Chapter Fourteen – Avda
I watched as Jo and Sasha chatted at the bar – she laughed at something he said, tipping her head back and giggling, her eyes lighting up. A flood of jealousy spiked through my system. Fuck. Why was this such a big deal to me? Why couldn’t I just let them be friends...?
I knew why. It was the same thing that had been bothering me all week, ever since I had walked out of Jo and Kyra’s place and tried to put some distance between myself and them. That he had been honest with her in a way I knew I never could be, and I was pissed as hell about it.
And the two of them seemed to be getting on better than ever, while I was staying a safe distance away from her and Kyra. And it was driving me crazy.
I knew I should have been focused on work. I could have headed over to the compound across the city, and made that my main focus for a few weeks while I cooled off, but the thought of not seeing her at all...nah, it just didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t want to be away from her for that long. I felt protective of her, of Kyra, even though I had walked out on them the other night – even though I was sure she was pissed and confused at the way I had acted.
And now, she and Sasha were hanging out together while she finished the set-up for the evening shift, before she headed home for the day. I had noticed her shooting a couple of looks in my direction, and I’d thought about going over, talking to her, maybe apologizing for the way I had acted, but I thought better of it. I wasn’t going to get desperate, get clingy.
Even if I hated seeing the two of them together right now. The ease with which they seemed to communicate with each other, as though they were totally comfortable with one another – had something happened between them? Was I just being paranoid? Did I have a right to say or do anything about it if they had...if things had gotten more serious? Jo and I might have a daughter together, but that didn’t mean that she owed me anything...
Fuck it, I wasn’t good at playing it cool like that. I made my way over to join them, leaning up on the bar, and Jo offered me a slightly nervous smile.
”Hey, Avda,” she greeted me. ”Is everything okay?”
”It’s fine,” I replied, turning to Sasha. He raised his eyebrows at me expectantly.
”What’s up?”
”I need to talk to you,” I told him. I couldn’t demand Jo’s attention, but at least I could keep Sasha from getting any closer to her. Might have been childish, but there was a part of me that wanted to keep the two of them apart – like she might see more of me in him than I wanted if they spent too much time together.
”What about?” he asked, not moving. I jerked my head towards the back office.
”We need to talk in private,” I replied, and he sighed and rose to his feet, flashing a grin at Jo.
”I’ll catch you later, okay?”
”See you tomorrow, Sasha,” she called after him, as I steered him towards the back office. Fuck, they had such ease with each other – like they’d been friends for ages. Was this what happened when he had been honest with her, and would the same thing happen with me, too...?
I pulled him into the back office, closing the door behind us, racking my mind for something I could throw at him that would explain why I had pulled him away from his conversation with Jo the way I had. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the door, raising his eyebrows at me.
”What is it?” he asked me. His voice was sharp, almost a little cold – like he knew he had to be careful around me, careful not to give too much away.
”You need to stay focused on work,” I told him. ”Not spend your whole shift flirting with Jo.”
”What the fuck are you talking about?” he laughed. ”We’re friends. We can talk with each other when there’s nothing else going on. Why would you have a problem with that?”
He leveled his gaze at me, as though he was daring me, downright daring me, to tell him the truth. Because he knew it, as well as I did. I was jealous of all the attention she was giving him. No, of the attention he was giving her – shit! My head was a mess. I pushed those thoughts down quickly, trying to get myself in hand again.
”Because you’re here to do a job, not hit on her the whole time,” I replied, doing everything I could to keep my voice level and steady. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he was getting under my skin, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that he already knew.
”You jealous?” he asked me, that smile curling up his lips a little further. ”Jealous that she’s paying attention to me and not you?”
”It’s not about that-”
”I know the two of you were hooking up,” he replied. My heart pounded in my chest.
”She told you?”
”No, I saw you,” he replied, nodding towards the back entrance to the club. ”If you don’t want to be caught, you should really find somewhere else to do it other than the alleyway behind your workplace. And you’re talking shit to me about being unprofessional...?”
I felt a heat rise to my cheeks, my hands clenching into fists. He had seen us? He had watched us? The thought of him seeing us like that, it made me – shit, I didn’t know how it made me feel. It should have pissed me off, but maybe...
”Yeah, well, it’s not like you don’t have a whole lot of other options,” I fired back at him. That caught him off-guard. He shifted his weight, his jaw clenching.
”What the fuck does that mean?”
”I heard that you’re not just into women,” I replied. I could feel myself gaining the upper hand once more, the feeling of it nearly intoxicating. And, more than that – acknowledging what I knew about him. That piece of me that I saw in him, that piece of me that he seemed so much more willing to accept than I ever could.
”Who the hell told you about that?” he asked me.
”So it’s true?”
”What the fuck does it matter if it is true?” he demanded, taking a step towards me. He could get all defensive about it, but he knew how this world looked at people like us – no, people like him. Nobody would look at him in the same light if they were to find out that he was into men. It would be practically admitting that he wasn’t the man they had thought he was, not the person who they could rely on to get shit done. Putting that information out there would have been dangerous, but I held it in my hand, clenched in my fist, ready to strike if I needed to.
”You know what it means,” I replied, not backing down. We were standing just a few inches apart now. His dark eyes were blazing with anger, but I didn’t break his gaze. I could feel the rage coming off him in waves, and it should have been enough to get me to back down – but, instead, I found myself tempted, wanting to see how far I could push him before he would strike back at me.
”Oh, yeah?” he replied, drawing his fist a little higher. I didn’t flinch. I had dealt with plenty of guys who were far scarier than he was.
”Yeah,” I shot back, my jaw clenched tight. In the quiet of this office, cut off from the rest of the world, it felt like anything could have happened. My eyes flicked down towards his mouth, drawn tight, ready to spit out some other defensive comment at whatever I came out with next...
And, before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed his face, and kissed him.
Our lips crashed together with a desperate hunger I had felt just a few times before in my life – the few times I had been with men, these hungry, needy, wanting encounters that had been so far removed from the rest of my life they didn’t even feel real. His stubble against my palms, against my chin, his teeth on my lip – I expected him to pull back, break away, but instead, his hands came to my shoulders and he pulled me in closer, tongue snaking past my lips.
The tension between us was boiling over now, consuming me, even as I tried to control it – the thought of him watching Jo and I, seeing me in that moment of complete pleasure, it was turning me on and I couldn’t deny it. I would fight him for Jo, if I had to, but right now, that desire was translating into something else entirely...
He let out a low growl, and it was that which brought me back to earth. I pulled back from him sharply, stepping away, my breath tearing out of my lungs, my cock half-stirred to life in my pants.
”What the fuck was that?” I demanded. He raised his eyebrows at me. His mouth was still slightly parted, like he was ready to go back in for another kiss as soon as I was ready.
”You started it,” he replied, grinning, moving towards me again. ”Not that I’m-”
”Don’t touch me,” I snarled at him. It wasn’t fair to aim this anger at him, but it was filling me to the brim – anger at myself, anger that I had let myself get drawn into something like that. How many times had I shared those passionate moments with guys? A handful? Four, five over the course of my life? And every time, I hated myself for it. I hated that I couldn’t control myself, hated that it was so easy for me to just give in and let it happen. I was a freak. A fucking freak. And I needed to get out of here, right now, before I did anything else to ruin my career at the Flood.
I turned on my heel and headed out of the office, my heart slamming against my ribs, feeling as though everyone I walked past was going to be able to tell just by looking at me what I had done.
I needed a drink. A fucking strong one. Several, actually. Anything to get the memory of his mouth against mine out of my head – anything.
Because I knew I had just made the kind of mistake I couldn’t take back. And it wouldn’t be long till Jo found out. He would tell her about it, and she would know what kind of person I was, and there would be no way I could hide it any longer.
It scared the hell out of me. But, after a few drinks, I would feel a little better. Or at least I would have a harder time remembering his hands on my face and his teeth on my lip.