CHAPTER 26

ALICIA

“You did all that for me?” Jared asked, turning slowly to face me.

God, how I’d missed him. After going a week without seeing him properly, I wanted to throw myself into his arms and cling to him like I was that koala bear he’d told me Nick thought he’d caught an STD from.

Minus the STD. Although Nick was clean, too, so I didn’t quite understand why they still joked about it. I also didn’t know why Gerry had sent me the guys’ latest panels last month.

But I digressed instead of focusing on how it good it felt to be alone with Jared again.

I’d somehow, impossibly, forgotten just how devastatingly handsome he was in my frenzied week of research over that woman and trying to get a handle on the story. He towered over me, but he’d never once made me feel intimidated. His dark brown hair was mussed, and the sunlight peeking through the blinds just caught the ends of the deep chestnut strands.

Most of his tattoos were covered by the white button-up shirt that Gerry had probably instructed him to wear, and his casual slacks were a long way off from the usual tight leather pants or worn jeans, but he looked like my Jared all the same.

It was his eyes, so alive and tentative and concerned, that were the clincher. I could get lost in his eyes, as cheesy as it sounded—even in my head—but I supposed that there was a reason for that cliché. To me, that reason was Jared’s eyes.

“I did do all that for you, yes,” I admitted, knowing that we had to get through this part of the conversation before we could get to what I was burning to talk about: the comments he’d made several minutes ago.

“How did you even find all that out?” Taking another step toward me, he held out his arms, and I sank into their welcoming warmth, leaning my forehead against his chest as those strong arms wrapped around me and held me to him.

“Like I said, she looked familiar, and I vaguely remembered hearing about something similar to this couple of years ago, but it was never reported on, and it was covered up quickly,” I told him, breathing him in and wrapping my own arms around his waist.

He dropped a kiss to the very top of my head and was almost reverent when he said, “Thank you.”

“Thank me, for what? Those test results were going to come in, either way, and prove that you were telling the truth.”

“I was thanking you for digging all that up, but I was also thanking you for not doubting me. You trusted me, even that first morning after the story broke when we were at Gerry’s office. Why?”

I sighed and tightened my grip around him, tilting my face up against his chest to look him in the eyes. “Because I know you. At least, I think I know you as well as anyone.”

Pressing a kiss to my forehead, his eyes fluttered closed as he breathed in deeply. “You do. But I guess that’s both a blessing and a curse.”

“Why?”

“Precisely because you do know me. I thought for sure that you were going to trust Madison in all of this. You know my past probably as well as only I do, maybe even better. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d believed the other woman.”

“You really thought I would have believed her over you?” I asked, planting a kiss on his chest before turning my eyes back up to his.

“I never said I thought that, just that I wouldn’t have blamed you. Honestly, though, when I didn’t hear from you, I thought that you hated me, even though I knew that I hadn’t knocked Madison up.”

“How could you have been so sure?” I directed the question at his chest, burying my nose in him because I couldn’t get enough of his scent after being away from him for so long, but also because I couldn’t look him in the eye as I asked.

“You’re not going to want to hear this.” He sighed into my hair, fastening his hands behind me as if he were afraid I was about to run. I braced myself, knowing he was right. I didn’t want to hear it, but at the same time, I needed to.

Forcing myself to meet his eyes, despite whatever it was he was about to say, I nodded and kissed his jaw softly. “I know I’m not going to want to, but I need to know why you were as sure as I was.”

His broad chest rose against mine as he took a deep breath, but to his credit, he kept his eyes on mine, their dark depths communicating his need for understanding. “I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that I’m religious about wearing a condom. I asked Madison if she was on birth control, and she said yes. Before we, uh, did it, I was reaching for a condom when she told me that we didn’t need one. I played it off, and she wasn’t happy, for obvious reasons now, but I knew for a fact that I still used one.”

“Condoms aren’t a hundred percent effective. You know that, right?”

Pressing another kiss to my forehead, he smirked and still didn’t release my eyes. “I know. I’m damn proud of how virile I am, but even I’m not arrogant enough to believe that doing it one time, while the girl’s on birth control and I’m wearing a condom, would have done the trick. I mean, my swimmers are probably strong, but—”

I groaned, smiling against him. “Could we please not discuss your sperm right now? Give me a break. I’ve hardly slept this week.”

One of his hands snaked up into my hair and gripped the nape of my neck as he threaded his hand into the hair he found there. He looked down at me with a fierce expression. “I know. You have no idea how much that means to me. That you were fighting in my corner.”

I’d never thought of myself as a particularly astute person. Beyond people’s very obvious boundaries, I tended to stomp all over them. It was different with Jared.

It was like there was a voice in the back of my head telling me when to back off, when to press forward, and when to just let him be. In that moment, I knew it was one of those times that I just had to let him be. I knew instinctively what it meant to him that I’d fought in his corner without question, and so I let hearing the words from him go.

There was something else that I definitely needed to hear the words about, though. “You do know that you called me your girlfriend back there, don’t you? If it was just for the—”

He silenced my vulnerable moment of uncertainty in the best way possible. He kissed me until my knees were weak and allowed his body to do the talking. His kiss gave me back my confidence, energized me, and moved me.

When he pulled back, his hand cupped my cheek, and I couldn’t help but lean into it. Being completely enveloped by him, caged with his one arm and so gently caressed by his hand, gave me hope that he hadn’t just been saying what he did to get to Madison.

My racing thoughts stilled when my eyes meet his and he traced my cheekbone before saying anything. After a long moment of drinking each other in, Jared said, “I know it goes against everything I’ve been saying, but I called you my girlfriend, and I meant it. I missed you this week. I have feelings for you that are real. They go beyond just having fun and sex. If you want to keep having fun—”

“I do, but my feelings for you are real, too. Not that I’m complaining at all about the sex, but there’s more to this than that.”

My heart was trying to escape from my chest by climbing up my throat, and my insides felt like they’d been lit up by a stick of dynamite joy. The only thing that kept me from dissolving into a puddle of pure bliss was the fact that I would miss out on seeing the look in Jared’s eye when he told me this.

“So, I guess we’re revising the terms of our agreement then?” The corners of his mouth were twitched into the most adorable smile, and I kissed each one before returning it with one of my own.

“I guess we are.” Having learned my lesson when it came to a relationship with Jared, I knew that I had to be clear on what we were once we walked out of this conference room.

As if he’d read my mind, Jared gave me a goofy smile that I wouldn’t have thought he was capable of, and he dropped a chaste kiss on my lips. “I guess you’re my girlfriend, then?”

Well what do you fucking know? I guess I was. Bubbles of pure joy floated through my veins and set my heart on fire as a broad smile fought its way to my lips. “I can only be your girlfriend if you finally agree to the fact that we’re dating, and that means that you’re my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend.” He repeated the word as if he were trying it on for size, and then he grinned in a way that could probably light up the moon. It definitely lit up my soul. “I like it. You should know that I haven’t done anything long-term in a while.”

“Oh, I’m very well aware of that.” I smiled and didn’t resist rising up on my tiptoes to kiss the corner of his mouth. “You afraid of what this means?”

“Hell no,” he said, still beaming at me. “I’ve been named the Emperor of Rock, baby. I’m not afraid of anything. I’m willing to give this a go if you are. I’m not afraid of doing this.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “If you’re serious about that, we’re going to need a few rules.”

A pained, yet teasing look crossed his features. “Rules? I don’t do rules.”

“Might I remind you that you still need me to say yes to dating you officially? Which means rules. Not many. Just a few ground rules that you need to know.”

Sighing with fake exasperation that was given away by his smile, he conceded by saying, “Fine, what are these rules you’re proposing?”

“They’re not hard. There are only three actually. One, you’re not allowed to call me baby, because I can’t stand to think about how many other women have been called that by you before.”

“Fair enough. I can do that. I’m sure we’ll come up with something else.” He nodded, peppering my cheek and jawline in kisses. “What else?”

“If you call yourself the Emperor of Rock again in random conversation with me, you owe me an orgasm.” His eyes lit up with enthusiasm, and I was sure that I’d inadvertently given him more reason to refer to himself by that stupid nickname, but I wasn’t taking it back. It might have been accidental, but it didn’t seem that either of us minded those consequences.

“And the last one?” he asked, his hands dropping to my butt.

I flashed him my most ball-shrinking smile, and his face dropped. “Exclusivity. I know that we agreed to it before, but I’m serious. You get with any other woman in any way, and this is done. Got it?”

“I got it, I got it,” he said proudly, the words and sentences flowing into one another casually. “So as your boyfriend, do I have conference room privileges?”

I knew what he was getting at, but I also knew that I wasn’t ready for that. “What do rock stars need conference rooms for?”

He smirked and started nibbling on my earlobe. “Why, to fuck their gorgeous girlfriends, of course.”

Using all the strength of my every conviction, I pressed against his chest and pushed him away. “You know that I love… being with you—”

“You mean, you love when I fuck you. When I’m buried deep inside you. Don’t try and hide those terms by the generic, ‘being with you.’”

My cheeks burned, but I swallowed my discomfort down. Jared loved hearing the words, and as new as I was to the whole dirty talk thing, I loved when he did it. So why not? “Fine, I love when you fuck me. I love you being buried deep inside me, but that doesn’t mean that I’m ready to fuck you in a conference room at the office.”

“Yet?” he asked, the corners of his lips twitching up into a naughty smile. “You mean you’re not ready to fuck me in a random conference room, yet, Empress?”

“Wait. What did you just call me?”

Smirking as he lowered his mouth to mine, he spoke against my lips. “I’m not allowed to call you baby, and I’m not allowed to refer to myself as the Emperor, so I’m just going with it. Empress seemed fitting.”

Yeah, I might not have been ready to get with him in that conference room just yet, considering we did just have his potential baby mama storm out of there not an hour ago. But there was a definite “yet” to that scenario.