Chapter Thirty
TANA
I’d talked Shelby into vacating the dorm so that Ryan and I could have privacy. Excitement coursed through me. I didn’t know how things would end, but maybe, if we got everything out into the open, we could build a future together.
Humming to myself, I took a long shower and shaved. I didn’t think we’d end up making love tonight, but just in case, I wanted to be prepared. I spread scented lotion all over my softened skin and went to my dresser to search for the new bra and panty set I’d purchased at the lingerie store. I eased the panties on and as the silky material slid across my skin, I imagined Ryan’s hands doing the same. I put the bra on and gained a confidence boost at the full cleavage it gave me.
Searching through my closet, I chose a short, figure hugging dress with a low neck. I’d been able to have some extra money this semester because in a surprise twist, my father had given my mom a nice chunk of money. She’d bought a new home in a better neighborhood, paid my next year’s tuition, and made sure I had some spending money. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel the pinch financially.
I’d asked her what had come over Dad, but she’d only said that maybe he’d seen the error of his ways. Whatever had caused him to change his mind, was fine with me. I opened up one of the boxes of new shoes I’d bought. The heels were pretty but not practical although they did scream do-me.
After I added the heels and a light touch of perfume, I was ready with half an hour to spare. Dashing around the sitting area, I straightened up the mess Shelby had left and tossed her stuff in the middle of her bed then shut her door. That was the only drawback to rooming with her. She was a total slob and it drove me crazy.
Taking a deep breath, I surveyed the room, then sniffed the air. “Candles,” I muttered and went in search of them. I had two mango and tangerine ones I’d picked up from Target. I lit those, then stretched out on the sofa. As soon as I did, I sat up straight again. No, I didn’t want Ryan to think we could skip talking and go straight to the sex.
He’d said he loved me. I smiled at the memory. We would order pizza. No, Chinese takeout. We’d eat. And we’d talk through the night if we had to. But tonight, everything would change. The minutes passed as I waited.
He should have been here by now. I looked at my cell phone. He was only ten minutes past the time we’d agreed to meet. I bit my lip. He’d said he’d be here. He would be. Of course he would. When twenty minutes passed, I began to pace the room. What if something had happened?
Get a grip
. That side of his life was over. I stopped. Was it? I thought back to our conversation in the car. Had Ryan said it was over? No. He hadn’t. He’d only said that Chanos was dead. He’d never said that the past was over. Never said he wasn’t a part of it anymore.
I sank onto the sofa. The memory of seeing my mother so helpless after she’d been shot zipped through my mind’s eye and the awful days that had followed tumbled after the memory. I couldn’t go through something like that again and if Ryan was involved in stuff, then I’d always have to deal with these fears, always have to wonder if he was okay when he didn’t show up. After thirty minutes, with no phone call from Ryan and no answer when I tried to call him, I blew out the candles and paced some more.
By the time an hour had passed, I went to change. Stripping off the dress, I shoved it into a ball in the corner of the closet. I couldn’t stand to look at it, at the hope that it had represented. Removing the sexy lingerie, I dressed in the sweat pants and T-shirt I usually wore to bed. God, what a fool I still was for Ryan. One look from him, one conversation and I was ready to lay myself open to the devastation he’d wreaked on my heart like before. How stupid could I be? I decided that I wouldn’t stay in my dorm tonight. I didn’t want Ryan to show up with some lame excuse or to tell me that he’d thought it over and didn’t want to be with me after all. I didn’t want hear him say he was still part of a dark past that might someday claim his life.
*
RYAN
I raked a hand down my face. Tana wasn’t answering her phone. I raced to the college and as soon as I parked the Charger, I ran across the campus to her dorm and banged my fist on the door so hard I thought I’d punched a hole in it.
There was no answer. Shit. I couldn’t be this fucking close to having her in my life again only to have it snatched away. I eased myself to the floor and sat there all night long. It was a quarter past nine before Shelby walked into the hall wearing a rumpled dress and carrying a pair of high heels in her hand. She shoved a key into the lock and gave me a nasty glare. “I talked to Tana last night. You have a lot of nerve showing up here.”
“Where is she?”
“Why would I tell you?”
I gripped both sides of the doorframe after she walked in. “Because me not being here last night was something I couldn’t help.”
“Uh huh. Something or someone? I know she has stars in her eyes when it comes to you, but she’s my friend and I won’t let you hurt her.”
“I would have moved heaven and hell to get to her last night because I love her and I’m asking you to let me make this right with her.”
Shelby’s cold expression softened. “Oh. She has history again this period. She’s probably already there.”
“Thanks.” I left before Shelby could say anything else. I didn’t want to hear from Tana’s friend how that Tana was done with me. Not before I had a chance to explain.
Instead of using the doors at the back of the room, I used the side entrance that the professor took to enter the room. He was at the lecture podium and when I opened the door, his eyebrows shot up. He looked at me over the top of his glasses and recognition dawned. “Can I help you?”
“I need this.” I stepped in front of the microphone. “Tana Shaw!” Heads turned toward where she was sitting in the same spot where I’d seen her in the class the first time. “Last night, something prevented me from getting to you. But that doesn’t mean we’re not meant to be.”
Some of the girls in the class made the ‘aww’ sound. I ignored them. “I know you’re scared. Hell, the thought of how I might screw this up in a million different ways scares me too. You’re right that I’ve got a shitload of junk in my past and I won’t deny that. But my past made me who I am today and I won’t apologize for that because it has helped me to survive and it has led me here, to this point. And that’s loving you.”
Tana stood up, but I was afraid to give her a chance to speak, afraid she’d tell me that it was too late. I rushed on. “You need to know that my past made me strong enough to protect the people I care about and that’s never going to change. If you think that makes me a badass or a sonofabitch or whatever you want to label me, then so be it. I’ll let out whatever fucking demon I have in me to protect you. You need to know that before you take me on.” I opened my arms. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here last night. I’m asking you to realize that I fucking love you and that will never change no matter how many times I screw up.”
Tana covered her mouth with her hands as the girls in the class started clapping. Then crying, she threaded her way past the rows of other students, and made her way to the aisle. My heart skipped a beat when she started toward me. Carefully, slowly, then running. She flung herself into my arms. I kissed her and the professor said, “Well, I guess she loves him too.”
The class erupted into laughter and the professor firmly invited us to leave his class and said for me not to come back.
Outside the classroom, I smoothed the hair away from her tear-stained face and said, “I can’t ever not love you.”
“I thought you’d made the decision last night that you didn’t want to be with me.”
I pressed her hand against my thundering heart. “That’s not possible. I want you in my bed, in my life now and in my future.”
“Future.” She smiled at that. “I always thought you saw that as a dirty word when it came to relationships.”
“Not with you.”
She gave me a look from beneath her long lashes and said shyly, “Do you want to come back to the dorm with me?”
I grinned at the lust in her eyes.
Hell, yeah.
Chapter Thirty-One
TANA
I led Ryan to the dorm and though Shelby gave me a raised eyebrow as she left for her class, she didn’t say anything. I locked the door behind her and kissed Ryan hungrily, the way that I’d wanted to in the class, the way I’d longed to for months. The need for him had built in me until I’d thought I’d go crazy from wanting him.
He walked us backward, not stopping until we butted up against the wall. I arched my neck, giving his lips the access that they sought as they burned a trail across my skin. His hands gripped my ass as he lifted me up and I slid my legs around him. His erection pressed up against me and my body ached with desire for him to fill me. The softness of his lips moved down to the base of my neck and suddenly, he was still, his forehead pressing against my chest.
“What is it?” I pulled his head up to look into his beautiful eyes.
“You scare me.”
“Me?”
“How much I love you scares me. I’ve never let myself need anyone as much as I need you.”
I pressed my hands against his face. “I love you, Ryan. I’m not going anywhere. Whatever comes, we’ll work through it together. I’m your family and I always will be. For as long as you want me to be.”
He put his hand over my heart, his fingers grazing my breast. “I want forever.”
“You had that the day we met.” I smiled. “You just didn’t know it.”
He was still for a few seconds, then his shoulders relaxed. “I’ve missed you.”
“Then show me. I’m all yours.” We walked into my room and I kicked the door closed behind me, stripping off my shirt as I did. His eyes widened as he took in the sight of my breasts in the skimpy bra. He reached out and covered my breasts with his hands, scooping the flesh up and burying his face in the valley. Turning his head slightly, he nuzzled the side of each with his jaw, gently scraping his five o’clock shadow across them. I gasped.
He grinned and lifted his head. “You like that, baby?”
“I like everything you do,” I whispered.
“What about this?” He unhooked my bra and tossed it aside, then took one of my nipples into his mouth while he gently squeezed the other with his fingers. I threw my head back and whimpered.
He slid his hands down my sides and into my jeans, exploring until his fingers found their way into my panties. Sliding his finger in, he moved it in and out. “So wet for me.” He pushed another finger in and I clutched his shoulders, squirming my hips toward him.
“Take off your jeans,” he ordered.
I unfastened the button and he kept working me the entire time, running his finger over my clit and up the top of my vagina. As I started pushing my jeans down the sides of my legs, he took my clit between his thumb and middle finger and started rubbing it. I moaned and my knees buckled.
He caught me with his free hand and kept touching me with his other one. “Ryan...” My stomach clenched and a ragged scream tore from me as I came. As soon as I could think clearly, I pulled at his clothes, stripping him naked. His erection sprung free, thick and ready. I stroked my thumb across the head of him and watched his eyes glaze over. “It’s my turn to play,” I said, but Ryan picked me up and fell with me onto the bed, our mouths locked together, our legs entangled.
“Let me see your face.” I ran my fingers across his cheekbones and down to his lips. “I want to see the exact moment that you enter me and you’re mine.”
He lifted up to cover himself with a condom, then looked deep into my eyes as he moved into me. I could have wept with the rightness of it. He ran his hands up the side of my body until he reached my hips, then rocked me. “I have always been yours.” He moved slowly, driving me crazy as he dragged his erection over the most sensitive part of me. Easing almost out, he paused then plunged in and I gasped, loving the fullness, the pressure of his pelvis against mine. It was hard, hot and fast and incredibly mind blowing.
I lifted my face for his kiss and he dove into me, kissing, gently biting, and devouring me like a man starved. I gave and I took as he sped up the movements of his hips until we both tensed and exploded together. Ryan collapsed against me, then rolled off to deal with the condom.
When he came back to bed, he got beside me, pulling me on top of him.
“So the past is really over?” I pressed a kiss to his chest, tracing my tongue across his tattoos, then ran my hands across the tautness of his abdomen.
“It’s over,” he promised. “Cooper said to me once that the Southtown Brothers would always be in my blood and he’s right about that. Not because it’s what I want to be a part of or even where I plan to be but because it’s who I once was.”
“But the situation with Chanos, that was the last act? You’re not involved in anything else?”
He hesitated.
“You might as well tell me. I don’t want anything to crop up and take me by surprise.”
His gaze darkened. “I’ll tell you, but I’m not sorry for it.”
“What?”
“I went to see your father before I came up here.”
I moved off of him and clutched the sheet around my breasts. “Why would you go see my father?”
“I told him that I knew he had money in an offshore account.”
“I told you about that but he’s never admitted it. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“After I told him I knew about the money, I told him that I was harmless in spite of my rap sheet. I said I was just a guy who loved his daughter. I mentioned a few things I’d done in the past that made him need to sit down suddenly. I explained how hard it had been for your mom and how great it’d be if someone could help her out. Next thing I knew, he was shoving a check in my hand telling me he never wanted to see me again. I had no idea he was such a generous guy.”
“Oh my God, Ryan. You scared the shit out of my dad.”
“Really? I thought the visit went well. I mean, other than him not wanting to invite me back.”