9 #2
“You don’t care about me,” she said.
I laughed once, low and humorless. “Don’t start a fight because the truth makes you twitchy.”
“I’m not twitchy.”
“You’re one insult away from calling me emotionally constipated and pretending that counts as a personality assessment.”
“It does.”
“It doesn’t.”
“It does when it’s accurate.”
I took the laptop before she could stop me.
Her hand shot out, but I was faster. I closed it with one hand and set it on my nightstand, well beyond her reach. Her eyes flashed, and there she was again, mean, alive, and furious enough to breathe around the fear.
“You have three seconds to return my laptop before I make this ugly,” she said.
I sat on the edge of the bed facing her. “Make it ugly.”
Her brows lifted.
I leaned closer, letting her know I wasn’t backing down. “Come on, Aura. You’re dying for a reason. I just gave you one.”
She stared at me for a beat, then scoffed. “You are so fucking arrogant.”
“And you’re deflecting.”
“I’m annoyed.”
“You’re scared.”
“I’m irritated.”
“You’re scared,” I said again, quieter but harder. “And if you say one more clever thing instead of admitting it, I’m going to start guessing, and you’re going to hate how close I get.”
The room went still.
Aura’s throat moved as I watched her fight herself. She wanted to snap, to call me a caveman, an overgrown hockey cliché, or a walking shoulder check with commitment issues. Anything would have worked. I would have taken all of it because anger meant she was still in the room with me.
She didn’t say anything.
I rested my forearms against my knees, keeping my hands to myself even though every inch of me wanted to touch her. “Is it Bliss?”
Her jaw tightened.
“Is it Cade?”
Her eyes flicked away.
“Is it the blood?”
“Stop.”
“No.”
Her gaze returned to mine, hot and furious. “I said stop.”
“And I said no.” My voice remained low. “You came into my room, Aura. You put yourself in my bed. You sat here in my sweatshirt with the lamp on and the door closed because whatever is happening inside your head is louder than your pride tonight. I’m not going to sit five feet away and let you pretend you came up here because my pillows are better. ”
Her breath shook once before she caught it.
I softened nothing in my face because soft made Aura run. It gave her room to become mean and make me the problem, so I stayed solid and steady, the kind of pressure she could push against without wondering whether I would move.
“What are you scared of?” I asked.
She looked down at her hands. “I’m not.”
“Try again.”
“I hate when you do this.”
“Good.”
Her eyes cut toward mine. “Good?”
“Yeah. Good. Hate me. Call me names. Threaten my life. Do whatever you need to do, but don’t sit there acting like this isn’t tearing you apart.”
Her mouth twisted, but her eyes shone too brightly. “You think you know everything.”
“I know you. I know you’ve barely slept.
I know you haven’t eaten enough because Bliss has been too out of it to notice and Charm is too busy trying not to crack.
I know you keep sitting where you can see every window and door.
I know you watched Cade carry Bliss upstairs last night and looked like someone had peeled your skin back, and I know when Briggs joked about installing better locks downstairs, you almost lost your shit before you swallowed it. ”
The silence afterward was packed with everything she wouldn’t say.
Aura looked away first. “She’s so small.”
The words were barely there, and I didn’t move.
“She isn’t,” Aura said quickly, like she hated that the first sentence had escaped wrong. “Bliss isn’t small. She’s loud and bossy and dramatic, and she cries at dog videos and still somehow thinks threatening men twice her size is a reasonable conflict-resolution strategy.”
“She’s all of that.”
“But she looked small,” Aura whispered, her fingers curling into the sleeves of my sweatshirt.
“When Cade brought her in. When she was shaking and trying to act like she wasn’t terrified because he was in protect mode.
She looked small, and I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t fix it.
I hated that Charm looked at me like I might know what to do because I always know what to do, right?
Aura has a plan. Aura is smart and tough.
Aura can walk into any room and make everyone else bleed first.”
Her voice cracked on the final word, and she turned away like she could hide it from me.
I reached out and caught her chin, carefully but not gently. She resisted for half a second because Aura resisted everything on principle, but I turned her face toward mine anyway.
Her eyes were wet and furious, which was exactly like her. Even on the edge of breaking, she looked pissed that gravity had the audacity to pull tears from her eyes.
“You don’t have to fix Bliss tonight,” I said.
Her lips trembled once before she pressed them together. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say nice things in that voice.”
“What voice?”
“The one that makes me want to believe you.”
That should not have hit me as hard as it did.
I kept my hand against her chin, my thumb resting below her bottom lip. “Believe me, then.”
She gave me a look. “That easy?”
“No.” My thumb moved once, slow and deliberate. “But you like hard things, so believing me should make you feel better.”
Her breath caught, and there she was again, the flash of want beneath all that fear and the way her body answered before her mouth could ruin it.
She hated that I saw it, so I looked harder.
“Easton,” she warned.
I smiled slightly. “There’s my name.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t be smug.”
“You said it first.”
“By accident.”
“Say it again.”
“No.”
I leaned in another inch. “Aura.”
Her pupils blew wide.
“You know the thing about your rules?” I asked.
She swallowed. “I didn’t bring up rules.”
“You didn’t have to. They’re all over your face.”
“My face is none of your business.”
“Your face is in my room.”
“That is the most male logic I’ve ever heard.”
“You like my logic.”
“I like very little about you.”
“That’s a lie.”
Her mouth parted with a sharp comeback ready, but nothing came out because I slid my hand from her chin to the side of her neck. My thumb found her racing pulse, frantic and wild, betraying her with every beat.
I bent closer, my mouth near her ear. “No lights. No names. No getting naked. No questions. No staying after. No softness. No proof you were here after morning.”
She shivered against my hand.
“Those rules don’t keep me out, Aura. They tell me where the bruises are.”
Her breathing changed.
She shoved one hand against my chest, but she didn’t push me away. “You think you’re very profound for a man who chases rubber with a stick.”
“I know I’m right.”
“You know nothing.”
“I know you came here because you needed quiet.” My other hand settled against her knee, firm and warm over bare skin. “I know you kept the lamp on because you didn’t want to disappear tonight. I know you want me close enough to make the room feel smaller, but not gentle enough to make you panic.”
Her lashes fluttered once.
Got you.
“And I know,” I said, dropping my voice, “that if I turn that lamp off right now, you’ll hate me for setting you free even if you need it.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, and for one second, she looked stripped down to the truth.
Then she grabbed my shirt and yanked me toward her. “You talk too much.”
I caught myself with one hand against the mattress beside her hip. “Only because you avoid too much.”
“I came up here for quiet.”
“Then shut me up.”
Her mouth hit mine hard.
It wasn’t soft because Aura didn’t know what to do with softness unless she could mock it first. She kissed the way she argued, like surrender had to look like violence so nobody could accuse her of needing anything.
Her fingers fisted in my shirt, dragging me closer while her mouth moved against mine, hot, angry, and hungry enough to empty my head.
I let her have the first few seconds, let her bite my bottom lip and press into me like she could turn the entire conversation into heat and win through distraction. I let her use my mouth to outrun every word she had almost said.
Then I stopped letting her.
My hand slid to the back of her neck, and I took control of the kiss, angling her head the way I wanted it. Her whole body went still for one beat, pride catching up to what her body already knew, before she melted with a furious little sound that went straight through me.
I kissed her deeper and slower, meaner than soft but never cruel. It was the kind of kiss that made her admit she had come to me for this too, for hands that didn’t shake, a body that blocked out the door, and a mouth that could take all that panic and give it somewhere else to go.
She climbed into my lap without me asking, and that wrecked me more than the kiss.
Aura liked making men chase. She liked maintaining distance so she could pretend every inch closed between us had been somebody else’s idea, but she moved over me now without a joke fast enough to cover it, one knee pressing into the mattress beside my thigh and then the other until she straddled me in my sweatshirt with the lamp still on and her mouth swollen from mine.
My hands settled against her hips as I tugged the sweatshirt.
She looked down at them, then back at me. “That’s bold.”
“That’s my sweatshirt.”
“Possessive.”
“My room.”
“Territorial.”
“My lap.”
Her breath caught.
I tightened my grip enough to make her feel it. “Mine.”
Her eyes flashed, but her hips rolled against me before she could stop them. The friction dragged a rough sound from my chest, and her fingers curled into my hair like she needed something to hold but would rather frame it as an attack.
“Don’t say shit like that,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I’ll make you regret it.”
I leaned forward and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Liar.”
She turned her head, denying me her mouth, so I kissed her jaw instead, then the spot beneath it and the warm line of her throat where her pulse still raced beneath my lips.
Her fingers tightened in my hair. “Easton.”