Anything Between Us (Starving Artists Book 3)

by Mila Ferrera

  “Nope,” Sasha mumbles against me. “Nope-nope-nope.”

  I fight back a laugh and a massive surge of triumph in my chest. “You heard her, bro.”

  Marcus’s eyes narrow. “You cool with this, Sasha? Him taking you to his place?” Now he looks like he wants to rescue her. From me.

  We both look down at Sasha, who leans her head back and squints at Marcus. “Nate’s mostly a gentleman,” she says, slurring a little.

  This time, I do laugh, though Marcus is frowning. “I actually am,” I tell him.

  Marcus shakes his head. “Just remember you asked for this, Sasha. Whatever happens, you asked for it.”

  Anger explodes in my chest. “She asked for it? Fuck you, asshole.”

  Marcus’s hands curl into fists, and I tense. I’m not sure Sasha will stay upright if I let her go to deal with this guy. “You don’t want to get into it with me,” I say quietly. “You really don’t.”

  “I could kick your weedy ass back to Afghanistan,” he growls.

  “You could try.” I look at him, assessing. He probably has about thirty pounds on me, but I have more reach.

  And enough hand-to-hand combat training to fucking murder him if I need to.

  Sasha squirms against me. “I need to pee,” she whines, pressing her face to my chest.

  Marcus rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Enjoy.” He stalks past us and out of the building.

  By the time we reach my door, my heart has almost slowed to its normal rhythm. I have to catch Sasha as she walks into my apartment and promptly trips over her own feet. I carry her over to a chair and set her down. “You’re lucky you didn’t break an ankle in these,” I chide as I untie the bows and unwind the length of black ribbon from around each of her silky calves.

  I force myself not to look up her skirt as I slip the sandals off her feet and set them aside. I am a gentleman, and I really don’t want to know if she’s wearing underwear right now, because already my mind is drowning in memories of that first night, and I know none of that stuff is happening on this one.

  I rise and pull her to her feet. She looks a lot smaller now that she’s not wearing those heels, but she’s no less wobbly. I escort her to the bathroom and close the door behind her. She opens the door a few minutes later. “Nate?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t figure out how to put my dress back on.”

  “You had to take off your dress to pee?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she mutters.

  “Hang on. Don’t move.” I go to my bureau and pull out a T-shirt and an old pair of PT shorts. “You think you can figure those out?”

  “I … might need some help.”

  “You’re killing me, you know that?” I move closer to the door, and she pulls it wide. Sure enough, she’s standing there in nothing but a pushup bra and a thong. The sight blasts from my eyes to my brain to my cock at the speed of light. “Are you doing this on purpose?”

  It’s like every day I’m with her, every minute she’s close to me, except on steroids.

  Forcing my gaze to the side and my thoughts to focus on anything but her almost-naked body, I jam the shirt over her head and thread her arms through the short sleeves. It hits her mid-thigh, and I decide to leave the shorts because I think she’d fall over if we tried to put them on her.

  It’s okay. I can handle this.

  “I need to text Aunt Cathy,” she says with a hiccup. I lead her to my couch and let her sink into it, then retrieve her phone from her purse and offer it to her. It wakes up when she holds it in front of her face, but it’s clear she’s too gone to text.

  “What do you want to tell her?”

  “I’m with a friend,” she says. “I’ll be home …” She looks up at me. “When will I be home?”

  “You can be home whenever you want. Whenever you’re ready. I’ll drive you.”

  “In the morning,” she says firmly. Then her expression crumples. “Is that okay?”

  It’s fine, as long as I can withstand the urge to act out all the fantasies I’ve had over the last several weeks. I open her texts and find Aunt Cathy, then text her. Home by 7.

  She replies a moment later. RU with a man?? This is followed by a smiley face emoji.

  “Um, Sasha …?”

  “Hmmm?” She seems focused on pulling the stuffing from a tear in the arm of my couch.

  “Never mind.” With a friend, I text. Seems like the safest response, and it has the benefit of being true.

  To her credit, Aunt Cathy pries no further. Have fun! You deserve it! This one’s followed by a few hearts, and it makes me smile. Sasha’s not as alone as she seems.

  Thank you, I text, and I mean it. Because Sasha’s here, and I’m starting to realize that I don’t care how she’s here, just that she is. I’ll take her however I get her.

  I fetch her a glass of water and present her with crackers and cheese, which I bought earlier this week so I had something else to feed her other than eggs. “Did you eat anything tonight at all?” I ask her. Each time I looked over, she had a drink in her hand—but no food.

  She shakes her head and nibbles the crackers. “Did I ruin your chance with Nora?”

  “Probably not. Did you want to?”

  Our eyes meet, and like always, I feel her dark gaze in my marrow. “What if I did?” she asks softly.

  “I’d say that’s the champagne talking.”

  “What if it’s not?”

  “Then I’d tell you I wanted you to,” I admit. “I’d tell you I’d been waiting for you to come up to me all night.”

  She tilts her head, and her black hair falls into her face. “Why didn’t you come up to me?”

  I sigh and tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Because I didn’t want to get burned in front of my brother and all his friends. And I feel like I’ve been chasing you for weeks.”

  “How can you say that when you spend half your time avoiding me?”

  “Fair,” I say with a shaky laugh. “I guess I do pull some evasive maneuvers from time to time.” Mostly when I’m too unsteady to want her to see me. It’s getting better, but I’m not there yet. And God, I want to be. I want her to see me as strong, not some pathetic boy who doesn’t deserve to stand next to someone like her. “I’m trying, Sasha.”

  I’ve been trying so fucking hard. And I actually feel like I’m getting somewhere, with the recording and the talking and all that shit. I’m a good soldier, and I do what’s ordered, even when it hurts. But this time, I’m not doing it for my country or my commanding officer—I’m doing it for me. And maybe, in some wild, hopeful way, for us. Me and her.

  She sips her water. “I pictured tonight going a lot differently.”

  I lean back. “Yeah? How did you picture it?”

  She sets her water glass and now-empty plate on the floor. “I was going to tell you something.” She furrows her brow. “I decided years ago that I was going to be alone.” Her hand slides across the cushion and onto my thigh, which instantly sends a cascade of heat along my limbs.

  “Are you going to tell me why?”

  She squirms closer. That shirt has worked its way up so that I can basically see everything, the lace of her thong, the curves of her thighs and hips. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmurs.

  It does to me, but it’s obvious that now isn’t the time to discuss it, for two reasons. One, because I have the feeling it’s painful, and a conversation best had when she’s totally sober. And two, because she’s crawling into my lap, and now she’s straddling me. She takes my face in her hands. “I think I’m changing my mind about being alone,” she whispers, and then her mouth descends on mine, and her hands are on my skin, and she’s grinding her hips on me. I’m painfully hard and desperate for her in seconds.

  I know I need to call a halt here, but this is all I’ve wanted for weeks.

  I thread my fingers into her hair and pull her head back, breathing hard as I force our lips apart. But the lure of her skin i
s too strong, and before I can reason it out, my mouth is on her neck, my teeth on her skin, and she makes a helpless noise that unfurls a raw lust in my veins. It’s like poison, taking over fast. With my last thread of rational thought, I manage to get to my feet. My hands grip her thighs, holding her against me. She wraps her legs around my hips and breathes in my ear. “I need you.” Each word sends tingles down my spine.

  I carry her into my bedroom. Carefully, I lay her on my mattress, and I brace myself over her as she tries to pull me down. “Sasha,” I say gently. “We’re not doing this right now.”

  Her legs are spread, giving me a view that tells me exactly what I’m missing. I want to lower my head and taste her. My mouth waters with the thought.

  Her fingers fumble with the buttons of my shirt. “We can if I can figure these out.”

  I pull her hand from my chest and kiss her fingers. She blinks up at me and lays her other hand on my cheek. “I thought you wanted me,” she says.

  I look her over, this gorgeous woman in my bed, offering herself to me. And I can’t believe I’m doing this, even though I know it’s the right thing. “You have no idea how much I want you,” I tell her. I lower my head and kiss her. “But we’re not doing it this way. You’re gonna sleep this off, and we can talk in the morning. Okay?”

  “I messed everything up, didn’t I?” She turns away and curls onto her side.

  I kiss her on the temple. “You didn’t mess up a single thing.”

  “I’m sorry, Nate,” she mumbles sleepily.

  I press my forehead to the side of her face. “Sweet dreams,” I whisper.

  She whispers something else, but I can’t make it out. I push myself up and head out to the living room, where I collapse onto the couch, my hard-on jammed against my zipper.

  She wants to be with me.

  Not sure how yet, but it’s obviously as more than friends. I stare at the dark TV screen and force myself not to head back into my bedroom. I need to calm the fuck down. I know I’m doing the right thing. I know that. And in this moment, that has to be enough.

  I can only hope that, in the morning, she won’t have changed her mind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sasha

  I lurch awake to the sound of Nate’s anguished voice. My heart thudding, I sit up. The room is pitch dark except for slivers of light around the door, which is open a crack. Nate’s on the other side of it, muttering in a shaky voice that makes my chest hurt. Is he having a nightmare?

  A digital clock next to the mattress tells me that it’s almost six in the morning. Hazy memories from last night swirl in my head, the misery of being towed out of the party by Marcus, of sitting on the curb after my escape, of catching sight of Nate and Nora by her car. The knowledge that he was probably going to go home with her crushed me from all sides, making it difficult to breathe. But then he was pulling me up from the ground, wrapping his arms around me, supporting me as I stumbled along.

  He almost got in a fight with Marcus. I remember that, too—how his body tensed, his muscles so taut it felt like they might snap. And then we were in his living room and he was feeding me cheese and crackers and I was throwing myself at him, practically begging him to fuck me.

  He didn’t. He tucked me in and slept on the couch, and honestly, I don’t think I should have expected anything different. Nate was raised right, and he wears the stamp of that decency with an unabashed steadiness.

  “I can’t,” he’s saying now, and it pulls me up and draws me to the light.

  Then I hear another voice, a man’s, say, “Let’s take it one moment at a time. Where were you standing, exactly?”

  “Dusty courtyard,” Nate says. “Behind the blast walls but in front of the barracks. We’d muster there before each patrol.”

  “How many people were in the courtyard that morning?”

  I frown. Who would be here this early?

  “We had three fire teams of three or four men each. I had one, Sam had another. The sergeant had the third, plus communications and the medic. Translator, too. And then there were the Afghan guys. There were twelve of them, I think.”

  “Good, Nate,” says the man. “How distressed are you right now? Zero to a hundred.”

  “Sixty,” he says tersely.

  I press my face to the door and peek out. Nate is sitting at his kitchen table, his back to me. Elbows on the tabletop, head bowed. He’s shirtless, and his broad shoulders go rigid as the man says, “What were you doing before you noticed anything was wrong?”

  I squint into the dim light of Nate’s living room. Though I can hear the man’s voice, Nate seems to be alone.

  “The strap of my M4 kept catching on my magazine pouch. I was fiddling with it like an idiot.”

  “You don’t need to pass judgment on your actions here,” says the man, his tone gentle. “Just relay the concrete facts.”

  “I was trying to free the strap and make sure it didn’t catch,” Nate says in a flat voice. But even as I hear him, the Nate in front of me bows his head and sighs. Through the gap between his arm and his body, I see his phone on the table in front of him, its screen lit up.

  He’s listening to a recording. A cold tingling spreads across my chest.

  The man’s voice—his therapist, I assume—once again asks how distressed he is. The Nate in the recording says he’s at eighty now. The therapist asks what happened next.

  “Sam’s standing next to me. To my right. And he asks what Rashid—he was one of the Afghan soldiers, one we’d patrolled with for at least a month—he asks why Rashid’s looking around like that.”

  I hear Nate pause and take a gulping breath. The Nate in front of me has his head in his hands. His shoulder blades stand out in sharp relief, and the muscles of his back are tense and trembling.

  “It all happened fast,” his voice continues. “It’s hard to describe.”

  “I need you to try,” says his therapist firmly. “Just one thing at a time.”

  “He steps on my foot. Kinda jostles me. Hits me with his elbow. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was raising his rifle.” More agonized breaths as his therapist tells him to only relate what happened in the moment.

  “What happens after his elbow hits you?”

  “My face … it’s warm. Wet. Something in my eyes.” His voice goes muffled, and his therapist murmurs words of encouragement. Asks him how distressed he is. “A hundred. I hear bullets snapping, but I’ve stumbled back against the blast wall.”

  “How did you stumble?”

  “He pushed me.”

  “Sam pushed you.”

  “My face is wet. And there’s red—I’m blinking, and it’s in my eyes. Our sergeant is moaning. He’s on the ground maybe fifteen feet away. And Abdullah, our translator. That was a headshot. Rashid and a few other guys, all on the ground. Blood, bleeding, I mean. And Sam.”

  I grimace as his sentences get more fragmented, his voice more agonized.

  “Where’s Sam?”

  There’s a long moment of quiet, and I hear two Nates, both breathing hard. “At my feet,” the Nate on the tape finally says. “Shot in the neck. Throat. His-his-his …” He makes a hopeless, strangled sound. “Eyes. His eyes are open.”

  “What happens next?”

  “I pull my rifle, but people are shouting that it was Rashid, and they’ve got all the Afghan guys on the ground, making sure no one moves, and so I drop to my knees. I’m pulling at my personal med kit when Spc. Griffin runs up to work on Sam. But his eyes are open, and he’s just staring.”

  “You know he’s dead.”

  “I-I can’t … I know, but I can’t …”

  “Distress?”

  “A hundred. We all know it. Griffin knows it after maybe five seconds. He runs for the sarge next, because Hoyt is still breathing. Griffin’s calling for the med-evac. He’s shouting. Everyone’s shouting.”

  “And you?”

  “I … I don’t say anything. There’s nothing in my head except … ringin
g. I stand up. I look behind me, and I see the bullet embedded in the blast wall. The one that went through Sam. He shoved me a few inches to the side as he pulled his rifle to target the threat, and if he hadn’t, the bullet would have gone through me instead. If I hadn’t been so fucking oblivious—”

  “No judgments now, Nate. We’ll process all those thoughts after you get through this, okay? What were you feeling?”

  “Nothing,” he whispers. “I’m numb. I walk over and help secure the area, moving the Afghan soldiers to a different spot, more contained, managing weapon storage, that stuff.”

  “Distress?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let yourself feel it, Nate. Give it a rating.”

  “Forty, maybe.” He sounds so tired. But the Nate at the table has shoved himself to his feet. Clad only in a pair of boxer briefs, he walks over to the sink and leans over it, gripping the counter’s edge. After a few shuddering breaths, he spits in the sink, then grabs a glass and fills it. He takes a gulp of the water and lowers the glass, staring at the wall.

  “I know you’re there,” he says quietly. He turns and looks right at me, peering at him from the crack.

  I open the door, my cheeks hot with shame. “I heard your voice. I thought you might be having a nightmare. I wasn’t sure—”

  “It’s okay.” He looks like he’s ready to collapse. “I’m sorry for waking you.”

  “You’re joking, right? I’m in your house. In your bed. And not exactly by invitation.”

  He rubs the back of his head. “I don’t sleep that well. And I figured I’d get this—” He waves his hand at his phone. “—over with for today. I should have used headphones, but it’s …”

  “Too much, to have it right in your ears,” I guess, venturing closer.

  He nods.

  “You have to listen to it every day?”

  He nods again and finishes his glass of water. “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel stupid even answering that after hearing …” There’s a lump in my throat that’s making it hard to talk. “Nate, I had no idea—”

  “I’m working on it. I … I need to learn to deal with it better.” He gives me a sad smile. “I can’t always count on you showing up at the right time to hide my gun.” He runs his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m just really tired.”