I told myself to accept the way it was and tried to ignore how much I just wanted to have Peyton in my hands again and feel the drag of his body against mine.
The spark of his beard. His groans.
Sensations that I wanted to lose myself in, not just once or twice, but endlessly.
My phone vibrated with another message.I’ll text you when I’m leaving work.
* * *
PEYTON
After getting held up at the firm, I headed straight to Jet’s, still in the gray suit that I’d worn for a couple of big client meetings that afternoon. I honestly believed that we needed to talk in person, that trying to text wouldn’t be enough. But I couldn’t deny what else was driving me.
I’d never been drawn to someone this intensely. I’d felt sexual attraction before, plenty of times, but it had never seized me the way my attraction to Jet did. If we ever did get to be together again, I had no idea what might happen or where things could go, and that excited me.
I just knew that I wanted him, the way people wanted each other in movies. I wanted him so bad my judgment was falling apart.
Jet let me into his apartment. He was wearing a black tank, and my eyes caught on the dark tattoos that covered one arm, a swirling mass of chaos, black lines, and shadows. “Thanks for coming over,” he told me as he swooped his hair back, his jeans clinging to his firm ass. “And in that suit, too.”
We crossed into the living room. Unlike last time, it wasn’t neatly organized, with every object in a carefully selected place. It was more lived in, with his equipment spread out. And even though I was an annoyingly organized person usually, I actually liked his place better like that.
I looked down at my suit. “I came straight from work. But I guess you’ve been working, too,” I added, gesturing to the equipment.
“Always.” Jet chuckled as he took a seat on the comfy old couch, and I joined across from him. “I like to keep myself busy, so I usually have a few projects going.”
I nodded, impressed that he could work like that.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, his voice lifting slightly.
“Right.” I rubbed my beard. “Sorry, everything’s good, I think. Noah didn’t love the news, but there wasn’t any meltdown.”
My mind clicked back to his warning. He had insisted that Jet wasn’t trustworthy, like I should watch myself with him. And even though my gut didn’t believe that, his words still got stuck in my head until I forced them away.
“That’s good,” Jet said, relieved. “Things have been going so well. I’m really glad to hear that.” He rubbed the palm of his hand over his knee. “Did you talk about anything else?”
“Not really.” I felt myself walking that delicate line again, treading carefully between Noah’s right to privacy and my own position between the two brothers.
My words caught in my mouth, but after a minute of silence, I finally forced them out. “It’s funny, but he thought we were going to keep hooking up.”
Jet arched an eyebrow. “Did he order you to stop seeing me?”
“Not at all. Actually, he just said that he didn’t want to hear about it.”
Jet stared at me. “Really,” he said slowly, carefully.
In the moment, I wasn’t just thinking about how Jet was a ridiculously hot muscle god, although I was noticing that, too. But mainly, I was thinking about how much I liked him, the simple fact that we had fun together, that he got me doing things I’d never otherwise do. I thought about how talented he was, how diligently he worked, the difficult challenges he’d had growing up, and how hard it must have been to come back around to his brother, trying to do right after all of it.
I respected Jet, and my feelings for him deepened in response, burrowing in.
“Really,” I answered.
Jet rubbed his hand over his face. “And you told him…?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” I answered honestly. “Only that I understood.”
“That he doesn’t want to hear about it.”
I held Jet’s eye. “Right.”
