Free The Valentine's Arrangement by Kelsie Leverich Page B

just took a breath, and allowed her vision to slowly fade behind her tired lids.
    *****
    Kale was jostled awake by a shove to his arm. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know that a beautiful, yet pissed off Ronnie would be staring at him.
    “Get up.” She jabbed her palm into his bicep again and Kale just smiled. He reluctantly opened his eyes and stretched out his arms that were still wrapped around Ronnie as she tried to wiggle her way out of his hold.
    “Hey.”
    “Think you could get off me?” she asked, trying once again to shift her body out from under him.
    He laughed pressing his hands onto the small of her back and holding her in a hug. He dipped his head down and kissed her once on her earlobe, quickly grazing it with his teeth before he let her go and rolled onto his back.
    The dim light flowing in through the window was carrying with it the thick warmth of evening. Shit, they must have been asleep for a couple of hours. 
    “Okay,” Ronnie said, sitting up, pulling the white sheet around her so it was covering her bare breasts. “We can’t do this anymore. You’ve had your fun; I’ve had my fill, now we can both go on our separate ways.”
    “You’ve had your fill?” he said, cocking his head to the side to look at her. Her face was impassive.
    She rolled her eyes. “Yes, my curiosity is satisfied.”
    “You were curious about me?” He looked knowingly at her, and as he watched Ronnie’s face turn from creamy to rosy, a pixilated smirk pulled across his cheeks.
    “ Were being the operative word; as in no longer. Look, this was fun, it was good—” Kale stalled her words as he arched his thick eyebrows at her, unconvinced by her choice of adjective.
    “—okay it was pretty fucking mind blowing,” she declared.
    His eyes relaxed and his mouth slacked back into its original post-coital smile.
    “But…that was it. We can’t do this again.”
    He leaned up on his elbow. “And what is your reasoning for that, because there are more than a few reasons for why I think we should definitely do this again.”
    “I told you last night, I don’t date.”
    “Who said we were dating?”
    “No one said we were dating, but I’m also not a tramp who sleeps with different guys every night.”
    A possessive shrill slithered through Kale’s nerve endings causing him to tense. “You won’t be sleeping with different guys. You’ll be sleeping with me.”
    “No. I—”
    “Ronnie, I get it. You don’t do the whole girly thing. Lucky for you, I don’t do the whole relationship thing.”
    “A guy not wanting to commit to one girl, shocker.”
    She was throwing her ex issues in his face and he wasn’t going to let that happen. “That has absolutely nothing to do with it. I’m a firm believer in commitment, and I know what it entails and I know how hard it can be. I also know that adding the military to that equation makes it even more difficult. I don’t choose to not be in relationships because I don’t want to be with one woman, I choose not to be in a relationship because when I decide to commit, I want to put that woman before everything else, just like it should be, and right now I can’t do that. Right now, I’m not ready to do that. So, committing to one woman isn’t the issue.” He reached under the covers and pulled Ronnie’s body down so that she was once again lying next to him. He ran his index finger up and down her stomach, igniting a patch of goose bumps on her naked skin.
    “What’re you doing?” Her voice cracked a little as she tried to get the words out in a volume that was slightly louder than a whisper.
    “Trying to remind you how I can make you feel. I want you to think about what you would be missing out on.”
    Her eyes were dark and her breathing was forced, but her body was lax. She was soft under his hands; she was like warm melting butter.
    “I know how you make me feel,” she said blinking hard, scooting away from him.
    “I’m only here for five