She laughed and it did something to the inside of my chest. I had put tears in her eyes first, but somehow she was amazing enough to understand the stuff I did better than I did myself, and now she was laughing about the disaster of it all. It was like the sun coming through the clouds on a stormy day. She was everything bright the darkness tried to swallow and I wanted inside of her so bad that I couldn’t see straight.
I pushed her up against the side of the battered car and closed my mouth over hers. I tunneled my fingers through the hair at her temples and kissed her with every bit of urgency I had. The funny thing was, I had to let go of some of the other stuff I was always holding on to in order to get the message across to her, and with the press of her mouth against mine, the brush of her tongue across my own, I couldn’t explain it but I suddenly felt lighter.
“I want to take you home and take you to bed.” I sounded rough. There was no smoothness in my typically practiced twang. I sounded impatient and needy, two things I don’t think I had ever been before this girl.
“I want that, too.” Her hands were back under my shirt and running up and down my rib cage. She was breathing hard as well and she kept stroking her tongue over the dip in the center of her top lip like she was tasting me forever and ever. Her dark gaze was softer than the night sky above us, but her eyes glittered with just as many points of light. She angled her head back so that we were looking at each other and some of the heady passion thrumming between us went the way of something more serious.
“Before I go home with you, Asa, you have to do something for me.”
I hated ultimatums, but for her, at this moment, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t agree to do. “I’ll do my best. That’s all I can do, Red.”
She sighed and leaned forward so that her cheek was resting against where my heart was thundering in my chest. It was so sweet, so touching, and so unlike anything that had ever happened to me in my life that I almost pushed her away because I simply didn’t know what to do with it.
“I like you, Asa. I like you more than I think is wise for either one of us, but I can’t keep this up. I can’t keep dodging everything you keep throwing in the way of doing this thing together if you can’t tell me one thing, one simple thing, that you like about yourself as well. I get that you did bad things and were a bad man, but part of moving past that is realizing you aren’t there anymore. If you can’t do that, I can’t do this.”
She pulled back and I could see the resolve and the seriousness stamped all over her arrestingly perfect face. The gauntlet had been thrown down and she was making me decide what to do with it. I dug my fingers into her hips and tried to smile at her around the bands tightening in my chest.
“I like that you like me more than is wise. Does that count?” She didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t do anything but stare at me until I sighed and let my head fall back on my neck so that I was staring up at the night sky. “One thing?”
“Just one.” Her voice was quiet and she sounded sad, but not for herself, and I didn’t blame her. What she’d asked me to do shouldn’t be that difficult of a task to complete, but for me it felt nearly impossible.
I was quiet for a minute. I had to think. Liking or not liking myself wasn’t something I invested a lot of time thinking about. I knew what I had done, where I had been, and I knew I was never going back there. That was what I tended to focus on, not what I was doing now that I had my sister back in my life and a whole bunch of other people invested in me. I pulled her back against my chest and rubbed my chin on the crown of her head. Something inside of me fractured off and settled into a warm hot place when she didn’t hesitate to wrap her arms back around my waist to hold me in return.
“I like that even though Ayden and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, and even when she has really pissed me off, I’ve never not loved her. Even when I didn’t know how to love, when all I was doing was looking out for number one, I still loved her, and I like that I know how to do it right now. I like that I haven’t wasted the second chance I was given to be her big brother and ruined it … at least not yet.”
She made a whimpering sound where she was buried into the center of my chest and I felt her fingers curl into the base of my spine right above my ass.
“Have you ever told her that?”
I blinked a little as she pulled back and smoothed a hand over her long hair.
“No. But I’ve apologized to her more times than I can count.”
Her long lashes dipped down over her gaze as she stepped all the way out of my embrace. “When she comes to town next week, tell her that, Asa. Apologizing for what happened or what might happen is a waste of an opportunity to tell her that you like who you are for her now. That’s the moment you need to focus on with her.”
We stared at each other for a long, intense moment until she reached up and put a hand on each of my cheeks and pulled me down for a smacking kiss. “Now take me home and take me to bed.”
Thank fuck. That was something I could do without all the introspection and soul-scraping thought.
I kissed her back and put her hastily in the Nova so we could race back to her apartment on Capitol Hill. When I parked in front of the Victorian, it was a stroke to my ego that she seemed just as eager to get through the front door as I did. She threw her purse absently on the small table by the door and her keys hit the floor with a clatter as I shut the door behind us. She turned around to face me and I felt every predatory instinct I still harbored claw at me to pounce on her to make her submit and give me everything I wanted. I started to prowl toward her, and whatever she saw on my face must have startled her because she took a stumbling step back. Finally she was getting smart and running away from me. Too bad she had nowhere to go and was now trapped in a room with my raging desire and the raw, unsatisfied edge she had sharpened with her little game at the warehouse.