28
Miles blinks once. Shakes his head. “You mean disarm?”
“Yes.” I nod. “That.”
“Not exactly what I had in mind,” he says, looking disappointed. “But okay.”
“Sharp tried to teach me for, like, five seconds and then…” My voice trails off when Miles procures a gun from the back of his pants. “You had that with you all night?”
“We were parked in a high-crime neighborhood, less than a hundred feet from a group of known mafia members.” The exasperated look he gives me would be cute if there weren’t a firearm resting between us.
Guess I asked for this. I wave a hand at the weapon. “You’re gonna take out the bullets, right?”
Instead of answering, he separates the bottom part of the gun from the rest, holds it up for me to see, sets it on the counter, and then he takes my hand, leading me into the open space in front of the bed.
He holds the gun out for me to take. “Point it at me.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, and I’m surprised by the tremble in my hands as I train the weapon on him. “Are you sure it won’t go off?”
“I’m sure,” he says gently. Then in one swift motion, the gun is transferred from my hand to his.
I blink, quickly rewinding the last few milliseconds, trying to figure out how that happened. “Yeah, I can’t do that.”
“It’s easier than you think.” Miles flashes me a dimple-filled grin before turning the gun on me. He wraps one of my hands around the barrel and then places the other hand at his wrist. “Grab the end, hit my wrist, and at the same time allow the gun to rotate around your hand.”
I try it several times and get somewhere, but nowhere near as quick as it needs to be. Every time we switch places and Miles shows me again, it looks like a magic trick. “There’s no room to hesitate,” I assess.
Miles nods, a weary expression on his face. “You hesitate, you take a bullet.”
Fear bubbles up in my stomach, pushing me to concentrate harder. After about thirty minutes, I succeed in at least preventing Miles from retaking the weapon. His face breaks into a grin. “All right. That’s not half bad.”
“Where did you learn this?” I ask.
“Krav Maga training,” he says, then probably in response to my blank look, he lowers the gun. “Summer before last, the honors program took a field trip to Israel. We trained alongside the IDF for eight weeks.”
“IDF?”
“Israeli Defense Forces.”
“The summer before last,” I repeat. “A bunch of fifteen-year-olds trained with the Israeli army? For a field trip?”
This tiny window into Miles’s past only serves as reminder that something isn’t right. I’m torn between moving closer to him and running far away.
Worry creases his forehead. He sets the gun on the bed and moves closer to me. “Don’t do this again.”
“Do what?” I ask, stalling.
“You’re conflicted, I can see it in your eyes.” He’s right in front of me now, his warmth drifting my way, stirring up all kinds of feelings. But unlike the other night when he approached cautiously, waiting for me to make a move, tonight he borrows some of those Krav Maga moves and swiftly hooks an arm around my waist, picks me up, and then sets me down on the kitchen counter.
The power of hovering a few inches above him is too much to resist. I tug him closer, my legs hooking around his back, and then I bring his mouth to mine. In an instant the world becomes as small as this apartment, and Miles’s hands and lips become the only thing I can think about. I yank his shirt over his head, tossing it to the floor. He’s much smoother, gentler, bringing my sweater above my head. His warm fingers glide up and down my back, his lips teasing mine until they part, and he deepens the kiss. My heart fights to get out of my chest. And then we’re pressed together again, my legs hooked around his waist, my hands in his hair, his bare skin against my skin and I don’t know which heartbeat is mine anymore.
My fingers grapple for the button of his jeans, and he leans into me for a moment, making the task easier, and then his mouth pauses in its journey down my neck.
“Dominic might be back soon,” Miles says, sounding a little breathless.
I tug hard on the waistband of his jeans, drawing him even closer. “He can wait in the hall.”
Miles laughs, then pulls back to look at my face. “I would want more time if we were going to…”
“Of course.” I roll my eyes, but the action is false. Inside I’m warm all over. “Always have to be the best at everything, huh?”
His gaze roams from my face to my nearly bare chest, and then his mouth is on mine again. He whispers against my lips, “Didn’t realize it was a competition.”
“Everything is a competition.” I hop down from the counter, hook my index fingers into his belt loops, and drag him toward the bed. “But you’re right. We can wait until we have more time.”
Yeah, the possibility of sex with Miles is appealing, but the idea of Dominic interrupting is far less appealing. Plus it is kind of a big deal, considering we haven’t done that before, not together anyway. For Miles, not ever, assuming what he told me back in November was true. I know some guys lie about being virgins, but he really didn’t have any reason to lie.
“What are you thinking about?” Miles asks, bringing me back to the here and now.
I nudge him until he falls back onto the bed. “How your mom called you shy, and how I still think that’s a load of crap.”
“First off…” He brings me down on the bed beside him and leans on one elbow, looking at me. “Mentioning my mother in a situation like this is kind of a buzzkill. Second, maybe ‘shy’ wasn’t the right word.”
“Then what?” I lift my hand to his cheek, feeling the little bit of stubble. “Undercover as shy? Passionate about sharp pencils but pretending to be shy? Trying too hard to make window escapes a signature move?”
“Is that what you really think of me?” He quirks an eyebrow. One finger glides from my neck down to the tiny bow centered on the front of my bra. “I was going to say selective. I keep only the best company.”
“Stuff like that kind of ruins the fun in making fun of you,” I admit. “How long do you think we have?”
“In New York? In life? On this earth?” he rattles off, and then laughs when I pinch his shoulder. “Maybe an hour.”
“An hour to live…” I prop myself up, facing Miles. My free hand lands on his shoulder and then slides all the way down his chest. The smile on his face dies and the heated look from earlier returns. He rolls onto his back, freeing both hands to cup my face, and pulls my mouth to his. My hand still rests at his hip, my body half on top of him. With my fingers busy exploring, the waistband of both his jeans and boxers slide south. From the corner of my eye, I catch a flash of something dark or shadowed on his skin. While Miles’s lips explore my collarbone, I glance downward, my eyes narrowing to focus on his left upper thigh, just below his hip bone.
“Do you—” I start, and then become momentarily distracted by the feel of his fingertips running over the satin material of my bra. I draw in a breath and refocus. I slide down, out of reach of Miles’s lips, and tug one side of his jeans and boxers lower again. I look up at him, shock probably all over my face. “You have a tattoo? Since when?”
Technically I hadn’t looked at this part of his body without clothing before. My hands have been there, but my eyes had been focused elsewhere.
“Since Christmas break,” he says, and when I slide even farther down to get a good look, his breath catches, heart pounding against his chest where one of my hands now rests. “Best tattoo shops are in Europe.”
I’m too busy studying the symbol to analyze his answer for truth. “It’s Chinese, right?”
Miles nods. I know this only because I hear the movement of his head against the pillow. I haven’t looked away from the dark ink below his left hip. Something is so familiar about this, but Chinese is not a language I’ve learned. Unlike Miles, who was born in China, lived there for several years, and then brought his Chinese nanny, Mr. Lee, all over the world with him until he went to boarding school.
My other hand now rests on his stomach. I tilt my head, viewing it from a new angle. Upon closer examination, it’s clear the symbol is actually several symbols. Possibly a series of words or a phrase. “What does it mean?”
“It means”—one of his hands tangles in my hair, the other reaching for me—“that you’re making me crazy.”
I’m suddenly aware of where my head is and the region I’m so very close to. My face heats and I quickly slide up until I’m eye level with Miles. “Sorry.”
“Not complaining,” he says, capturing my mouth with his. “But it’s only fair if I check you for ink, right?”
“Right,” I say, smiling and turning flat on my back like he’d been. His fingers head straight for the elastic waist of my leggings, but his mouth slowly, patiently makes its way down my chest, my stomach, below my belly button, until I can’t even remember my own name let alone think about why that tattoo might be familiar to me.
But amid the haze brought on by warm lips that are now brushing over each of my hips, a voice in the back of my head urges me to stop and think about what I just saw. And then a name pops into the front of my mind.
Aidan.
Oh shit. This is messed up. I can’t think about my sister’s boyfriend while Miles is—
The awkwardness of this moment triggers another very awkward moment. Something that happened when I first moved in with Harper and Aidan. The haze begins to clear, nearly showing me a full picture, but then Miles’s voice bursts through my thoughts.
“Is this okay?” he asks so gently, hypnotically, that I nearly blurt out yes without even knowing what I’m agreeing to.
I glance down and see him preparing to slip my black leggings off, but his blue eyes lock with mine, waiting for permission. My stomach flutters with both nerves and excitement. “Yeah—I mean yes. It’s okay.”
Soon my pants join the other clothes scattered around the studio apartment. Miles kisses below my hip, my inner thigh, the outside of my underwear, and I know exactly what he meant minutes ago when he said I was making him crazy. And then without warning, the haze vanishes again and a clear graphic image of Simon Gilbert bursts into my mind. His body stretched out on the medical examiner’s table during the autopsy. A sheet covering his head. And below his left hip—
I gasp, sitting up suddenly, startling Miles. My chest rises and falls so rapidly I can barely speak. The heat between us cools. Cold dread knots the pit of my stomach and icy beads of sweat form all over my skin. There it is. That missing piece. The seed that started it all. Dammit. Why did I have to go looking for it?
Concern fills Miles’s beautiful blue eyes. He sits up, shifting close enough to touch my cheeks. “What’s wrong?”
“You…” I say, but words get lodged in my throat. My gaze drifts to where the ink is now hidden and then back to his face. “Aidan…Simon. The tattoo.”
Comprehension forms on his face. He draws his hand back, eyes wide.
I finally spit out the words I’d been trying to form. “St. Felicity’s.”