Never Been Loved(105)

She sighs, but moves to her back and fiddles around until she gets my shirt on her head. Okay, I feel better. It’s dumb as hell, but I feel better. Maybe I didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe this is all new for her.

Hell, it’s all new for me, too.

When she’s done, I get an arm hooked around her and haul her close, getting a leg between hers, rolling her into my side and practically crushing her with my body. I start nuzzling into her neck. The only way to do that is to give it to someone to help you share the load.

“You’re going to learn some bad things about me, Sera. Real shitty things about the asshole I used to be. I don’t want it to touch you, but it will. I want you to remember us, like this, before you run off on me.”

“Okay,” she whispers. I have a feeling she’s not taking this seriously.

“I’m being serious, baby. Judge me on the man I am now, and not the kid I was back then. S’all I’m asking of you. God, I can’t believe you’re in bed with me. And you’re letting me hold you like this.”

“Why wouldn’t I let you hold me like this, Hunter?” Shit.

“You’re so good to me. You’re so good to Matty, even after all the shit that’s gone down, you’re still here. With me.”

“I gave you a hand job. That does not constitute me ‘being good to you’. You’re freaking me out. What does the past matter?”

Sera’s so unbelievably sweet. I lean in to kiss her but only get the corner of her mouth. “It matters, baby. It just does. I’ll tell you when I’m ready, all right?”

“Fine, whatever. Good night.”

“And the hand job was spectacular. I saw the sun at a close-range distance.”

She snorts, trying to hide behind the covers.

“You think Aly ever had a juice or candy for me in her purse? Sera, when you kiss me, you kiss me. I’m not a mouth to you; I’m not just a cock.”

She turns to me now, and it’s amazing. Everything about her is amazing. “You have those things, you are not just those things.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m not following.”

I move some hair behind her ear, trace the skin of her cheek with my fingers, down over her nose, her lips. I don’t want to be telling her this, but she needs to know – for all our sakes.

“I’m a way to get off, baby. I’m also a paycheck, a guarantee of a cozy future.”

“Where does Matty factor into all this?”

“He doesn’t. She’d ship him off as soon as the marriage license was signed. Not gonna happen.”

“Yeah, over my fraking dead body. Who the hell does she think she is? Lilith?” She gets a hand on the side of my neck and I like that a hell of a lot. Also, I have no fucking clue what she just said? Who the hell is Lilith?

“Are you talking about one of your shows again?”

“You bet.”

I chuckle. I love how her shows get mixed up in the words she says. There’s always going to be something to talk about. Always.

“Which one is this?”

I learn about this show called Supernatural, which sounds stupid, but I keep my mouth shut. Sera tells me there’s these two brothers that travel in this solid1967 Chevy Impala across America fighting monsters and whatever baddies go bump in the night. But then she gets into it, what the story means to her, and she sounds like she’s almost in love with the two of them – and they aren’t even real.

Here I am, jealous again of fictional characters.

She gets into the story, talking about the apocalypse and about some angels and demons, and hell, even Lucifer, and some monsters I didn’t quite catch the names of.

“Aren’t you terrified of going to go to sleep every night? What if we lived in a world where all that shit existed?” I’m man enough to say I’m shit-scared of horror movies. My life’s enough of a roller-coaster ride, thanks.

“I already have packets of salt in my purse for such an occasion. Salt stops, like, eighty percent of things that go bump in the night. And, and, and the whole show is about killing these things. It’s basically like a manual. I know how to kill everything already,” she tells me.

“Fuck.”

“What?” Sera asks.

“I just pictured you in leather pants and a black tank. Jesus Christ your ass would look amazing in leather pants. Then I wouldn’t be able to let you out of the house, since every guy with a half a dick would want a piece of you.”

“I think only you see me that way.”

Don’t get pissed. She’s admitting something to you; this isn’t a game. “Baby, it’s not my fault you haven’t noticed.”