“It’s okay to be a little ticked off,” he said, strangely ticked off himself at her self-possession. “I treated you pretty shabbily.”
She arched a dark eyebrow, its delicate upward curve a message in itself. “After all this time, you’d rather I was angry. You’d rather I kept you in here”—she touched a clenched fist to the soft swell of her breast—“because it would mean I still care and you still have some power over me.”
Yes, a million times, yes. He hooked her pearls to bring her closer and then, very deliberately, placed one palm against the hallway’s wall inches from her heat-stained cheek.
“I’d rather you were mad because then I could make it better. Remember what I used to do to calm you down? Your dad would piss you off and then I would piss you off more and before you knew it, you were coming apart, screaming my name.”
A muscle ticked at the corner of her mouth, begging for his thumb to soothe it.
So he did.
“Kissing you, touching you, every hurried fumble in my car, every time we explored each other’s bodies—it was all amazing. And when after months, years of waiting, I finally drove deep inside you where I belonged, that was also amazing, Darcy. Sex had nothing to do with why we didn’t work out.”
There. He’d said it. As for the reasons for their split—the real reasons—now was neither the time nor the place. Might never be, but she needed to know she was not to blame.
The soft thud of a closing door signaled that someone was exiting the restroom around the corner. A guy weaved by on his way back to the bar, and with each passing second, Beck’s heart thundered in his ears.
He turned back to Darcy in time to catch her blinking away an intrusive thought. “Thank you for setting the record straight and letting me know my sexual inexperience was not a contributing factor.”
Uh-oh. Sarcastic, if his snark-o-meter was calibrated right. “You said you had a complex.”
“I said it was enough to give a girl a complex.” She rubbed a tuft of his coarse beard between her finger and thumb, like she was testing the quality of fabric in a high-end store. “But I figured out quickly that I’m rather awesome, both in and out of the bedroom. Lots of hot college guys helped with my sexual awakening.”
“Your what?”
“My sexual awakening. Those first few months of school, I jumped right in with all the zeal of a frat boy at a kegger. Discovered what I like.” She tugged on his beard and it felt surprisingly good, despite the fact he was half-past pissed at the words spilling from her pert, kissable mouth. “What I don’t like.”
A tight band of steel squeezed around his chest, and the pounding in his ears grew louder. He had been the one to nurture her sex-starved body, not some Dockers-wearing college boy. Beck’s nineteenth year had been one of the most painful of his life. A year of stiff sheets and balled-up tissues, every cock-stroking fantasy filled with sweet, sexy Darcy begging him to touch her, take her.
Own her.
Denying his raging needs for months, he made sure to take care of hers until finally he surrendered to her tight, virginal body the night of the funeral, in the boxing ring at the gym where he had made Sean and Logan proud so many times. Not how he had planned it at all. It was too rough, too raw, too damn visceral. But he had needed her desperately, the only drug that could numb his soul-splitting pain.
He scrubbed a hand across the scruff on his jaw. “You like the beard, princesa.”
“It disgusts me,” she deadpanned, but there was no missing the wisp of a smile on her lips. Teenage Darcy was a fiery creature, spoiled and perpetually indignant, and the ability to laugh at herself was not part of her makeup. Somewhere along the way, she had developed a sense of humor, and damn if that wasn’t sexier than every one of her soft, womanly curves.
“What else about me disgusts you?”
“How long have you got?”
“Ten good inches.”
She snorted. “See? Dirty mouth.”
Covering her body with his, he nuzzled his raggedy jaw against her cheek and absorbed her shiver into his own. “You used to like my dirty mouth and all the magical things I could do with it.”
“Teenage hormones have a lot to answer for.”
“Adult ones, too.” Though it killed him a little, he put a few painful inches between them and trailed a finger along her jaw, noting with satisfaction that she trembled under his touch. “It was good to see you again. Have a nice holiday.”
Her expressive brow told him she liked what he’d done there. “When did you get funny, Beck Rivera?”
“Around about the time you got a sense of humor, querida.”
There it was, that fire-bright smile. He felt like he’d swallowed the sun.
“Your shtick needs work.”
“Then show me how it’s done. Bésame.” Kiss me.
She laughed, right in his face. “Bésame el culo.”