Unconditional

This is beyond pleasure, beyond anything I’ve felt before. Sharp and sweet, hard and soft. I’m undone, sobbing into the cushions, thrusting back to meet him, letting out animal cries of pleasure with each hard slam. Garrett tangles his fingers in my hair and pulls, arching my body back to him, pumping faster, and now we’re crying out together, my gasps mingling with his groans as I feel the pressure rising, swift and breathless, a hungry darkness craving release.

“Carina!” Garrett gasps my name, slamming into me again. I feel him, oh I feel him everywhere, his hands and heat and the relentless power of his c**k plunging into me, a relentless rhythm that won’t be denied. “Come for me,” he growls. “Dammit, come!”

But I can’t answer, I have no words, I’m already climbing, cresting, the waves rising in me again at the force of his passion and then I feel his body tense against me and hear a guttural cry, and Garrett thrusts deep again, stroking hard against my cl*t and God, it’s too much and I break, break, fall apart as the world contracts to a single explosion that rips through my body like a supernova, sending starlight burning through my veins.

I feel him surge inside me, feel the force of his release, crying out my name. And as we collapse, gasping to the floor in a tangle of sweat and flesh and dizzy wonder, one thought pierces the haze of my delirium, one simple truth.

It’s him.

This man. This infuriating, irritating, goddamn miracle of a man.

It’s him.

16

I wake, disoriented, to find morning light streaming through the open living room window. I look around. I’m curled on the couch under a blanket, naked, clothes strewn around me on the floor. I stretch, the fog of sleep still wisping in my brain. I’ve got a crick in my neck, and my body feels thick and heavy with exertion, an unfamiliar ache like I’ve run a marathon.

Or f**ked your brains out, all night long.

It floods back to me in an instant. Garrett, pinning me down here on the couch, slamming me up against the wall, making me cry out, beg, come again and again and again.

Garrett.

I look around, but the apartment is empty, nothing but the damage we did last night. My body clenches with panic. He’s gone. Left me here, like nothing even happened, like I’m just another one-night fling to add to his collection. A notch on his bedpost, a warm, willing body.

Did he ever promise me anything more?

My heart sinks. In all the passion, the breathless pleasure, I didn’t stop to wonder what it all meant, how Garrett felt about me. Now, in the cold light of day, I realize it might not have meant anything at all.

Then I see a note propped up on the coffee table with my name scribbled on it.

Gone to hunt & gather, it says in Garrett’s messy scrawl. See you back at the beach house for breakfast.

Relief floods through my system. He didn’t just creep out without saying goodbye. That means he doesn’t regret what happened between us.

He didn’t stick around to kiss you good morning, either, a voice reminds me. That’s a friendly note he could have left anyone. You don’t know how he really feels.

I stare at the note, trying to decipher some hidden meaning, but I can’t see anything between the lines of the short message. I let out a groan of frustration. This is what I missed out on learning, all those years I played by the rules. Morning After 101, or how to wake up after a night of unbelievable pleasure without stumbling into a mess of insecurity and self-doubt.

It suddenly hits me how many times he must have done this before, and how few times I have.

Not when it matters, not when I cared.

Stop.

I catch myself falling back into tender thoughts and force myself to stop getting carried away. It was one night. One unbelievable, unspeakable, amazing night, but for all I know, that’s all it’ll ever be.

And as for the connection I felt—the utter sense of rightness that surged through me, lying in his arms? That was just biology, I remind myself sternly. Nothing but chemical attachment firing up as an after-effect of the best damn sex of my life. Just because he made me lose my mind bent over the living room couch doesn’t mean this is anything more than a simple fling.

A fling. Yes. I grab hold of the idea and cling to it tightly. A fun, no-strings, walk-on-the-wild-side kind of affair, to blast away the cobwebs and jump-start my system again after years of denying what I really want. Garrett is the last man in the world I need to be planning a future with; hell, he doesn’t plan past his next beer or booty-call fling. I could do with taking a leaf out of his book and living in the present tense for once.

Your life is complicated enough, Carina, I tell myself, heading for the shower. I’ve got plenty of problems to deal with, I don’t need to go looking for any more.

By the time I’ve rinsed off and dressed and am driving back over to the beach house, the last fragments of my morning-after haze have dissolved safely away. Instead, I feel sharp and vibrant, somehow more alive. It’s a gorgeous spring day as I head along the road through Beachwood, the sky blue up overhead, the bay glinting clear blue along the shore. I feel a rush of clarity, my body alert and buzzing, ready for the day ahead.

Damn, I should get laid like that more often.

I laugh to myself, turning down Main Street. I’m too old to be having this kind of crazy hook-up thing, but I never really fooled around in college. I dated with a single-minded determination, always focused on finding a man who would make the perfect husband and father for the future family I built up in my mind. I made myself into the ideal girlfriend, sweet and demure, the kind of girl they would want to bring home to their parents—not the girl they would shove up against a wall and f**k so hard she’d come screaming their name.