“Yeah, but you don’t have to be interested in someone to, you know, do what we just did.”
“You’re confusing me with Von,” Thad said “It’s not that I’ve never done the casual thing, but it just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. And, please, when you talk about what we just did, say that we fucked. Because the hottest thing I have ever heard in my life is the word fuck coming out of your mouth.”
Her sharp laugh sounded around the room.
He nudged her, lifting his hips. “Come on. Say it.”
“Thad.”
“Say it,” he goaded.
One corner of her mouth tilted up in a grin. She rolled her eyes, but then, in a voice so sultry it nearly killed him, she said, “Fuck.”
Thad threw his head back against the mattress and groaned.
“You’re so silly.” She laughed. “That’swhat surprises me. Well, that’s theotherthing that surprises me. I never would have expected you to have this sense of humor, not based on my first impression of you.”
“To be fair—” he started, then stopped. “Wait a minute.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her, then pushed himself up so that his back was against the headboard. “That’s better,” he said. “As I was saying, to be fair, I was notat my best on the day we first met. I was still salty that I’d been roped into looking after Puddin’.”
At the sound of his name, Puddin’ came running. He jumped onto the bed and sniffed Thad’s face.
“Down,” Ashanti said.
The dog immediately jumped off the bed and stood at attention beside it.
“That’s sexy too. The way you get them to obey your commands like that?” He struck the mattress with his fists. “It turns me the fuck on, Ashanti.”
“That is… strange,” she finished, the soft rumble of her laugh feeling like heaven against his chest. She scooted off the bed.
“Where are you going?” Thad asked.
“I love these two, but they’re going to have to hang out on their own for a while.”
He stared at her exquisite body, loving the way her braids swished back and forth just above her ass as she guided the dogs into her room. She came back and climbed in the bed, twisting around so that her back was to his front. He fully acknowledged that she could ask anything of him right now and he would give it to her, provided her naked ass remained in his lap.
“Now,” she said, pulling the sheet up over her and totally ruining his view, “You really want me to believe that you were this surly grouch because of Puddin’?”
“Ouch. Was I that bad?”
“Yes,” she answered with an emphatic nod.
“It wasn’t just Puddin’,” Thad was willing to concede. “Although he did account for a lot of it.” He shrugged.“Honestly, I’ve been in a pretty fucked-up mood since I left the military.”
She looked back at him over her bare shoulder. “You weren’t ready to leave, were you?”
He swallowed hard and decided to go with the truth.
“No.” Then he thought better of it. “Actually, that’s not true. It was time. It was past time for me to leave. I just thought I would have been better prepared. Mentally,” he added. “I spent the first six months wandering around like a kid lost in a big department store. Just… floundering.”
“Is that when you came up with the idea for The PX?”
“I had the idea for The PX well before I left the military. Von and I had already shored up our plans before we filed the paperwork for retirement. That’s the thing, I knew what Ishouldbe doing, but I couldn’t seem to get my ass in gear to actually do it. It felt as if I’d left things… I don’t know… unfinished.”
How had he allowed the conversation to veer so far to the left? It was as if he was trying to guarantee that they were one and done when it came to sex tonight.
“Maybe it isn’t meant to be finished,” she said. “What you’re trying to do with The PX seems like an extension of your service.”
He had thought about it in the same way, yet he was still stunned by the effect her words had on him.
