has nothing to do with leadership. Everybody’s out there alone, getting his own whacks. Instead of deifying the community, they’ve deified the individual. Maybe that’s necessary in principle. In the Bill of Rights. But… ‘What’s good for the individual is good for the country’? It simply is not true. What is good for the community is good for the country. Once you put the individual on a pedestal, it’s at the expense of everything else. From The Stacks: The Eyes of Winter: Paul Newman at 70 by Peter Richmond.”

  I flipped to other pages; there were quotes by other famous people. Some about leadership, some about government, some about community and country. His hand was running along my bare skin as he watched me read his notes. It was intoxicating, like everything about him.

  “Wow,” I breathed out.

  “You use that word a lot,” he said, hand still journeying over my skin.

  “Wow?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “Why do you have this?” I asked.

  “When we first met Ava, all those years ago, in Rockport, she dropped quotes all the time. Some of them were said just to make us laugh, some to make a point, but I realized some of them were really good. Things that I’d want to be known for saying some day.”

  “So, you bought a journal and started writing?”

  He chuckled. “You make me sound like a teenage girl, but yeah, I guess. At first, I was just writing them in this old-school notebook—a stupid, spiral-bound thing that kept coming apart. Dani bought me this as a birthday present, and I wrote down my favorites.”

  “It’s pretty impressive.”

  Mac eased his body over mine, taking the notebook and throwing it to the side of the bed, his length and hardness making itself known. “I agree. Very impressive.”

  And he was devouring me again for what felt like the millionth time that weekend, and I let him because it felt incredible to be devoured by Mac.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  My alarm went off, and I groaned at the same time a male voice groaned next to me. It took all of two seconds for me to remember where I was. In Mac’s room. In his bed. Where we’d spent all of Sunday learning more about each other than just the physical. Learning things that made him embed himself inside me in other ways.