Aerie sighed. "Canaan, I'm not going to bite you."
"But everything is fucked up." I felt a thickness in my throat. "So fucked up."
She rolled to her side, gazing at me steadily. "Yes, it is. And it's not just you. It's me, too. But this awkward silence, where you won't even let your hand accidentally touch mine? It's bullshit and I can't sleep like this. So unless you just want nothing else to do with me ever again, come closer, and let's get comfortable."
"I want everything to do with you." I breathed out slowly, shakily. "I just don't know where to start."
"Hold me." Her amber-green eyes found mine, held them. "Just hold me. It won't fix anything, but it's a start."
I shifted closer, extending my arm, and she nuzzled closer, lifted her head to rest it on my shoulder. We both breathed out, slow exhalations, releasing tension. She felt...right. Here in my arms, nestled against me. Even though everything was messed up and unsure, she still just...belonged.
God, that scared me.
"I can feel your mind spinning, Canaan," Aerie murmured sleepily.
"Can't seem to stop it."
She just murmured again, but I couldn't understand what she'd said because it had been mumbled as she drifted off to sleep. No such luck for me. I was honestly still exhausted, and should have been able to sleep, but I couldn't. I lay with Aerie in my arms, breathing in her scent, feeling her warmth against me, her softness and her curves, her breath on my neck. My heart was aching worse than ever, pounding, thudding, splitting.
How could I have run away from this? From her?
But then I remembered what I'd heard her say, that she was too afraid to risk actually being with me. So far, we'd danced around the idea of togetherness. We'd never discussed what we had. We'd had great sex, and a lot of it. Incredible, life-changing chemistry. But...did chemistry and wild sex equal...more? No, not really. If we weren't willing to talk about what our relationship was, where it was going, how long could it last? I'm not dumb or naive enough to think a real, lasting relationship can be based on nothing but sex and chemistry.
And she's unwilling to risk her heart with me. Which, I get. Honestly. After what Lex did to her, harboring that hurt and that betrayal and that mistrust is only natural. Her father left her, and her mom shackled them to a creepy old rich businessman who they never liked, and who probably gave them more reasons to mistrust men. Then Lex comes along and takes advantage of a young, nubile, naive, starry-eyed eighteen-year-old girl, uses her, gets her pregnant, stabs her in the back, and then...god, tells her to just go get an abortion? The regret I heard in her voice, the self-loathing, and the pain of the memory. How could she ever come back from that? How could she ever believe in men, or love again?
I get it.
Doesn't mean I like it, though. For me, I mean, selfishly speaking. I want more. I really do. I may not know how to go about getting there, especially with her, but...I've watched my older brothers all find love one after another, and I've seen them transformed into different kinds of men. Bast was always gruff and closed off and aloof, more concerned with survival, keeping the bar afloat, and ensuring the rest of us had some kind of stability when he was just a young man himself. And now? He's still gruff, but he's found his sense of humor, he's become more open, more involved. The good man that was buried deep inside his rough, tattooed shell has come out, and it's all due to Dru.
I've seen the similar transformations in Zane, Brock, and Bax, and now even my own twin is finding that love, finding his place in life, and it's taking him away from me.
And goddammit, I'm jealous. Of what he's found with Tate, and also I'm jealous of Tate because she gets him, she gets my twin. It's always been the two of us, making music and doing life. Now his life is hers. And I'm jealous of that.
And I want it with Aerie.
I feel myself drifting as these thoughts spin and circle and loop back. Wanting, but being afraid.
I don't have any huge trauma in my life that's holding me back. I mean, not really. Not like Aerie has.
There was Jenna, though. I don't think about her much, because it's past, it's over, and there's no point. But she did really do a lot to me in terms of making me wary of trusting women too far. Is that coloring the way I deal with Aerie? It's an old story, from when Corin and I first moved to LA. Could I have been more affected by Jenna that I've ever realized? Maybe.
Probably.
When Cor and I first moved down to LA, we had a great contract and a decent following. We found a shitty apartment in West Hollywood, and we played the LA rock scene, building our audience and honing our style as we worked with the label to put out our first album. With it came more success than we'd ever imagined. The audiences at our shows grew, and the size of the venues grew. The backstage experiences got more...interesting.
Girls would show up and want to have fun with us. No strings attached, no expectations, no promise of a call or even of seeing each other again. We were rock stars, and they just wanted a piece of us. Hell yeah. I was seventeen, so of course that was my dream come true. Being seventeen, having money, screaming fans, playing famous venues? Plus, the women. Hot-as-fuck chicks would just show up backstage, in our green room, and they'd strip off their tops and waggle their fine asses in their sexy little miniskirts, and they'd bang us and blow us and go on their merry way afterward without expecting jack shit in return. Who wouldn't love that?
Then I met Jenna. She was a sound tech at a club, and she wasn't impressed by me at all. She wore ripped jeans and tank tops and fitted hoodies, ball caps and sneakers. All girl and totally heterosexual, just tough, pragmatic, and no-nonsense. She painted her nails and wore rings and necklaces, watched girly romance movies and cried at the end, but if you called her on it, she'd slug you hard enough to leave bruises. She grew up with a bunch of brothers, grew up tough, grew up self-contained. Shitty home life, let's just put it that way. I asked her to coffee, asked her to dinner, asked her to shows...got told no a dozen times, but something about her kept me coming back for another rejection. Then, finally, she agreed to go out with me. Made it clear we weren't a thing. Just coffee. Told me she didn't expect me to change anything about my life just because she'd gone out with me on a date. One date became two, and by the third we were sleeping together at her apartment. She was intense, but quiet. Not a screamer, not effusive, but she was...intense. She'd shake and quaver and gasp, staring at me, and the look in her eyes would stir something inside me. She told me again and again that we weren't a thing, we were just friend with benefits. Don't change your life for me, she'd tell me, again and again, don't develop feelings for me.
I did anyway.
I stopped hooking up backstage, because it felt nasty and weird to go from nailing a groupie backstage to meeting Jenna for coffee and then going to her place and being with her. She assumed that was what was happening, and told me so in so many words. She didn't want anything real, just wanted to hang out, hook up, have the thing we had, which wasn't a thing.
I wanted more.
Jenna and I had our thing-that-wasn't-a-thing for several months, and I knew she was probably hooking up with other guys. Didn't know it for sure, but sometimes I'd call to see if she wanted to connect and she'd say she had other plans, was already out, something. Which, to me, meant she was with some other guy. Sure, okay, that's what it was for us.
I tried to keep it casual, tried to keep my emotions out of it because I knew she wasn't interested in me that way.
Eventually, curiosity and a desire for more got the better of me. After she and I had gone out and seen a movie and hooked up at her apartment, I lay in her bed with her. We were smoking a joint, still naked, Joni Mitchell playing in the background.
Are you ever going to want more than us being friends with benefits? I had asked.
She'd blown out smoke, glanced sideways at me: Nah, not really.
That had hurt: I'm not hooking up with anyone else.
Another of those long silent sideways glances: I am
.
Shit.
I went for broke: I want more. I like you. I feel things for you. We could be good together.
She took another drag, handed the roach to me: I don't want that. It's not you, it's not that you're not a good guy. You'd be a great boyfriend. The fact that you're not hooking up with the groupies when I know for a fact how many of them are throwing themselves at you every show you play says a lot. But I'm sorry, Cane, I just don't want more. Not with you, not with anyone.
I had lain silently, smoking, trying to contain the hurt: There's nothing I can do or say to change your mind?
She had shrugged, speaking through a mouthful of rolling smoke: Not really, no. My heart is broken. In the sense that it just doesn't work right, not in the sense that someone hurt me and I'm not over it yet. I'm just broken. Love doesn't interest me. You don't interest me like that. I enjoy hanging out with you and I like fucking you, but that's all it is, and that's all it'll ever be.
What was I supposed to say to that? There wasn't anything. Eventually I had gotten up, gotten dressed, and got ready to leave. Jenna had stayed naked, watching me as she lounged lazily on her bed, stoned and divorced from the fact that I was hurting.
She'd waved as I paused at the door: If you have feelings for me you can't get over, then it's probably best we don't see each other again. I'd rather hurt you a little now, like this, than let you think I'll ever change and risk hurting you more later.
I had laughed bitterly: Already hurts quite a bit, Jen.
Yeah, well...I told you from the start what this was. I told you not to change your life for this--she had traipsed naked across the apartment to stand in front of me, perhaps intentionally teasing me with the fact that she knew I was crazy attracted to her: best advice I can give you, Cane, is to lose my number and forget about me.
So I had.
I left, deleted her number, and forgot about her. We'd never taken pictures together, so there really was no evidence of her in my life except for my memories. Which faded.
Except when other women came into my life, and there were plenty of them after that. Groupies who wanted more than one night, who presented tempting opportunities for something more than backstage hookups or tour bus shenanigans. I never took those opportunities, because deep down, I remembered Jenna, and the casual, off-hand way she had dismissed me and my feelings. Why bother? Better to go for the low-hanging fruit. The easy conquests. A girl I could bang on the tour bus, smoke a bit with, drink a bit with, and then say goodbye to as I went to the next show. Eventually, that was the habit, and it was easy, and it was fun, and I stopped questioning it.
Until now.
Until Aerie.
I hadn't even thought about Jenna in years. But in the back of my mind, she was always there. Standing naked in front of me, looking up at me dispassionately, understatedly beautiful but cold and disinterested as she crushed my nascent little dream of having a relationship.
Fuck, I couldn't sleep.
I'd started to drift, but thoughts of Jenna woke me up, and now I was just...awake.
I was holding Aerie and wondering what she would say to me. What would happen next?
Why would she show up like this? Take care of me, cook for me, and then ask me to hold her? Especially if she didn't want something more...
But why would she change her mind? I ran away, and she's going to change her mind about me being worth risking her heart over? Yeah, probably not.
Eventually, I managed to quiet my mind enough to relax. Not sleep, exactly, but just...drift.
But she's there, in my arms, in my mind, in my heart, confusing me, hurting me, scaring me, worrying me. I have no answers. Does she? Are there any answers?
10
Aerie
* * *
I woke up very, very slowly. I never nap, ever. But I really hadn't slept more than a handful of hours at a time in days, and I needed the sleep.
I was disoriented, at first.
Then I remembered I was in Seattle, with Canaan.
I was in his arms. He had his arm around me, and his chest was bare under my cheek. He was breathing slowly, evenly, but somehow I didn't think he was really asleep.
There was no window in this room, so there was no sense of the time. The only light came from a naked Edison bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling, which shed a warm orange glow, dull and soft and intimate.
"Canaan?"
"Mmm."
"I don't know why I'm here, if you want real honesty."
"Been wondering that myself."
"Why I'm here?"
"Mmm-hmmm. After the way I left, I'd think you'd want to be rid of me for good."
"Part of me does. But I also deserve more than the way you left. You deserve more. We deserve more."
"More what?"
"More...I don't know. Closure, at least."
"Closure."
I shifted to my side, levered up on my elbow, head propped in my hand. Canaan opened his eyes and stared at me sidelong. His eyes raked over me, taking in my bedhead--my hair had come loose from my bun as I slept and it was now loose and messy around my face--and my rumpled clothing. My tank top had ridden up as I slept, leaving my stomach bare, showing a hint of the bottom of my black sports bra. I'd chosen this outfit as the most comfortable, and also because it was, to me, the least sexy. It communicated, I thought, that I wasn't here to mess around, that I wasn't interested in trying to seduce him or allow us to fall back into chemistry rather than communication.
But the look in Canaan's eyes told me I had failed. He wanted me. It had been almost a week, now, since we'd last touched each other, and that was way longer than either of us had gone without sex since Tate and I had shown up in Ketchikan.
I was having trouble keeping my own libido under wraps, in all honesty. Especially when he lay there like that, shirtless, wearing nothing but tight, ripped, faded jeans, the button undone, the zipper only partway up. His abs were hard bulges and deep grooves, and his chest was firm and thick. His arms were toned and covered in sexy tattoos, and his hair was loose and messy and in his eyes, which were a deep rich chocolate brown, and wild and heated and hungry and dancing as they met mine.
"Don't look at me like that," I whispered.
"Like what?"
"Like I'm something to eat, and you're starving."
"If I'm looking at you like that, it's because it's how I'm feeling." He shifted closer to me, and his hand reached out to rest on my hip. "It's only been a few days, but it feels like an eternity since we were together in Baxter's bed." His eyes were sparkling, and his hand was roaming. "Remember?"
I breathed out shakily. "Remember? How could I forget? You blindfolded us. You made me come so many times I thought I was going to die from orgasm overload."
"That was the goal."
"Murder via orgasm? A dastardly plan if I've ever heard one." I couldn't help the banter; it just came so naturally.
And the way he was looking at me? The way his hand was trailing down my thigh, then back up to my hip. His fingertips toyed with the waistband of my yoga pants, rolling the hem down, and then releasing it. As if he was thinking about peeling them off, but couldn't decide.
"Canaan, we should talk first."
His gaze narrowed. "We are talking."
"You know what I mean."
"Is that what you want? To talk?" He shifted closer yet, so our bodies were almost flush, but not quite. His breath was warm, and his hand warmer yet as he palmed my skin between shirt and yoga pants.
"Don't you?"
"Why would you come here just to talk? You could have called me. Did you think I was going to stay here forever? I needed some time. I needed to think." He hooked the fingertips of his index, middle, and ring fingers into the stretchy waistband of my pants. "You came here because you wanted something."
Bullshit, if I ever heard it. "Yeah, I did, but--"
His mouth trailed across my cheek, and then his lips pressed against mine, and I stopped abruptly,
because his mouth has always been intoxicating, the way he kisses.
Like this.
The kiss was slow and delicate at first. A tease. A testing, a questing. Lips on mine, tongue tip sliding across my closed lips. His hand sliding up my back to the strap of my sports bra and then back down. Sticking to skin, palming my waist, then up my back again.
God, his kiss.
Why couldn't I resist his kiss?
I had things to say--I wasn't this weak.
Shit, who am I kidding? Yes, I am. For Canaan, yes, I am.
The whole notion of two people having "chemistry" together is overused, and the punch of the phrase has been lost, to a large degree. But have you had chemistry class? Have you ever set up a beaker full of a chemical and poured another chemical into it? Some chemicals react mildly together, some gasses venting and vaporizing, a little bubbling, and then nothing. Some react violently, explosively. Reactionary explosions, boiling, colors changing, instant, volcanic.
People are the same way.
Canaan and me?
It's the latter. The moment he touches me, the moment he kisses me, the reaction occurs. I can't stop it. Can't help it. Can't change it or lessen it. He kisses me, and I react; he touches me, and I react.
It's chemistry, pure and simple.
I tried to resist, I really did. There was so, so much more to me showing up here than wanting sex...but when he kissed me, it erased all that. Well, no, not erase; that's not the right word. Pushed aside. Swept away. I hadn't come here wanting sex at all, truth be told, but his kiss, his body, the ravenous, eager look in his eyes, the way he touches me...
I palmed his chest, traced the lines of his pecs, the ridges and grooves of his abs, tasting his breath--which wasn't great, but I didn't care, because his kiss was intoxicating. His tongue demanded mine, and I gave it to him. His body was hard against mine, and I wanted more. Nothing mattered in this moment, but the feel of Canaan, so familiar and strong and lean and hard and soft and warm.
I gasped into the kiss, shocked, as Canaan rolled onto his back, pulling me on top of him. He had me pinned, my arms tight against my sides, our hips flush, his hard cock a ridge against my core, his chest heaving, his arms wrapped around me. Holding me against him. His eyes pierced me, and I couldn't look away. I read him, easily. I knew what this was: distraction. Returning the favor from when I'd coyly avoided a conversation about us with sex.
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