“I’m damaged, Gabe,” I warned him.
“We all are, Willow,” he replied.
I pressed even closer, and that was not about getting more of his stiff dick. I also glided a hand up the hot, silken skin of his back.
Dang, that felt good.
I yanked my mind from that and back into the moment.
“Can you give me some of it?” I requested, even if I knew it was unfair, since he made it clear he was willing to give it all, but couldn’t, because I was holding back.
“Not about yesterday morning.” Gabe, being all that was Gabe, didn’t delay with his reply. “But I will tell you I’ve been in love twice. One didn’t work out because it couldn’t. And the other didn’t work out because she was a cunt.”
My head jerked back.
Ummmm…
“A cunt?” I asked.
His hold tightened on me, and he soothed, “I know you women don’t like that word, but?—”
“How was she a cunt?” I demanded.
“How?” he asked, watching me not only close-up, but closely.
With a hefty tug, I pulled from his arms only to sit up and frown down at him.
“What did she do to you?” I asked.
“Babe—” he started to curl up.
I slapped a hand in his magnificent, furred chest and held him down.
“Talk, Gabriel Stark.”
He pressed his lips together, but his eyes danced, and he settled on his back.
The view was marvelous.
But the fact he found this amusing was ticking me off.
“Don’t you annoy me,” I snapped. “Give it up.”
That smirk returned, but he talked through it this time.
“She wasn’t happy when I had to work on my thesis and not kiss her ass. She wasn’t happy when her friend got a DUI, and I didn’t ‘fix it,’ and the bitch was so over the limit, not only was she looking at jailtime, she’d committed felony property damage by jumping a curb and running into someone’s porch. When my ex got wasted, she got belligerent and often got into fights with women, and men, then she’d say shit like, ‘My man is a cop and he’ll bust your ass,’ and pull me right into her shit. And she was a bitch to servers. Like, always.”
I saw red.
Thus, it was a near on shriek when I asked, “She was a bitch to servers?”
“She’s long gone, cupcake.”
“If she was all of that, how did you fall in love with her?”
“Well, she wasn’t all that all at once. It took me a while to piece it together. In the end, it was about the fact we were young, but I was the only one in our relationship who was getting any older.”
Ah.
