Still, I felt compelled to point out, “If you hadn’t lied, we wouldn’t have been so angry at each other all these years.”
“True. But then maybe we wouldn’t know how awful that felt either.”
Warmth spread through my chest. “It was awful for you, too, huh?”
“Like ripping out my own lungs. Sometimes I could hardly breathe. Still, though, maybe things were supposed to happen that way.”
I frowned. “No. Bad things are never ‘meant to happen.’ That’s Beale’s mystical woo-woo Kool-Aid. It’s something people say to explain away a giant fuckup.”
Rafe’s lips twitched. “Fine, then. How about we both needed to learn our lessons. To wise up. To mature. To know just how far we’re willing to go to prevent something like that from happening again.” His fingers tightened on my jaw, and he pressed a fierce kiss to my lips. “I know you’re hurt, Jay. I know you’re angry. I wish I could take that away, and I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you. But I’m not making the same mistake twice, okay? I’m not letting us walk out of each other’s lives again. Not if I can help it. I’m gonna sit right here and let you be mad at me.”
He spoke confidently, but his eyes were pleading.Don’t walk away, Jay.
Pfft. Like I ever would have in the first place, if I hadn’t convinced myself that’s what he wanted deep down.
“I suppose this is what Aimee was talking about yesterday,” I grumbled. “She said if I wanted to convince you to talk about this, I should remind you why you promised to keep quiet in the first place.” I pulled a face. “Which was because youcared.”
“I did. I still do.” Rafe smiled tentatively. “She really said I should tell you everything?”
“What, did you think I was lying?” I lifted one eyebrow imperiously, even as my insides did a crazy jig.He’d told me even though he thought Aimee hadn’t given permission?I was petty enough to find this mattered and honest enough to admit it to myself.
“Not lying. But I thought maybe you were using… What did you call it when you phoned Aimee’s hospital pretending to be me? Unorthodox methods?” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“No.” I shoved his shoulder.Fuck, I loved when he smiled. It did crazy things to my insides.
I kinda wanted to ask him what he meant when he said he wanted us to be in each other’s lives. How would that even work when I lived in New York and he was in Florida?
But he was here with me now, his eyes hot on mine in a way I’d never seen outside of my dreams until last night, so I pulled away from his hand just long enough to stretch out on the bed with one arm bent back to support my head, and I trailed my other hand down my naked chest to toy with the waistband of my briefs.
“Why don’t we back up for a second?” My voice nearly vibrated with want. “Pretty sure somewhere in there I heard a promise to make it up to me?”
His eyes flared even hotter. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“You did.” I ran my thumb over his full bottom lip, and when his tongue darted out to lick the tip and draw it into his mouth, I sucked in a breath.
“Maybe we should talk about how,exactly, I could do that.” He trailed a hand up my thigh to trace the outline of my dick through the cotton of my underwear with one blunt fingertip.
I went hard instantly.
“In the immortal words of Chet’s Chrissea,” I said, grabbing the back of Rafe’s neck to pull him down for a kiss. “Actions speak louder than words, Rafael.”
11
Rafe
“Singer Jayd Rollins, perpetually age twenty-five, found dead in Pleasure Emporium bathroom,” Jay whispered sometime later. “Investigators say it was death by orgasm.”
I snorted, which used up all the remaining energy in my body. I wasn’t entirely positive that my feet were still attached to the rest of me, and checking would have involved opening my eyes, which… was kind of a lot to expect from a person who’d had more sex in the past twelve hours than in the three years before.
The only sensation I had below the waist was a pleasant tingling hum—which might have been a symptom of my own impending death by orgasm, or maybe was because I’d collapsed on a pile of towels on the bathroom floor after our last round of blow jobs in the shower and Jay had laid himself out on top of me, cutting off all my circulation.
If this was how it all ended, though, I was perfectly okay with that.
It was kinda funny to remember how I’d fantasized about Jay blowing me two nights ago in that hotel room back in Tennessee. I almost pitied that Rafe, poor asshole. He’dnoidea how good it actually could be.
“That’s tragic,” I managed. “Jayd gave so much to the world. I mean, not as much as Ari Friedrich, obviously, but…”
Jay lifted his head just far enough to turn his narrowed green stare on me. His hair had dried in spikes and cowlicks, thanks to me gripping it so hard at various points throughout the morning, and it looked like he’d electrocuted himself. It was fucking adorable.
