“Um … is it working?” he asks with his own brows raised. “You know, Brooke,” he starts, but I can't take anymore of the weird sad half-smiles and the excuses. Clearly, Zayden is not ready for a relationship and you know what? Maybe I'm not either. I shouldn't cling to him when I can't even face the gaping yawn of loneliness inside of me. Besides, he's right: I'm only twenty-two. I have my whole life ahead of me. I don't need to get romantically involved with anyone for a while.
“Don't. Just,” I pause as Dodger starts humping my leg, scooting him away with my heel. The little gray and white dog trots away and then … tries to go at it with the cat. Fortunately he gets a nice curved claw in the nose. Serves him right. I look up at Zayden and shove some hair away from my face. “Don't make anymore excuses, okay? However you feel, whatever you feel, it's fine. I get it.”
Zayden looks a little skeptical, but he purses his lips and then nods, the black metal balls on his lip rings spinning as he plays with them with his tongue.
“Gotcha,” he says and then gestures for me to follow him. “C'mere. I want to show you something.”
I follow him into the kitchen and over to the back door, watching in awe as he opens it to reveal a giant trampoline with netted sides.
“Holy crap,” I say as we move outside and into the slight drizzle. “Where the frick did this come from?”
“Some guy on Craigslist,” he says and then grins at me when I give him a look. “What? He just wanted to get rid of it. Only cost me fifty bucks. I wanted the girls to have something fun to remember me by.”
A wave of sadness crashes over me at the thought, but I push it back. The night's too quiet, too pretty, for those kinds of thoughts. When I glance up, the porch lights turn the falling needles of the trees into white slices in the dark.
“Jump with me?” Zayden asks with a sharp grin. “I made sure to put Sadie upstairs, so we could hang out down here, watch a movie, or … whatever else.”
“I see,” I say as I kick off my heels and move across the wet lawn to the edge of the trampoline. “You want me to jump on this thing in a trench coat and lingerie?”
“Nooooo,” Zay says as he comes up next to me and spins around to lean his back against the trampoline, his green eyes sparkling. “I want you to jump on this thing in just lingerie. Lose the coat.” He gestures with his thumb and then grabs the edge of the netting, pulling it back and climbing in. As soon as he's up there, he turns and reaches out a hand for me.
I stare at it for a long moment before I decide to take it. What the hell? I had a shitty night tonight, so I may as well go for it.
I climb up and shrug my coat off, noticing Zayden's appreciative smile as he takes my hands and pulls me into the center of the wet trampoline, my skin prickling under the cold air and the icy droplets.
“Wait,” Zay says as he reaches back and grabs his shirt, tearing it up and over his head with a bright grin. “It's not fair if you're the only half-naked person out here.”
“You just want to show off your chest, admit it,” I say as Zayden wiggles his eyebrows at me and starts to jump, spinning in a circle as I laugh at his ridiculousness. “You are so weird,” I say, but it doesn't faze him and it makes me forget all about Dan the Douche and the strip club and everything else.
“Bounce with me, Smarty-Pants,” he says as pauses and reaches out to take my hands, droplets sliding across the firm, hard muscles in his chest and abdomen. It's hard for me to pull my eyes away and focus on his face.
“Do you know how bad my boobs are going to jiggle when I do that?”
“Um, yeah. Clearly that's the whole reason I asked,” he jokes, sticking out his tongue and tilting his head to the side. I can see that the goofiness is amped up tonight, probably in some super secret genius way of his to make everything seem less heavy, less emotional. Zayden thinks he's stupid—or at least he pretends to think he's stupid—but I know he's a smart guy. “Bounce those boobs for me, baby.”
“You're alliterating again,” I tell him, but take a deep breath and start to jump anyway. It's so weird. I haven't been on a trampoline since I was fifteen, but holy crap it's fun. I try not to scream as Zayden bounces into my feet and propels me into the air, catching me on my way down and pulling me against his chest.
We fall to the surface of the trampoline and then in all that cold air and darkness, there's just suddenly this explosion of warmth as Zay's body slides against mine, as his mouth finds mine, his tongue slicking across my own.
I groan and lean into him, my body draped over his, those big tattooed hands of his gripping my ass, fingers caught in the lace of my red panties. My hair is already wet and heavy, sticking to the back of my neck, but it's easy to ignore with the hard press of Zay's erection through his jeans.