Shattered: An Extreme Risk Novel (24 page)

“The thing is …” I tell her after a too long pause. I don’t look at her when I’m talking. It’s hard enough to get the words out, to strip my defenses away, when I’m staring at the ground. Looking at her would send me right over the edge. “The thing is, I didn’t used to be like that. I mean, yeah, I got offered a lot of sex—kind of comes with the snowbunny territory.”

“Snowbunny?” she asks tentatively.

“You know, girls who are in Park City for a week’s vacation. Who want to brag about sleeping with a famous boarder or skier.”

“Oh, right.” She nods like she knows what I’m talking about, but her eyes say she doesn’t have a clue. It’s such a weird contradiction—
she’s
such a weird contradiction. For a girl who stood in my kitchen and had no problem bartering sex for my agreement to come on this trip, she seems awfully naïve.

“I didn’t used to take them up on it. Or at least, not very often. I much preferred having a girlfriend, having someone I could hang out with outside of bed as well as in it. But … I don’t know. Things got all crazy after my parents died, after Logan got hurt. And I just …” I trail off, embarrassed at how vulnerable I sound. And at how much of a loser I’ve turned into.

And now, instead of burying that shit deep and throwing away the key, I’m pouring the whole, sad story out to the same girl I currently want to sleep with.

Tansy reaches over, covers my knee with her hand. “I wasn’t really watching porn, you know.”

My eyes jump to hers. Seriously? I just fucking poured my heart out to her—at least as much as I’m capable of—and she’s still on the porn thing? “I don’t care about the—”

She lifts her fingers to my mouth, stops me mid-tirade. “My sister sent me some links because I was embarrassed about what happened last night. About how I messed up the whole—” She flushes a bright scarlet again, but takes a deep breath, makes herself keep going. “Hand job/blow job thing. I’m sorry about that, by the way. It’s just because I’ve never done it before and well, Anna thought maybe I could learn from the videos.”

For a second her words don’t compute. Like I honestly can’t get my brain to wrap around them and figure out what the hell she’s even talking about. Blow job/hand job thing? Never done it before? I understand the words, but what I don’t understand is why Tansy is saying them like they’re her secret shame.

What I do understand, though, is the vulnerability in Tansy’s eyes, in her face. And I know telling me this is her way of evening the playing field, of making me feel less exposed after what I just said to her.

That block of ice in my fucking chest melts just a little bit more. Goddamnit. I don’t have time for this, don’t want this right now. Except … I kind of do, don’t I? Because I want her. Beneath me. Wrapped around me. Her body moving against mine. I want her every way I can get her.

But then her words sink in and I realize just how much I damaged her when I walked away last night. It’s the last thing I wanted to do—I was trying to do the exact opposite, in fact—but I can see the shadows of hurt lurking in the back of her eyes. The same shadows that were there after I told her back in Park City that I had been trying to chase her away.

Fuck. I’ve become a real bastard, haven’t I? So wrapped up in my own shit that I don’t even notice when I’ve hurt someone. Could I be more of a dick?

“Hey,” I tell her, moving my own hand to cup her cheek. “You didn’t do anything wrong last night.”

“I’m not a child. You don’t have to placate me.” She shrugs me off, starts to stand up. But I grab on to her hands, keep her in place.

“You’d been drinking, Tansy. I saw you with Luc, could taste the wine on you when I kissed you. I didn’t want to take advantage of that. I didn’t know how drunk you were and the last thing I wanted was for you to wake up this morning feeling like I took more than you wanted to give.”

“But you—” Her voice breaks and she clears her throat, starts again. “You went down on me.”

“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. You’re gorgeous when you come.”

“Ash!”

She’s blushing yet again. This time, though, I don’t stop myself from leaning over and taking a little bite.

Tansy jumps at the feel of my teeth on the underside of her jaw, though I’m careful not to hurt. “It’s true,” I tell her after licking my tongue against the sensitive spot, taking away the sting. “If you’d been sober, I would have been more than happy to have you all over my dick, with whatever portion of your anatomy you wanted to put there.”

“Ash!” My name is a strangled sound in her throat, but that doesn’t matter, because I can see the look in her eyes. Can see the interest there, as well as the fact that the hurt is fading.

It’s enough for now, more than enough. I pick her up, settle her down on my lap, so that she’s straddling me, her knees on the bed and her pussy pressed right up against my suddenly very hard cock.

“Does that feel like I’m not interested to you?”

Her eyes go wide, but she shakes her head even as she rocks against me. I bite back a groan. Fist my hands in the bedcovers in an effort to keep from grabbing her hips and taking control of the whole situation. To keep from grinding her down against me until we both come with our fucking jeans still on. She might be inexperienced, but she’s a fast learner. I’ll give her that.

To distract myself—or maybe just to make the whole thing worse—I press hot kisses over her lips, her cheeks, her jaw, her neck.

She moans a little, her fingers clutching at my hair as I suck a bruise into the delicate skin at the hollow of her throat. I want to mark her up, to cover her in hickeys and love-bites so that Luc and every other guy at this fucking resort knows what she’s been doing—and who she’s been doing it with.

It’s a ridiculous thought considering the fact that I’m not in the market for anything permanent, but it’s a gut reaction. One I don’t even know how to fight.

When it gets to be too much, when the need to plunge inside her is a red haze in my brain, I force myself to lift my head. To try to slow things down a little. If Tansy thinks she needs to watch porn to learn how to give a hand or blow job, she doesn’t have much experience. Which means, if I don’t want to scare her, I probably shouldn’t come at her like a fucking sex addict.

“So,” I ask her, forcing the clawing need back down so I can think. “Did you learn anything from your, uh, research tonight?”

“Oh my God!” She pulls away, her face twisted in disgust as her voice goes higher and higher with each word. “I don’t know what kind of pervert my sister is, but the links she sent me
were disgusting. I mean, I just wanted to see a guy and a girl and I pretty much got everything else. I mean, there were these guys and they used their fists. And then there was a Doberman. And then—”

I cut her off her panicked diatribe with a kiss. This time, I take my time, tracing her perfect bow-shaped lips with my tongue before slowly, gently, licking my way inside her mouth.

Fuck. She tastes as good as she did last night—all vanilla and brown sugar and sweet, sweet cream. I want to drown in her taste, in her scent, want to wrap it all around me and just wallow in it for a while.

Tansy moans a little, and I take advantage of her parted lips to tangle my tongue with hers. Her head falls back and I delve deeper, stroke the length of her tongue and along the inside of her cheek. I play with the sensitive skin behind her bottom teeth and the bumpy, slightly ticklish skin at the roof of her mouth. She gasps, laughs a little, but burrows even closer.

It’s all the invitation I need to kiss her harder, deeper. To tease and torment and tantalize her with memories of what I did to her last night. With promises to do the same, to do more, tonight.

We kiss for tens of minutes, for dozens of minutes, until she’s all that I can feel or smell or taste. Until everything that I am, everything I want, is tied up in her.

It feels good. So good, even with my hands shaking, and my cock is so hard that it hurts.

“Ash!” she gasps, ripping her mouth from mine. “Ash, please. I need—”

“I know, baby. I know.”

I roll us over then, so that she’s lying flat on the bed and I’m above her, resting on my forearms while my hips nestle between her legs.

Tansy’s eyes go wide even as her legs come up to tangle in mine, to wrap around my hips, and I can’t stop myself from moving against her just to see the way her crazy hazel eyes change from green to a desire-hazed brown.

“Oh, God,” she says as her body arches against mine. “I need—”

She breaks off again, just as she starts to tell me what she needs. Either she doesn’t know or she’s too embarrassed, and I find myself knocked a little off balance by either possibility. Or maybe it’s the suspicion that’s growing inside of me that throws me off, the one that tells me that no matter how unusual it feels for me to be this in tune with another person, that it’s even more unfamiliar to Tansy. Because—

“Tansy,” I say, lifting my head after what might very well be the most intense kiss of my life. Tansy’s lips are red, swollen, and for a second all I can think about is what it would feel like to have her deep-throat me. To shove my cock past those gorgeous, blow job lips of hers and blast straight down her throat.

There’s a wildness in the look in her eyes, in the hands clutching at my shoulders, that
tells me she would let me. But there’s an innocence, too, a hesitance, that makes me wonder. That makes me ask what is probably a ridiculous question. “Tansy? Sweetheart?”

“Yes, Ash?” She sounds breathless, a little brazen and totally blissed out.

“I just need to know. You … I mean, have you done this before?”

She starts to turn her head, to look away from me, but I catch her chin between my thumb and index finger, force her to keep staring into my eyes. Which is why I see the embarrassment, the secret shame in the depths of her gaze that makes no sense to me at all.

At least not until she shakes her head and whispers, “No,” in a dark, husky voice that sends shivers running up my own spine.

“You’re a virgin?” I ask, incredulously, struck stupid by the very idea. I knew she was inexperienced, but there’s a difference between not having had much sex and not having had any sex at all. A girl who looks like her, who kisses like her … it’s a lot to wrap my head around.

“Is that a problem?” she demands, lifting her chin in a perfect impression of a haughty princess. I’m not sure why it makes me want her more.

“No.” I press kisses to her suddenly tense lips, over and over again until she relaxes. “Of course not. I just wanted to know.” Though there’s a part of me that thinks it
is
a problem. I’ve never been with a virgin before, not even when I was one.

“Yeah, well, now you know.”

Now I know. It doesn’t make me want Tansy less, doesn’t make me want her more, either. But it does make me determined to be very, very careful with her. To make tonight, and this thing between us, the very best for her that I possibly can.

God, could I look any more pathetic? Not only does Ash walk in on me watching porn, but now I tell him I’ve never slept with anyone? Ever? It’s amazing he’s not running for the door—or laughing his ass off.

Then again, he might be thinking about doing just that. His kisses have suddenly become a lot softer, a lot more tentative, and I can’t help wondering if he’s pulling back because he doesn’t want me anymore now that he knows I’m not experienced.

I almost ask him, but I learned a long time ago not to ask questions if I don’t want the answers. That’s Survival 101 on the cancer ward at Primary Children’s. And while I know that keeping Ash with me is a far cry from life and death, that doesn’t mean I want to hear him tell me that he doesn’t want me again.

Not now, when his hand is sliding down my spine.

Not now, when his tongue is licking at my lips.

And definitely not now, when I have Ash exactly where I want him. Where I’ve wanted him since the moment I first met him.

But still, I’m nervous, the images from those videos seared into my brain while all my insecurities, all my fears, all my deficiencies run crazy through my brain.

I’m not what Ash is used to, at all. He’s used to sophisticated snowbunnies, to women who know the score. To beautiful bombshells with beautiful, flawless bodies and I’m—I’m just not like that.

Years of cancer treatments have had their effect on my body. I’m too small, too skinny, too scarred for anyone to call me beautiful. And though I want Ash—so much—there’s a part of me that’s terrified of what he’ll say when he sees the real me. The Tansy beyond the clothes and the wild hair and the easy smiles.

“Hey, you okay?” Ash murmurs against my lips, and I realize I’ve stiffened in his arms.

Afraid he’ll think I want him to stop, I wrap my arms tightly around his neck and pull his mouth down to mine. “I’m good,” I tell him in between kisses. “Great, actually.”

I want this. I really, really want this and I need him to know that. Partly because I want to lose my virginity, because I want to see if all those books I’ve read got it right in a way the porn
movies I just saw didn’t. And partly, mostly, because I want to do this with Ash. With smart, sweet, sexy Ash.

Oh, he talks a good game, hides his true colors behind a lot of bullshit. But I see how he is with his brother, how he is with Timmy. I know how he’s been with me. Even when he’s annoying me, or bossing me around or making decisions for me, he’s still protective, still kind. When I think of all the guys out there I could pick to be my first, I can’t imagine any of them taking better care of me than Ash Lewis.

Which isn’t to say I’m not nervous, because I am. I really, really am.

Ash maneuvers us closer to the edge of the bed and I reach my hand out, turn off the lamp next to the bed.

“Hey!” he says, pulling back. “What’d you do that for? I want to see you.”

I want to see him, too. I really, really do. I want to study every inch of his beautiful, beautiful body. But I know if I leave the light on, I’ll be too worried, too self-conscious, to do anything but wonder what he’s thinking about my body.