A/N: This chapter is significantly shorter than the other chapters and I sincerely apologize for that. I planned on putting more into this chapter but it's 3:30 in the morning where I live right now and I have a screaming headache so I need to lie down and go to bed. I promise next update will be super kick ass to make up for this shitty one. Sorry guys.

M rated content in this chapter.

As I'm laying down on his chest, inhaling the scent of his skin, I'm becoming dizzier with drowsiness but there's some kind of internal, biological force that doesn't want me to fall asleep. We haven't said anything to one another in about twenty or so minutes but I don't know for sure if he's asleep or not and I don't want to move my head to check, just in case he is sleeping and I disturb him by moving. His skin smells amazing, so fresh and clean and I have no idea how. He didn't take a shower, he spent all day wearing scrubs and working in a hospital, yet somehow he still smells like he just stepped out of hot, soapy water. I'm beginning to think he just naturally smells good. I close my eyes, move my head to the side just slightly and make sure that my cheek is resting flat against the solid but soft crevice between his arm and his pecks. He has a little bit of hair in the middle of his chest but it's so soft and thin that I hardly notice it's there. This is the most comfortable I think I've ever been while laying in bed at night, yet I still can't fall asleep. Everything is perfect though. I'm on his chest, he has his arms around me, I'm comfortable and covered with pillows. It's not too hot in here, it's perfect by the grace of the air conditioning system and I'm cozy under the covers with him. I don't know why I can't fall asleep. "…Alex?" I'm lonesome though. I know it's not fair of me to wake him up if he was sleeping just so he can talk to me and keep me company while I display insomniac tendencies but I really want him to talk to me. "Alex?" I try one more time. If he doesn't answer this time, I'll leave him alone because that means he's out cold.

"Huh?" He grunts to answer me and he doesn't sound like he was sleeping. Usually if someone's just waking up out of a dead sleep, they sound groggy, disoriented and sometimes even cranky but he sounds like he was doing the same thing as I was; just laying awake and relishing the moments that we're spending in each other's arms. His arms tighten around me and pull me closer towards his body so I loosen up so that it's easier for him to make me come closer to him. To make us closer, I drape my leg across his waist, shift my weight off my front leg to my back leg and wrap my arm around his chest. "I thought you were sleeping." He turns his head and tilts it downward so we can see each other. I tilt my head up and look him in his eyes. "Everything alright?" I nod my head and walk my fingers down his arm so I can find his hand. Once I find his hand, I slip my fingers through the empty spaces between his and lock our hands together. "You sure?" I nod again. Truthfully, I think my problem is that I don't want to go to sleep. I need to go to sleep, otherwise I'll be mean and cranky tomorrow at work but I really don't want to sleep. I want to lay here forever, in his arms, enjoying the time I have with him because I know what's coming. I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning, leave for work and not see him again until I get off. I have limited time with him as it is, why would I waste it sleeping?

I roll over on my side so I can reach him easier, brace myself using my elbow and press my lips to his chest. My lips make that sucking noise when I pull away and I move my head to the side and kiss his shoulder. He takes his hand out of mine, runs it through my hair and stops at my jawline, which he uses to hold me still. I jut my face forward and make our lips meet. He smiles through the kiss for a moment but eventually, he gets into it and kisses me back. God, I could stay here like this forever. I could easily spend the rest of my life right here, unchanging and never moving. In his arms, tasting his lips, feeling his breath against my top lip as we share a kiss. I wonder how far I can take this though. We've never made out with each other. We've kissed numerous times, we've kissed with tongue but we've never made out. I turn my head to the side opposite the way his head is turned and open my mouth up a little bit, just enough to allow him to put his tongue inside. He doesn't force his tongue in my mouth right away though. He's careful about it; gentle and very passionate. His tongue glides into my mouth and immediately meets with mine. It's not a harsh, lustful kiss. It's slow and meaningful, yet enough to make me want to roll over on top of him. He lightly drags his teeth along my tongue every time I slip my tongue out of his mouth and that drives me insane. No other man has ever done that to me during a kiss before so I didn't know how much it turned me on until just now. I begin to pull away just so I can breathe, but he takes my bottom lip between his two lips and sucks on it. I put my hand against his shoulder and push him backwards until he catches on that I want him to lay down. He releases my lip from his custody, pecks me on the lips and lays down like I wanted him to. I swing one leg over his body, straddle him and go right back to kissing.

I can't put into words how I feel right now. I feel as if every nerve in my body is suddenly so alive. Like that spark that Mark took away when he died is officially rekindled, reignited and burning oh so much brighter than I ever could've imagined. It's like every emotion I've ever felt in my life—anger, sadness, regret, remorse, shame, guilt—every single emotion is just wiped clean and replaced with one single feeling; anticipation. My heart is beating fast, my head is spinning and I don't feel like I have a handle on my body. Honestly? It's the most pleasant feeling I've ever encountered. I try pulling away again so I can breathe but this time, it's me that can't bring myself to do so. It's as if he has a magnet in his mouth and I have one in mine, the attraction is so strong and forceful that I'm doing more damage by trying to break the force. I have spit—his spit—all over my mouth and running down from my lips from kissing him so sloppily. He puts his hands on my lower back, pushes against me to brace himself and scoots up with me still on his lap so that he's now propped against his headboard as if he's sitting up. His hands slide up underneath my shirt but don't go any further than my hips. He caresses my back for a moment before he jumps straight into pulling my shirt over my head.

I pull away from him to help him take my shirt off. I toss it on the floor so it's out of the way and start kissing him again. I can tell by the way he's grabbing and touching my body that he's feeling the same overwhelming feelings of anticipation that I'm feeling. It's like a fire burning in the pit of my stomach, causing the warm, tingly sensations rocketing all throughout my body; giving me a feeling that I haven't felt in a very long time…I want him so badly and for the first time in a little less than a year, I'm horny. Our makeout officially turns from soft and meaningful to hot and lustful as his hands make their way to my bra and his fingers begin to fiddle with the buckle. I reach back and help him out but I let the fabric dangle on my arms for a moment before I take it off. I still want him. I want him so much. But the nervousness is starting to set in. I haven't had sex in a really long time and this is going to be the first time I've had sex with Alex and I want this to be perfect and it's already not. I haven't showered, I haven't properly groomed in three days…I have to make this perfect somehow.

He tilts his head to the side and presses his lips to my neck. I roll my eyes up to the ceiling and take a deep breath to bear with the fact that he's making my underwear uncomfortably wet by kissing me there. He opens his mouth up and his tongue prods at the spot directly below my ear and I gasp. I close my eyes tight and rest both my hands on the back of his head. I don't know how the hell he found that spot so fast but he did and that's my sweet spot and I'm going crazy. My head is spinning even faster than before, my heart is racing and the burning sensation in the pit of my stomach has moved to my vagina and god, I just really need him. He closes his lips around my sweet spot and sucks on it, which makes my mouth fall open and just when I think I might moan, nothing comes out. He yanks my bra off, never taking his lips off that spot and his hands start kneading my boobs. His thumbs circle around my nipples for a moment before he squeezes them again. I squeeze a handful of his hair, let go and rub his head. I slide my hands down to the back of his neck and caress it. His tongue is occupying my neck, his hands are occupying my boobs and I think I'm going to explode in a fit of eagerness.

One of his hands leaves my boobs and slides down past my stomach and stops at the rim of my underwear. Without hesitation or warning, he shoves his hand down the front of my panties and his fingers stop at my clit. "Damn…already?" His voice is in a whisper but it's loud because he's right next to my ear and chills shoot up my spine, making me shiver. "Made my job easier…I don't have to get you wet." He presses his lips to the underside of my jaw and teases his fingers along my clit, which makes me close my eyes and bite down hard on my lip. I don't usually talk dirty during sex or scream real loud but he seems like he's into that kind of thing and I want tonight to be perfect so I might just have to swallow my pride and talk dirty to him. I don't want him to think I'm a bore in bed. With quickness, he pulls his hand out of my panties and starts messing with the middle of his boxers, around the buttons of them. I take the moment to kiss his neck. I trace my fingers all over his sexy, solid chest and suck on his neck like he sucked on mine. "Lift up…" He whispers and taps me on my lower back.

I hold onto his shoulders and lift my bottom half like he asked. I guess Alex isn't really a foreplay kind of guy. No fingering, no kissing the boobs, no long makeout session, no kissing of the body…he cuts straight to the chase. I take my hands off his shoulders for a moment so I can take off my underwear but he puts his hand between my legs and simply pulls my underwear to the side. He's not a naked kind of guy either, I guess. He's not bothering to take my clothes completely off and he still has his boxers on too. He holds himself with his hand, keeps my underwear pulled over with the other hand and guides the head of his thick, rock-solid erection inside of me. He lets my underwear go, lets his erection go and places his hands on my waist. I forgot what sex feels like. Holy god, he's big. Oh my god, he feels so good though. I wrap my arms around his neck, burrow my face in the crook of it and rest on the backs of my legs so that he's all the way inside of me. I kiss his neck and start rocking back and forth very slowly. His hands on my waist are pushing and pulling me at a pace far faster than I'm trying to go, so I give up control and let him take over. I guess he's not a slow kind of guy either. "You're so wet…" He mumbles.

He pushes me backward and pulls me forward at a fast yet rhythmic pace and I gasp. Honestly, gasping is really the only thing I do during sex. I'm not a loud kind of person. I'm not a screamer, I'm not a talker and really, I just moan and gasp and breathe hard and give occasional words of encouragement and direction. I don't talk dirty but he's talking dirty and I guess he's into that? "You're so hard…" I cringe when that comes out of my mouth. I could've started out with something better than that. I decide to shut up for the rest of this. I tried dirty talk, I failed at the dirty talk and I'm done with it. I unwrap my arms from around his neck and start rocking back and forth on my own but he won't let me. I'm trying to ride him because that's usually what girls do on top, right? But he won't let me. He won't let me do things on my own so it's like I'm doing something and he's making me do something totally different. I'm bouncing to an extent and he's trying to push and pull and it's horrible and I literally feel him go soft inside of me. He's not hard anymore and I'm really not even wet anymore and this was just the most awkward thing I've ever been part of.

I purse my lips together and slowly ease my way off his lap. My underwear snap back into position once he's out of me and he starts shuffling to put his away. I lay back down on the pillow I was laying on before and keep his blankets over my chest since I'm too embarrassed to get out of the bed and grab my shirt. If I get out of this bed, I'm going home and I don't want to do that so I'll just sleep topless tonight. I turn my back towards him and close my eyes. That was the most awkward sexual encounter ever. I'm so embarrassed. First I screwed up with the dirty talk, then I messed with whatever he was trying to do…I don't know. That just didn't feel right. It felt rushed and forced and just not right. That felt horrible. Not in terms of the sex because the sex actually felt good for the two minutes it went on but the way it happened just felt horrible. It felt like we were two strangers that had never met before, trying to figure out what each other likes to do in bed. It was awkward, uncomfortable and clearly we weren't ready to try out sex. I close my eyes and sigh, ready to give myself to sleep after all. "…Goodnight." I mutter.

He lies down too but he scoots closer to me, wraps his arms around my waist and sighs too. "Night."

Alex's Point of View.

I pull open the dryer since the buzzer went off about ten minutes ago. I was busy when the buzzer went off. I came home last night, checked on Lyla and immediately went to bed with Jo. I didn't clean up anything, I didn't put away the food on the counter and I didn't wash the dishes. So when I woke up about an hour ago, I threw her clothes in the washer, washed the dishes, threw away the pizza that sat out all night on the counter and cleaned the cheddar goldfish off my sofa. I grab Jo's jeans and her work shirt out of the dryer and drape them over my arm. Lyla's still fast asleep and so is Jo. I'm the first one up and that's probably because I didn't sleep much last night. I was tired and sleepy when I first laid down and held Jo against my chest but once we started having sex, I wasn't tired anymore and after the sex was over, I just never got tired again. I think I was too humiliated to sleep. Last night was the worst sex I've ever had in my entire life and that in itself is embarrassing. We tried to have sex and it was awful and I'd rather not think about it.

I trudge up the steps with her clothes in tow and open my door. She's still sleeping like a log. She's laying on her stomach with her arms up underneath the pillow. I lay her clothes across the foot of the bed and disappear out of the room. Any other time, I'm excited to see Jo and spend time with her but today is one of those rare days where I would be okay if she slept for the entire day. I don't know how to face her after last night. I go to the bathroom and grab my toothbrush out of the cup where I keep it. I turn on the water and wet my toothbrush. I squirt some toothpaste on it, wet it again and start brushing away. Last night shouldn't have happened. Last night had no business happening whatsoever. Clearly, neither one of us were ready to do that. It's mostly my fault that it turned out that way, I think. We weren't ready for that. We didn't even talk about anything. We haven't had the "past sexual partners" talk and we haven't even flirted properly, yet we were jumping right into sex. We went from giving oral straight to having sex and that's not how it should've been.

Everything I stand for, everything I ever try to be…it all went out the window last night. I'm all about being respectful and treating Jo like she's special. I want things to be genuine and meaningful and I want to make love to her and that's not what I did last night. I just really wanted to please her last night and I just felt like what I did was going to do that and it backfired. I don't know, sometimes I just don't know anything about Jo. I don't know what kind of romantic she is. I don't know if she's into lovemaking, slow, passionate, kissing and sensual sex or if she's into the rough, fast-paced stuff. When we were kissing before all the sex went down, she straddled me and when I tried to keep the kisses passionate and slow, she's the one that went rougher with it. I wanted to lay there and makeout with her for a little while longer but she pushed me back and made me lay down so she could straddle me and that's when I started thinking that she wanted it rough. I didn't want to bore her. I wanted to impress her, show her what I'm made of when it comes to sex. And the way she pushed me and straddled me, it sure seemed like she wasn't into foreplay, kissing and being slow. So I skipped the foreplay, the kissing and went straight to the sex. And I assumed since she was into the rough stuff, she was into the dirty talking too. I don't usually talk dirty in bed but I thought she'd like that. I guess I was wrong.

That's not how I envisioned me and Jo's first time being. I've thought about me and Jo's first time on plenty of occasions and when I pictured it, I didn't picture it being with her on my lap like that. I pictured myself kissing her, every inch of her. I'd kiss all over her body, pleasure her with my mouth for a while, show her that I'm all about making her feel good. And I wanted to make love to her. I didn't want to have sex with her, I wanted to make love. I just lost myself trying to impress her and it ended up being the most awkward thing ever. I haven't had sex in over a year and I couldn't have picked a better person to basically re-lose my virginity to than Jo. I had it all planned out and last night…that wasn't even part of the plan. That was never part of the plan.

I rinse my mouth out with water, rinse off my toothbrush, put it back, shut the water off and leave out of the bathroom. Lyla's still sleeping because her bedroom door is still closed so I have no other choice but to go back to my bedroom. I really hope Jo's still sleeping. I open the door and just my luck, she's stuffing her legs into her jeans. She's pulling her pants up over her pink underwear and I just sigh. She's perfect too. Those long, sexy legs and that silky smooth skin….dammit, I can't believe last night turned out the way it did. If I could rewind…I wouldn't have even had sex with her last night. I wouldn't take it back and try to change the kind of sex we had, I just wouldn't have done it at all. I would've waited until we got to know what each other's strengths and weaknesses in bed are. I would've waited. We weren't ready to take it to that level. I should've just gone down on her like I originally thought to. When she straddled me like that, I thought about just putting her back down on the bed and going down on her. Something was nagging me, telling me in the back of my mind not to do it. It's been over a year since I've had sex and I was horny as hell last night but I could've controlled myself and kept it to eating her out.

Without a word, I just start making the bed. You know how I know that last night was horrible? The fact that I still can't tell you what her body looks like. I didn't get a good look at her boobs and I didn't even have her panties off to see between her legs. I didn't take the time out to look at her body, all I did was shove it in and be done with it. If you're having good, meaningful sex with someone, you should at least be able to give a proper description of her boobs…and I can't. I pull the blankets up on the bed, fluff up the pillows and make sure the quilt is straight. She's just casually putting her socks on. "…You need a ride to work?" I already know that she doesn't. She has a nice ass Chevy Sonic sitting outside that her mom got for her. I already know she has a car and she doesn't need a ride to work, but I ask anyway just because I want to have something to say to her. I don't want to be dead silent and make her think that I think just because the sex was so awful and awkward last night, our relationship is doomed. I don't think that at all. I don't want to break up with her over one bad sexual encounter and I sure hope she doesn't think ending things is necessary either. I think we just need to learn how to talk to each other better, maybe. I don't know. I sit down on the bed and catch the tail end glimpse of her shaking her head. "Are you…" I clear my throat. Talking to her is awkward, no matter how I slice it. "Are you still coming to sign Lyla up for preschool with me later?"

"Mhm." She nods her head and starts running her fingers through her hair to smooth it down. How is she that beautiful when she just woke up? She just rolled out of bed no more than ten or so minutes ago and she looks absolutely gorgeous. Her hair falls perfectly with just a few yanks from her hand, she doesn't have sleep lines on her face, her eyes are crust-free and she looks as if she's been awake for hours. She's beautiful, no way around it. She sits down on the bed too and rubs her face with her hands. "…You okay?" She asks me through a yawn. I nod and drag my feet across the soft carpet. "A-about last night…" She stutters.

"We don't have to talk about it." I stop her before this conversation gets any more awkward than last night's already made things between us.

"I think we should though." She whispers. She coughs just softly and speaks up. "We should talk about it."

"Not now, Jo…some other time…when you're not about to leave for work." I sigh hard.

"I'm not mad…if that's what you're thinking." She stops talking and things are awkward and quiet between us. "Are you mad? At…at me? Because it was kinda my fault…trying to go against you like that…"

"I said we're not gonna talk about it right now, Jo." I mutter under my breath. "But no…I'm not mad at you." I say more clearly. "It was just as much my fault as it was yours." She says nothing back to that. "You're gonna be late for work."

"Right." She stands up. "…Can I have a kiss? Or is that asking for too much?" I smirk but my back is turned to her so she can't see it. Well I'm glad to know that there's no tension between us. Things are awkward, sure and things will probably be awkward until we talk about it and clear the air. But right now, we're taking things slow and at least there's no tension. I get up off the bed and walk over to her.

I put my hand against her waist, pull her close and kiss her on her lips softly with no tongue. "Have a good day at work." I stroke her hair back and stare at her. She's so damn beautiful. I give her one more kiss. She wraps her arms around me tightly and squeezes me in a firm hug. I squeeze her right back, rub her back and let her go. "I'll see you later."

"See ya." She rubs my cheek, smiles at me and turns to leave for work.

"Wait, Jo…" I call to her and she turns around before she can be completely out of my room. She raises her eyebrows to let me know that she's listening. "…Will you stay the night again tonight?" Her eyebrows fall. "Please?"

"…Mhm." She hesitates but eventually agrees.