Behind the wheel, he carefully pulled into traffic. The silence between us had never seemed so loud before, or maybe it was just that my heartbeat was pounding inside my head, making that bitchy little inner voice keep quiet for once. Either way, I turned the stereo on only for Tainted Knights’ first single with the record label they had signed with to be playing.
Pride in Gray, my brother, and their band filled me, and I leaned over to kiss Gray’s cheek. “I can’t believe this song is in the top five on iTunes in the rock category.”
He shot me a look, and I grinned.
“Okay, scratch that” I said. “I can believe it. It’s exciting to see Tainted Knights’ name on iTunes period, not just so high up on a list.”
He caught my hand and brought it to his lips, making my heart actually skip a beat. “I knew what you meant. It’s hard for me to believe it too. Hell, baby, a year ago, I didn’t know what the future was going to hold, but now, I see it so clearly. I feel like I was blind until now.”
I had this odd feeling that he was talking about more than just his music career, but I kept my mouth shut as he drove us home.
TWENTY FOUR
Gray
I pulled into the garage and parked my car beside Kassa’s mint-green Fiat. She had been quiet for the rest of the drive home, but she hadn’t tried to pull her hand from mine. I turned the engine off and got out before she could say anything. After going around to her side, I opened the door, letting her get out and then taking her hand.
With our fingers linked, we took the elevator up to our apartment, neither of us speaking on the short ride up. There were half a dozen other people in the elevator with us, all of them my age or a little older and most of them drunk off their asses. I pulled her back against my front and wrapped my free hand around her, pulling her hips back against my rock-hard cock and as far away from the others as I could. She inhaled sharply when she felt my cock flex against her hip, and when I saw the way her cheeks turned pink, I had to hide my grin as I kissed the back of her head.
Our floor was the third stop on the way up, and I kept her close in front of me until we got off to hide just how hard I was for her. I unlocked our apartment door, and she walked in ahead of me, but as I closed the door behind us, she turned to face me. Those pretty, blue eyes watched me for a long moment before she spoke.
“I’m going to shower.”
Reluctantly, I released her hand. “Okay, baby.”
She watched me for another moment before turning and going to her room. I watched her go before daring to move. My instinct was to follow after her and join her in the shower, but I had to take this slow. She wasn’t ready for what I wanted. Fuck, I had been pussyfooting around this whole thing, and I knew she was scared.
All I had wanted to do was avoid hurting her, but maybe I had done that anyway. I had wasted time with her, and even though that time had been spent together, it had been time that she hadn’t known that I loved her. Now, she was skeptical of me and I had to give her time to realize I wasn’t playing around. Fuck, I would never play around with her or her feelings.
I locked the door and went into the kitchen. I grabbed a bottle of water and the bowl of fruit Kassa had washed and cut up earlier that day. In her bedroom, I set the bowl on the bed and then kicked my shoes and my jeans off. Once I was down to only my boxers, I climbed into bed and turned on the TV.
I was flipping through channels when she came out of the bathroom a long while later. She had a towel wrapped around her body, and she didn’t even look toward the bed as she walked to her closet. When she came out, she was wearing one of my old shirts that fell to her knees, so I couldn’t tell what she was wearing underneath it.
I took the lid off her bowl of fruit as she sat beside me on the bed. Her eyes lit up and she didn’t hesitate to tuck herself against me as I finally found the late-night cartoon channel we had always liked to watch together. Putting her head on my chest, she fed me a slice of strawberry. As she placed the piece of fruit to my lips, I licked the juice off her fingers.
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t move her fingers away. I kissed her fingertips and then the top of her head.
“What are we watching?” she asked after a few tense minutes had passed. “Isn’t there a movie on?”
“This late, the only thing on is what we’re watching or soft-core porn.” I stole a slice of kiwi from her bowl, trying to pretend like my cock wasn’t trying to kill me from the lack of blood flow to my brain.
“Yeah, I’m good with this, then,” she said with a shy, little laugh.
“Or we could talk,” I suggested quietly and felt her tense.
“What’s there to talk about?” she muttered, finding her bowl of fruit more interesting than either the television or me. “Everything that needed to be said has.”
“We haven’t even touched the important things that need to be said, Kas.” I took the bowl from her, knowing that she could attack me for taking away her food, and set it on the nightstand beside me. Keeping an arm around her, I shifted us so that we were lying down on our sides, facing each other. I pushed her shirt up so I could stroke my fingers up and down her spine. When I felt the top of a pair of panties, I was relieved that she wasn’t bare.
“Okay, let’s be real for a minute,” she told me, pulling away a little but still arching her back into my touch. She was no more able to pull away from my touch than I was to stop, but the look on her beautiful face was completely serious. “Things have gone down this road twice already,” she reminded me, not that I needed it. I remembered everything as clear as if it had happened yesterday. “Both those times, you freaked out on me and told me that what we were feeling couldn’t be explored. Because you didn’t want it to happen, and then you begged me to forget about it and stay your friend.”
“I know what I said,” I muttered.
“Yet, now, you want me to forget about all of that and explore this thing with you. Not because I’m ready, but because you are finally are?” She glared up at me. “Don’t you think that’s even a little bit selfish, Gray?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “It’s selfish—I’m selfish. I always have been, but you still loved me anyway. Which, according to Kin, is a miracle all its own.”
“What if, for once, I want to be selfish?”