21. Arden
Arden
He also told me some of his deepest secrets up there on the mountain, and I can’t help feeling that he gave me something more precious to hold than he was expecting.
I wrap my arms more firmly around him and he reaches up to press my hands against his belly.
I catch my breath at the movement, the casual intimacy of it, and feel a sudden rush of warmth between my legs. His hand on my hands, pressing them against his skin, after what he just shared up on the mountain, feels intentional. Personal.
Hot.
He must realize that I’m shivering behind him, because he pulls his shirt up and tucks my hands under them, against the skin of his belly, and I nearly groan.
He’s hot in a way I wasn’t expecting, his abs hard and tense under my hands, and I know I shouldn’t be touching him like this.
The man is related to my stepmother and I’ve known him through my life as ‘uncle,’ though we aren’t actually related.
And yet here I am with my legs practically wrapped around him, my hands mere inches from the length of his cock, his words about wanting a family still ringing in my ears and my own blood going several shades hotter in my veins.
Bad idea, I tell myself firmly. This is a bad idea. Dangerous. Reckless. It’ll just lead to trouble.
And I have no idea how he feels about me.
Except, I realize, I’m starting to suspect. Because he’s good at solving other people’s problems, but I don’t think he hands his own problems to a girl unless he trusts her.
Unless he wants her to see how vulnerable he can be.
I bite my lip, close my eyes against a sharp turn, and then draw my mind back to where it belongs: Planning how soon I’m going to leave town, and how I can repay Mars and Orion for letting me stay.
I don’t think again about how close my hands are to his cock.
Or how much I want to reach down and feel him. Just to see how he would react.
When we get to the house, Mars presses one searing kiss to my forehead and then turns without speaking and heads into the house.
I follow him, the words I want to say caught in my throat, but by the time my eyes adjust to the dark he’s already heading up the stairs to his room and leaving me behind.
Without a word.
Without so much as an acknowledgement of what we just went through.
I don’t understand how he can do that–just shut down after a night like this. I’m still feeling the wind on my face, the darkness in my veins, and the stars on my skin as he tells me things I don’t think he ever tells anyone.
I’m still feeling the warm weight of him between my legs, his hands pressing my hands into the skin of his belly.
I can’t sleep.
I don’t even want to fucking try.
But there’s nothing else to be done. I can’t start cleaning the house because I’ll wake the men, and I have nothing else to keep me occupied down here. At least in my room I’ll be able to read a book.
I start through the living room, my eyes on the stairs, but pull up short when I realize this room isn’t as empty as I thought.
The sun shining through the windows shows me Orion, asleep on the couch.
He obviously came in from wherever he was and fell right onto the couch, as he’s still wearing a flannel stained with grease.
He has his boots propped up on the arm of the couch and his arm thrown over his eyes, and I can see a smear of grease on his cheek.
I’ve never seen the man asleep before, and I pause to take it in.
My God, he’s handsome.
More handsome than I realize during the day, when he’s busy scowling at everyone who can see him and acting like he doesn’t need anyone or anything.
Now, though, his face is relaxed in sleep, and he looks far younger.
I know he’s only twenty-nine–only eight years older than me–but this is the first time I’ve seen him looking his age rather than like a forty-five-year-old man.
His cheeks are rounder, the furrow between his brows relaxed, and when he twitches, his mouth moves and shows off one of his dimples.
I catch my breath at that, because it increases the relaxed feel of him. I wonder if this is what he looked like when he was younger. Before the weight of the world started trying to drag him down.
Or if he’s always been carrying that weight.
I wonder if he ever had the chance to be a child at all. Because the stories he’s told me haven’t included much youth.
He can’t maintain that facade in his sleep, though, and I move forward, fascinated at the sight of him. His hands are relaxed and open, his lips parted on deep, steady breaths.
And I want to take care of him so much that it makes my heart physically hurt.
I don’t know what this man has been through or where it happened, but he has scars and secrets he keeps to himself, and I don’t have to be psychic to think he’s hiding wounds so deep he may not even realize where they end and he begins.
If he had a childhood like I suspect, then he’s built an entire persona on the remains of someone else’s damage, and has spent his life certain that he doesn’t deserve anything more.
When someone tries to offer it to him, or gets too close to touching his wounds, he runs rather than letting them in.
Honestly, I’m surprised he’s stayed with Mars so long. It seems very unlike his pattern.
And I wonder, just for a moment, if he’d stay with me that same way if I were to fall for him. Or if he’d take one look at the emotions I tried to hand him and run, the way he runs when he accidentally admits something vulnerable.
I realize now that I’ve just voiced the phrase ‘fall for him’ in my head and shake myself firmly.
What’s wrong with me tonight? Mars and Orion have been nothing but kind to me, and here I am, a schoolgirl with crushes that I won’t stop poking at, acting like I have any right to anything more than they’ve given me.
Silly girl.
I know better.
Bending over, I untie one boot and then the other, then slips them off his feet so he can fit more comfortably on the couch.
I get the blanket off the back of the couch and lay it gently over Orion’s body, then tuck it in around the edges.
It’s still getting cold at night, and there’s no protective bed for him down here.
I put my fingertips to his cheek, wondering if perhaps I should wake him and send him to bed, but decide against it. His lashes are fluttering against his cheeks with dreams, and I don’t to disturb that sort of rest. If he’s managed to sleep, I’m not going to destroy that for him.
Then, so abruptly it scares me, his fingers come up around my wrist and he squeezes. His eyes open a bit and look up at me, bleary and unfocused.
“Time is it?” he asks.
“Maybe 2:30,” I reply. “Don’t wake up. Sleep.”
Instead of drifting back off, though, he pulls sharply on my wrist. “You don’t wake up. Stay.”
My smile is soft and gentle, and holds far too much affection. “Orion, it’s 2:30. I need to go to bed, not bother you.”
He pulls me down to the couch, though, and then turns so I’m tucked into the front of his body.
His arms come around me and pull me back until I’m flush with him, and then tucks the blanket around me.
And God, he’s on fire. I thought he might be cold but he’s a furnace, a flame in the shape of a man, and when he rocks his hips against me I realize he’s also rock hard.
My body erupts in matching flame, days of tension between us suddenly coalescing into this one moment, and I have to physically stop myself from rubbing my ass against his cock. It’s not right, I tell myself. It’s not right. You barely know him. You know he’s running from something.
You know he’ll probably run from you.
The thing is, I don’t think I do know that.
I think he’d say it. But I don’t think he’d mean it–or that I would believe it.
“Orion,” I whisper. I don’t have anything else to say. No protest or encouragement. I just want to taste his name on my tongue.
“Stay,” he says again. “If it’s 2:30, Arden, you’re right on time. Because only good things happen after 2.”
His breathing goes deep and even again then, and I hold my own breath and listen to him for a long, slow moment.
Only good things happen after 2.
And he asked me to stay.
No one has ever asked me to stay before, and it feels... dangerous. Like there’s something actually at stake if I admit that I want to. Like he’s started a very risky game asking it of me, and we’re both tempting fate, here.
Both daring the universe to hurt us if we stop running and just sit together.
But holy fuck, do I want to. I want to believe him when he says that only good things happen at this time of night, and believe he knows what he’s talking about when he asks me to stay. That this is more than just a sleepy wish, but something that has true emotion and thought behind it.
I want to believe that he’s been planning this for days and has just now managed to say it.
Because the thought of someone actually wanting me to stay–of Orion wanting me here, with him–is so delicious, so wonderful, that I would do just about anything to make it true.
I snuggle further into his arms, trail one careful nail along the scar on his arm, and then close my eyes, exhausted, and find my way toward sleep. I didn’t think I’d be able to. I thought my brain was too awake.
But it turns out I just needed to feel as if I finally found home to do it.