by Sara Cate
He wants to rope in my emotions.
He can fuck off.
Sitting on the bed in front of me, he reaches for my cock, and I try to pull away, but the second his hand wraps around me, fighting back is pointless. Instead of pulling back, I push him forward. I hate myself for how much I love the feel of his hand around me.
Before I let things get out of hand, I grab him by the wrist, stopping his motion as I glare up at Hanna. “She didn’t say you could do that yet.”
There’s hesitation on her face, and I can tell she’s nervous about the minor scuffle between us.
“What’s next, baby?” I ask her.
“Kiss him,” she whispers, and I clench my jaw. Hanna wants the problem between us to be fixed with physical touch and affection, but she doesn’t know what happened that night. She doesn’t know the pain I endured for months…years. How bad Nash broke me.
But I do it for her, convincing myself this can be just sex. I won’t get attached. I won’t bring my emotions along. So, I lean down, pulling his lips to mine, kissing him without emotion.
But Nash takes. That’s what he does. He demands and doesn’t ask permission. He takes my mouth without forgiveness, pulling me closer and humming into my mouth, but I pull away before he can take something I’m not ready to hand over.
As we pull away, I see Hanna move away from the nightstand. “I want to see you two together…” she whispers quietly.
Fuck my stupid heart for speeding up. Fuck how bad I want that too.
“Nash?” I ask, looking down at him.
“She calls the shots.” He pulls my lips down to his again.
“Get on the bed,” I tell him, and he keeps his eyes on me as he shifts backward, and I crawl over him, covering his body with mine. This time, I grasp his hair in my fists, pulling his head back so I can kiss his neck. It’s a little too rough, I know that, but I love the way he sounds, fighting the pain of my teeth and five o’clock shadow against the tender skin of his neck.
Hanna crawls onto the bed by his head, watching us quietly, so quietly I almost forget she’s there. The room is still dark enough I can only hear her breathing and Nash moaning beneath me. When his hand wraps around our cocks pressed together, I bite down a bit harder. With every ounce of pleasure he brings me, I want him to feel pain. I want him to hurt half as much as I did.
Pulling away, I reach for the lube on the nightstand, and I pop the top. That’s when I notice the seal on the top of the bottle. It’s unopened. With his eyes on me, I pause.
Then, I glance down at him.
He squirms under me. “What are you waiting for?”
Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I tear the foil off the top and squirt some onto my fingers, then reaching between us to run my fingers around his tight entrance. He shivers as I cover him.
I’m so fucking anxious to be back inside him, but I take my time, prepping him, watching his face as I work in one, then two fingers. Sitting above him, Hanna watches, biting her lip and clenching her thighs together.
I can’t take another second, so I reach for the condom.
“I’m clean,” he grunts, wrapping his ankles around my waist. “I got tested before you came out.”
Glaring down at him, it feels like my heart is pounding a mile a minute. My hand hovers over the foil packets, and I know in my head I shouldn’t admit to him I also got tested before my trip. If I tell him I did, he’ll know I wanted this.
And suddenly the roles feel reversed. When I first got here, he was the one denying his feelings for me. Now, I’m the one guarding my heart, but I know where he is concerned, I don’t make wise choices, and I don’t care how much this is going to hurt later.
Looking up at Hanna, she nods.
With that, I press my cock against him, hovering over him as I admit what a fucking idiot I am. “So did I.”
Then, I press myself home, inside him, and we both groan. My face contorts, almost in anguish and I rest my forehead against his shoulder, thrusting in hard again. He cries out, his ankles still wrapped around me as he pulls me in again and again.
That’s when I lose control. My body moves on its own, and it’s like the last three years don’t exist, and we’re right back where we were. We are together, and tomorrow feels infinite.
My hands roam his body as I fuck him, along his chest, up his biceps, and when I get to his hands, I feel her hands too. Looking up, I see that she’s grasping his hand in hers and my fingers mingle with theirs.
When I lift to see her, she bolts forward, kissing me hard. The only sound in the room is flesh pounding flesh and Nash’s heavy breathing and loud groans. My hips won’t stop thrusting, and when Hanna releases my lips, she leans over to kiss him. As she reaches down to stroke him, I know he’ll come fast.
So, I hook an arm under his leg, pounding harder, fucking all of my feelings into him because as far as I know this could be our last time. And I still hate him. I hate him so much for making me feel this way. His skin against mine, bare and beautiful.
With one last heavy thrust, I come hard, letting out a guttural cry as I fill him up. Hanna only has to stroke him a few more times before he shudders underneath me, and I watch as he comes all over his chest.
The three of us are silent for a moment as we catch our breaths. Hanna reaches for a tissue, cleaning up his chest, and I reluctantly pull out, collapsing on top of him.
Hanna lies next to him as I roll away. “That was perfect,” she whispers into his neck.
Sitting up with my feet on the floor, I try to remind myself why I’m not getting involved with Nash again. I can’t.
“I’m going to go shower,” I say, standing up and escaping to the bathroom.
Under the hot spray of water, I let everything roll off my shoulders. I can’t let him get to me. I can’t.
Soon, the shower door opens and I feel his presence as he steps in. The dual heads give us enough room so we can both shower without touching each other, but he’s still right at my back. And it feels like that first shower we shared all over again.
“I didn’t fuck anyone else.” His voice is low, barely audible over the water. “No guys at least.”
“I don’t care.”
His arms wrap around me from behind, and it feels impossible. Denying him. Protecting myself.
“Yes, you do.”
A second later, the shower door opens, and Hanna joins us. Having her with us instantly diffuses the tension as she steps against my chest, sandwiching me between them.
Looking down at her, so perfect and beautiful, I feel something with Hanna I don’t feel with Nash—safe. This whole time I’ve been telling myself I can’t keep her because he cares too much about her, but I’m finding myself having a hard time imagining a life outside this island. Without either of them.
26
I can’t sleep. The launch party is in three days. But that’s not why.
Somewhere around midnight, I wake up in Ellis’s bed. Hanna is between us with her back to him so they’re both facing me. In the darkness, with only the light of the moon entering the bedroom window, I stare at them both.
This week has gone by too fast. We made a deal—after launch, Hanna could return to her life in the city, and Ellis would fly back home and never contact her again. It felt so right a few days ago, but now…it feels wrong. How can I send him away now, especially after last night?
I feel myself pulling him back in, desperate to keep his attention. I can’t let Ellis go and maybe I never did.
There’s no more sleeping for me tonight so I climb out of bed and pad silently across the house back to my room. Slipping on some sweats and a T-shirt, I leave the house, letting the door close without a sound and crossing the helipad to the office. I could have probably gone down to the gym for a workout. I haven’t been down there all week, but there’s too much on my mind.
So, I open my email, but there’s nothing new. I open the bank account…nothing new. Then, I flip through the documents ag
ain, looking for something, anything I can fix or change or make better, but there’s nothing.
Somehow, I end up scrolling through my phone. Completely restless, my mind needs something to occupy itself, and I land on my camera roll. Flipping through the past starting from the most recent photos, I scroll through shots of almost nothing. Pictures for work, models, ideas, screenshots. Aside from a few shots I snapped of Harper and before that, the wedding, I have no real memories in my phone.
Until I get to Amsterdam. The trip we took to Brussels. Ellis and I on the train, being tourists in a foreign country. Everything from eating to sleeping…and even fucking in the five-star resorts in high rise buildings in the city center.
I land on one, a selfie he took with my phone. Lying in a white bed with my head against his chest, a smile on his face and a sarcastic scowl on mine. Regardless of how it looks, I was happy. We were happy. Maybe the happiest I’ve ever been. Trying to remember where my head was then, I can hardly believe for months I acted like it was normal…not being with a man, but being happy.
He says I never truly accepted it because it was just two weeks after that trip everything fell apart. Okay fell apart is a bad way of saying it. I smashed it all to pieces. I set our relationship on fire, leaving him to watch it burn alone.
There are more pictures of us in Amsterdam before the setting is back to Del Rey.
Zara’s smiling face stares back at me in one picture, wet from the pool, sitting between my legs, my hands holding her possessively. I don’t look happy in this picture. I look angry, desperate, barely holding on.
In another life, another chance, I could have kept her. I could have been happy. Zara was everything I thought I needed, someone who worshipped me. Never challenged me. Someone who held my hand through my own downfall. Letting her go was one of the few things I did right.
Then why does it still hurt so much?
Before the pictures of her there are pages and pages of blurry memories, regrets, mistakes. Drugs, parties, girls. It’s a mess.
Until it’s Preston. Pictures from the weekend he died. The catalyst.
The door of the office opens, and I look up to see Hanna tiptoeing across the office in one of my T-shirts. “What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
She sits on the desk in front of me, and I immediately roll my chair putting myself between her legs. My hands run up the soft skin of her thighs as she rakes her fingers through my hair.
“Is this about last night?”
Last night. The first time I slept with Ellis in three years, the best sex I’ve had in about as long. The way he looked when he thought I had been with other men. The jealousy on his face. And yeah, I bought the lube in a moment of weakness stupidly thinking I could replace him. Thinking I could find someone in the city, accept the truth about myself and pretend it had nothing to do with him.
That bottle never even got close to being opened.
I thought he’d be happy, being together again. I thought that’s what he wanted, but he never really shook off the anger at me, and I’m starting to think his little threat the other day about never going back down that road with me was true, and that feels like knives in my chest.
I let out a deep sigh.
“I don’t know.”
She picks up my phone, seeing the picture of Preston on the screen. Then, she kisses the top of my head and sets it back down. “Do you want to talk about it?”
No, I don’t.
But not talking about it has been my MO for as long as I can remember, and look where that’s gotten me. Fuck maybe Preston’s death wasn’t the catalyst after all. Maybe I never had it together even then. Zara admitted she loved me long before the crash, but I had walls up long before she found her way back to Del Rey.
“Ellis and I did a lot more than hook up in Amsterdam,” I mutter against the skin of her knee.
“I figured that much out.”
“He was the first man…no, the only man I have ever been with. I thought it was just sex, and at first, I think it was.”
“Did you love him?”
My throat starts to ache with the emotion I’m holding back. Did I? Do I still?
“Yes,” I whisper, shutting my eyes and letting her stroke my head.
“What happened?”
My eyes squeeze closed, painful memories resurfacing. “I fucked up.”
I tell her everything. From the first time to the end, the most shame I have ever felt in my life. The point in my story where I hated myself more than ever before.
“Oh, Nash,” she whispers, placing her lips on the top of my head.
“What do I do now?” I ask, not even bothering to fight these fucking tears as they land against the skin of her legs.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.” Which is a lie. I know what I want. What I don’t know is if asking for what I want is worth the risk of being disappointed, rejected and left with nothing.
“I think you do know.”
She pulls my head back, peering down into my eyes. Hanna is so fearless, flawless, and with her I don’t feel afraid of what I could become. She makes it so easy to be the man I want to be.
Leaning forward, she kisses my lips.
“What if I want both of you?” I whisper, pulling her to my lap and squeezing her as tight as I can. “I want it to stay like this. I don’t want this week to end.”
“Neither do I,” she whispers, kissing my cheek, her lips trailing over my beard and down to my neck.
“Even after what I just told you? After what I did to him.”
“Nash, this is how you are. The harder you love, the more you fight. You made a mistake, but you need to make it right. Apologize to him. Prove to him you’re not going to hurt him again.”
“Why would he take me back?”
Holding my face in her hands, she kisses me again. “Because he loves you.”
27
Amsterdam
I have never had so much sex in my life. Even if I could keep my hands off of Ellis, I wouldn’t want to.
What started as just once and just to see if I liked it has become an addiction. Ellis’s touch consumes me, day and night. After work every day, I go to his apartment where we fuck almost immediately then usually again after dinner and sometime in the middle of the night. Most of the time, I bottom and sometimes, he does. Either way, it’s fucking mind-blowing.
There’s something about the way he is with me. How it doesn’t feel wrong or strange. Like nothing about me has changed.
It’s been over three months since the first time. One Saturday evening, we’re lying naked in his bed, both of us putting off ordering something for dinner, and he’s laying between my legs, trailing his fingers over the plane of my stomach. If he hadn’t just sucked the life out of my cock, it’d be aroused and ready for more.
“I have bad news,” he says without looking up at me.
“What?” I’m scrolling mindlessly through my phone, but I set it aside to look down at him. There are a million things he could say right now. Ellis and I never really established the boundaries or labels for whatever this is, but I know he’s not fucking anyone else strictly because he is literally always with me.
“My contract with the company is being absolved at the end of the quarter.”
“What?” I snap.
“This is what happens. I’m a temporary contractor. These things only last so long. I thought I had until the end of the year, but they want to cut it off in October.”
I don’t speak because I’m waiting for him to drop the weight he’s holding over me, ready to crush me.
“I can do some freelance jobs for now. My work visa isn’t up for another year, so I don’t need to leave right away.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying I’m going to stay here for you, you stubborn ass.” He places a kiss on my stomach, and I get a sick feeling in my stomach.
“Why w
ould you do that?”
“What do you mean why? Do you want me to leave?” He’s getting defensive, and I’m suddenly regretting the way I answered him just now, so I drop it.
“Of course, I don’t want you to leave…but I just feel weird, you staying for me.”
“I’m staying for us,” he mumbles with a little affection lacking in his tone as he climbs off me, grabbing his underwear and getting dressed quickly and walking out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.
Us.
Fuck, I still haven’t even told my dad I’m here with him let alone fucking…and what, dating him? What am I supposed to do? Come out? It doesn’t feel right. I can’t.
I mean...I don’t want to do it with anyone else, but that’s because I trust Ellis. We’re friends. Best friends. My brain does a little dance of denial over and over as it often does when I get lost in my thoughts when my phone rings.
Looking down, I see Zara’s picture on the screen.
Fucking great. There’s still a little buzz of worry or excitement when she calls. Worry because I don’t want her telling me something bad happened between her and my dad, but then there’s also excitement because…well, I’m still a fucking idiot after all.
“Hey,” I say into the phone.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” she asks, and already I can tell there’s some hesitation in her voice. Something’s going on.
“No. What’s wrong?” I cut to the chase.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re calling to tell me something, I can tell. Is Dad okay?”
“He’s fine, and yeah, I did call to tell you something, but nothing is wrong,” she says with tightness in her voice.
“God, don’t tell me you’re pregnant,” I say in a joking manner, but I guess I shouldn’t joke about that. Sure, they’ve been fucking for less than a year, but it doesn’t take long to make a baby, and I bet the asshole still has it in him. Zara’s only twenty-five, and she’ll probably want kids.