23. Isla
CHAPTER 23
ISLA
Two weeks.
It had been two weeks since I opened my door to Zayn that second night.
Two thrilling weeks. I fought the smile as I fought the yawn. Thrilling? Maybe. Exhausting? Definitely.
I giggled— good god, who was I? He was also thrilling, I thought with a smile. I was going to make myself puke with how completely nauseating I was being.
The war between Zayn and I was over. Describing it as war might be dramatic. The open battle of words, power plays, and bitter confrontations had settled into a fragile, unspoken truce. Instead, when the sun dipped low and Gracemont’s pulse flickered to life, our secret meetings were our escape; we found a way to be together without pretense and out of the public eye.
It was an unspoken rule. No one knew about us. Well…Rye did even though I hardly saw him, but it was clear Zayn wasn’t hiding me from his best friend.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t mentioned anything to Julian. In fact, Julian thought I was at an event this evening when, in reality, I was in a quiet lounge of Elixir. Zayn had pulled me into this place a few nights ago, and it was only him and me with no intrusions. It was tucked away from the main floor, above the VIP level, a haven where only he and I ventured.
I heard footsteps before I saw him. I turned and watched him enter the room, his eyes half hidden in the soft lighting. He was in his signature black with a calm and unreadable expression, but the intensity of his gaze already had my pulse racing with anticipation.
“Is,” he said quietly as I met him halfway across the floor. “Have you been here long?”
I shook my head, and for a long moment, we simply looked at each other, a silent conversation passing between us. There was no need for grand declarations or small talk.
Zayn looked down at me, one arm already slipping around my waist. “Are you enjoying sneaking in here?” he murmured, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I am,” he said as his nose trailed over my jawline. “I can’t seem to stay away from you.”
Already savoring the way he touched me, I pressed my palms flat against his chest. “I can see that,” I teased. “Here we are again.” I’d given up the fight pretty quickly, but pretending I didn’t want him was fooling no one. Not even me.
I thought giving into his pull meant surrendering a piece of myself, but it hadn’t.
He took nothing that I was not willing to give. I gave a lot. I knew that, but so did he.
Zayn’s thumb traced my lip, and I noticed his cuff was wet. I reached up without thinking. “You’re wet?” Whatever quip I had been going to follow up with died on my tongue as I stared at the red stain on my fingers. “Yours?” I asked, swallowing carefully. “Or theirs?”
Zayn stepped back, a thin frown creasing his forehead. “Theirs,” he grumbled. “Bar staff dropped a bottle of vodka.” His eyes flashed with bitterness. “A very expensive bottle of vodka,” he grumbled. He started calmly taking the shirt off, revealing tight abs and a broad chest.
“Vodka?” I would not be the woman who was reduced to one-word syllables when she saw a thirst trap.
“Yes.” Laughter danced in his eyes as he watched me try not to watch him. “We sell it in the club, top-shelf stuff too. They couldn’t reach, and instead of asking for help, they tried anyway, and it came down with one almighty crash.” He was grinning as he tossed the shirt onto a chair beside him. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear the crash up here.”
“Um, no.” I felt like a jerk. I just assumed he’d been involved in some form of violence. “No crashes.”
He reached out, his hand brushing against my wrist as if to anchor me. “Still too stubborn to let go of who I was in high school, eh, Is?”
He didn’t seem upset or disappointed about my reaction, but I was. I had jumped to conclusions. “I don’t mean to.” It was a whispered confession but a confession nonetheless.
“It’s fine.” He brushed it off. “Sooner or later, you have to accept that I’m the same guy, just a decade older.”
“Well, you’re not the same guy,” I protested lightly. “You’re no longer fighting in a back alley.” I tried for lightness, but even I knew I failed.
“How do you know?” he teased back, letting the mood soften despite my best efforts to put my foot in it tonight. Before I could answer, he was kissing me, his tongue stroking mine, his hands cupping my face, my body swaying into his. Zayn pulled back. “I tried to resist that,” he said, and I didn’t believe him, but I also wasn’t complaining. “We both know what happens when we’re together,” he said, his tone soft but laced with command. “It feels…inevitable.”
I shivered under his touch, and for a moment, I wanted nothing more than to let go of the past, all the carefully constructed barriers. “It does,” I admitted quietly even as a part of me screamed to hold on to my own self.
For a heartbeat, we stood there, caught between the pull of our past and the possibility of something new—a secret intimacy that defied the harsh reality we had yet to accept about each other. Then, without another word, he leaned in and pressed his lips against mine. It wasn’t the fierce, consuming kiss of earlier; it was softer, tentative—a moment of truce.
I responded slowly at first, following his lead until the kiss became more urgent. The unspoken tension that had defined us for so long was once more pushed to the side. We existed only in the dim, private space of Elixir. The weight between us faded into nothingness. It was just us, our past reduced to soft touches, stifled moans, and smothered cries of longing.
When we finally broke apart, our foreheads rested together, breaths mingling as we caught our breath. I saw a glimmer of something in Zayn’s eyes, triumph, perhaps, or was it regret? I couldn’t be sure. But I didn’t want to ask because we had a lot to talk about despite our best efforts to ignore it. As the days passed and we became each other’s go-to escape, I knew we couldn’t continue as we were.
But I didn’t want to burst the bubble of contentment I was currently enjoying. I was in complete denial—I knew it, and I accepted it—but I was still happily living in it.
I turned my head away as I fixed my clothes and pulled my pants back on. “Well...not done that before,” I mumbled, my cheeks beginning to burn.
Zayn’s hand ran down my back, soothing me. “Liar, you’ve done that and more many, many times over the last few weeks.”
I was already shaking my head at his nonsense. “I meant in a club.” He simply smirked that infuriating, sexy smirk of his. “Someone could have walked in!”
Zayn shrugged as he stood. “Only Rye would come in, and he knows you’re here.”
I pointed to the ceiling. “You have cameras everywhere; I can’t see them,” I said as I looked around the room, more flustered now that my sensible Isla head was on and not my dirty harlot one. I turned to him with wide eyes. “What if Rye watched ?”
Zayn threw his head back and laughed—full-out—at me. The only reaction I deemed worthy was to punch him in the arm. He just laughed louder. “There are no cameras in here,” he told me, dropping down to kiss me, his smile still distracting me. “This is why we meet here.”
I looked at the leather couch and single chair with skepticism. “It’s a booty call room?”
He laughed again. “It’s a quiet sanctuary for me when I’m having a shit night and I need to take a few minutes before I do punch someone.”
“There’s no door.” I persisted stubbornly.
“Two people in this building will come into this room if it’s not me. One is Rye, and the other is Jayden, who would only come in here if Rye was in here with me.” He helped me to my feet, dipping his head so his lips were at my ear. “No one else but me saw you ride my cock, Is.”
I reared back, my hands on my cheeks. “Zayn!”
He laughed again, fully relaxed. “You’re funny,” he said with another chuckle. Looking at his shirt which was in his hand, he frowned. “I need a new shirt.”
Slipping my feet back into my shoes, I looked up at him. “Don’t you have a spare in your office?”
“No.” He hesitated. “I live upstairs. The whole top floor is a converted loft,” he added. “Julian designed it, actually.”
I tried not to react to the information or that he’d done the forbidden and brought Julian into the conversation when I was still feeling the aftershocks of my orgasm. “You mentioned the one who should not be mentioned.”
Zayn’s lips twitched into that familiar, haughty smirk. “Does it matter?” he asked. “Really?”
“Yes!” I pulled my hair over my shoulder, hoping it didn’t look like I’d just had sex. “He wouldn’t understand. We don’t like each other, remember?” I let out a huge sigh. “And even though we might, well…” I gestured between us. “We’re doing this. He won’t understand when I tell him how long I’ve been boning his friend. My supposed hated nemesis!”
Zayn was watching me, one eyebrow raised. “This all turned very…high school. Boning? Really? We’re fucking. We’re two single adults who like to meet up and fuck each other.”
Oh god, why was this so awkward and making me cringe? “Could you not be so…?”
“Honest?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, that would be new for you.” I regretted it as soon as I said it, and I saw Zayn shut down.
“Right.” His voice was soft. “I forgot my role.”
“I didn’t mean?—”
“I think you meant it exactly how you said it.” His look was cool. He held up the shirt. “I need to replace this before someone comes looking for me.”
“In your apartment upstairs?” Wow. I was just full of snarky outbursts.
He gave a tight smile. “Yeah. Exactly. It’s where my wife and three kids are. Want to come and meet them?”
It was my turn to give him a flat look. “But I’m the one behaving like a high schooler?”
“You’re fucking impossible sometimes, you know that, right?”
“Ugh. Just go change, we’re done here.” I scooped my jacket off the couch, ready to leave.
“I was wrong; maybe it’s a booty call room after all,” he said quietly behind me. “You just got the roles reversed in terms of who’s using who.”
“Oh no, you didn’t!” I whirled on him. He was right behind me, and I came up short as I realized how close he was. “Oh.”
Zayn looked down at me, anger glinting in his eyes. “You done?”
“No.” I swallowed. “Maybe. Yes .” I crossed my arms and looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, his tone even.
“No.” I shuffled my feet. “I think it’s best forgotten.”
He pushed my hair away from my face. “I think you’re going to have to face the reality of the situation sooner or later.”
“I’m not stupid,” I muttered. “I know what this is.”
“And what is that?”
I met his steady stare. “Really? We’re having the talk now with you shirtless and us just having had...”
“Sex.” He said it firmly. “I’m not ashamed of what we’re doing. I don’t broadcast it because it is no one else’s business except Rye’s, especially when the club’s open.” He ran his eyes over me. “You need to have a conversation with yourself. Otherwise, this isn’t going to work.”
“And this is?” I sassed at him, my inner teenage drama queen suddenly surfacing after being dormant my whole life.
“Fun.” The word was final. “We’re two people who enjoy spending time naked with each other.”
“What happens in the bottom club?”
Zayn didn’t react to my question. He merely held my stare with that sane, steady gaze. “Deflecting doesn’t make you clever, Is.”
“ You just deflected.”
“And we’re back to being a teenage brat.” He inhaled. “Okay, I’m going back to work.” He pulled the soiled shirt back on.
“It’s got blood on it,” I reminded him weakly.
“Yeah, seems to be a theme.” He moved past me, and I thought he was going to leave me when he turned back, and in three steps, he was crushing his lips to mine in a harsh, punishing kiss. He pulled back and looked down at me. “When we’re together, nothing else seems to count.” He grabbed my ass. “But this bullshit tonight? You’re obviously not happy with this arrangement. Sort out what you need to and then come and talk.”
“I don’t need to,” I replied, my voice trembling with a mix of defiance and desire.
He kissed my forehead. “You do.” His thumb brushed over my cheek. “I need to go to work. I didn’t intend for this to happen here,” he said, and I believed him. “You’re just hard to resist now that I know what it feels like to be inside you.” He glanced at his watch. “Should I walk you out?”
Shaking my head, I saw the flare of disappointment he quickly masked. “No, I’m, um,” I sighed. “I’ll manage.”
“You have time to work on it.” He headed to the entrance. “Good night.”
I hesitated before nodding slowly. We stood there, watching each other warily. There was nothing left to say—just the simple, raw truth that we both might need to reassess what this was.
“Night.”
He left me there, and I didn’t follow. Instead, I sank onto the chair and reflected on how a secret meetup had gone so horribly wrong.
I didn’t expect anything of this, whatever this was. Was it casual sex?
Yes. Wait, no.
There was nothing casual about it. It was intense, heated, and filled with passion. But…maybe that’s just how he was. I had a very limited number of boyfriends to compare the sex to. We didn’t gel as people outside the bedroom or lounges.
If I wanted to or he wanted to or whatever…would we go on a date? The idea was preposterous. Wasn’t it ?
As I sat there, I realized that during our secret meetings we had found a way to be together without the burden of consequences—if only for a few stolen hours—or reproach.
I enjoyed that freedom, and I enjoyed my time with him. However, we had so much to learn about each other, and I didn’t know if I wanted that. Did he? That sounded like a relationship.
And he lived here? I mean, why was this the first time I knew that?
Because you didn’t ask .
“This is a mess.” I leaned back in the chair, my eyes heavy with the thought of it all.
The sense of being carried woke me, and I looked up to see Zayn obscured by the shadows as he climbed stairs.
“I fell asleep?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah.” He didn’t look down.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be; it’s late.” He sounded so calm.
“What time is it?”
“Four.”
Oh. “I can go home. Let me down. I’ll walk.”
“No need. We’re here.” Zayn’s thumbprint unlocked the door, and he set me down just inside the door of his apartment.
When I looked around, my first impression was how immaculately neat it was. “It’s nice.”
“Mmhmm.” He pointed to the far door. “Bathroom.” He moved his arm slightly. “Bed.”
“I can sleep on the couch.”
“Get ready for bed, Isla.”
Less than thirty minutes later, I was lying in his bed in an apartment I had never known existed, and strangely, I felt myself relax. I would need to unpack that later because I knew that when morning came I would have to think about this all again.
But for now, in the dim glow of Zayn’s loft, I allowed myself to simply be.