“Once. He was my high school sweetheart.”
“What happened?”
Darius wiggles his toes and I press a little harder, massaging further up his foot.
“He got a scholarship offer to a university in Australia and I didn’t want to go.”
“But you loved him?”
“I did. But we were young, and I knew that following him across the world was not what I wanted to do. Sometimes love isn’t enough, you know?”
I nod even though I don’t.
“I’ll be honest, I thought you’d drink because I was certain you were in love with Caiden.”
Was I? If he had asked me a week ago, I may well have said maybe, but I’m not so sure what I felt was love. It was safety and control. Comfort and familiarity. Caiden and I played a role in each other’s lives, one that pitted me as the villain he needed, and there were feelings there, but it wasn’t love.
“No. That wasn’t…we weren’t.” I huff a breath, annoyed at the words catching in my throat. “It would be easy to say it was complicated, but the truth is that Caiden and I weren’t good to each other. Maybe it could have been something if we had been different. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Okay. That’s fair.” Darius raises his glass. “Your turn.”
I take a moment to think. I haven’t played this game since I was twenty and partying too hard in a small town in Devon. Playing by Darius’s version of the rules, where you can pick something youhavedone, I eventually settle on, “Never have I ever got a tattoo.”
We both drink, Darius downing the last of his.
“Can I see yours?” he asks, depositing his empty glass on the floor.
My hand hovers over the hem of my t-shirt, my body tensing and a knot of anxiety forming in my chest. I know he’ll have questions that I’m not ready to explain. Past hookups have been given a version of a story about it being a silly joke. Darius deserves only the truth from me.
I lift my tee slowly, watching Darius’s face – his eyes homing in on my naked skin and the words tattooed on the left of my chest.
I chose me.
“I love it,” he says. “One day, I hope you’ll tell me what it means to you.”
He must sense my anxiety, that or he really doesseeme, because he doesn’t push for more.
Clearing my throat, I ask him to show me his. He throws his head back with a groan.
“I showed you mine. It’s only fair.”
“Fine. I have two, but I will give you one. You have to promise not to laugh.”
I make a show of crossing my fingers, tucking them behind my back.
“Promise.”
Darius huffs. “I’m serious. I got it when I was nineteen and it seemed like a great idea at the time.”
He stands up, swaying a little before he steadies himself, turns around and lifts the hem of his t-shirt.
Bloody. Fucking. Hell
Three things greet me that I do not expect.
The first being a strip of pink lace sticking out above the waistband of his low slung shorts. The second, dimples. He has two little dimples in his lower back that I want to either stick my thumbs in or lick my cum out of. Or both.
I swallow thickly, averting my eyes upwards to the third thing, biting back a chuckle.
