Half an hour later we were all steamed up but clean, dry, and I was ready to collapse into bed. Jesse followed, leaving on the lamp by the bed as he climbed in under the sheet with me. He stretched out next to me and I wrapped my arm lazily around his waist. He was so warm, his skin soft. He trailed his fingers through my hair, his arm flung around me on the pillow.
We hadn’t even gotten it on in the shower, which only fueled the uneasy feeling that had been building all night.
“So…” I asked, rather bravely, since the blood coursing through my veins was still at least fifty percent champagne, “how come you don’t do the girlfriend thing?”
After a moment, Jesse sighed. “The answer to that will make me sound like an ass.”
“So be an ass.” I smiled to encourage him and elbowed him gently. “Come on. Tell me.”
“The truth, Katie Bloom,” he said while playing with my hair, “is that in my experience the women I date usually want something from me I’m not prepared to give. So I just don’t go there.”
“But you did with Elle.”
“I did with Elle.”
“May I ask why?”
He considered that for a moment before he answered. “I felt a lot of pressure to be what she wanted.” His eyes met mine and he stopped playing with my hair. “Man, that does make me sound like an ass.”
“Kind of,” I said. He frowned a little and I grinned. At least he looked mildly amused, which was miles better than the strained look he’d had on his face most of the night.
“I knew when we got together it couldn’t just be a hook up,” he said. “There was too much at stake. The band, our working relationship. A longtime friendship. I didn’t want to fuck any of that up.”
“Very sensible.” It killed me a little to hear him talk about her. Even though they were no longer together, they had been together, and according to Elle, what they had was real. But I wanted to know. I wanted to know what it took to have a man like Jesse Mayes.
For real.
“So why did you take the risk?”
He sighed again. “She wanted us to. And after a while I thought maybe it would be worth it to give it a try.”
“Lucky her,” I teased. “Itisevery woman’s dream to have the man she wants ’give it a try’ with her.”
Jesse gave me a dirty look and smacked my bare ass cheek under the sheet, sending a sting of excitement straight to my clit. “Smart ass,” he growled. Then he squeezed my tingling cheek, and Ialmostforgot what we were talking about.
“The truth is,” he went on, kneading my ass as he spoke, “I spent the last decade listening to the world hypothesize about what a scorching couple Elle and I would make. Sometimes it seemed like everyone thought we should be together. Including Elle. I thought maybe there was something I was missing, and once we were together I’d find out what it was. But that never happened, and after a while I accepted the fact that we weren’t right for each other. But it takes a while to navigate breaking up from someone you care about whose life is so intertwined with yours. I never wanted to hurt her, but I knew I couldn’t stay with her.”
Well. That would explain the way Elle treated me tonight. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t like me. She didn’t even know me.
It was that Jesse had broken her heart.
“People call me a heartbreaker,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I don’t enjoy breaking hearts.”
I got that. I felt it. And I believed him.
In light of what he’d just told me, it even made total sense why he didn’t want a girlfriend.
What better way to avoid breaking hearts than to never let anyone love you in the first place?
Problem was, I did love him, already and completely. And right in the middle of it I was trying to figure out how I was supposed to let him go. I knew this was all coming to an end, soon, and despite the pain that had started creeping in around the edges, making it harder and harder to breathe every time I looked at him, I’d never wanted to kiss him more than I did right now.
So I did.
I put my hand on his cheek, leaned in, and sealed my lips to his. I kissed him, gently, slowly. He kissed me back, his body gradually tensing, his breaths getting heavier as he curled up off the bed to envelop me. He rolled me over, driving me into the mattress with his weight, and I let him. I wanted to be smothered by him. By the feel of his body, hot and strong against me, his smell, his taste as he kissed me until I could barely find breath.
He pulled away and I caught some air. His eyes were hooded with lust, and that sparkle was back in their dark depths. He leaned in to kiss my throat and I sighed. In that moment I would’ve let him do pretty much anything he wanted no matter how much my heart would hurt later. I didn’t care. We still had a week. I’d take what I could get.
“How about some good old missionary sex,” he murmured in my ear. “I hear it’s your favorite position.”
