“Shaking from what?” Rome asked a little too casually as he ambled down my hallway and took a seat at my kitchen island. He must have seen my questioning look because he returned it with one of his own and then shrugged. “Stopped over to eat, babe. My cabinets are empty.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
I heard a low grumble from Jax.
Being in the same room with the only two people I’d ever had relations with made me feel like a little prairie dog wanting to duck into a hole. Then maybe after a couple minutes, peek my head out to see how everyone was doing.
“Rome, um, Jax was just stopping in for some water.” I cleared my throat. “There may also be some paparazzi outside.”
Rome’s back stiffened. I didn’t have to turn around to know that Jax stiffened behind me too. Glares were being thrown over my head between the two of them. When Rome turned in his stool, I figured if I was a prairie dog, I probably just would have stayed in the hole.
Rome’s dark eyes filled with anger. “Why the fuck would you steer paparazzi back to her place?”
“Rome …” I started but Jax cut me off.
“Would you rather me let her run home with paparazzi on her tail alone?”
“You could have taken her anywhere. Now they know where she lives.”
“Yes, because that woman is so easy to persuade when she’s hyperventilating.”
Rome’s eyes snapped to me. “He’s exaggerating. I wasn’t hyperventilating.”
Both Jax and Rome glared at me.
I moved fast toward the cupboards. “You want something to drink, Rome?”
He didn’t answer. So, I grabbed another water bottle.
When I went to hand it to him, I noticed both men were in some sort of staring contest. Rome didn’t even glance over as he mumbled a thank you and took the bottle from me.
“That run was brutal.” I opened the freezer door wide like I was in a Broadway play, trying to get both men’s attention.
They looked ready to kill each other and when their gazes lasered in on me, I almost fell into the freezer from the sheer anger they unleashed in just their stares.
I fanned my face and slumped in front of the freezer, keeping the theatrics going. “I seriously might stand in the freezer door all day.”
Relief washed over me when Rome finally cracked a smile as he stepped into the kitchen. He moved closer to me and said, “Looks like you worked up a sweat.”
I laughed a little. “More like I worked out a bucketful of sweat.”
Rome studied me for a second. Then, without the slightest bit of hesitation, he slid between me and the freezer, spread his hand over my bare stomach and nudged my back to his front. I let out a little gasp as I glanced up at him over my shoulder, but he was smirking directly at Jax.
He leaned down and dragged his tongue across the most sensitive part of my neck. “Mmm, a Brey-sicle, just what I wanted. I could lick your sweat all day. I’ll text you and Vick later to see if you want to hit a few bars.”
With that, he smacked my ass and I yelped.
He made his way to the door, nodding toward Jax. “Jax,” he said curtly.
Jax and I stood there, taking one another in after the front door slammed.
The only movement in the room was the clock ticking.
His glacial eyes bored into me so much that the freezer seemed to warm my back. It was the stare people talked about, the one no one could read, the one where you knew, deep down in your core, that he either didn’t give a crap about you or cared so much he might rip your head off.
I can honestly say I didn’t know which emotion I wanted from him.
Goose bumps skittered up my arms, and I willed myself to take a breath in and a breath out.
Somehow, my living room and kitchen seemed so much smaller once Rome was out of it. Jax took up all the damn space. His stance dominated every square foot of the room as he stood there in his workout clothes and let the sweat run down his temple.
He didn’t move or even seem to breath. I only knew he was alive because he held that water glass so tight, I saw his knuckles turning white.
I had to be the bigger person. I couldn’t succumb to rubbing my relationship in his face because Rome and I hadn’t truly moved on from our broken hearts. We’d just bandaged them.
I turned to close the freezer, trying to dispel the moment. “So, are you hungry?”
He grunted out a sort of laugh and mumbled, “Are you kidding me?”
I turned back to him, crossing my arms over the sports bra that was drenched in my now cold sweat, “I have a pizza I could heat …”
“Are you fucking him?” he asked so matter-of-factly I almost questioned whether I’d heard him right.
“What?”
“You heard me, Whitfield. Are you fucking him?”
“I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation between friends, Jax.”
“Well, when he touches you like that in front of your friend, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to ask.”
Did it really matter? He left me, and he was definitely fucking someone else. It was all over the news. I contemplated screaming it at him.
Who did he think he was asking something like that as if he had a right? Did he really think I was going to tell him?
He slammed the water down on the counter and some of it spilled over. Then, he stalked toward me in the kitchen and I backed up. When I bumped into the edge of the counter, he caged me in with his arms.
This look in his eyes I knew. It was the one I dreamt about and cried out his name for. His eyes would turn the bluest blue before he’d take me as if all of me was his.
“Answer the question, Whitfield.”
“I don’t think it’s fair of you to ask.”
“Answer the fucking question.”
“No, I’m not.” Then, I mumbled, “At the moment.”
I realized my mistake when he shoved back from the counter, spun around to pace and roared, “She says at the moment. Fuck!” Then his hands were pulling his hair up. “How many times?”
I slumped against the counter. “Jax, really?”
He whipped back around to pace up to me again. “Yes, really.”
“Does it matter?” I whispered.
He touched his forehead to mine and searched my eyes as if he could gaze the answer out of me. “Yes, baby, it matters.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know how long it’s going to take me to erase every time you were with him from your memory.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what friends do. Friends actually encourage friends to go get some wherever they can so they aren’t drooling over some unattainable man that has the ability to ruin them.”
The words slipped so quickly out of my mouth, I barely realized I had just admitted to drooling over him. To wanting him even though he was unattainable. I’d blurted out my biggest fear too, which was him ruining me again.
I could have curled up and died from embarrassment
His jaw locked into the place where I knew he was trying to contain some emotion, trying to leave my ridiculous comments alone. Suddenly, he pressed himself against me. I should have shoved him away, but instead, I gasped. I felt how hard he was, and my body seemed to know he belonged between my legs. Every part of me was magnetized toward him.
He must have seen his opening because he grabbed both of my legs to lift me up onto the counter. I automatically wrapped them around him.
“Do I feel unattainable?”
I bit my lip to stop from gasping again and rocked into him.
He pulled back just a little to run one of his hands up my thigh. We both watched that hand as goose bumps trailed its path.
I wouldn’t ask him to stop. My breath came too fast, my mind too hazy with his scent all around me, and my body too languid after the run. An inch further and he slid under the leg of my shorts, dipping his fingers into my panties.
“This, Sweet Sin, doesn’t feel like we’re friends. This feels like you’re wet for me.”
I whimpered and he didn’t stop. Anyone else who cared about me would have stopped in that moment. Rome always stopped to make sure I was okay with this or okay with that. My friends walked on egg shells to maintain my well-being. They always watched and padded any sharp edges for me, made sure that even if I wasn’t protecting myself, someone was.
Jax didn’t do that. He plunged headfirst with me into the sharpest object called oblivion. Then, we’d each swim around in a lust-filled wonder, holding our breath because the second we gulped for air, the toxicity of our past would fill our lungs. He didn’t protect me at all. He let me risk drowning in the heartbreak that would inevitably ensue again.
He rubbed my slickness up onto my clit with his thumb and jammed two fingers inside me. My head fell back as the climax that normally took so long to build started to rush faster than ever to the finish line.
He dragged his other hand across my collarbone and then wrapped his fingers around my neck, bending it to one side. That sensitive part that Rome had licked was now exposed to him. “He touches you like he knows every sensitive spot on your body.”
“Jax,” I whimpered.
“Didn’t you tell him all of those spots are mine?” he asked as he languidly stroked me.
I couldn’t control how quickly I climbed toward my climax. My emotions got involved, and they pulsed through me more than they ever had with Rome.
Before I could answer, he devoured my neck. He’d bite it and then lick it better and then suck on it so hard, I moaned from the pain and the pleasure.
My mind spun and spun as I rode the hand that fingered me faster and faster.
The way Jax touched me and made me feel shot through my blood and reached all the way to the tips of my fingers and my toes. I tingled all over, shivered and trembled at his touch. Every flick of tongue and every movement of his body on mine set off sparks in me. He set off a reaction in me everywhere, even in the one place he should have never been able to set off a reaction again: my heart.
When he dipped another finger inside me and squeezed my neck just enough to demonstrate his control over me, my body erupted in stars and fireworks.
Spiraling toward my finish should have been exhilarating. It should have been rewarding. I should have felt satisfied and relaxed. But coming down from it, watching him watch me, seeing his cerulean eyes searching mine as though they lapped up all my secrets, I felt exposed.
I shoved him back from me. “You need to leave.”
“Peaches,” he said low, as he stood there, still aroused and ready for me. That thin sheen of sweat was back, and I wanted to rip his shirt off and lick it from the chest that was heaving.
“L.P.,” I threw back, singsonging the nickname to lash out at him. “We’re supposed to be friends. And we aren’t really even that.”
He grumbled something I couldn’t make out but I didn’t care.
I was done playing nice and tiptoeing around the subject. “Are you still going to visit him?”
I didn’t look away when I asked. I watched his every movement. The way his body stilled, then his muscles bunched and his breathing evened out.
His eyes turned cold when he answered with one word. “Yes.”
It was all I needed to hear. I shoved off the counter. “When?”
His lips thinned, “This weekend.”
“Will you explain why?”
He pulled at his hair, “There’s nothing to explain.”
“Then this …”—I waved between us—“there’s nothing to it and you need to leave.”
He took a step forward and I found that although he maintained his look, I could see the anger underneath that he hid from others so well. It was like my body was now fully aware of him after he got me off.
I absolutely hated it.
“I’m not leaving just because I visit your father, Whitfield. You can’t deny what just happened between us.”
I matched his stance and took a step forward. “Nothing really happened. Me getting off isn’t out of the norm, L.P.”
“Don’t act like that was a common occurrence, Whitfield,” he warned.
“Get out of my apartment.” I kept my voice even, trying like hell to get him out before I did something stupid like agree with him.
He ran his tongue between his lips and teeth, contemplating and calculating.
I didn’t have time for it. I wanted him out. “Get out!” I yelled right in his face, too drained to question my control or sanity.
He licked his lips and I made the stupid mistake of flicking my gaze down to watch rather than holding his stare. Just the tip of that tongue, I knew, held so much talent, and suddenly I was aching between my legs all over again.
The mouth I stared at relaxed into a half-smirk. “You sure you want me to leave?”
I snapped my eyes away from his mouth, realizing I’d been caught. “I am fully capable of finding someone else and pointing out all of my sensitive spots to them, Jax. I don’t need you here to get me off.”
His eyes bulged and mine probably did also. I couldn’t believe I’d just blurted that out.
He shook his head and backed away like I’d gone too far. “You’ll pay for that.”
Was it bad that later that night, I couldn’t control fantasizing about paying for it while I laid in bed all by myself?
