“What are you lonely for?” I muttered.
“I don’t know. Maybe for home. Maybe the very thing I’ve been running from.”
Eyes weary, she laid her head down on my chest, and I shuddered out a breath. I ran my fingers through her hair, and she sighed. I loved having this time with her, regardless of the fact that I’d be picking up the pieces of my heart soon enough. As soon as she was done using me. And especially after she’d gone back to school.
I’d better have a strategy figured out by then. A plan to move on. Get over her.
Actually make money doing something I love.
“This whole time I told myself I was missing Miles,” she said, and her breath feathered across my skin. “I had this whole fantasy about our reunion . And here he is, in the same town as me. I saw him last night and the reality is so different.”
“What’s different?” I wanted to ask more about what he’d said and what they’d done, but I didn’t want to push her. I also probably didn’t want to know.
“I see myself a bit more through his eyes now,” she said. “I was just this girl who fell for this popular jock and didn’t know how to act or what to do with that. As it turns out, he didn’t really know how to act either. “
“It was like you lost a bit of yourself,” I said, going for honesty.
“I know I did. And I’ve repeated the same mistake the past three years,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, sometimes a girl needs sex. But I went to ridiculous lengths not to get to know anyone. To not let anyone get close.”
Something else was on the tip of her tongue. I could hear it in her voice. Something she wasn’t telling me. Something she was ashamed of. But I wasn’t going to press her about it. I had plenty of things to be ashamed of.
“I’ve never let anyone get close, either,” I said. Nobody except you. “The difference for me is that nobody has ever given me a reason to let them in.”
“Ever?” She looked up at me through lowered eyelashes.
I hesitated. “Ev . . . ever. Does that make me sound so shallow?”
“No,” she said, suddenly throwing her arms around my chest in a hug. “It just makes you sound honest.”
My hand came up and curled around her shoulder. My face went to her neck, and I breathed her in.
“I’ve always loved talking to you, Kai,” she said, running her hands up and down my back. “Always.”
“Is that what we’re doing here?” My lips met her ear. “Just talking?”
“I . . . don’t know,” she said, letting out a long sigh. “I’m not sure I really want to examine this. Not right now.”
My fingers gripped her waist, and I felt her tremble in my arms. “Sounds cool to me.”
Her hands traveled across my shoulders to grasp my hair. “The truth is . . . I liked what we did the other night.”
“Yeah?” I said, my lips coming dangerously close to her mouth. “What did you like?”
“The way you”—she looked from my lips to my eyes—“helped me forget.”
“It’s a hard habit to break, huh?” I said, and she stiffened in my grasp. Shit. I didn’t want to break this spell we were under. I didn’t want her to question her decision to come to my room. Even if it was to erase Miles from her mind. “That’s not how I meant it. It’s okay. I want you here.”
She visibly relaxed as her fingers resumed grazing my biceps. I loved the feeling of her hands on me. I closed my eyes and savored the way her fingers traced over my arms, across my shoulders, and then down my chest.
When she hooked a finger into the loop of my nipple ring, my eyes flew open.
“What do these feel like?” she asked, her eyes innocently roving over my pecs. Then she tugged at the hoop, and I groaned.
“Obviously pretty damn good,” I said, trying to get a handle on my breathing. “Rachel, I’m warning you.”
“What do you mean?” she said, her gaze not so innocent any longer. “What’ll happen if I keep doing this?”
Before I could respond, she bent her head and encircled my nipple with her tongue.
My dick immediately sprang to action. “Fuck, Rachel.”
“Do you like that?” Her voice was coy and sexy as hell. Now her lips closed over my hardened nipple. She slid the the tip of her tongue through the ring and sucked. All the pleasure receptors in my brain immediately went on high alert.
I grasped the back of her head as she moved to the other side, her mouth like a suction cup.
“Two can play this game.” Without any warning, I tugged her mouth up to mine and drove my tongue past her lips, deep and forceful. She grabbed my shoulders and whimpered against me.