Chapter Two
Jona
I roll over, groaning as my head pounds.
When I do, my hand smacks off a smooth pale ass. I sit up and stare down at the female body it belongs to. Long, pale legs. Heart-shaped ass. Lower back tattoo. Butterfly. Classy. There’s a thong on the end of the bed. Light pink, lace.
Shit.
The room is unfamiliar. Girly. Greek letters adorn the alcove over her closet. Sorority. College. Frat house alley.
My brain springs back to life, throwing memories of me pounding back shots and shoving my hand up skirts. Jacob had gone as far as locking the door after me, despite my best attempts to get him to come out with me. He was impervious to my methods. Apparently, tits and booze don’t tempt him as much as they do me. Go figure.
“Loser,” I mumble, rolling out of her bed so I don’t wake her. I don’t feel like playing that awkward hookup I’ll never see you again game right now. My jeans are on the floor. I hop into them and search for my shirt, finding it draped across her desk. My wallet and phone are still inside my jeans, so that’s a good sign. I smell like perfume, and my back hurts—I don’t even want to know why.
I slip out of her room and find the hall crawling with naked tail. They don’t even pause when I walk by, a few of them probably having the same experience as me last night. Their perky tits bounce, and their towel-wrapped bodies parade past me with knowing smiles. I duck my head and search for the front door.
When I make it back home, after a walk-of-shame and headache-filled hobble down the street, I find Jacob and Hayden, another roommate, eating cold pizza in the kitchen.
I grin, running a hand through my hair, trying to appear more alive even if I feel far from it. I don’t know why I put up the pretense this morning. I look like shit any way I see it. I need to cut my hair, but don’t have the desire to care about how I look. I usually put in some kind of effort. My façade’s the only thing I have going for me, and—thankfully—I’m a handsome bastard. Lately, however, worrying about how I look feels like trying to breathe with one lung missing. Every breath could be deeper, could mean so much more.
“Morning, virgins.” I head over to the fridge, yearning for something to kick the headache pounding in the back of my skull and the leftover taste of blurry whiskey-laden kisses. “I can smell your hairless balls and fondness for tighty-whities in the air.” I’m not sure there is something strong enough to kick anything for me.
“Is he still drunk?” Hayden whispers, pushing his glasses higher up on his nose.
“No. I think this’s just who he is.” Jacob clears his throat. “Be nice. He has to be this forever.”
I glare as I inhale a bottle of water. Crunching the plastic, I toss it in the garbage can across the island. “Exactly.” I miss Bach. My down-for-anything party buddy. He drank as much as I did, and high wasn’t high enough. He’d fallen in love like a pussy last summer and took off, leaving me here with myself.
Inadvertently putting his little sister Hillary in my path. Memories of her passed out in my bed with a black eye, skirt flipped over her waist, and that rapist piece of shit jumping out of my window, have me doubling over in the hall. I brace myself against the wall and squeeze my eyes shut, but you can’t run from memories. I know first-hand. They never go away. The cops wouldn’t even take me seriously with my priors and my reputation. They’d let a monster walk free to hurt other angels because it wasn’t true coming from a guy like me.
But the truth is still the fucking truth.
I couldn’t have known what Zane Eastwood would do. I slept with women who loved saying yes. If they said no, I moved on. But there were men like Zane who blurred the lines of what bad and evil were.
There are different kinds of bad. Different levels of evil. There are men like me who sleep around and do drugs, but understand that women have every right in the world to tell my piece of shit ass no. And then there are men like Zane Eastwood. Men who pull the feathers from angel wings one white feather at a time.
So, I walk past a clean house with The Big Bang Theory playing in the living room and not a pair of whipped cream covered tits in sight, because that’s what’s good for everyone. I’d give up my past in exchange for not hurting anyone else. I just hadn’t figured out what I left myself with yet.
The restless energy inside of me is growing, knocking into my guilt and colliding with my desire to escape.
I shower, washing my dick the way I’d wash a prized trophy. Carefully, gently lathering my hard shaft with my soapy palm in reverence. It’s all bullshit, though. There’s nothing reverent about me. It’s why I’m here. But sometimes, you have to claim your bullshit and be who you are even if it isn’t good because at least there’s that. I grip my trophy and claim my prize.
“Don’t mind if I do.” I brace myself against the tiled wall as I jackoff. It doesn’t take long before her dark chocolate eyes, and tall, tanned curvy body fight their way into my mind. Justine is the only woman ever to turn me on and be on the other side of the country.
She is my perfect woman. Pulling emotions from me I don’t even realize I have. Her skin is always lightly tanned, and her curves are always plenty. There are too many parts of her to focus on. My dick thickens in my fist. I grunt at the memory of her full round tits bouncing heavily as she rode my cock. Her dark eyes gleaming, mahogany hair flowing down her back. Her flat stomach leading the way to her hip bones and a shaved tight … perfection is illusive, but in this moment, Justine comes damn close.
“I miss you,” I cry out miserably as I explode, coming all over the shower as pain invades my chest.
It’s only reserved for her, this pain. For my Justine. She can try and be someone else’s. She can pretend. But we both know she’s mine. Her heart, her body—she’s the only thing in the world that makes me feel anything good.
That’s why I always ruin it.
I’m not sure what good even is at this point. What anything good is doing anywhere close to me. But I know it’s good when it feels bad. How can I hold onto something that brings me so much joy at the same time it rips out my heart?
Falling onto my bed wrapped in a towel, I stare up at the wooden beams in my ceiling for so many hours that the nerds I rent my rooms to start crawling out of their caves. I imagine them blinking at the light, hissing at the sun as they make their way down to the kitchen for sustenance. The sound of men giggling reverberates from downstairs, and I know for a fact they’re not talking about anything I’d find funny.
Nope, no blowjobs here.
I spend the next couple weeks ignoring them as best I can. They’re here to keep me out, and I take full advantage of my desire to be as far away from everything as possible. I ignore every part of myself. Drinking drinks with women who offer them. Sleeping with women I abandon in the morning. My walks-of-shame become too frequent.
***
This morning, or afternoon—the light coming in through the window is too heavy to be new—my eyes open slowly, and I roll over to find more than one set of legs. We’re not even in a bed. The wooden floor is digging into my back. The smell of booze is thick on my breath. There’s something sticky on my chest and my head is killing me.
I immediately hate myself.
There’s a bed in the room, but it’s already full of naked bodies. Feeling disgusted, I find my clothes and tiptoe out of the room naked, putting my clothes on quickly in the hall. It’s a regular house. Pieces come back to me. Women, ecstasy, lots and lots of touching …
“Naked twister,” I groan, stepping over the polka dot game in the living room as I recall watching all those naked drunk body parts trying to fit on one tiny mat.
I step out into the sun and fall to my knees in the grass, groaning as my skull pounds and my eyes burn from the pain of the light. My stomach rolls. My emptiness begs for release. I give it what it wants, puking my guts out on a foreign front lawn as my body hurts from the inside out.
Once I can stand, I eye the street for my Mustang. It’s parked at the end, by a park. I sink down inside, immediately searching for my sunglasses in the front seat. As I sit there, I spot a little boy and his mother playing tag. When she gets close, the little boy runs away, laughing raucously.
I smile before I can stop myself, having a flashback to a beautiful woman with toffee-colored hair and warm brown eyes. She’d been that alive once. She’d been my world.
Before her life was ripped out of her.
I shake the memories aside—they’re dangerous—and head home. I need an aspirin the size of my dick. My house is quiet when I step inside. I scour the cupboards, downing the ibuprofen I find with orange juice straight from the bottle. In the shower, I stay still, too sick and empty to move. I feel this pressure in my chest, this weight I don’t understand.
I’m going to burst if I don’t figure out a way to alleviate it.
Wrapping myself in my towel, I close the curtains and fall onto my bed. My eyes drift close, but a ruckus in the hall drags me awake.
“He’s in his room,” I hear Jacob say. “Who are you?” The wonder in his voice makes me sit up.
Only one woman can make a man wonder that hard. A second later, she walks into my room.
And everything inside of me steels. It cracks as it heals. My heart pounds, my blood rushes to my cock, and my hands ache to feel her smooth tanned skin.
Everything makes sense suddenly. I don’t know who I am because that doesn’t matter when she’s around.
I know her, and that’s all I need.
“Justine?” I breathe, my eyes stuck on her.
She smiles slightly, leeringly. We didn’t part on good terms. We’d been close to that point where I wanted to swear off all other women, going back and forth with each other, craving her—I can get addicted. Want her more than I want air. Until she’d met that loser guitar player and took off as I screamed after her.
But that was months ago.
Her dark brown hair is in a ponytail, hanging perfectly from the middle of her skull. Her face is free of makeup. I like it that way. Clear, smooth, nothing in my way. Her lips are plump and pink. I want them so badly it hurts. And her eyes, like smooth pools of dark chocolate, make my insides come to life.
I’d never want anyone other than her. I could sleep with a million women and they’d never come close. They were bodies. She was my reason. But we’d never work. I’d run, she’d run, and in the midst of our ruin, we’d rejoice in the pain.
We’re fucked up like that.
She drops what looks like a duffle bag on my bedroom floor and closes my door in Jacob’s face, biting her bottom lip as she faces me.
“What did you do to this place? It looks like a normal, respectable house. I thought you moved out.” She comes to me, standing at the foot of my bed as I sit there in my towel.
“I wanted a change. You know, fewer ecstasy orgies and more rent with leases.”
She looks down at me, her eyes doing what they always do. They rip the life from my soul. It’s a minimum amount of life, but it’s hers, and she knows it.
“Sounds boring.”
I smirk. “It is. And lonely,” I add, giving her a look only she understands.
She looks away. “I’m home now, Jona. I made a mistake. You’ve made so many I can’t even count them all. I just wanted to come home.”
“Did he ditch out on you?” I guess. I was the first place she came to. Always. When her old man hit on her, she came to me. When she couldn’t go home, she came here. When she was hungry, sad, horny, lonely—I was Justine’s first choice. But there were so many other choices out there, and they usually came after I was done giving her what she needed.
What Justine wants and needs isn’t the same thing.
She sighs. “Yes, okay? He ditched me. He sold me a dream, and I fell for it. Go ahead.” She crosses her arms over her chest and taps the foot of her cowboy boot in aggravation, readying herself for my abuse. “Lay into me so we can forget it happened.”
“I ever leave you?” I ask instead.
She frowns, her boots pausing. “What?”
“Have I ever left you? I’ve cheated on you. I’ve hurt you, Jus, I know I have. But I’m always here. I never chose a dream over you. I’ve been rotting by myself for months.” I pull in a breath as her eyes tear up. “And you know something pathetic? I haven’t felt more alive than I did the moment I met your eyes when you walked in here. I don’t want to point out how much you hurt me because that’s what Jacob would do. But I don’t have much more left.” I stand up, unable to sit as an epiphany slams into me. “In Crystal Gulf, in here.” I pat my heart. “I’m going crazy.”
She watches me, unmoving, eyes both glossy and unnerved. I can only imagine what I look like. Naked—my towel is on the floor—spewing my guts after she just walked in the door.
“What’s wrong, Jona? You don’t look like yourself.”
“I don’t feel like myself.” I swallow hard, sensing a new kind of break inside of me.
Hillary showed me who I was. What being me got. She reminded me of a pain I’d locked deep inside of me and of one more woman I failed. I’d been living with that guy since Justine left. What kind of monster would I be throwing more parties, putting more women at risk? But what kind of man was I not doing those things?
“You need a drink. Let’s go out. You and me.” She walks to me slowly, eyes never leaving mine. “I’ll remind you who you are.”
“What if you don’t know? What if we don’t know who he is?” I’m slipping. Falling. Cracking now that I know the only person I love is here to catch me.
But that’s the thing about Justine. She has no problem falling—doesn’t see the problem with breaking right along with me—but she’s never caught me.
She’s never pulled me from the edge in time to save me.
And I’ve never known a reason not to jump.
***
Justine
In my life, people come and go. It’s a constant I expect. Relationships that mean little and reminders that fade.
They make lasting impressions or distant memories. I’ve grown used to the men in and out of my life. None of them mean a thing anyway. Even Ryan. My dreams aren’t the same as love. Sex doesn’t mean love.
Jona Kyles does.
For as far back as I can remember, he’s been there for me. He is a constant I rely on, even if we’re across the country, I know Jona’s in Crystal Gulf doing the same thing he was doing last night. It’s both comforting and aggravating, depending on his choice of activity … or blond.
I know who he is, but there’s something off about him. His eyes are wild, uncomfortable. I’m not used to the lost look trapped in his gaze. His handsome face has filled out, his abs too, as though he’s been eating more than he’s been drinking. Even his hair has grown. For the first time in years, I can see how gorgeous the color is, like coffee and toffee, this sweet, warm brown mixture hanging in his eyes. The tattoos trailing down his abs disappear into his V’s, and his abs, which were always on the skinny side, look more pronounced, healthy, and ten times sexier.
He looks healthy and bright-eyed. Sober. But with his sobriety, came a misunderstanding. I knew. The few times I’d been forced to be me sober, I felt trapped in this skin I did not know. The question is, why? Why did Jona feel the need to be sober? There is nothing about our reality worth being clear-headed for.
And I know it’s probably opposite of what most would do, but I’m opposite, and it’s the only thing I can think of.
“Get dressed. We’ll go somewhere. Get drunk. Forget.”
He nods numbly, glancing down at his cock. Then he gives me a crooked smile. “Sorry, Jus. It’s just … been hard without you.” His crooked smile falls.
So does my heart. Here’s the thing. I love Jona. I fell in love with him years ago. I don’t bother with other men when it comes to my heart. I know it’s his. But I also know he can’t handle it. He doesn’t do love, doesn’t know what it is. How to give it, to receive it. He gets off on ruining it. He’s done it, time and time again. I swallow the burn of his betrayals because I’ve burned him too. It’s painful playing with fire.
We have a connection that goes beyond anything we understand. But it’s the only one we have, and sometimes when your only prized possession is inside of another human being, there’s only one way to know it’s real. We take it and nurture it at the same time we do our best to rip it apart.
But there’s a part of me who yearns for his love. For him to say, let’s try, Justine. Just once, let’s try to love without hurting. I don’t think we know how.
How do I love without hurting? How does that love mean anything unless I’ve ached for its existence?
I lean forward and hold his face between my hands. His eyes are so stunning this close. Like spiced apple cider, this heart pounding mixture of brown peppered with a hint of cinnamon and amber. His eyes are my favorite part of him. His long brown lashes curve up, sheathing them. His nose, so small and cute, travels down to his sculpted lips. His lips are always smooth and full and dark pink, like he bit into my bloody heart and stained his flesh.
“I like the hair,” I whisper, forgetting everything I was going to say. His jaw’s starting to grow stubble; the hard hairs scrape enticingly against my palms. Jona Kyles is by far the sexiest bastard I have ever met. Tall, hard, and gorgeous. He could make my panties wet with one look from his spicy eyes. He could make me come with a stroke of his hips. His body, his deep voice, his warmth—everything about him set me on fire.
And right now, I want to erupt. But we aren’t there right now. I can feel it. We’re in the friend zone of our relationship. After all, I ditched out on him. Left him for over six months. If he did that to me, I’d do my best to make him feel my pain.
Even imagining it has me pissed. I release him and shake off the past six months. I’m home now; that’s all that matters.
“Can we please go out?”
He gives me another limp nod. But doesn’t move.
Sighing, I stomp over to his dresser and pull out a pair of white briefs—my favorite ones—and a pair of worn jeans. I pair it with a dark blue shirt that says No Parking with an arrow pointing down and toss the outfit on the bed.
“Wear that. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Yes, baby,” he mumbles, giving me a tight look as he hops into his underwear.
“Jona,” I warn, livid in seconds. “Don’t do that.”
“What?” he asks innocently, zipping his jeans.
“You know what it does to me.” I shove at him, smirking when he stumbles back.
He catches himself and glares. “That’s why I said it.”
The word baby on Jona’s lips makes my heart spring to life. It melts and burns at the same time, wanting so badly to be his. It’s a turn on like nothing else. For proof, my panties dampen, wanting to hear him moan it while he’s inside of me. Bare. No condom. The girth of his cock filling my every inch. “I need to go back on birth control,” I mutter unthinkingly.
“What for?” He runs his fingers through his hair. It’s a new habit. The last time I saw him his hair was shaved close to his scalp. Now it’s long enough to pull. Interesting. “Who are you screwing now?”
“What I do, or don’t do, with my pussy, isn’t any of your business.” I spin on my heel to leave but stop just outside of his room, meeting his eyes from over my shoulder. “Bring your wallet. You’re paying.”
His lips curl into a soft smile. “For you, Justine, I think I can manage a cheap bottle of whiskey.”
I gasp, clutching at my chest. “You will? Will you hold my hair when I puke tomorrow too?”
“I’ll even flush the toilet.”
“Lover.” I give him a wink and take off, feeling him following me. His eyes are on my ass, I just know it. To test my theory out, I pause, bending over slowly in the middle of his staircase to tuck my jeans into my boots. His soft groan makes my nipples harden. “Miss it?” I ask, peeking up at him from between my legs.
“Be careful.” He grabs my hips, pressing my ass into his groin. The hardness of his erection is no surprise. So hard, so hot, so not mine. The thought depresses me. “You might fall.”
“Jona, honey, I fall all the time.” I straighten up and continue walking, done playing.
You know how this is. He loves you, but he won’t keep you. He never wants me for later, only right now. I didn’t know what made him that way, or what made me this way, and maybe it didn’t matter. We are who we are, and trying to make us work would only wreck us. How many times could we take playing this game before the rules blew up in our faces?
When we get downstairs, his new roommates come walking out of the kitchen, pausing to stare open-mouthed at me. They’re cute. Nerdy virgins who probably haven’t seen a woman naked in real life—online doesn’t count—but they’d be fun to mess with.
I walk over to the tallest one. He’s kind of good-looking. Messy tousled hair the color of dark ale. His jaw is strong, and his eyes are hazel. Gorgeous. Like dipping a green apple in buttery caramel. “What’s your name?”
“I let you in,” he squeaks, flushing.
Jona stomps past me, knocking into me on his way. “Let’s go!” he snaps, wrenching his front door open and slamming it so hard that Gorgeous and I jump.
“He’s always mad,” he says, watching the door in concern. “Always drinking, hiding out in his room, or lifting weights in the garage. I worry about him.”
I stare at this kid. He’s new, fresh, never been broken. Not my style. I like them destroyed before I get to them. “Have there been a lot of parties?”
He shakes his head. “We’re not allowed to throw parties in the house. I wouldn’t anyway, you know.” He smiles shyly. “But he doesn’t want them around the house.”
He doesn’t want parties? I frown to myself. Jona Kyles was the party king. Made a lot of money charging for entry and selling dope, typically ecstasy, to those who dared entered his house. I eye his new roommate carefully. That’s probably how he’s making money now. Whatever made him not want to party was probably the reason he wasn’t being himself either.
“What about women?” This question is purely for me.
“What about them?”
“Have there been a lot of them?”
He shrugs. “Yes, I guess. They don’t stay the night, though. He comes home really early, or they both come in here super drunk.”
Bastard. “Thanks—name?”
“Jacob,” he supplies.
“Thanks, Jacob. You want to come hang out?” De-virginize your virgin-ness? I don’t say. Although I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. The last two times I tried to force good people to the dark side, one ended up OD’ing and the other … I swallow hard, the guilt of my actions making it hard to breathe.
Hillary Hayes was different. I hadn’t known what Zane would try and do. Or what he’d done to her friend. I’d been doing what I always do.
Maybe that’s the problem.
“Never mind,” I mumble. “Maybe we’ll hang out later?” I don’t wait for a reply. We won’t hang out. What would a guy like Jacob and I do together? Play Parcheesi? I’d destroy him for all others, and I’d destroyed enough.
When I get outside, Jona’s leaning against his black Mustang. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s looking down frat house alley, his eyes far away.
I’m struck by how lost he looks. How he could float away at any second. The idea of him doing so hits me so hard I can’t breathe suddenly. When I leave, I leave. When he leaves, he leaves, and like so many others, he may not come back.
I clutch at my heart, pulling in breaths of the muggy Crystal Gulf air. The sun’s setting, taking the heat with it, but it still clings to the atmosphere.
I can feel it now. The shift in the air isn’t coming from any place other than him.
Turning, he spots me on his doorstep. He gives me a slight glare and nods. “You done humping the nerdy neighbor?”
What happened to him while I was gone? Did I leave him alone too long? Bach was gone, Dylan too. Everyone around us is moving on. And maybe we should too—why else would I take off in search of my dreams—but I’d learned there was nowhere to go. He had to know that.
I get into his car without commenting. He plays with his phone, synching it to his radio. Heathens by Twenty-One Pilots starts to play. He turns it up loud, so loud I can’t think, and I think that might be the point.
I never told him where to go. I sit back and try not to stare at the side of his face worriedly. Eventually, he pulls into the parking lot of a liquor store and gets out, leaving his music blaring. Ed Sheeran and I alone together for long periods of time is not a good thing. I might start spilling my guts. No one wants that.
He returns with a brown bag and sets it in the back before taking off again, blaring his mood.
When we get to the coast, he parks in the cove and shuts his engine off, getting out with the bag. I follow. I’d follow Jona anywhere.
The sun is setting over the horizon as we walk to the water’s edge. We both sink down into the sun-warmed sand as the warm salty air coming off the water settles around us. I missed the Gulf. The beach in L.A. was too crowded, too much of everything to mean anything. Crystal Gulf will always mean something to me. I met Jona on it.
He takes out a bottle of whiskey and a liter of cola, mixing two drinks in two plastic throwaway cups he bought. One’s red, and one’s silver. I eye his choices, peering into the bag. There’s food, snacks, beer, and ice-cream.
“Okay,” I say, tired of his shit. “What’s wrong, Jona?”
He takes a drink, staring out at the water. “Right now?” He looks at me, spicy eyes warming me all over. “Nothing’s wrong.”
I rarely blush. I’ve done too many nasty things to sweat the small stuff. Plus, the men I prefer think wearing a condom’s romantic. Jona isn’t far from that spectrum. But he finds a way to penetrate my armor sometimes.
I pull my tie loose to let my hair fall around my shoulders, hiding the heat in my cheeks. “I’ve been gone for six months. You mean to tell me you haven’t been able to feel good in that long?”
“No.” No hesitation, no question. Like he’s been suffering for that long.
“Jona.” I slide closer to him, pressing my side into his. The warmth of whiskey swirls around us, coupled with the saltiness in the air. “What’s wrong? Tell me. The truth,” I warn. “Not what you’ve been telling yourself.”
He rests his head against mine, eyes on the water. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Ever since Hillary and then you left. Everyone left. I can’t keep throwing parties, putting women at risk. And I don’t think I can go another six months without you, Jus. That shit was hard.” His voice breaks.
My heart breaks with it. I can sense that now isn’t the time to push him. Nothing’s funny, so cracking a joke won’t do either.
I hate it when he makes me get serious. “Jona, look. What happened to Hillary wasn’t your fault. You threw a party, something you’ve done a million times. You didn’t even know who she was. You were expecting her friends, not her. That asshole slipped something in her drink, not you. If anyone’s guilty, it’s me. I convinced you to let her stay, I was supposed to watch her, and I didn’t. Stop beating yourself up over it.”
He shook his head from the moment I said it wasn’t his fault. “You’re not talking about you.”
“What about me?”
His eyes, so brown and warm, meet mine as the sun sets, casting orange shadows on his face. His eyes look like they’re glowing. The bastard takes my breath away. “I need you.” He takes a deep breath, the way I would before I did something stupid. “I think I need you more than I need anything. Do you have any idea how hard it’s been without you? And what were you doing? Blowing some long-haired asshole who used you. He used you, Jus, like all of them do.”
There was a time when we weren’t sure about the other’s feelings. I had them, and instead of finding out that he may not, I simply kept myself in the game. I watched him with other women—so many other women—and did my best to muffle my feelings for him. Which consisted of bad choices with bad boys. But that time was gone. Last year it blew up. Knowing Jona loved me the same way I loved him, and that no matter how hard we try we’d never have a clue how to get there, hurt in a part of my heart I couldn’t heal.
I almost want to go back to that time. When he was clueless and broken, and I was the same. Everything’s changing. We aren’t friends with secret feelings anymore.
We’re friends with our hearts at stake. And I’d always been terrified of losing.
“Jona.” I try to get up, but he grabs my arm and pulls me back down. “Let me go.”
“No. Aren’t you sick of this shit? Sick of the hangovers? Sick of running? The waking up next to people we don’t love? Being used? Forgetting everything and having nothing to remember?”
I didn’t know what to say. But he didn’t look to be impatient, eyebrows raised, eyes hard and desperate. “What else is there, Lover? Hmm?” I press my lips to his cheek, feeling like I’m losing him. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know,” he admits, his breath thick of spice and whiskey as it brushes over my lips. “But I want it from you.” His warm lips press to mine, melting the way they always do.
His lips are my world. I have this feeling we don’t feel anything at all until we’re together.
I used to hold that dream in front of my heart when I watched him taking women up to his bedroom.
I push him back in the sand, the whiskey and cola soaking into our clothes as our cups tumble. I straddle him, pinning his arms over his head. Staring at his lips for a moment, I lick mine, and then I do my best to say I’m sorry the only way I know how.
Sex is a language; a connection only understood the moment I’m beneath someone else, holding their pleasure in my hands. I never understood the idea of holding back during sex. I am more myself naked and feeling pleasure than I am at any other time.
Jona and I know what it means to sleep with other people. There’s sex, and then there’s us. When we’re together, that’s all that matters to me. But there’s a part of me deep down that hates myself every time I give my body to another man that isn’t him.
There is a part of me who wants to give him exactly what he wants.
Me.