Shattered: An Extreme Risk Novel (23 page)

Nope. Close that. Random click again.

This time it’s a gay site, which, okay. I mean, guys know how other guys like to be touched, right? This could be a good site for me. I could learn a lot. Except is that guy doing what I think—

Nope. Close that.

What the hell kind of deranged lunatic is my sister anyway?
This
is what she was doing while I was getting
chemo
? Jesus. I’ve only been at it five minutes and I feel like my eyes, and my brain, need to be permanently bleached.

Okay. I’m going to give this one more shot. If it doesn’t work, I’m giving up. I’ll go find a convent or a monastery or something where I never have to worry about giving hand jobs or blow jobs, or any other kind of jobs, ever again. I hear Tibet is nice this time of year. I could totally be a Buddhist. I look great in orange. Plus, I’ve already done the shaved head thing a bunch of times.

Taking a deep breath, I brace myself and click on another site, this one with the dubious web address of howmanylicksdoesittake.com. I’m not going to lie. I’m a little concerned, but it seems like the best option—holy shit. Is that a Doberman?

I’m done. I’m done. I’m so fucking done.

I start to close it, but there’s a hard knock at my door and it startles me so much that I end up clicking on a video near the top right side of the screen. Obscene noises fill my hotel room.

I try to click it off, but a little window pops up asking if I’m sure I want to leave. Yes.
Yes, God, yes. I’m sure. But when I click the yes, it just takes me back to the video.

No! Goddamnit. I can practically feel the viruses leaping through my firewall by the second—and only half of them are electronic. Is it possible to get STDs from a porn site?

The knock sounds again, a little louder and more impatient this time.

“Coming. I’m coming!” I shout, even as the woman on screen starts giving a pretty good impression of doing that very same thing.

Oh my God.

I am so going to kill Anna the next time I see her.

I try once more to close the window, but that same stupid box pops up again. And again, it refuses to let me actually shut anything.

“Tansy?” Ash’s voice comes through the door. “Are you okay?”

“Fine! I’m fine!” Fuck it. I click pause—of course the stupid thing lets me do that—and then I bury the tablet under a pillow on the bed.

I’m so freaked out by everything I’ve just seen, and by the fact that my sister is obviously some kind of sex fiend, that I forget to be nervous about the fact that Ash is on the other side of my door. At least until I open it and find myself looking straight up into his beautiful, concerned face.

“Are you all right?” he asks, reaching a hand out and pressing it to my forehead. “You sounded funny. And you look a little flushed. Are you sick?”

“No, I’m good. I was just … exercising.” Exercising? Seriously, Tansy? Is that the best you can come up with?

Ash doesn’t seem like he’s buying it, either, at least judging by the way he’s looking at me. “In your jeans?”

“Uh, no. Of course not. I forgot my yoga pants so I was working out in my underwear, but then you knocked and I had to put my jeans back on.”

“Oh, right.” His eyes darken a little and he shakes his head as if he’s trying to clear it. Not that I blame him. I did just mention my underwear to him. He probably thinks I want a repeat of last night. Which, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind. Well, except for the last part. And the part where my guy of choice is probably, at this very moment, trying to figure out how to get the hell away from the crazy sex fiend who doesn’t know how to take “not interested” for an answer. It’s a good thing he’s never met Anna. He’d probably run screaming into the night. Then again,
she
probably knows how to give one hell of a blow job.

Oh, God. Where is a bottle of bleach when you need it? I am never going to forgive my sister for this.
Never
.

“Tansy? Are you sure you’re all right?” Ash puts a hand on my arm, closes the door behind him and guides me toward the bed. “Why don’t you sit down for a couple minutes? You
look a little …”

Bewildered? Freaked out? Insane? Is this a multiple choice test, because right now, I swear I’d pick all of the above.

“Hot. You look really, really hot.”

Somehow, I don’t think he means that in the good way.

I sit, because I can’t do anything else, not with Ash standing over me like that. And because I really, really need him to stop touching me. My mind knows he’s not interested, but all my body remembers is the pleasure he gave me last night and it is very interested. Sparks are tearing through me, originating at all the places he’s just touched and spreading outward from there.

Except, as I settle onto the bed, my hand brushes against my pillow. As it does, I must jostle the tablet and unpause it because the next thing I know a series of very loud, very unmistakable sounds is filling up my hotel room.

Ash’s eyes go wide as he registers what the sounds are, and then a wicked grin creeps across his face. “Exercising, huh?”

Oh, God.

Why, why,
why
is there never an erupting volcano around when a girl needs one?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone turn that particular shade of red before. Tansy’s a blusher—I knew that about her already—but even she’s never been quite this color before. It’s adorable and endearing and hot, in a way that has my muscles clenching and sweat slipping down my spine.

“It’s not what you think!” she tells me as she dives for the pillow.

But I get there first, grabbing the tablet and watching a little wide-eyed as the woman on-screen gets it from three guys at the same time. Wow. And I was worried about taking advantage of Tansy after she’d had a couple drinks … if she’s looking at this, maybe she’s more experienced than I thought.

“Give me that!” she all but screeches, ripping the tablet from my hands. As she does, she glances down at the screen and nearly chokes on her own tongue. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!”

Scratch that. Maybe she is
just
as inexperienced as I thought.

She’s poking frantically at the tablet now, but the noises aren’t stopping. I find myself getting a little hard despite myself—not because of the porn, but because of Tansy’s wide, wild eyes and the way she keeps working her lower lip between her teeth. God, she really is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Can I help?” I finally ask after a few more seconds of watching her struggle.

“No!” she whines, but then, in a direct contradiction, she thrusts the tablet at me.

I laugh—I can’t help it—though I try to stifle it. Judging from the way she’s glaring at me, I don’t do a very good job of it.

“Make it stop! For the love of God, just make it stop!” she wails, so I do, before handing the tablet back to her.

The room seems unnaturally quiet after the cessation of all that noise. I’m not sure what to do, what to say that won’t spook Tansy more, so I just stand there watching her watch me. At least until she groans and throws herself face-first onto the bed.

“Can you just go?” Her voice is muffled and I have to strain to hear it. “Please? So that I can die of shame in peace.”

I start to laugh again, but she’s so tense and she sounds so distraught, that I swallow every ounce of my amusement. Instead, I sit down next to her on the bed and run what I hope is a
supporting hand down her arm. As I do, I try not to notice how soft her skin is beneath my fingers or how good she smells.

“Hey,” I tell her after the silence stretches between us. “It’s no big deal. Everyone watches porn.”

She responds with a muffled, “I don’t.”

I do laugh then, because, seriously? Isn’t that what she was just doing? “Um, okay.”

Tansy rolls over then, pillow clutched under her chest, and glares at me. I try not to think about how good she looks propped up on her elbows like that. Or how I’d like to see her in just that position, but naked, legs spread and eyes watching greedily as I go down on her.

“I’m serious. This is all my sister’s fault. She’s the one who sent me the stupid links. She’s the one who said I should—”

She breaks off abruptly and I find myself leaning forward, anxious to know what she was going to say. “Said you should what?”

It’s like she suddenly realizes how close we are, because she stiffens up. Shoves off the bed and crosses the room to the dresser. Starts fumbling around with all the stuff she’s got lying there. Jewelry. A water bottle. A couple of lipsticks.

“Nothing. Just …” She lets out a long sigh, then puts on a smile that almost looks real. “Did you want something, Ash?”

“Wow.” I blink at her, a little surprised by the abrupt segue. “That sounds an awful lot like, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

“No!” Her eyes go wide and she’s blushing again. “I didn’t mean—I just thought—” She closes her eyes, takes a couple of deep breaths. “Never mind.”

It’s fun to tease her, but now she’s gone beyond flustered, into frazzled, and I feel bad about that. I go to her, take her hand in mine and then pull her back toward the bed. I wait while she sits down and then settle down next to her.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” I tell her because I really am afraid that she’s on the brink of hyperventilating or something. “Just breathe for a second and then we’ll start over.”

She nods, but she still looks mortified, so I pull her into my chest. I cradle the back of her head and let her bury her face against my neck. She’s stiff at first, every muscle tight, but I stroke my fingers through her hair, rub her back, and eventually she relaxes.

She feels good against me. Really good. So good that I’m not surprised by the fact that I’m getting hard—then again, that seems to be a permanent condition around her—but I am surprised by the tenderness that sweeps through me. She’s so tiny, so fragile against me, and I can’t help feeling like I need to protect her. Even more surprising is the fact that I want to.

I’m not sure how long we stay like this—Tansy wrapped up in my arms. But however much time passes, it still doesn’t feel long enough when she finally raises her head and looks at
me.

“Thank you,” she says shyly and I think I just felt something melt inside of me. Something that’s been frozen solid for seven long months.

“For what?” I ask, working to keep my body relaxed and the smile on my face. “I’m the one who came in here and got you all freaked out. I should be apologizing to you, not sitting here listening to you thank me. In fact, I came here to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For what you did out at the half-pipe today. Things with Logan and me are pretty tense right now—he thinks I’m too overprotective, and I am, I guess. I just—I almost lost him, you know, and the thought of anything else happening to him freaks me the fuck out.”

She nods, like she knows exactly what I’m talking about, even though she can’t. That’s no reflection on her. It’s just this fear, this bone-deep terror I wake up with every morning, is not something you can really understand until it happens to you.

Until you’re living it.

“He’s doing well, though, Ash. You know that, right? He’s as well-adjusted as I think any kid could be at this point. You should be proud of that.”

Proud? How can I be proud when I pretty much choke on guilt every time I look at him? Not that I have any intention of mentioning that. I’ve spent too long burying that shit deep to just blurt it out at this stage of the game. “Yeah, well, I still wanted to say thanks. For intervening and smoothing things over.”

She smiles and this time it’s genuine. In fact, looking at the way it lights up her face, the way it carves little crinkles into the skin around her eyes, I can’t help thinking it’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her all day. Maybe even longer.

The thought makes me nervous in a way I can’t quite figure out.

“So, umm, do you want to maybe go get—”

“You know, I’m not really a sex fiend—”

We both start—and stop—talking at the same time.

“Umm, what were you asking?” Tansy inquires after a second, eyes wide.

I start to answer, but I figure I need to clear up her misconceptions first. “I don’t think you’re a sex fiend.”

“You caught me watching porn!”

“I’m a pretty normal twenty-one-year-old guy, Tansy. I’ve seen a lot of internet porn. I don’t think that makes me a sex fiend, either.”

She snorts. “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about that.”

For the first time in days, I think about how we met. About how I took her into the back of the storage room and … Now it’s my turn to be embarrassed. To not be able to look her in the
eye.

“I’m sorry,” she adds after a second. “That was a shit thing to say.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was honest.” I clear my throat, try to figure out what I want to say here. What I want to do. There’s a part of me that wants to just say fuck it and run for the door. There are a million girls out there who won’t ask anything of me, who won’t call me on my shit or look down on me for fucking around.

Tansy isn’t one of them. She’s shy and inexperienced, but she’s also tough and honest and doesn’t back down easily. It’s a good combination—she’s a good combination. One I probably would have been all over seven months ago. But everything’s changed since then and I don’t think I’m ready for her, or for what she’ll ask of me. What she needs of me.

And yet … and yet, I can’t get last night out of my mind. How she felt pressed against me. How she tasted melting over my tongue. How she sounded when she came. I know I should walk away—hell, I should run away. But I don’t want to. I want to hold her again, to kiss her and touch her and watch as she comes apart in my arms. I want to fuck her, maybe even want to come apart a little in her arms, too.

None of which is going to happen if she keeps looking at me like she is right now. Like she thinks I’m just fucking with her. Just using her. Which, to be honest, I might have been at the beginning. But now … now I feel something for her. I don’t know what it is, yet, but it’s something. Something more than I’ve felt in a damn long time.