by MJ Prince
I turn away to look at the ceiling, because this is all just too much. We’re straying into dangerous waters, and I feel the tide threatening to pull me under.
He doesn’t finish what he was saying. I let out a long sigh.
“I moved around a lot. Ten different high schools in ten different foster homes and I have some serious trust issues,” I say.
That last part makes him smile.
“Really? I never would’ve guessed that you have trust issues.”
I roll my eyes in response, and I don’t know what makes me say what I say next.
“When I was fifteen, my foster father tried to …” I try to find the words, because other than telling the cops, I’ve never spoken to anyone about this and I have no idea why I’m telling Raph, of all people, now.
“He tried to sexually assault me—”
The waves of palpable anger that I feel rolling off Raph cuts me off. He looks so furious, that he’s almost glowing with anger.
“But it didn’t get that far. I kicked him in the balls and called the police.”
He chuckles then.
“But it meant that for a long while after, I didn’t like to be touched. I guess I still don’t,” I say.
“So, to answer your earlier question, I haven’t done other stuff. I hadn’t even kissed anyone before until that kiss with Baron that night at Twisted.”
Those blue eyes burn like twin flames in the darkness, and he looks almost angry. Why would Baron being my first kiss even matter to him?
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Firstly, I’m going to kick Baron’s ass.”
I gape at him in response.
“Secondly, I feel like a total dick. I had no idea. I’m so sorry, Jaz.”
I smile then, despite myself.
“Well, like I said before, you are an asshole.”
He laughs.
We’re silent for a long while and he seems to be thinking something over in his mind.
“I haven’t ever slept with a girl either, by the way.”
Now, it’s my turn to laugh. When I turn to my side to face him, his expression is dead serious.
“Sorry. I don’t buy that. I saw you post-orgy only a few weeks ago, remember?”
He rolls his eyes.
“That’s not what I meant. I’ve fucked girls before—plenty of girls.”
“Gross,” I interject.
“But I don’t ever sleep with them. I usually get them to leave straight after.”
I gape at him in shock and I don’t like the strange warmth spreading in my core at the confession and all that it means.
I’m sure that I don’t want to hear the answers to the next question, but I ask it anyway.
“But what about Layla?”
Raph doesn’t even blink at the mention of her name, although I feel my own extreme discomfort at having mentioned it.
“I have never slept in the same bed as a girl,” he repeats.
Still, I don’t want to believe him.
“Okay, what about that morning when I saw those two girls in your bed—naked girls.”
I have to admire Raph’s cool in the face of these questions that would make most people flush crimson. I sure as hell feel embarrassed at even asking them.
“What you saw that morning, those girls came to my room that morning. They didn’t sleep there.”
The image of what I saw that morning is still burned into my mind, and I remind myself that this guy is a total pig, so I should tell him to get the hell out. But when I open my mouth, something else comes out.
“So, what are you doing here then?” I ask quietly.
“I don’t know,” he replies honestly. The same thing he said to me in the art studio and on that training session on the beach.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks, turning to me.
Yes. Should be the answer. But I can’t seem to make myself say it.
We’re not touching, though there’s something strangely intimate about the way we’re laying across from each other, eyes locked.
“No.”
Something flares in his eyes, something that I don’t recognize. It stirs something inside me which I’m not ready for. So, I close my eyes.
I’m almost asleep when I hear Raph’s words. So gentle, that I think I must be dreaming them.
“Goodnight, Jaz.”
“You have to come to Friday night’s game—it’s our first one this season.”
Raph has been bugging me to go to his stupid game for the past two weeks and it’s driving me bananas.
“Dani, help me out here.” He really knows how to lay on the charm, because to my annoyance, Dani joins the chorus.
“You have to go, Jazmine. The Regency Gladiators are the best.”
I narrow my eyes at my traitorous friend. But part of me is kind of glad that she and Raph have been getting along so well. I’ve learned pretty quickly that Dani is good at reading people, so I guess I thought that she’d see right through Raph’s charm pretty quickly, and see him for the arrogant asshole that I still like to think he is. But she seems to think that he’s a genuinely good guy. I guess I was wrong about her being able to read people after all. Because I refuse to acknowledge the alternative.
“But I don’t even like soccer. I went to one game before, only because they needed someone to work the concession stands for the night and it was dull,” I say, helping myself to another spoonful of my frozen yogurt.
“Trust me, this is like no other soccer game you’ve ever seen before,” Raph says. “It’s not the same as the kind they play on Earth. Plus, you get to see me in all my glory.”
I choke on my next spoonful of yogurt.
“How could I say no to that,” I reply sarcastically.
Raph leans over to me and I don’t miss Dani’s smirk as Raph’s thumb wipes a drop of yogurt off my bottom lip. The simple touch sears my skin and I jump back as if he’s just held a lighter up to my lip.
I hear Dani stifle a laugh with a cough.
Ever since that first night in my room, Raph has been acting like we’re attached at the hip. In the classes that we have together, he either sits next to me or behind me and of course, it doesn’t stop him, if those desks happen to be occupied. One look from him and the offending person promptly gets up and finds somewhere else to sit. He is also now a permanent fixture at Dani and my lunch table, much to Layla’s annoyance, and to the confusion of the rest of the student body. Everyone, apart from Baron, Keller and Lance, that is. Because whenever they see Raph and me together, they exchange looks which tell me that I desperately need to set the record straight about whatever they think is going on.
Because nothing is going on. I mean, sure Raph has now taken to sleeping in my bed like it’s his own, much to my annoyance. But nothing ever happens, and we both keep to our respective sides of the bed. Although, even I haven’t failed to notice that Raph is always trying to touch me—surprisingly, nothing perverted or sleazy. Just a brush of the hand here, an arm around me there, wiping food off my lip like he just did. I always push him away but I get the feeling he understands why. Especially since I told him about foster father number six a few nights ago. I also get the feeling that he’s doing it to make me at ease with his touch, and the flutters that it causes inside me aren’t entirely unpleasant. Shit, I’d rather gouge my eyes out than admit it, but something tells me that I’m straying into dangerous territory.
“God, Jaz, you really know how to chip away at a guy’s ego,” he says. His tone is light hearted, but I think I see a flash of hurt in those blue eyes, although I’m probably just imagining it.
“Which is perfect for you, because your ego could use some chipping.”
He chuckles at that.
“Anyway, about the game …”
I throw my hands up in frustration.
“Oh god, okay, if you stop bugging me about it, I’ll go.”
His smile lights up his entire face and those perfect dimples po
p out, making it impossible for me not to smile back.
He pulls me in for a hug and although I don’t return the hug, I also don’t pull away. I try not to notice the deafening silence that has descended on the tables around us or Dani’s shit-eating grin.
18
I think I must be fast asleep and dreaming, but I can hear Raph’s voice in the night. I can’t make out the words but I hear the anguish in his voice.
Consciousness taps at my senses and I drag myself out of sleep as the impact of Raph’s large frame tossing and turning causes my bed to quake.
I look over to the other side of the large bed where he’s lying with the sheets tangled around his waist. It’s dark in my room, but the silvery moonlight beaming in through the large French windows illuminates the bed just enough so that I can see that Raph’s bare chest is gleaming with sweat and the beads of moisture glistening on his face.
Alarm spikes inside me and I don’t even stop to think before I reach over to him. I take his face in my hands, telling him to wake up. He’s having some kind of nightmare and I don’t know why, but the sight of him like this affects me in a way I can’t understand.
He continues to thrash for a moment longer before those startlingly blue eyes snap open. They’re hazy and out of focus at first, though. Dazed as he grasps for consciousness. The flash of vulnerability in those eyes, so at odds with his usual arrogance, does something to me that I can’t explain.
He blinks up at me for a few seconds. Neither of us says anything. Neither of us moves. His eyes register my face above his and I might be imagining it, but it’s as if the sight chases the shadows from his eyes.
The darkness is thick with something that I can’t even begin to understand or maybe it’s just that I’m not ready to. My hands are still holding his face and when he reaches up to cup my elbows, I don’t stop him. We’re so close, that I can feel the running stag clamor of his heart. I can feel every breath he takes against my skin, as he attempts to steady his breathing.
“You were dreaming,” I say finally, in an attempt to slice through the charged air.
He’s silent in response.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask quietly, although I’m not sure that allowing myself to delve beneath Raph’s surface is entirely safe for me.
He shakes his head then. “Not right now.” His voice is husky with sleep and with the memory of whatever it was that haunted him in it.
He slowly pulls me closer after a moment, until my head is resting on his chest. His arms circle me, holding me to him.
I don’t know whether it’s the glimpse of a part of Raph which I’m sure no one in the entire universe has ever seen, or whether it’s the merely the cover of night which makes me feel like every secret is safe in this dark place. But I don’t make a move to pull away. There are a million reasons why this shouldn’t be happening, but in that moment, I don’t allow myself to hear them. I don’t allow myself to even think.
We stay that way for what seems like an eternity.
“Is this why you don’t ever sleep with anyone?” I find myself asking finally. I don’t know where the question came from and I don’t expect Raph to answer. But he does.
“Yes.” He says simply and it feels like he’s saying a great many things with just that one word. But I’m not ready to hear them. I force myself not to think about what any of this means, closing my eyes instead, as I force myself back to sleep.
I wake up to the feeling of something solid wrapped around my waist and my back pressed up against a wall of warmth.
I think I must still be dreaming, as I look down and see golden skin with a dusting of fine golden hairs—an arm? It’s wrapped around my waist. I feel something tickling my ear and my throat. The feeling sends a shiver down my spine.
“Hmmm.” I hear Raph’s voice in my ear and then the feeling of something brushing against the side of my neck. It feels like he’s breathing in the very scent of me.
As consciousness taps against my senses, I feel Raph’s bare skin against mine and my own skin burns everywhere it makes contact with his—which is in a lot places. His bare chest is pressed up against my back, with only the thin material of my too small sleeping vest between us. His bare legs are tangled up with mine. My goddamn hand is resting on top of his.
I’m jolted awake when I feel his other hand against the bare skin at my abdomen, where my vest has ridden up. I feel something long and hard pressing against my back which makes heat pool in my core, and muscles I didn’t even know existed, clench tightly.
I bolt upright and Raph rolls sleepily onto his back. It strikes me again how young he looks when he’s asleep, innocent almost. But there was nothing innocent about what I’d just felt pressed up against me.
“Quit staring at me like that or you’re going to make me blush,” he says, those blue eyes opening to look up at me. God. Seeing those eyes first thing in the morning is like a shock to the senses, which is more effective than any alarm clock.
“I’m staring at you in outrage,” I retort.
I still can’t believe that just moments ago I’d woken up to his body tangled up with mine. God. Did we fall asleep like that? Were we sleeping like that all night? The memory of last night floods my mind then. Waking up in the middle of the night to find Raph thrashing in his sleep. The way he’d looked at me, as if I was the one thing that could chase the nightmare away. The way he held me to him afterwards and what I’d let myself feel. Seeing Raph so vulnerable had done something to me. Something that had stripped me of my good senses, clearly.
But there isn’t a trace of that vulnerability in his face just now. Only his usual arrogant smirk.
A part of me expects him to bring up whatever it was that happened last night. But he doesn’t. There isn’t even a trace of the memory of it in those luminous blue eyes. Either that or its carefully hidden in a way that only Raph, with his years of being raised in the public eye, could achieve. It’s almost as if last night was nothing but a dream, it sure as hell feels like it. Unfortunately, the memory in my own mind is as clear as day and it’s very much real.
“I don’t appreciate you groping me in my sleep,” I snap with more force than necessary.
“Me groping you? I don’t appreciate being molested in my sleep either.”
I stare back at him, sputtering as I try to find a response, because I can’t actually believe this guy is serious. But I’m glad because the way he’s infuriating me just now makes it easy to promise myself that whatever it was that came over me last night, will never happen again.
“Urgh. Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t even look twice at you, let alone molest you.”
“Then stop staring at my chest.” He flashes me that cocky grin which sets my temper on fire and damn those dimples.
I can feel my face flaming because I realize that I am staring at his perfectly cut chest. Dammit.
A rush of disbelief hits me, because how in the world did we go from hating each other’s guts to sleeping next to each other every night? I’m literally in bed with my enemy. I have no idea how I let myself get into this situation and I can’t help but feeling like I’m riding on a runaway train, about to hurtle over a cliff to my death.
“It’s not my fault you sleep practically naked,” I snap.
“I’m not naked—I’m wearing my boxers. Although, if you want me to sleep totally naked, I’d be down for that, too.”
“God, you’re such a pig. You have a bed of your own, in your own room across the hall—you can sleep there shirtless, naked or however the hell you want.”
“But I told you, I like your bed.”
“Well, then, keep your hands to yourself or you won’t be sleeping in it much longer.”
“Likewise,” he winks.
I notice something then as I look at the covers. Something which I’m sure was the same thing pressed up against my ass just a few moments ago.
The horror in my face must be apparent, because Raph bursts out laughing.
“Relax, Jaz—it’s only a little morning wood.”
I’m totally mortified. Firstly, although Raph’s basically moved himself into my room, this is the first time that either of us has strayed past our respective sides of the bed. Secondly, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen that happen before. Either that, or he’s been hiding it pretty well to stop me from freaking out. Which he was right to do, because I am freaking out. I can’t stop looking at it, though, and Raph smirks at my reaction.
“Stop staring at my dick, Jaz.”
“God. I hate you so much.” I almost scream in frustration as I leap off the bed and stalk into the en-suite bathroom, slamming the door behind me to block out Raph’s laughter.
We’re walking out of Sovereign Hall, on our way to class, when Raph stops me.
I look over at him and I can’t ignore the pang of concern. He’s been oddly sullen since I walked back into my bedroom after my shower. His usual cocky charm replaced by the faraway look that I can see in those impossibly blue eyes now. I wonder if it has something to do with his nightmare last night.
“Will you … will you go with me somewhere today?” he asks; he looks uncertain in a way that’s at odds with his usual confidence.
“What—now?” I ask, feeling a mixture of surprise and curiosity.
“We’ve got class,” I add, stating the obvious.
“Forget it,” he says, shaking his head, as if berating himself for asking. He turns to walk away. I should let him. But I find myself calling after him instead.
“Wait—what is it?” I ask. “Where do you want to go?”
He hesitates for a second.
“There’s just something I need to do today,” he replies simply. “And this year, I guess I don’t want to do it alone.”
I’m intrigued now despite myself. But that doesn’t mean I should be skipping class to go to god knows where with Raph.
Still, when I open my mouth, I find myself saying exactly the opposite of what I should.
“Okay.”
He smiles in response, but it’s not that usual infuriatingly arrogant smile. He looks humbled almost, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that look on him before.