29. Utah

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

utah

W ell.

The end of me would certainly fucking begin with this girl.

The last thing I’d expected out of this bar night of hers was to bring her to one, only for her to let some other guy rub his dick all over her ass under the guise of dancing. For someone who’d been thoroughly unable to even so much as walk straight in her overwhelming drunkenness, she sure had perfect control of the way her hips swayed in rhythm with the wrong fucking man’s body. If I could figure out a way to block him from view, this would be the spectacle of a lifetime. I’d sit here and watch her move that way for the rest of my days, if there hadn’t been someone else’s obviously stiffening cock disrupting the entire image.

But I stayed where I was and just watched.

I watched his hands on Memphis’ hips. I watched them shift up and down the outside of her thighs every so often. I watched one roam across the bare skin of her stomach. It stopped on the little revolver that hung from her naval for a long while. Then that handed started to shift south so slowly I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t directed all my focus squarely on that fucking hand. By the time I watched his thumb hook itself inside the top of her jeans, I’d already imagined the forty-seven ways that I intended to remove that hand from his body. But Memphis pushed his hand off and turned back to face him. I even smirked, thinking I was about to witness her slap the shit right out of him.

Except she put her arms around his neck and laced her fingers behind his head. Then I watched both his fucking hands creep into the back pockets of her jeans. He said something to her. She dropped her head back to laugh. He was right there to say something directly into her ear a moment later. And whatever he’d said froze her movements. She tried to take the tiniest step back. The laughter had stopped. The smile was gone.

My whole body was reacting to the scene without any part of my head thinking it through. I was shifting through the crowd of people as quickly as I could move to intercept them at the door. He had her hand again and he was taking her toward the exit, but she wasn’t fighting him. She wasn’t screaming at him to stop. She was terrified, she was panicking, and she was looking for me.

I interrupted his path to the door by placing my body right in front of it and waiting for them to get closer. Memphis hadn’t even noticed me yet. She was scanning the entire bar as they walked, looking where she thought she’d left me. Somewhere in the middle of her eyes darting around the room, they finally landed on me when the man leading her stopped right in front of me.

“Whatever this is, angel, it’s over now.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m not talking to you,” I said, still without bothering to look at him.

“You know this guy?” he asked Memphis when he shifted just enough to look at her.

She just barely nodded her head. “Yeah.”

I chuckled at that.

“Is he bothering you?” he asked Memphis before he looked back at me.

“The only person bothering her is you . Come on, Memphis,” I said and held out a hand to her. I could feel the moment that my heart tried to go into cardiac arrest when she glanced down at my hand rather than just taking it.

“Maybe I’m not ready to leave yet,” she said quietly.

This motherfucker got bold after that and put his body squarely between her and me while crossing his arms over his chest.

“Hear that? She says she’s staying with me,” he said and smirked.

I watched the tiny girl behind him start chewing on her lip to try to hide a smirk.

She was enjoying this now that I was standing here. Now that she knew I was still watching, and she was still safe.

And she was pitting him against me?

I made myself look back at this asshole. “I don’t think that’s what she said.”

“Are you deaf or stupid then?” he asked. “If she’s leaving, it’s with me.”

I smiled when I looked at Memphis that time. “You’re about to get a young man killed tonight, sugar. Are you ready to live with that?”

“You want to try saying that again?” he threatened.

The smile that Memphis had been chewing on disappeared entirely.

“Come over here, angel,” I said as calmly as I was able. She moved immediately that time to step around this man. He grabbed her by the wrist before she made it all the way to me, and my body reacted again. I stepped right at him to push the shoulder closest to Memphis and simultaneously slammed my fist down on the wrist of the hand that he was using to hold her. He squealed and stumbled backward, looking down at his own wrist like he was afraid I’d broken it. Memphis took that opportunity to put herself fully behind me.

“You’ll lose that hand if you touch her again,” I warned.

“Motherfucker,” he hissed at me. Then he shifted his gaze to Memphis. “What are you doing? You don’t have to go anywhere with him.”

My whole body tensed when he stepped toward me again, but Memphis wrapped herself around my arm. Her fingernails bit into the skin of my forearm while she held the full length of my arm against the front of her body.

“Let’s just go,” she said quietly.

When she started to pull on my arm, I backed away a couple steps to make sure this asshole didn’t think he was going to be the hero tonight by following us, and then I turned to follow her out to the parking lot.

She made it to the truck in record time, and the second that she nearly had her door open, I quickly slammed it shut.

“Utah,” she hissed.

Like she was the one who had a right to be pissed.

“Care to explain yourself?” I asked.

“Not particularly, no.”

I grabbed her arm to spin her, so she was facing me, and I stepped all the way against her to pin her between me and the truck.

“Let me rephrase that,” I whispered. “Explain. Yourself. Now. Memphis.”

Something between a sigh and a moan came from her mouth. Just barely loud enough for me to hear it. And instead of keeping her caged against the truck just by being close to her, I took the opportunity to put my foot directly between hers so I could lean forward until the front of my thigh was pressed directly between her legs just to find out what might happen. Her hands came up to my hips and I could feel her fingernails digging in again when she tried desperately to just breathe.

“Utah,” she whimpered.

Her bottom lip even shook when she said it and holy fucking hell, the kind of restraint that it took to not just chew on it for her.

“As much as I love hearing my name from this mouth,” I said and dragged my thumb across that shaking lip. “It’s not the explanation that I asked for, angel.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“Because it fits.”

Her hands moved from my hips and clawed their way up across my stomach to grab my shirt where it sat over my chest. She raised up on her toes while she tried to pull me down by my shirt. I didn’t give in for a couple seconds, like I had some point to prove in standing my ground. Then my brain punched my own stupidity to remind me that I was only depriving myself of what I wanted by being that way.

I pushed my leg against her even harder, grabbed her by both hips, and lowered my head until she was able to fucking slam her mouth into mine. She tried to pull back away just as quickly as she’d done it, but there was really no way that I was going to let that happen.

I dug my fingers into where they sat on her hips and lifted her right off the ground, until her legs were wrapped around the middle of my body and I was the one looking up at her. Her hands went to either side of my face and she leaned down to kiss me another time. I shifted my hands under her ass so I could crush her against my truck, just to feel more of her pressed into me. I couldn’t help myself with her in this position and I thrusted my hips against her. Her mouth dropped open in what I assumed would have been a moan, but I took that opportunity to send my tongue in for a taste of hers and no sound at all was able to escape her. She smiled against my mouth when my hips moved a second time.

“That—” she started to say, just to pause to think about her next words very carefully. “That does not feel small,” she whispered and hunched forward to bury her face between my neck and my shoulder to giggle. I laughed at that shit, too.

She was so fucking cute.

But I so fucking needed that reminder that she was very drunk right now.

I stepped away from the truck just enough to start to release my hold on her, letting her slide down the front of my body until her feet were on the ground again. Memphis just stood there, staring right back up at me, waiting for me to make another move. I took her face in both my hands and kissed her so softly that she nearly melted into a puddle right there in that parking lot.

“That’s really all I wanted,” she whispered, with her eyes still closed while I stood with my forehead pressed against hers.

“What?” I asked and laughed.

“I just wanted you to kiss me.”

“Sugar.”

“Utah.”

“You’re going to stand here right now and tell me you nearly got that guy killed because you couldn’t just tell me that you like me?”

“I didn’t say I liked you. I said I wanted you to kiss me.”

“Such a fucking sasshole,” I said and kissed her another time, way harder. “Get in the truck, Memphis.”

“But—are we not?—”

I laughed and opened the truck door for her as quickly as I could move.

“Get in.”

“Utah, I?—”

“Sweetheart, if you wake up in the morning and decide, while perfectly sober, that you want me to fuck you until you can’t think straight, you know where to find me. But as far as this moment is concerned, get in the truck.”

She glared at me for another second like she was trying to decide if she was going to actually say whatever was still on her mind, or just do as she was told. I held my hand out so she could use me for balance while she chose the correct option and climbed up into the truck. I closed the door behind her, exhaling all the air in my body to try to get my shit back under control. I almost laughed to see her squished as close as she could get against the passenger’s door once I was in my seat.

I cleared my throat and waited for her to look at me. As soon as she did, I raised my right index finger between us and pointed at the seat between us. She didn’t move or respond in any sense. So, I dropped that finger all the way down to the seat and tapped on it until she started to slide toward me. Once she was right beside me, I reached across her for the seatbelt to fasten her right there against me. She very noticeably held her breath while I kissed her cheek, like she was suddenly unsure how she was supposed to act around me now that we’d made out and I dry humped her against the side of my truck.

“You’ve got about a half-hour drive before we’re back to the house if you want to do this without having to look me in the eye,” I said, putting the truck in gear.

“Do what?” Memphis asked.

“Explain what this night was really about to you. Because I was under the impression that we were just crossing things off that list of firsts that you never had the chance to experience. But I can’t help but feel like maybe I wasn’t told the rules of whatever tonight’s game was before we started it.”

She sighed before she looked like she was in physical pain while having to force herself to look at me. I laid my hand directly in the middle of her thigh and her eyes dropped down to it so fast I was almost afraid that I hurt her. I even got to watch her breasts rise and fall in a moment of panic when I moved just my thumb across the full width of that thigh. She was wildly reactive to every move I made, no matter how tiny. And I was loving the shit out of it.

“Talk to me, angel,” I reminded her. “You’re better off doing it now if you’re uncomfortable about it because I’ll make you look me in the eyes while you explain yourself once we’re home.”

“You’re a dick,” she said and giggled again.

“Memphis.”

“I just wanted to see if you’d feel the same way that I felt when Nevada was around you.”

“This was about Nevada ?”

“This was about you ,” she said quickly.

“Are you sure?” I asked and laughed.

She glared at me. “She wanted your attention so badly.”

“Why are you worried about what she did?”

“I’m not stupid, Utah. And you’re not blind. I know you could see the way that she looked at you. The way that she touched you…” She stopped to shake her head and look down at her lap again. I shifted my entire hand up her thigh ever so fucking slightly, and I could actually hear her trying to breathe.

She was so fucking adorable that she didn’t even seem real.

She was jealous.

And she’d never been jealous before, so she didn’t know what to do about it.

She was upset because she didn’t know if she had any claim to me. She didn’t know if she was allowed to just tell me that it upset her to see another woman eye-fuck me.

“You didn’t answer my question, sugar. Why are you worried about what she’s doing? You shouldn’t care about anything other than the way that I act when she’s around. If you’re jealous of some other girl, it’s because I’m doing something wrong. Because I’ve put you in a position where you feel like you can’t trust me .”

She sat quietly for a minute with those words before something in the neighborhood of rage burst out of her. “I am not jealous. I’m territorial. There’s a difference.”