Defile

by Jessica Prince

  “Can I…? She hesitated for a few seconds, and I found myself holding my breath. “Can I think about it?”

  “Sure!” I offered exuberantly. “Take all the time you need. Just as long as you agree to take the job at the end of it.”

  She gave me a glare that wasn’t threatening in the slightest. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

  “Not a chance,” I replied honestly.

  Now that Gwen had put the idea in my head, there was no getting rid of it. Having a friend at work who wasn’t one of the guys was something I was really looking forward to. And I needed all the positivity I could get in order to deal with the complete emotional upheaval I’d been struggling with the past few weeks. With Gina on my team, maybe things would finally start looking up.

  Or at least I hoped so.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tatum

  “Well aren’t you two just the cutest couple,” I teased as I walked into the lobby of my building. Maury stood tall, trying to hide the fact that he was just leaning into his wife, Elise, allowing her to wipe lipstick left behind from the kiss they’d shared seconds before.

  The beautiful older woman giggled like a schoolgirl having been caught making out with her boyfriend behind the bleachers, while he cleared his throat and awkwardly adjusted his tie. “Ms. Valentine, how has your day been so far?”

  “Maury,” I said warningly, “we’ve talked about this.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up in a knowing smirk. “Sorry, Tatum. How has your day been?”

  “Not as good as yours, judging by what I just walked in on,” I answered playfully. “You guys are adorable.”

  “Thanks,” Elise chirped. “That’s nice to hear. My son and daughter make gagging noises every time they’re around. I swear it’s like the those two never grew up.”

  I smiled politely even as a pang of sadness lanced through my chest. I was missing my own folks like crazy. Before I could let the sorrow consume me completely, Elise let out a low whistle and leaned sideways, leering at something behind me.

  “Sweet merciful Mother Mary Magdalene. And I thought my son-in-law was the best-looking boy in this city.”

  Casting a quick glance over my shoulder, I spotted Declan coming out through the glass doors of the gym into the lobby. Earbuds hung from his ears as he concentrated on the cell phone in his hands. He was dressed in a tight faded black tank, a pair of mesh basketball shorts that hung deliciously from his lean hips, and tennis shoes. He was so much bigger than he’d been back when we were together. His triceps and biceps bulged and rippled underneath the tattoos scattered along his arms. His shirt hugged broad shoulders, swollen pecs, and ripped abs. Sweat coated his skin, making it glisten beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. It was complete bullshit that a man could still look like a Greek god beneath such horrible lighting.

  He was so engrossed in whatever was happening on his phone that he hadn’t noticed me staring, giving me the perfect opportunity to gawk unrepentantly. Desire flooded my core at the sight of him, drenching my panties and causing me to squirm as visions of that night played on a loop in my brain.

  “Swear to God, woman. One of these days you’re going to give me a complex,” Maury mumbled.

  “I said best-looking boy, darling,” I heard Elise say as I continued to stare—and most likely drool. “You’re the best-looking man.”

  Back when we were together, I hadn’t thought Declan could possibly get any better-looking. Now I knew for certain that I’d been wrong. I’d been so overwhelmed that night a month back that I didn’t have the chance to fully appreciate just how much Declan had grown from a boy to a man, but now that I had proof, I was sure the image would be burned into my brain for a lifetime.

  “Looks like you’re not the only one swooning over our own personal resident celebrity,” Maury stated.

  That caught my attention. And Elise’s as well. “Celebrity?”

  “Yeah, some rock and roll band or something. Wouldn’t know by talking to him, though. Really down to earth. Nice kid.” Hearing Maury refer to Declan as a kid would’ve been comical if I wasn’t already obsessing over the ‘nice’ part of that comment. I continued to listen while watching Declan tap away on his phone from the corner of my eye. “Don’t see manners like that on boys his age anymore, which is just plain sad.”

  “How do you mean?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Well, he’s always the first to open a door for someone. And when Mrs. Kellerson in 12B nearly slipped trying to navigate her walker on these freshly waxed floors, he rushed over to catch her before she could hit the ground. Good thing too, because she’d just had hip replacement surgery a few months prior. Gave the old lady his number so she could call him any time she needed help in or out of her apartment.”

  All of a sudden I was finding it really hard to breathe.

  He helped little old ladies who had trouble walking, doted on Liddy like she was blood, and pushed his friends so they could have their own happily ever after. I’d been trying so hard to keep him in the box marked ‘Liar and Cheater,’ but it was as if fate was determined to show me just how wrong I was. I’d grown up knowing he was a good person, but after he’d broken my heart, it’d been all too easy to forget the good in him and focus on the bad. I easily labeled him as the enemy, the bad guy. But that image was no longer holding up. I was catching glimpses of the Declan who’d been my best friend for years, the Declan who’d made it so easy to fall in love with him.

  He started moving, and my feet began carrying me in that direction of their own accord. “Excuse me, guys,” I offered politely to the couple as I hurried to catch up. I didn’t have the first clue what I was going to say; there was no plan for how I would handle my first encounter alone with him after we’d had sex. But something inside me wouldn’t let me simply stand there and watch him disappear into the elevator.

  The doors had just started sliding shut when I reached them, and I had to stick my arm out to stop their progress. Declan’s eyes shot up in surprise as I stepped into the small confines, and his silver gaze made my knees shake. “Hi,” I said quietly.

  I could hear the heavy thump of rock music coming from his earbuds as he pulled them out. “Huh?”

  “Um….” I licked my lips, feeling as nervous as a whore in church. “I-I said hi.”

  The music quickly cut off, and he wrapped the wires around the cell phone before stuffing it in his pocket. I was barely able to suppress a shiver when he did a slow scan of my entire body from head to toe. His eyes went from their unique blue-gray to mercury in an instant, and I felt as if I were standing in front of him completely naked as opposed to ratty sweats. The elevator suddenly felt way too small to contain the heat from that one look.

  Clearing my throat, I did the best I could to ignore the jolts of electricity sparking to life between my legs. “How have you been?”

  He was leaning casually against the opposite wall. At least five feet separated us, but it felt like inches.

  “So, this is what we’re doing now?” he finally said. “Meaningless small talk? You gonna ask me about the weather next? Let me stop you there. We’re in Seattle, so it’s shit and rain. That about sums it up.”

  Heaving a defeated sigh, my shoulders slumped, pressing deeper into the chilly mirrored surface of the elevator wall. “Look, we can’t keep doing this, Deck. We need to talk. Actually sit and talk without fighting or throwing barbs at each other.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, pulling my attention to the way his biceps stretched the skin surrounding them. God, his body was something else. “Kind of hard to talk when you’ve spent the past goddamn month acting like I’m carrying the plague.”

  A loud ding cut through the tension swirling around us and the doors to our floor opened. Declan stepped off without so much as a backward glance as he said, “Enjoy the rest of your day, Tate.”

  I had to jog in order to keep up. It was now or never. Time to pull up my big girl panti
es and get this shit over with. There was no way I could continue to do my job if he and I weren’t speaking. And the brutal truth was I didn’t want to avoid him anymore. My chest physically ached every time I bolted from whatever room he walked into. As scary as it was, I found myself starting to miss him.

  “Declan, I’m sorry.” That got his attention fast. He stopped in his tracks, only a few feet from his front door. “Please. Can we just talk?”

  “I’ve wanted to talk for the past ten fucking years,” he stated in a low rumble. “It’s you who’s always refused.”

  “Well I’m not anymore. Please.”

  He watched me for a few seconds before finally pulling his keys from the pocket of his shorts and unlocking his front door. Stepping to the side, he held it open and silently waved me in.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected his apartment to look like, but the barren, lifeless space certainly wasn’t it. There was nothing in the place making it a home. Literally nothing. One couch, a cheap standing lamp, and a massive flat-screen TV were the only things in the living room. No dining room table, nothing on the kitchen counters or photos on the walls, no personal effects whatsoever.

  “Are you having trouble picking furniture or something?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he answered, tossing his phone and keys on the long granite bar that separated the kitchen and living space as he circled around it toward the fridge. “Don’t need much other than a couch and bed.” Pulling out a bottle of water, he twisted off the cap and sucked the whole thing down. I stood transfixed by the sight of his strong, corded throat moving with each swallow. “So,” he said once he finished drinking, “you wanted to talk.”

  Why did this have to feel so awkward and nerve-racking? “Can we sit?” I asked, pointing to the sofa.

  We both moved that way. I sat on one end while Declan took the other, a huge, gaping, couch cushion–shaped chasm between us.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I told him in a small voice.

  “You aren’t fucking quitting,” he growled menacingly. “You made a commitment—”

  “What? No. No, I’m not talking about that. I don’t want to quit.” Looking at my lap, I twisted my fingers together and continued. “Believe it or not, I really like managing the band. Even though I sometimes want to kill a few select people. I was talking about us. I don’t want to keep fighting with you anymore, Declan. I’m exhausted. Ten years of trying my hardest to hate you is wrecking me.”

  One of his long, thick arms stretched along the back of the sofa as he turned fully to face me. “And how do you suggest we go about doing that?”

  I dreaded what I had to say next, but if I was going to find a way to move past this, if I was going to be able to forgive him for my own sanity’s sake, I needed answers. “Tell me about that night,” I answered cautiously.

  His entire body locked tight, and his jaw started ticking. “No,” he gritted in objection. “We aren’t going there. Let’s just….” Blowing out a breath, he raked a hand through his hair. “Can’t we just leave that in the past and move on?”

  The backs of my eyes stung, and my sinuses began to burn with unshed tears. Speaking past the massive lump of emotion in my throat was difficult, but I somehow managed. “I wish it were that easy. Believe me, talking about that night is the last thing I want to do, but I can’t just act like it didn’t happen. I need to know how you could do that to me, how you could—”

  “Christ, Tate,” Declan barked, shooting off the couch. He began pacing like a caged animal, desperate to escape and maul the first person he came across. “I don’t remember a goddamn thing about that night. It’s like a big fucking black hole in my head. I was so messed up over how I’d left things with you before the tour that I spent every hour of every day drunk out of my mind. It was the only way I could function, because if I’d been sober my ass would’ve been on the first plane back to you, and I couldn’t let the guys down like that. Chris was on my case the whole fuckin’ time, giving me shit for being so hung up on you.

  “Last thing I remember from that night is leaving the venue after the show and finding the closest bar. Chris found me, and that’s it. Everything else is gone until the next morning. I don’t even remember how I got my hands on that coke. You’d asked me to stop, and I swear to Christ, Tate, I did. I hadn’t touched the shit since we fought.”

  “You don’t remember anything?” I asked on a croak, swallowing thickly against the tidal waves crashing around inside me. This was one of the hardest conversations I’d ever had. “Not going to the party, meeting… those women, or anything?” The memory of those two girls with Declan stabbed like a white-hot blade every time I thought about it.

  “None of it. I can’t tell you how I got to the hotel, let alone that party.” He stomped back over to the couch and sat right next to me, his face a mask of sincere concern. “You have to believe me,” he pleaded, his own voice course and ragged. His eyes were ringed with red, like he was battling his own emotional turmoil. “There’s no way in hell I’d ever have done that to you if I’d been sober. There hasn’t been anyone else I’ve wanted since I was fifteen fucking years old. You can’t begin to imagine how much I hate myself for what I did to you.”

  Hearing that didn’t take any of the pain away, but as bizarre as it sounded, knowing there wasn’t a single detail of that night that he could recall made it a bit easier to let some of the anger go. Maybe I was being naïve, but I truly believed that he never would have cheated had it not been for the drugs and booze. It didn’t make his betrayal okay, but at least I was now able to understand why it happened. It didn’t repair the cracks still splintered throughout my heart, but it did help.

  “I want us to be able to start over,” I finally said after several seconds of complete silence. “I can’t say that I completely forgive you, Deck, but I want to try. Before anything, you were my friend. I’d like to see if it’s possible to get back to that.”

  His eyes scanned my face, examining me so close it made my skin prickle. He leaned in, placing his lips against my ear and whispered, “That’s not gonna work for me, baby.”

  Um, what?

  “I told you what I wanted the night you finally let me back inside you, and I’m not willing to settle for anything less. We can’t be friends, Tate. Not when I’m planning on fucking you over and over again until you’re begging me for more.”

  Well shit.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Declan

  I was getting close. I could tell just by looking at her. It had been a little over a week since our ‘talk’ in my apartment, and I’d gone out of my way to make her as crazy as possible. I stopped by her apartment every day with different excuses. There was the time I couldn’t find my phone and needed her to call it so I could track the ringtone—complete bullshit. Then I was out of milk. That one was true; however, I left out the fact that I had no intention of drinking it, and poured it right down the drain when I got back to my own apartment.

  Fortunately I could use work more often than not as reason to see her, so my attempts at seduction weren’t becoming obvious. I made damn sure never to wear a shirt whenever she was around so I could watch her eyes heat as she stared at my naked chest like I was her favorite meal. Catching her with that hazy, lustful expression made me hard enough to pound nails every goddamn time.

  I took every opportunity I could to touch her or get close enough for my breath to fan along her neck. I brushed against her, grabbed her hips, moved the hair from her shoulder or tucked it behind her ear, anything to get that skin-on-skin connection. And it was finally fucking working.

  There was no chance of her hiding the way her chest stuttered with each broken breath whenever I was close, or how her pupils dilated and her cheeks flushed. Her arms and legs would break out in goose bumps, and she’d bite down on her bottom lip as if to suppress a moan every time my fingertips skated across her skin.

  She wanted me. She craved to be fucked again. But that was just a
start. I needed so much more than that. I needed all of her. The only time in my life I’d felt complete was when we were together, and I knew that feeling would never return until she was mine in every way.

  The muscles in my arms began to tremble and strain as I lifted the bar over my head one last time.

  “That’s enough, bro. Any more and you’ll drop this goddamn thing and crush your trachea.” Killian helped me lower the bar onto the rack with a loud clatter. “Jesus, man, what’s your deal today? You’re pushing yourself so hard you’re gonna break something.”

  Heaving out a much-needed breath, I sat up on the weight bench and wiped the sweat from my forehead. Tate wasn’t the only one going a little crazy this past week. I’d only had two options to blow off steam these past several days: jerking off and working out. And if I jacked my dick one more time, I was afraid I’d chafe the damn thing. So working out it was.

  “Just working off some stress,” I huffed, leaning forward and placing my forearms on my knees.

  “And does this stress have anything to do with a certain sexy redhead giving you a killer case of blue balls?” he asked, a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “For fuck’s sake. Can we be done now? I feel like I’m gonna hurl,” Mason whined, pulling the key from the treadmill to bring it to a stop. The gym in my building wasn’t all that big, but it had everything I needed to get in a good workout. And the bonus was that not many people used it, giving me the privacy I craved.

  With Garrett on a short vacation slash honeymoon with Gwen and Liddy, the rest of us had been kind of out of sorts. Once he got back, we’d be able to get back to work, but until then we were pretty much bored out of our minds. That was the only reason I could think for why Kill and Mace had shown up at my apartment earlier this morning and decided to work out with me. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Killian or Garrett to hit the gym with me, but Mace would’ve rather volunteered for a vasectomy than exercise most days.