8. Jaxon
Chapter Eight
JAXON
I didn’t want to wake up. It was the sweetest, nicest dream I had dreamed in years. It took me back to the sweet and torturous nights throughout high school when all I did was dream of this. Except, it wasn’t a dream at all.
Elio had knocked on my door.
He had kissed me.
He had held me.
He had fucked me.
I could still feel the tension in my throat long after his hand had released me.
Blinking awake despite my desperate desire to stay asleep and let this night continue forever, I was rewarded with the full view of Elio’s sexy body sprawling on my bed, my arm thrown over his torso, my leg resting between his legs.
We stayed naked after the shower. We hadn’t spoken much, but the silence was filled with pleasure.
He was asleep still. His chest rose and fell gently under my hand.
His body radiated incredible heat, but it didn’t deter me from tucking myself as close to him as I could.
His hair spilled over the pillow in unruly curls, a darker brown than mine, and his eyelashes threaded together with all their incredible length.
Two years ago, I had rolled a small snowball off the top of a very large mountain.
It had taken it all this time, but the snowball was not a ball at all.
It was an avalanche. It had swept me off last night, and I didn’t regret a second of it.
Even if it left me buried alive and locked in a cold, white coffin, I would go with a smile on my face.
Finally. Fucking finally. This wasn’t the resolution I had been expecting.
Triggered by refusal, I had spiraled out of control.
Who would have thought that giving myself to Elio after all this time could cure my fractured heart rather than smash it into dust?
But it helped. It smoothed out all the wrinkles and showed me the truth that I had been seeking all along.
I hadn’t been crazy. I hadn’t imagined his secret affection.
I hadn’t tricked myself into thinking that every glance had carried some hidden meaning. It had all been true.
Elio stirred, and I sent up a quiet prayer that he wouldn’t open his eyes and regret last night. The fear became very real the moment his eyelashes fluttered and his brown, almond-shaped eyes opened. A small frown creased his brow, and he turned to look at me.
The moment his gaze met mine, time froze.
I was stuck between one heartbeat and the next.
It all moved so slowly that I grew aware of my entire body and my soul in that instant.
I felt the hairs on my neck rising in wariness, felt the contact of his flesh and mine, felt the heat our bodies exchanged.
And Elio smiled. The curly corners of his lips ticked up just enough to dispel the fears. The relief that washed over me was more powerful than if someone had shoved me, my head dropping down and my face burying in the crook of Elio’s neck.
For one moment, nothing else happened. Then, he shifted slightly and touched my arm, pulling me closer to him. With my hand resting on his chest, I could feel his speeding heartbeat, but Elio held me anyway.
This couldn’t be easy for him. I understood that much, and I decided to be quiet about it.
Years ago, when my brother wouldn’t answer his phone and when the reporters cropped up in front of our house, Elio had been with me.
He had come just before the news crews had arrived, even though there was nothing he could offer that could solve the clusterfuck Ronan had created.
I forever knew that as the moment I fell in love with him.
Oh, I was crushing on Elio before that. Maybe even since the first time we’d crossed paths.
Just the way his intense gaze examined me that first time had been enough to make me feel all sorts of ways, mostly flushed and tingly, keen to impress him.
But that evening, when Ronan’s name covered all headlines, had been different.
I hadn’t just wanted our hands to touch by chance.
I hadn’t just hoped we would step out of the gym shower at the same time and see one another naked.
It was so much more powerful than the constant pull of attraction I had felt.
Elio had followed me into my bedroom. He sat on the chair while I lay, staring furiously at the ceiling, and then he joined me, his arm around me much like mine was around him now.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he’d asked.
“No.”
And the silence that followed was the fertile ground for the feelings that would follow me for years.
Ronan had been seen by several journalists booking a floor at the Orbit to celebrate the string of victories he had single-handedly brought his team throughout the season so far.
It was lavish but not too out of the ordinary until the tabloids scratched the surface and discovered that Ronan’s guests weren’t just friends and rising celebrities.
The truth leaked quickly after the staff had called the police because of the behavior of Ronan’s guests and the sheer destructive force they had all become.
Sex, drugs, alcohol, and total disregard not just for the private property of the hotel but the image Ronan had cultivated for years.
My brother had given it all up for the attention of people who only liked him because he paid them to.
Not directly, but the supplies of cocaine and speed and ketamine flowing up into Ronan’s circles were payment enough.
He had given up the one thing he was good at for the sake of mindless sex while his wife was home with their one-year-old.
Never in my life had I seen someone cause so much damage in such a swift move. I’d always imagined that the destruction was something you did to people with your fists and with fights. Ronan had unleashed a whole new level of destruction. The one person I had admired all my life had ruined it all.
And the one person who stayed with me all night, holding me in total silence, was Elio.
As I dragged my gaze from his sweet, perfect lips to his sculpted torso, I knew I would never be free of him. I would never not fall for him. I would never not love him with all I had.
And that was a tragedy of a different kind because nothing guaranteed he would love me back. All I knew was for sure that he was attracted to me.
“What time do you need to leave?” I asked.
Elio let his head sink into the pillow and thought about it. “Around ten. I have a rough week ahead, Jax.”
“I figured something happened,” I said.
Elio let out a small sigh and turned to his side. He opened his eyes and looked at me, taking in every trace of my face, neck, and collarbones. There was a plea in his eyes, and I decided not to pry.
“We have enough time for breakfast,” I said.
Elio considered this, then sat up. His shoulders were broad and square, his hair messy from sleeping, his back knotted with tense muscles, but his voice was soft. “Let me bring us something here.”
So nobody can see us together, I thought and swallowed the words fueled by years of anger. “That’s a good idea.”
He shot me a somewhat surprised look over his shoulder, gratitude welling in his eyes. He got up first, naked and divine, and I almost begged him to forget about the breakfast and just stay. But he found his underwear and pulled them on before scouting the floor for the rest of his clothes.
Elio sent me one more lingering look before walking out of my room, and it stayed with me long after the door was shut behind him.
Few people I’d met throughout my life could say so much with so little.
However, I didn’t know anyone as intimately as I knew El.
Sometimes, people could speak without saying a word, and that had often been the case between us.
And you wonder why you’ve had a lifetime of misunderstandings? I asked myself skeptically, then ignored that voice.
By the time Elio knocked on the door again, I had dressed and brushed my teeth.
I’d meant to make us coffee in the shared kitchen at the end of the hallway, but he had returned quickly.
In his hands, there were two paper bags, one containing two large cups of black coffee.
“Not sure how you like yours,” Elio said as he unpacked our breakfast on my desk.
“That’s perfect,” I assured him.
He unpacked the other bag, setting out sandwiches, doughnuts, and croissants on the desk and taking a seat in my office chair while I settled for the bed. “Tuck in,” he said, picking a ham sandwich to start with.
“I was afraid you might just keep walking,” I said before I could stop myself.
El looked at me with a mixture of understanding and mischief. It was a strange combination but one he delivered clearly. “Why would you think that?” he asked, irony adding a lilt to his voice.
I blanked for a moment before a smile grabbed the corners of my lips and stretched them wide. I shook my head.
“I, uh…” El said, looking at his sandwich.
Here it comes, I thought and swallowed a bite of my breakfast. “Look, I’ve been through this,” I said, my tone cooling down but holding on to a sliver of compassion I was able to dig up. “I’ve been with guys who got curious.”
Elio was still, his gaze flicking to my face. “You’ve mentioned.” His tone could chill champagne bottles.
My heart skipped a beat. “I’m just saying, I kinda know how this goes,” I said.
Elio’s eyes narrowed a little. He was at his most beautiful when he was lost in thoughts like this, and I could hardly get the words out.
“Those guys,” I said, and Elio’s facial muscles clenched. “Sometimes, they just realized it wasn’t for them. Fun, sure, but not much beyond that.”
Elio nodded once, slowly.