He watched Talia’s face for her reaction. Jealousy? Surprise? It was pretty bad form to talk about an ex the morning after. But he owed it to Talia to explain.
She only nodded, looking at him. Absorbing the information.
“I moved here after she left me. I had to get out, obviously. She kept the apartment, and I didn’t want to stay anywhere near there. I didn’t want to run into her. I didn’t want our lives to overlap.”
“That sucks,” Talia said, her face softening. “I’m really sorry. I get it if you’re not ready for something. I’m not looking for that, either.”
“It’s not about being ready,” he said. I’m ready.
He didn’t say that last part out loud, thank God, but the thought came to him whole and unbidden, a perfect kernel of capital-T Truth. Like one of the sparks that would light up in his mind in the middle of the office, staring at a web of evidence that didn’t make sense, until suddenly the lines connected and clicked into place, and the puzzle was clear.
He was ready. He’d been ready. But.
But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he couldn’t. Period.
“There was this guy,” he said. “My testimony locked him up. But he got out early on probation anyway. Lisa was a nurse. She was picking up lunch at the bodega across the street from the hospital where she worked and this guy came up to her. Said her name. Asked how I was doing.”
He watched Talia’s face. Information dawned in her eyes even before he said it.
That was the thing about her. He could see her whole thought process unfold. He could track how quickly she got there. How much she just…got it.
“Lisa asked the guy how she knew him. Thought maybe he was a patient. An old buddy of mine. You know how it is.” Talia nodded. “But then the guy said, ‘Tell Bishop I’m back.’ And Lisa—” He shook his head, remembering. “She told me he gave her this look. This smile, you know? But not a smile. The kind of smile that left her fucking terrified. I knew who it was. She came home and told me, and I immediately knew. Talia.” He tried to explain. He had to make her understand. “She was so scared.”
“I would have been, too,” Talia said. “Please tell me he didn’t do anything.”
Reed nodded. “It was okay. She didn’t go to work for a few days. We put out an extra security detail. He got picked up not long after that for violating his parole. He’s still locked away. There’s not much he can do. But the point is, Talia, I’m not a good guy to be around.”
She raised her eyebrow in a way that immediately made him feel stupid. It made sense in his head. This whole thing, if only she could understand it.
But that look she gave him. It was like for everything she got, for all the ways she was immediately with him, she didn’t get this. And she had to.
“Did Lisa want you to quit?” she asked.
“Yeah. Do something where I’m not out on the street.”
“I don’t see that being your thing,” she said.
He shrugged, palms up. Half apology. Half, well, fuck the world and the horse it rode in on. What else was he supposed to do?
“Last night was wonderful, Talia,” he said. And he meant it. “But it can’t happen again. Lisa was right. I can’t be with anyone. Not right now. I just can’t do that to them. Where I am in my life, what I do, the people I’m around. This case in particular. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk you.”
He wanted to draw her into his arms. Pull her hair out of that tidy bun and feel it cascade through his fingers. Take that shirt off, undo her jeans. Lie with their limbs tangled together in the early morning sun, nowhere to be but with each other.
But he meant what he said. She must have known it, too, because she took a step back, and then another. And then she was suddenly moving.
He followed her back to the bedroom. “What are you doing?”
She reached for her suitcase and started throwing things into it. Clothes, shoes, anything she could grab.
He said her name, but she didn’t stop. “Talia,” he said again. “Slow down.”
“I get that you need your space,” she said as she stepped past him and into the bathroom. “You don’t want to be living with someone, and definitely not me. It’s a really big ask, and I can’t keep having you do it. Just give me a second to pack and I’ll find a new place to stay.”
She went through like a tornado, picking up her things. Toothbrush, toothpaste, her creams and sprays from the sink. Her razor, deodorant, that thing that looked like a grilled cheese maker that she’d plugged in last night to make her hair curl that way.
He’d been annoyed by the creep of her stuff into his space. Messy was an understatement. Her shit got everywhere, and there was a lot of it.
But now, as she gathered it up and shoved it in her suitcase, he saw all the empty places she would leave behind.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’m not asking you to leave.”
“You don’t have to ask. I’m doing it anyway.”
He tried again. “I don’t want you to leave.”
That made her stop, socks in her hand, overstuffed suitcase at her feet.
He licked his lips. He couldn’t believe he’d just said that.
“You don’t have to leave,” he tried again, aiming for something more neutral. “It’s not a big deal. I just felt like I should tell you. About Lisa, about my job. What’s at stake. I know it’s not like you have all sorts of places where you can crash for this amount of time. So don’t worry about it. Please. I just have to go to the office today and get some work done. I promise, I’ll be back.”
She looked at her suitcase, then at him. For the first time since he’d known her, her face was unreadable. At least to him.
“Are you sure?” she said.
He nodded.
“It was wonderful,” he said again. He didn’t want her to think it had been bad. Oh God. It had not been bad. “But—”
“I get it.” She held up a hand to stop him. “It’s not going to happen again.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, looked at the socks balled in her fist, and threw them not into the suitcase but at him.
He caught them in one hand. Tossed them in the air. Tossed them back into the open drawer.
“Get out of here,” she said. “Go save the world, or whatever. I’ll see you later.”
He nodded. He didn’t want to leave.
But he’d started this mess. Now all he could do was grab his bag, his keys, and be gone.
Chapter Ten
Talia watched Reed leave the apartment. She told herself to get going, get moving, go about her day as briskly and easily as he did.
This wasn’t supposed to be a feel-bad event. This was a hot fuck with a hot guy and life moving on. This was, of course, for the best.
So why couldn’t she drag her ass out the door? Why couldn’t she shrug and move on?
It wasn’t like she’d never had sex with someone only once, then called it quits. It wasn’t like she’d never had a one-night stand.
Just not one where she was already, sort of, technically, living with the guy. Where when he went out the next day, she was still in his home, lying on his sheets, thinking of him.
Last night wasn’t just sex with no strings attached. She was kidding herself if she could pretend that. It was the best sex of her life. The best non-date, too.
The food. The laughter. His touch. How it felt to fall asleep in his arms and wake throughout the night and still feel him there.
When she’d put on his shirt that morning, enveloped in the smell of him, she’d imagined his hands all over her again, and all she’d wanted was more.
Even when she’d known she shouldn’t. Even when she’d been thinking about how she had to focus on practicing her steps, getting ready for the moment the curtain rose and the spotlight zeroed in not on Stacey, not on some other, better, brighter dancer, but on her. Even when a voice inside had warned her not to risk it all for some guy who wouldn’t be worth it, i
n the end.
But this one, she’d thought. What if this one is different?
Then she’d stepped into the kitchen and seen the coffee pot with barely a quarter inch of liquid in the bottom.
It was just a coffee pot. How could she get such a sinking feeling from some glass?
But between the dregs in the pot and the set of his shoulders over the sink, he didn’t have to say anything. She knew.
It’s better this way.
He was doing her a favor. He may have been physically available, but emotionally? He had a steel trap locked around his heart. It didn’t take X-ray vision to know his insides were still bloody and raw.
So she’d better get up, get out of bed, and spend her Sunday rehearsing in the empty studio as if nothing had happened.
Since it was obvious that, to him, it hadn’t.
Talia came home late that evening. But Reed came home even later.
She’d expected him to be there when she walked in the door and was surprised by darkness instead. She had to remind herself that they didn’t owe each other anything. They weren’t lovers. They weren’t even roommates. They were just…happenstance. Pure coincidence.
As soon as this weird limbo she was in came to an end, the thing that was “they” would disappear. And that would be that.
She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and got into bed. She was tempted to text her friends and fill them in on the rise and precipitous fall of this latest plot twist in her life. But she needed to go to sleep—if only to make sure that she was out cold when he came home, so she wouldn’t be tempted to see him.
But no matter how tired she was, she couldn’t make her mind stop churning. She was awake when she heard the front door open and close. Still awake to the sounds of him in the kitchen, then the bathroom, then the click of the lights turning off in the apartment.
When the noises stilled, she guessed he was lying on the couch. Not sleeping in bed with her like he had last night. But choosing that too-small, uncomfortable couch, alone.
Thinking about the couch was dangerous. It made her think of how his body didn’t fit on there.
And that only made her think of how it fit, instead, with her. His large palms spanning her body. His mouth covering hers. Her hands on his smooth head pressing him down between her thighs.
She squeezed her legs together under the bed. His bed, with his sheets, his scent, his presence everywhere. Fuck.
She could not slip a hand under the covers and indulge in the fantasy. They’d agreed not to do that anymore, which meant no thinking about him that way. No letting herself go there. At all.
She wondered if he was asleep yet. At one point last night she’d woken up and caught sight of him close to her, sleeping. Maybe she’d been imagining it, but he’d looked so peaceful then, like there was less of that worry that tightened his brow.
It seemed too intimate a thing to know how his face softened, how his chest rose and fell with his breathing. She rolled onto her stomach to quell the thoughts.
But there was Reedness on the pillowcase, Reedness touching every inch of her skin. It wouldn’t let her forget that she was resting her head right where he’d rested his own the night before.
God, she sounded like she was twelve years old and gossiping with Jessie in homeroom. I touched the same pencil he touched! I breathed the same air molecules as him!
But she wasn’t twelve anymore. All she had to do was think of Max Matthers if she needed a reminder of why making eyes at cute boys only landed her in trouble.
Besides, Reed had been clear. This was an arrangement of convenience, to make up for what had been a night of terrible inconvenience.
She yanked her hand out of her pajama pants. She’d barely realized it had gone there of its own accord, thinking of Reed and his tattoos, Reed and his silences, Reed and the way he’d licked her to ecstasy the night before.
Was he okay? She wished she knew for sure if he was settled in and sleeping. Just so she could stop wondering about it.
It wasn’t like she wanted to see him. Not after she’d just been touching her clit fantasizing about him in his bed right after swearing up and down that there was nothing going on between them and she was 100 percent on board with making sure their little lapse never happened again.
He was practically made of stone—she probably hadn’t crossed his mind again. He would have gone to work, focused on murderers and drug dealers—a real boner killer, she was sure—and now he was bagged out on the couch, exhausted, not wanting to be disturbed.
She’d just tiptoe out, take a quick peek, and tiptoe back to the bedroom. They wouldn’t interact. He’d never even know.
But when she slowly, quietly, slid open the door, she froze.
At first it just sounded like breathing, and she was glad because that meant he was definitely there, and definitely asleep, so she could definitely do the same.
But then she listened closer, and it wasn’t breathing. Or it was, but it was heavy breathing. Unsteady breathing. Not the full, slow, steady rhythm of sleep but something quick and fast and hard. Strained. Held back, but escaping anyway.
She took a quiet step forward on her bare feet, using all her dancer training to tread as lightly as possible, not making a sound.
Then she heard it. Not just his breathing, but something else. A fast, steady shake of the cushions. Fabric moving.
Was he—?
No. It couldn’t be. She moved closer.
The sounds were unmistakable now: his hard panting, the work of his hand.
She came up over the couch. His eyes were closed, pinched shut and strained. His T-shirt was pulled up slightly, his sweats pulled down. His cock was thick and hard and full in his hand, and he was pumping it steadily, fondling his balls with one hand while he worked his shaft with the other.
Talia’s heart stopped. Her lungs, too. Everything in her was frozen. This was not what she’d expected to find.
Could she back away without him noticing? Would her legs hold her up that long, or would she collapse into a puddle of want on the floor? Between her thighs was an ache so deep she thought it might break her. He was so, so beautiful, and she couldn’t deny for another second longer that she wanted him so, so much.
But he’d also been so, so clear that she couldn’t have him. He was just releasing some steam, a quick jerk-off before bed. If he’d wanted to sleep with her again, obviously he knew where to find her. All he had to do was knock on the door.
He didn’t want her. He’d said that. She’d heard that. She knew it was true.
But then his lips parted, a faint moan escaping. And he whispered— Oh God, she could have sworn she heard him whisper “Talia” as he stroked his hard cock.
She leaned over him. His eyes flew open wildly as she parted her lips and whispered, “Yes?”
Chapter Eleven
Reed froze, the hand wrapped around his dick arrested mid-stroke.
This wasn’t happening. He had to be dreaming.
He’d fallen asleep with a hard-on and was now hallucinating that Talia herself was standing at the foot of the couch in the darkness, barely visible in the moonlight through the living room window highlighting streaks in her hair.
Standing at the foot of the couch, then climbing onto the couch, climbing up him, letting her breasts graze his thighs, her lips murmuring over his balls, his cock, his knuckles as his hand dropped his shaft and let his hard—now even harder—dick stand up straight.
Then kissing her way up his stomach, his chest, until her body hovered over him, almost on top of him, almost not touching, so maddeningly not-quite-either-way, as she dipped her lips low to his ear and murmured, “Were you talking to me?”
If this was a dream, it was the best goddamn dream he’d ever had.
He groaned as she rested her body on his. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Oops.” Her fingers tiptoed down his stomach to where his hand had just been.
How could it be the
same movement but feel so much better when it was her fingers around his shaft, her wrist pulling up and down?
His hips bucked up, already straining to be inside her. His cock slid over the fabric of her pajama pants.
“We said we weren’t going to do this,” she said, grinding her clit against the head of his dick, their clothes like nothing between them.
“I know,” he said.
“You said it couldn’t happen again.”
“It can’t,” he said, then groaned again at the feel of her body moving with his.
He cupped her ass in his palms, feeling her warmth against his cock. Fuck these pajamas. Fuck what he’d said about keeping their distance. He needed to tear them off her, now.
Sliding his hands under the pants, he pushed her underwear aside. He ran a finger along the seam of her wetness before pressing it inside. Just enough to play with her body. To show that for right now at least, it could be his.
“If this isn’t happening, then what are you doing?” she asked him, spreading her legs wider as she straddled him, letting him penetrate her more deeply.
“What am I doing?” He nipped at the sensitive side of her neck. “I’m not the one creeping around in the middle of the night while innocent people are sleeping.”
“You have a funny way of sleeping.” She began to pant, breathless, exaggerated, imitating him. He pushed a second finger inside her. Deeper this time, so her panting wasn’t pretend.
“You have a funny way of always hovering over me, scaring the crap out of me when I’m lying here,” he said.
“If this is what happens when you’re scared, I’d hate to see what happens when you’re turned on.” She wrapped her hand around his hard cock, giving an extra squeeze at the word this.
He groaned in her ear. “I told you. You’re not allowed to find out.”
“That sounds like a challenge.” She stroked him slowly, lightly, torturing him with her touch. “If I’m not allowed to turn you on, then what’s a girl to do?”
“Get creative, I guess,” he murmured, not even sure what he was saying, aware only of the sensations coursing through him, her body rubbing against him, the pressure on his dick, the heat surrounding his fingers. Not to mention the fact that he’d been getting closer and closer before she interrupted him, and now she was doing enough that he had to hold on if he didn’t want to finish right then and there.
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