She clasped at my face, gasping raggedly as she twitched and thrashed through it. “I think that counts as two,” she breathed. “Fuck, Myles. Where the hell did you learn to go down? Because you’re so fucking good at it it’s ridiculous.”
I laughed. “Self-taught, babe.”
She pulled at me, tugging me upward. “I’m serious, I think that was two at once. I’m…oh shit. I’m done. I’ve already come twice this morning.”
“Are you complaining?”
She laughed, wiping at my mouth with her hand. “You have pussy juice on your stubble. And hell no. I’ve never gotten off so much as I do with you. It’s a beautiful thing.”
I wiped a thumb over my lips, and then popped the thumb into my mouth. ”Yum. Tastes like you.”
She sucked in a deep breath, held it. Shook her head as she let it out. “For real. However you learned to give cunnilingus, you learned really, really well.”
I handed her the purple thong, watched as she wiggled into it. “I just pay attention.”
“There had to have been someone who was instrumental in helping you learn how to pay attention and what to do.”
I sighed, laughed, and looked at her. “You really want to know about weird shit, you know that?” Especially for someone reticent to share her own past. “Her name was Helen. It was when Crow was in prison and I was doing the dive bar grind on my own. I ran out of money in a little shithole town in Oklahoma and had to spend a week there till I could play another weekend of gigs so I could afford gas to keep going. There was this waitress at the bar I played at—Helen. A little older than me, I was, shit, nineteen? A kid. She was thirty-something. Single, just sort of stuck in a dead-end job in a dead-end town. Hooked on drugs, I think, but was in a sober spell when I was with her. I couldn’t afford a motel and there wasn’t one in town anyway, so I was staying in my van. She caught me napping there, and invited me over. I stayed the week with her, and if anyone I ever slept with really actually taught me anything, it was Helen. And good god, did she teach me. That was a wild-ass week, man. She worked at night, so she was a night owl like me. I’d hang at her apartment while she worked, writing music and wishing I had booze, playing, practicing. She’d come home from work and we’d just fuck like crazy till dawn. And yeah, she wasn’t shy about showing me how she liked it, you know? I’ve always been a quick learner and there’s nothing I like more than appreciation and approval, so I’d use what she showed me to get her going. I never forgot what she taught me, and I guess what she liked is pretty universal.”
Lexie was still lying back on the couch, legs across mine, spread apart, skirt up around her hips. “Lucky me that she taught you so well.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Anyone stand out as having taught you things?”
She sat up, then. Tugged her skirt down, stood up. “I have to pee.”
And she was gone.
What a shock. I share, ask the same question in return, and get ignored. It was getting annoying, honestly.
When she came back, we were taxiing toward the runway for takeoff, so I made a visit to the bathroom to get cleaned up.
I let the question go, but filed it away as another oddity, another example of how she avoided sharing personal information at all costs.
She, for sure, had something major in her past that she never, ever talked about. It was becoming more obvious, every time she avoided an encounter, that it was something big, something buried deep. It hurt, and it irked me, because there was nothing I’d kept from her. I’d been totally open about my short-lived coke addiction, my exes and my sex numbers, and that one time I thought I had an STD. All of it was weird and embarrassing, and a bit painful, but there was nothing I wouldn’t share with her, if she asked.
I wanted the same in return.
If I pressed her, though, I had a feeling I would face a major explosion, and a pissed-off Lexie Goode was something I knew I really, really didn’t want to encounter. But how long could I allow her to avoid this issue, whatever it was? Was it worth it to me to press the issue? Was I willing to risk what we already had? She’d bolt, if I pushed too hard—I knew that for a fact. It was almost as if she was just waiting for me to give her an excuse to run, no matter how good the sex was.
Even I knew, deep down, that even the best sex possible between two people wasn’t enough to build a relationship on if you wanted more than just sex.
And I did.
I knew I did.
It scared me stupid, but I knew I wanted more than just sex with Lexie. A lot more.
I just wasn’t sure how to make that happen, or if it was even possible, given how cagey she was about so many things.
Lexie
I knew he was irritated with me. I chewed on that little problem as we landed in Ketchikan and headed for the ferry—it was a dark, overcast, cool day, but it was still breathtakingly beautiful.
Too bad I was too deep in thought to really appreciate the beauty.
Myles was no dummy. He was definitely aware that I avoided certain questions. He never pushed, but I could tell it was hard for him not to.
I hoped he wouldn’t push, because I couldn’t guarantee our…thing—whatever it was—would survive him pushing me to talk about certain things.
The trouble was, I wanted our thing to survive. I liked being a thing with him. I’d never been in a thing like this or for this long with anyone. I’d had sex more times with him than with any other one person. Well, except…gah, no, fuck, fuck no. Not going there. That didn’t count.
And that was why I had so many topics to avoid.
We reached the other side of the channel, and Myles consulted an email on his phone. After we collected our bags, we set out on foot.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He laughed. “To your mom’s.”
“You have my mom’s address?”
I’d intentionally not acquired that piece of information, because I really didn’t want to be here, doing this. Chicken, coward, call me what you want, but the story I had to tell my mom and Cassie was one I was not looking forward to. Primarily because I could already feel Mom’s disappointment in me. Oh, she’d cover it with love, because that’s just how Mom is. But she’d be disappointed in me. Shit, I was disappointed in myself.
“Yes, I do.” He smirked at me. “I knew you’d try to be like, oh I don’t have her address. So I got it from Charlie via Crow.” He winked. “We’re staying with your mom and her boyfriend, Luke, I think it is.”
“Lucas,” I corrected. “Cassie raves about him. Says me meeting Lucas is going to be the funniest thing that’s ever happened.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Because I hate cutesy demeaning pet names like babe and honey and sugar and sweetheart, and he’s apparently psychologically unable to not use them with women. So I’m going to want to kill him, and they’re all really looking forward to what Cassie is anticipating being the Lexie explosion of the century.”
“Is that why you’re so tense?”
“That’s part of it.” I knew that came out short and snappy, but I couldn’t help it.
“And what’s the other part?
“You’re upset with me.”
“I’m not upset,” he said, sighing as we crossed a sidewalk and followed his phone’s GPS navigation app’s directions to Mom’s condo. “I’m annoyed.”
“With me.”
“Yeah.”
“Because there’s shit I just don’t talk about.”
“Exactly. And there’s nothing I won’t tell you. Haven’t told you, matter of fact.”
I eyed him sideways. “Bullshit. You haven’t told me everything.”
“Sure have. Everything major.”
“Worst breakup.”
His answer was immediate. “Never had a real relationship, so I can’t say I’ve ever had a breakup, per se. Closest I could come would be a girl named Tiff. Backstage bunny. Had a major crush on me.”
He didn’t elaborate, and
I waited for him to ask me the same thing, but he didn’t say anything. That left me a bit off-balance, and I found myself offering the information anyway, since it was a safe topic for me. “Mine was a guy named Nick. He was a fuckbuddy, and even that’s too close of a relationship to put on it. We were booty calls for each other for a long time until he came over one night and proposed.”
Myles winced. “How’d you let him down?”
“At first I thought it was a joke, and started laughing. But then I realized he was serious. I may have overreacted a little. Or…a lot.”
We were walking through a condo complex, and I was aware, suddenly, that Myles was acting kind of weird. Nervous, keeping his head down. He’d put on a ball cap, which he never wore; he’d put it on as we got on the ferry and pulled the brim low. Weird.
“So he just proposed—just like that?
“I sort of yelled at him for breaking the unspoken rule number one of fuck-buddies, and that’s to never make it emotional.”
“So you’re saying you were harsh?” he asked with a grin.
I sighed. “I feel bad, now. But yeah, I was a major bitch to him about it. He looked crushed. He left, and I sent him a text a few days later apologizing for being so mean about it, but I just wasn’t looking for a relationship and he took me by surprise.”
I still remembered the guilt I felt about the way I’d treated him.
“And that was it for Nick, I imagine?”
I winced again. “Weeeeeell, not quite. I got wasted a few months later and drunk texted him for a hookup.” I grinned sheepishly. “He was like, I’ve actually got real girlfriend now so you should probably delete my number.”
“Oof.”
“Yeah, oof.”
Myles stopped, looked up at a building in front of us and said, “Here we are.” He eyed me. “You ready?”
I shook my head. “Not even close.” I let out a sharp sigh. “But, we’re here, so let’s get this over with.”
He laughed, took my hand. “Your family is going to be happy to see you. And it will be great to see Crow and Charlie. But I don’t think you have to walk in and spill your guts. We are here for a week, babe.”
That term of endearment was like nails on a chalkboard, and I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. “I’ve been trying to let you do that, call me babe. But I just can’t anymore.” I took my bag from him, rang the buzzer for Mom’s unit, identifiable by her name printed on the label. “Please, please don’t call me babe. Or anything else like that. I know it’s weird, but it’s a thing with me. So, please don’t.”
He was silent a moment. “Okay,” he said, looking away.
And that was it.
I eyed him. “I’m sorry, Myles. I’m just—it’s a thing.”
He nodded, but he wasn’t looking at me. “I got it. It’s a thing. No cutesy pet names. Lex or Lexie.” A pause. “I guess I thought maybe that didn’t apply to me, since we’re…” he trailed off. “Never mind. I thought wrong. Message received.”
My heart sank—I’d hurt him. Pissed him off. “Please try to understand, Myles. I care about you. It just rubs me the wrong way and I hate it. It’s not you.”
He nodded, and I saw right through the fake grin he put on for me—it was the stage-Myles grin, the ten-thousand-watt mega-star grin. The smile that surely had melted the panties off thousands of women, the grin that had been splashed across tabloids and People, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, GQ, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, US Weekly, even a two-page modeling spread in Vanity Fair. That grin.
The one that hid the real Myles North from the world.
“I got you, Lex. It’s cool.” The wink.
I hated the wink.
You know what I hate almost as much as pet names and talking about emotions? Winking. It’s stupid.
He could get away with it once in a while because he was Myles Fucking North, and for sure a future Sexiest Man Alive. But I hated it.
He did it because he knew it annoyed me, because it made me roll my eyes and huff in irritation.
This time, he did it to piss me off.
“Hello, sorry, who is it?” Mom’s voice, on the intercom.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Lexie and Myles.”
“I was indisposed when you buzzed, sorry for making you wait.”
“Indisposed,” I said, laughing. “Mom, it’s me. You can say you were in the bathroom.”
A long pause. “In the bathroom. Yeah.” She buzzed the door. “Come on up, sweetheart.”
“Dammit, Mom—” I started, but the intercom was already silent and the door was buzzing.
Myles laughed. “Not even Mama gets a pass on sweetheart?”
“No one gets a pass,” I growled, my ire all the way up, now. “Not you, not Mom, not the pope, or the president, or God himself. No one.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“And don’t fucking wink at me,” I snarled, my voice icy and dripping poison. “It’s stupid and smarmy and you just look like an idiot.”
He chuckled. “Noted.”
I glared at him as we hiked the steps to Mom’s floor. “What’s so funny?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
I knew I was being stupid and irrational, but I was helpless to stop myself. I was about to see Mom, and I knew she knew something was up, and I’d have to tell the whole stupid story all over again and I hated myself for it, and for Charlie for pulling me into this— and for thinking any of it was in any way Charlie’s fault—and at Myles for being so damned amazing even as I was being a bitch to him, because he wasn’t lashing out at me, wasn’t fighting, was just accepting my bitchiness without seeming fazed.
But I knew he was upset—I knew I’d hurt him, and that I had damage control to do.
If that was even possible anymore.
I had to set that conundrum aside for the moment, because I had bigger fish to fry—namely, my mother, and her moral expectations, which I have completely failed to uphold in pretty much every aspect of my life.
Mom opened her door as we approached, bustling out in a rush; arms open wide, and all but slammed into me, wrapping me in an unrelentingly fierce hug. It was such a warm, unexpected welcome from Mom that I very nearly got misty-eyed.
“Lexie, I’m so glad you’re here.” Mom’s voice was a low soft whisper in my ear. “I’ve missed you, my sweet girl.”
I hugged her back, letting myself, for a moment, just be that little girl way down deep inside who just wanted her mother’s love and affection. “I missed you too, Mom.” I stepped back and gestured at Myles. “Mom, this is Myles North.”
He leaned in and gave Mom a brief, cordial hug. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Goode.”
Mom shook his hand. “Call me Liv, please. It’s a real pleasure to meet you, too.” She stepped backward into the open doorway, and then spun on her heel and led the way inside.
Mom slid her palm across my cheek, up over the buzzed sides and into the messy longer top. “I like this. It suits you.” The last time I’d seen Mom in person was via video chat a few months ago, before I’d cut my hair like this. Back then, it had been one length all over, down to my shoulders; a guy I’d slept with a few times had told me he liked his girls with long hair so he had something to pull on while he drilled them from behind. Those words, verbatim.
It hadn’t been the idea of hair to yank on while being drilled from behind that I’d taken issue with—I quite enjoy that very much, thank you. It was the other two words: His girls. Ohhhh fuck no, buddy. He’d said them while in that exact position, behind me, hands in my hair; I’d kicked him off me, jumped into my clothing as fast as I could while cursing him out with every iota of indignant rage I had within me, and marched my jiggly ass straight to the nearest salon and gotten this cut. Just as a fuck you to him. I’d gone back to his dorm room, showed him my new ’do, and gave him two middle fingers. I’m not one of your girls, you rotten, chauvinistic dickbag. Those had been my words to him.
I shook thoughts of that unnamed dic
kbag out of my mind and focused on Mom. She was wearing a men’s button-down, the top several buttons undone to reveal more cleavage than I think she’d ever shown in all my life, certainly. The sleeves were rolled several times and still hung past her elbows, and her knees and hints of bare thigh peeked out from the edges of the lower hem. Her hair was messy, tangled, and wild—very obviously a case of just-fucked hair. This was my MOM, so…yuck.
“Mom! You said you were in the bathroom!”
She smirked at me. “I said I was indisposed, you said I was in the bathroom.”
“You were having sex?”
She shrugged, her face carefully blank. “I’m not a nun, sweetie. I spent three years alone, mourning your father, God rest him. I moved, and moved on. I have someone in my life whom I love very much and who loves me. So yes, Alexandra, I was in the middle of—well, at the end of, if you must know—making love when you rang the buzzer.”
I shuddered. “Next time, I’ll just stick with my assumption that you were pooping.”
She made a face that was a bizarre cross between a frown, puzzlement, and an amused grin. “You’d rather think I was pooping than making love to a wonderful man?”
I rubbed my face with one hand. “Mom. I don’t want to think of either one. I’m glad you’re happy, I’m glad you’ve found someone. I truly mean that—Dad is gone, and even when he wasn’t, none of us were happy, least of all you. I don’t begrudge you a happy, loving relationship with a man who treats you like you deserve to be treated. I just don’t want details of your sex life.”