“God, you’re beautiful,” she told him, touching the side of his face. “And as good as that…hat trick sounds, I’m just…Well, can we…not?”
She could tell that he didn’t fully understand, that he thought she was shutting him down, so she quickly added, “Go inside, I mean. I…don’t suppose you’d want to help me set up our…tent? It’s a pop-up. Pretty quick and easy.”
He got it—it was the going-inside to which she objected. “Oh, Shay, no. The likelihood of another earthquake—”
“I’ve read that sometimes the aftershocks come first,” she said. “And if that was an aftershock, the real quake’s gonna be huge. I mean, yeah, it’s rare, and I know I probably sound irrational and crazy, but…” Her voice shook and she felt her eyes fill with tears, despite her best intentions. “That scared the fuck out of me.”
“Fair enough.” Peter immediately nodded. “I’ve got an air mattress and one of those crazy-fast pumps. We’re gonna need a blanket or two, tonight’s gonna get cold. But other than going inside to grab that—and make sure the gas line’s okay—we can stay outside as long as you need to.”
Stupidly, his kind response to her crazy made her tears well and overflow. God, she hated crying in front of anyone—in fact, she hated crying when she was locked alone in the privacy of her own bathroom. She hated it, because it never changed anything; it never helped, it only impeded. And on top of that, it made her feel weak and helpless and gave her a congestion headache.
But everything she was feeling—or trying not to feel—was jumbled up inside of her. The residuals of her overwhelming fear—not for herself, but for her precious babies and even for Carter and Tiffany, but then also for herself as the quake had slammed her to the bedroom floor again and again—and the knee-weakening relief of finding out, quickly thank God, that everyone was all right, combined with the crazy whatever-this-was that she was feeling after dry humping her Navy SEAL neighbor in her own backyard…
It was all apparently exiting her body through her tear ducts. Damn it.
“Hey,” Peter said, pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her even more completely. “Hey, hey. It’s okay.”
“You’re so nice,” she told him.
His laughter was a rumble in his chest. “Not really,” he said. “But I’m okay with you thinking that I’m being nice when I’m really just trying to shorten the time it’ll take before we can, you know.”
She did know. She also knew that the responsible adult thing to do would’ve been to have a conversation in which they discussed the high emotions that had led to that unexpected orgasm, because really, where was this going to go besides a place of hurt or awkwardness? Despite knowing that, she threw caution to the wind as she wiped her eyes and smiled and said, “Hat trick. I’m with you on that. As long as you’re in a tent.”
“Where’s the tent?” he asked in response.
“In the garage. Left side, top shelf. Plastic container. Purple. Airtight. Spider-proof.”
His smile broadened. “Of course.”
“California has some very nasty spiders. Black widows—”
He kissed her as he moved her off his lap. “Your backyard or mine?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Maddie risked a glance at Dingo. He was clinging to his steering wheel with both hands as he drove, his eyes focused fiercely on the freeway ahead of them.
The earthquake had shaken him up and gotten his adrenaline flowing—or so he’d said. So much so that he’d insisted they forget about sleeping and drive through the night, hit Sacramento at just past dawn.
But Maddie knew that it wasn’t the earthquake that had shaken him—it was the fact that after he’d grabbed on to her to try to protect her as his car rattled and shook, he’d kissed her.
She’d kissed him back. In fact, they’d made out for a good long time—until he’d jumped away from her as if he’d been bitten by a snake.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked him now.
He laughed, but it was a sound of despair, not joy. “Nope.”
“Well, I wanna talk about it,” she said. “I don’t know what the big deal is. I like you and you seem to like me—”
“Fiff,” he said. “Teen. As in: You. Are. Fifteen.”
“Drama, drama, drama, drama,” Maddie said on an exasperated exhale. “So what?”
“So what?” he said. “So what? So I could go to jail. I’d have to register as a sex offender, forever. Forever, Mads. It happened to a friend of my cousin.”
“What happened to your accent?” she asked.
“It’s fake!” he shouted. “I’m fake! Everything’s fucking fake, all right? So, see, you don’t really like me after all! Say the word, I’ll turn around and take you home!”
“Well, that’s stupid,” she said. “If you take me home, you’d practically be handing me over to Nelson. And until I get the money or the proof that Fiona was the one who stole it, you’d pretty much be sentencing me to death.”
“Fuck,” he said, because she was right.
“You know, I think maybe I like you more now,” she told him. “So, really, all this time, you’ve been, what? Playing a character?” She imitated his Australian accent. “I’m Dingo from down under. That’s pretty freaking brilliant, Richard. I bet most girls really go for that.”
“See, you are mad. No one calls me Richard unless they’re mad at me.”
It was weird—that flat California accent coming out of his face, his mouth.
He glanced at her, several times, probably because she was staring at him. “What?”
“You’re a good kisser,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no, no, no.”
She shrugged expansively. “I’m just saying. Kissing isn’t sex.”
“Mads,” he begged. “Please. Can we just…not?”
She sighed heavily. “Can Dingo come back now? Because you’re right, I think I like him better than you. You’re a buzzkill.”
“Can’t have a buzzkill without a buzz, love,” he said in his fake Australian accent.
“Whatever,” Maddie said, sinking down in her seat. “Why should I have anything good or nice or happy in my life?”
“I’m not good or nice,” he whispered.
Maybe not. But when he’d kissed her, for the first time in a long time, she’d felt happy. Or at least less relentlessly alone.
Shayla surrendered.
At first, she was a little weirded out—going into that grown-up version of a bouncy tent with the deliberate intention of taking off her clothes and having some happy-fun time with the Navy SEAL. This was a man to whom she’d not so much as spoken two words until last night.
And now she was going to let him plant his face between her legs.
How do you do?