Here’s where I have to tread very, very carefully. If I admit to him—to myself—the truth, this arrangement I’m proposing, will be entirely off the table. If I admit how damn much I feel about Oliver Bergman when I’m promising to fuck him senseless and satisfy this ravenous craving between us with not a drop of emotion involved, he will shut this down and for very good reason.
Because if he knows what I feel, it would give him permission to feel that, too. And that’s exactly what he’s asked me to promise not to do to him, what I will not do, when I know how this ends. Me leaving. Him living. Happily. Without me.
“I have never hated you,” I tell him quietly, keeping my hands to myself, needing him to hear me, to understand, to believe me.
“Then, if not hate, what was the past two years, Hayes?”
I stare at him, knowing I can’t tell him what I’m thinking: That was doing everything in my power not to end up exactly where we are—loathing you for what you have while longing for who you are, aching for the person who’s gained everything I’m about to lose, wanting you more than I want my next breath.
“I hated how I felt around you.” It’s an incomplete truth, but it isn’t a lie.
“Likewise,” he fires back. “But you didn’t see me being an asshole.”
“Not overtly, but you found plenty of ways to get under my skin. You just did it with a smile.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “I had to give it back to you somehow.”
“Yes, well, I’m not the warm-and-fuzzy type to begin with. Having to rub shoulders with you was not going to bring out my nonexistent friendly side, especially when I was attracted to you.”
His mouth parts. “Wait, you’ve been attracted to me—”
“Since I fucking saw you? Yes.”
And I resented you for it, I almost admit. I resented how happy you were, how gorgeous and young and promising. How content you were, when I was anything but.
“It was irritating as fuck,” I gruff. “It still is.”
His mouth quirks. A faint blush stains his cheeks. “But you wanted me. You couldn’t stand me, but you wanted me. You still do.”
I hold his eyes. “Yes.”
He bites his lip, staring at me. “So…it wouldn’t change anything. Same dynamic as always, professional at work. And when we’re home—”
“Very unprofessional,” I promise him.
A smile lights up his face. His blush deepens. Then he schools his expression and offers his hand. “Deal.”
I stare at his hand, then glance up, meeting his eyes. I slap away his hand, wrench him by the shirt, and drag him into my arms. “I’m going to kiss you.”
He nods. “I’m good with that.”
“But first, you’re going to tell me who the fuck walked into your house like he owned it and kissed you first.”
“My cheek,” Oliver says. “He kissed my cheek.”
I growl as I walk him backward until he’s up against the wall and I’m pressing him there. “Tell me.”
Oliver rolls his lips between his mouth, then says, “Don’t get mad.”
“Bergman,” I warn.
“It was my brother.”
I stare at him, feeling like the floor has dropped out from underneath me. “Your brother?”
Oliver’s trying very hard not to smile. “Also, that night when we were in the kitchen and a woman showed up outside my place? That was my sister.”
“Jesus.” I rake a hand through my hair, setting distance between us. “How many fucking siblings do you have?”
His smile wins, brightening his face. “Six.”
“Six!” I blink. “There are six more of you running around? God help us.”
“Shut up.” He grips my shirt and pulls me close. “Now do you feel like an ass?”
I stare at his mouth, at that smile that won’t leave, that I want to kiss until it’s a gasp of dizzied pleasure, wide with wild abandon. “A little,” I admit.
“Hayes.”
“Hmm,” I tell his mouth.
“Up here.”
Reluctantly, I tear my gaze from his lips to his eyes. “What?”
His eyes search mine. “Now that you know it was my brother and your little territorial display was unnecessary, do you still want m—”
“Don’t bother finishing that question, Oliver Bergman.”
He swallows. “Okay.”
I slip my hands around his ribs, the powerful, lithe muscles knit to his torso. “I want you. And don’t you dare ask me again.”
“Okay,” he whispers. And then he undoes me.
So simply, so easily, totally unaware of the power he holds. Pushing off the wall, Oliver clasps my face, then presses the softest, slowest kiss to my mouth. His fingertips work along my scalp, his thumbs slipping into the divots of my face where, not that I’ve been beardless once in over a decade, dimples form on the rare occasion that I smile.
“I really wish we could get this started right now,” he says.
I groan as he kisses the corner of my mouth, the sensitive space behind my ear. “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
He sighs against my skin, making me shiver. “There’s just one small hiccup in that plan.”
I slip my hands beneath his shirt, touch his skin, his body, because I have to. “What hiccup is that?” I pull away, holding his eyes, seeing the smudges beneath them, the fatigue he hid so well with Linnea. “Do you feel ill again?”
Just as I say that, I notice the monitor that connects to Linnea’s room is bright, lit up as she mutters something in her sleep.
I glare at the monitor, then back at Oliver. We definitely can’t do what I want with a kid down the hall. “Mother fuck.”
He smiles tightly, then leans in for one more of those slow, soft kisses that makes my aching legs turn boneless. “Get some sleep, Hayes.” Stepping back, he looks so infuriatingly pleased, I nearly tackle him to the wall. “You’ll need it for when I get my hands on you.”
I snort, while stepping into my shoes, opening his back door. “That’s precious. You think I need a warning.”
“Generally, I consider it polite to give someone a heads-up when they’re about to be demolished by so many orgasms, so many ways, they’ll forget their own birthday, but—” He shrugs. “What do I know?”
Spinning, I face him as we stand on his threshold. Oliver stares at me, looking much too smug.
“Demolished, hmm?” I close the distance between us, tucking a hair behind his ear, my mouth lowered there. “When I’m done with you,” I whisper, “you’re going to have forgotten much more than that, Oliver Bergman. Every moment of pleasure another soul has given you, even pleasure at your own fucking hand will be gone. I will obliterate it and ruin you for anything but my touch and my mouth and my cock. That’s a promise.”
Oliver glares at me. “Is that a challenge, Hayes?”
“It’s whatever you want to call it, sweetheart. It’s all going to end the same. You. Wrecked.”
He tips his chin, looking me over. “Then it’s on. Pistols at dawn.”
I frown. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You clearly haven’t read enough historical romances.”
“Fucking correct. I’ve never read one. And I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“That’s how you threw down the gauntlet, challenged a man to a duel. And I challenge you tomorrow morning. Your place or mine. One of us will come out the victor.”
I bite my lip. “Is this your deeply nerdy way of saying you want to fuck first thing in the morning?”
“Yep. Linnie gets up at the butt-crack of dawn in the morning. I’ll be back by seven and very, very ready to take you down. Or go down on you. Or both.”
Heat rushes through me. I drag him close again, kiss him, battling his tongue, drinking in his ragged breaths. Part of me wants to tell him no. I know how I feel when I wake up, how everything fucking hurts, how slow and sore I am.
But the thought of telling him no feels physically impossible. I want him too badly. I’ll…set an alarm. Wake myself up in time. Take a hot shower, limber up in time for when he shows up.
With one last kiss, a slow tug of his bottom lip, I pull away. “I’ll text you the code. Just let yourself in.”
Oliver stands there, flushed, breathless. “Okay.”
I turn away, slip out of his house, before I’m tempted to kiss him again, to torture us any further.
As I stroll from his yard to mine, for the first time in so, so long, I feel the buoyant pleasure of having something to look forward to. Peering up at the stars, full of rare, real joy, I smile.
21
GAVIN
Playlist: “Die for You,” LÉON
After a night of shit sleep, riddled with filthy fantasies starring Oliver, I wake up in a foul mood to the sound of my alarm. The world’s bright as my eyes blink open. Every fucking thing, including my deeply unsatisfied, aching-stiff cock, hurts like hell. My body’s in its usual agony. I feel every vertebra in my spine. The knot tightening my neck, tension banding around my temples. The first bend of my knee makes an unstoppable groan creak out of me.
I feel deeply entitled to the sour outlook with which I greet the day.
I’m too sore and miserable to go all the way into the kitchen and make myself a coffee. Instead, I piss, brush my teeth, splash my face, then stand at the sink, groaning at my reflection, the lines etched by pain, the dark circles under my eyes. “Fuck.”