Chapter 28 #2
He grimaced and shook his head. Gave a dry little chuckle. “Or, she asks. Woman, you’re torture.”
She’d meant to say, or what?
“Or, Castle, you’re going to wind up in this shower with me, and I can’t promise I won’t shag you senseless as a result. So, yeah, I guess you’d better invite ol’ Joy Division over and maybe get out of here while I finish up.”
Yep. Yeah, she ought to do that. Definitely…
“You mean the shower right, not…” She backed out of the room with her hands up.
Fuck! Jodi rested against the closed door to catch her breath, though the vision of him sparkling like he’d been painted with diamonds continued to loop in her head like an animated gif. And just like an old Tumblr gif, it stopped short of where she wanted it to go.
And that was a good thing. Wasn’t it? Right? Yes. Of course it was a good thing, because she didn’t actually want a close encounter with all those barbells, even if her lady bits were currently screaming at her in frustration to the contrary.
Well, they were just going to have to hush.
She’d made her choice. Chosen Nash, and just because things were a bit testy between them of late didn’t change that.
He’d been there for her when she needed him.
He was still here for her, even if he was distracted by his newfound fame.
They were still getting married, and she wanted that.
Doubts were normal.
She was still excited about it, about him.
She sent Nash Rock Giant’s room number pronto.
Accountability. The ultimate godsend.
Jodi: RG says you’re good to come up and join us anytime.
Retrospectively, it hadn’t been a good way to phrase it.
Nash: Join you? Doing what?
Watching him impersonate Neptune.
Jodi: Nothing. Hanging out.
Just come up after you’ve finished watching Balin.
Nash: How’d you know that’s what I’m doing?
Jodi: Are you saying it isn’t?
Nash: Be there in a bit.
He was watching Balin.
And she… she wasn’t even surprised enough to be bothered by that, just irritated, that the fall out of her doing something similar would have far-reaching consequences.
That was her fault though, too, because she hadn’t kicked up a stink.
They all kept assuring her it was harmless, but was it really?
Her guts weren’t so sure about it.
She’d made it as far as the lounge area again by the time Paul came out of the bathroom, mostly dry, but with a towel around his waist so all his ink was on display: the dragon—well, most of it—the many interlacing mythological and religious symbols, and of course, his newest tattoo, still safely hidden beneath a protective bandage.
The towel was sadly a little longer than the one he’d been sporting the very first time they’d met.
He crossed to where his suitcase sat on a luggage stand and pulled out a pair of lounge-wear trousers.
“Unless you’d prefer me nude?” He flashed her a grin over his shoulder, before dragging a hand over his shorn scalp.
Jodi shook her head. Him nude was far too dangerous a notion.
Him semi-covered already had her nerves ablaze.
Her hands itched to touch. Her lips, to explore.
He was literally three feet away from her wearing nothing but a white towel that it’d take zero effort to remove.
She could see herself pressed up against his back.
Her hands encompassing his arse, before sliding around his hips and…
Yeah, was he still hard for her? In her head she was counting the rungs of his ladder with the tip of her index finger, while her lips explored the wings of his shoulder blades.
He sat on the edge of the right-hand bed, leaving the set of bottoms beside him on the comforter.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“No.”
He laughed. “You don’t even know what I was about to say yet.”
There were water droplets clinging to his shoulders. The dragon head across his chest had tears in its eyes. “Let’s steal a bus and run away together?”
He barked out an even deeper laugh. “Okay, forget my idea, that’s a much better one. Let me get some feet on. Wait, maybe shagging first, then bus stealing, then more shagging.”
“No.” She nervously wetted her lips. “I mean…no. I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t know why I said that. Forget I said that.”
“I am never forgetting you said that. Any time, you just give me the nod, and I’ll be ready to enact it.”
“Stealing buses is bad.”
“Well at least you didn’t say shagging me is bad.”
Shagging him definitely wasn’t. It was simply forbidden.
Paul let his bent leg flop to the side, which dragged the edge of the towel around his waist apart, revealing the tail of his dragon curled around the inside of his thigh. The knot around his waist held… just about.
Unlike her.
“You don’t need to use the force, Castle. You can just ask me to undo it, and I will. You can drink your fill, touch, tease. I’m yours to treat as you will.”
The sad… unbearably… frustrating thing was that he meant it.
Truly meant it. Providing she didn’t compromise his core principles; he’d do anything to make her happy.
She wasn’t even sure what that looked like.
Not so long ago, she’d been very certain what happiness was—hadn’t she?
It hadn’t been a distant speck on the horizon that jumped position whenever she blinked. Why were her feelings running amok?
She’d chosen.
She did love Nash.
Nothing was going to change. So why did it feel as though she was stuck on a runaway train, hurtling towards a set of points? One leg of the fork led to a cliff edge and the other to utopia, but it was impossible to tell which was which.
Paul feathered his fingertips over the fold of the towel.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t, what?”
Loosen the towel. Treat her to what her eyes were virtually popping out of her skull to see.
“Get dressed? I mean sure, I’ll lay about semi-naked for you some more if you like, Castle, but didn’t you invite your—”
“Yes. I mean, yes, you should put some clothes on before Nash arrives.” She didn’t need Nash putting naked man and his girlfriend together and reaching an answer that wasn’t three…fuck…two. “I’d rather not have my relationship implode.”
The way Rock Giant sucked his tongue suggested he’d have rather less issue with that.
“Paul.”
He gave a sultry blink. “Old Joy Division gets jealous of you ogling other men, does he? That must make life tricky, given you’re sharing a bus with him and three buddies.”
Nash never worried about her looking at them.
Maybe because they were his bandmates, and he trusted them.
What did that say about their relationship, though?
He trusted his bandmates, but not her? He wasn’t threatened by his bandmates?
He’d realised that rebuking her for catching the occasional glimpse of willy or naked butt cheeks would be hypocritical, considering his current favourite pastime was watching them fuck groupies?
Not that he wasn’t frequently hypocritical, if she thought about it.
“Don’t assume you know what our relationship is like. ”
He nodded.
“Please get dressed.”
“I’m working on it.”
But not in any sort of timely fashion. He reached for the joggers, drew them up his legs excruciatingly slowly. To his shins, to his knees, then thighs. Her heart hammered, anticipating the rap of Nash’s knuckles on the suite door, then him entering to find her gawping at a still mostly naked man.
She squeezed her eyes closed as Paul undid the towel.
“All covered. You can look.”
While he’d certainly covered his gear stick, that layer of thin cotton hid nothing.
The soft grey fabric stretched taut across his abs.
Dammit, she could count the sodding rungs of his ladder from the lowest barbell near his balls all the way up to near his navel and the Prince Albert through his tip. Nine. Damn! Nine.
“Put the towel back on.”
“No chance.”
“Put the towel back on.”
“Castle, it’s wet, and if you keep on looking at me like that something else is gonna be wet too. Babe, you’re gonna make me leak.”
She made a frantic noise in her throat, which didn’t sound like a noise she usually made, but had to be her. There was only him and her, and he hadn’t been responsible for it.
“Is something else wet too?”
She ticked her index finger from side to side. “You’re not supposed to ask me stuff like that. Friends, remember. We agreed we’re just friends.”
Had they truly ever, and would they truly ever be just friends? There was something about the way they were when they were together, like they were opposite strips of a piece of Velcro, which meant when they got close, they stuck.
She had other close male friends. Fuck it, all of her close friends were men, but while she adored Lee, and Balin, and Jez, and would do until the end of time, there wasn’t the same grippy feeling she felt when she was with them as when she was with Paul.
And she never felt as if they possessed a part of her she was forced to leave behind when they parted.
“And yet, I’m asking, Castle. I’m asking because you’re here, and you’re looking, and I’m tired of not asking.
Maybe it’s about time we started being really fucking honest with one another, instead of hiding behind falsehoods.
I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to sit back and watch you marry Curtis fucking Nash.
I want you. I want to give you all the things I promised, not just a fraction of them—”
“I don’t remember what you promised.”
The way he looked at her, the green of his hazel eyes so bright, made it clear that it didn’t matter if she recalled the promises he’d made. He did. He remembered, and he meant to deliver on them.
“I want all that silky heat you’re generating all over my bare cock.
I want my tongue on your cunt. Your thighs around my ears.
I want to hear you scream so loud that every fucker in this building knows how good I’m making you feel.
I want them to be so fucking aware of it that they make memes about it.
Once wasn’t enough. I want more, Castle.
I want forever. And I think you do too, so the question is, are you ready to admit that yet, or do we have to keep playing this game awhile longer? ”