“My name is Megan, not Martha, and my sister’s name is Jennifer. Thank you for keeping your word.”
Shark nodded and gave me a strange look before waving back at his son and hiking back to his truck. I think he sensed something was off the way he kept glancing back at Aaron and me.
* * *
Before cookingthe last meal I’d likely make for Aaron, I took a long hot shower. His face had drooped, and he was quieter than usual. Was he going to miss me? Men like him didn’t miss women. They usually had a line of them waiting their turn.
When I handed him his second beer, he gripped my hand after transferring and setting the beer on the small table next to him. We sat there with him gripping my wrist until he made the decision to pull me onto his lap. I straddled his legs, inching my pelvis closer to his although I didn’t think his intention was for sex.
His heavy gaze searched my face as his hands massaged my thigh and lower back. He reached up and brushed one of my escaped curls from my face. Unrecognizable emotions flashed in the strained lines of his handsome face. Emotions that I didn’t expect and was not prepared to see.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, Megan.”
My bottom lip inched away from the top as my body ceased all movement. I wasn’t much of a talker, but his unexpected compliment left me speechless. I think he noticed as I was pretty much a deer in headlights. He gave me a soft peck on the lips and pulled back to glance into my face. His penetrating emotion-filled gaze scared the shit out of me. This was not the Aaron I’d come to know. He wasn’t soft and sensual and careful.
However, it seemed he was attempting to be careful with whatever he was about to tell me. Please God, not the L-word. Not with Aaron. Not right now. Not with me. I was too messed up. Too complicated and twisted. And so was he.
“I have to be honest with you,” he said with a pinched brow. “The news about tomorrow being your last day has my mind all fucked up.”
Relief swept through me. It wasn’t that dreaded L-bomb, but it was nearly as bad. What the hell was I supposed to say after he’d admitted something like that? We were supposed to be fucking, not feeling. However, when it came to Aaron, no matter how much my brain thought one thing, my damn mouth said something different.
“I know. It was all I could think about on the drive back.”
Aaron kissed me hard. His urgent lips crashed into me as his strong tongue seem to wrap circles around the slippery contours of mine. After a moment, the harshness of the kiss died, and it started to soften and become delicate and slow.
I drew back, eyeing Aaron like I didn’t know who the hell I was kissing. This was not his way. This shit was scary in a way that it had me jittery and anxious to get out of his lap. He couldn’t even hold my eye contact. His head landed on my shoulder as he tugged me into him, gripping me like he wasn’t ever going to see me again.
Truth was he wasn’t going to see me again. Was this his goodbye? I was not good with goodbyes. Goodbyes fucked with your head, as he’d just admitted that I was fucking with his. Goodbyes had you doubting what you’d already made up your mind to do. I couldn’t let anything sway me from doing what I knew I should. I needed to get back home and resume my life.
“Stay a few more days,” he uttered the statement into my neck, barely above a whisper.
I drew back, searching his eyes. “No,” I said, surprising myself as much as I seemed to have surprised him.
His jaw tightened at my rejection. I shook my head, attempting to rid it of the self-doubt creeping in. My eyes pinched as I glared into his, fighting to be strong when all I wanted to do was give in to his request.
He appeared hurt, and I felt the need to explain myself.
“I hate goodbyes even worse than I hate dragging them out. We should rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with. You drop me off at the airport and let that be it. I had the best sex of my life with you, fun moments, murderous moments, an all-around whirlwind adventure, but I have a life I need to get back to, and so do you.”
He didn’t say anything. He only stared at me and considered my words. His left eye twitched and his expression was almost painful like he was having a hard time accepting the reality of our situation.
“Fuck. You’re right.” He shook his head, trying to accept what I’d said.
I reminded him, “If you think I’d ever tell anyone about what happened here, I won’t. I participated too. Killed someone too, and I don’t feel bad about it, considering they hunted you down to come and kill you.”
After those words, he kissed me with such tender and delicate ease that it was like I’d kissed an entirely different person. My damn insides were fluttering like crazy, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
This kiss… Damn if it wasn’t the most intoxicating kiss I’d ever had, but more than that, it was filled to the brim with pure, raw, uncut emotion; the kind of emotion that scared the shit out of you. It was the kind that made you do dumb shit. But such emotion didn’t belong to Aaron and me.
He pulled away, breathing harshly. When he glanced at me this time, I didn’t miss it. Right there in his eyes. My eyebrows shot up so fast that I’m sure they landed at the top of my hairline.
Aaron jumped up and almost sent me tumbling to the floor, but he gripped my wrists in time to keep me from falling.
“I need to get some fucking air. For fuck’s sake, I can’t take this shit,” he expressed, shaking his head as if he were attempting to shake off whatever had climbed into his body.
He dropped my wrists and shivered before he took off towards his front door. I understood what he meant about not being able to take this because I couldn’t move. I stood there, shaking and staring at the door he’d stepped out of. The level of emotions he’d dredged up in me scared me shitless and excited me at the same damn time.
When Aaron returned two hours later, we ate and talked about every damn thing except what was so obviously between us. Had it been there, hidden between us the entire time? We’d fooled ourselves into thinking we could fuck without emotion, ignore the strong chemistry between us, and move on without a second thought. We had been so fucking wrong that the truth of our situation was drowning us.
Later that night, Aaron fucked me into oblivion, and he fucked me some more after that. By the time we fell asleep, it was after 2:00 a.m., and I was having a fucking crisis of conscience. A part of me wanted to stay with Aaron, but the part of me that made the hard decisions had won the battle.