I still don’t understand.
“Nate was… he was on the window ledge,” he says quietly, and it takes me a moment to process the words. “He told me later he was trying to escape, but I’m not sure, Syd.” He sighs. “Not sure what he was doing in that room, and if he was trying to escape from the apartment, or end it all.”
Tears spill down my cheeks. I don’t even feel them until Kash reaches up and dashes them away. I put a hand over my mouth, nausea hitting me, a crushing wave of fear.
Then he pulls me into his arms and lies back down, hauling me on top of him. “Shh…It’s okay.” He strokes my hair, my back, his heart beating steadily underneath me. “It’s okay.”
But it’s not and probably never will be. How can it be okay? He confirmed my worst fears.
“I thought he said that his stepmom didn’t hurt him,” I breathe, wetting Kash’s T-shirt with my
tears. “Why would he lie?”
“Who knows how he sees this in his mind,” his voice rumbles. He’s so warm, his body hot like a furnace. “Trauma is a tricky business. Or what he thinks we’ll do if he tells us the truth.”
“I’d go punch that bitch in the face,” I hiss into his shoulder.
He chokes. “Okay, maybe that’s why. Maybe he’s afraid we’ll go and get ourselves into trouble on his behalf.”
“So is this why?” I whisper, despair crowding my thoughts. “Why kissing me freaked him out?”
“He kissed you.”
I lift my head, to see his face, because his voice is strange—kind of… empty, but also kind of curious and interested.
There’s heat in his gray eyes, but not the angry sort.
I lick my lips, and his gaze drops to my mouth. “Yeah. He did.”
“Dammit.” He shifts underneath me, and I feel his cock, long and hard, poking me in the hip, making me gasp. His hands thread in my hair, cup the back of my head, and then his mouth crashes on mine, his tongue thrusting between my lips.
Oh God, it’s been so long since we kissed, that first and last time, and all this want, all this desire for him has been accumulating in my core, under my skin, everywhere, and now his taste is in my mouth again, his scent, his long, hard body stretched underneath mine, his arms around me.
I missed him, I realize with a jolt, missed being so close to him, feeling his skin, the shape of his body, feeling how he wants me.
It makes me happy. And hot. I whine in the back of my throat, my hands burrowing under his T-shirt, stroking the smooth skin and firm flesh of his abs, then higher, over his pecs.
How can I want him so much when I also want Nate and West? But the thought is fleeting, lost in the storm raging inside me.
He grabs my ass and hauls me higher until I’m sitting in his lap, his hard-on pressing between my legs. He moans and breaks away, panting harshly.
“Fuck, I tried,” he whispers. “I tried not to kiss you again. Not to stay. To leave and not come back, but I couldn’t. What are you doing to me, woman?”
I can only kiss him again, kiss him more, touch him, unwilling to stop. I want to see him, pleasure him, so many fantasies of getting him naked that I’m breathless.
Sitting up, regretfully breaking the kiss, I drop a hand to his zipper and feel his cock pressing against my hand, burning hot even through the denim. It jumps a little when I press down.
God, so sexy.
“Syd.” He groans, staring down where my hand rests on top of his hard-on. “Shit.”
Without a word, I unzip him, carefully, finding that he’s gone commando, the parting cloth revealing his bare, flushed cock inch by inch, until it springs free.
“Oh fuck,” he hisses, his abs clenching into that delicious six-pack. I’ve managed to push his T-shirt all the way up, and I can see his small pale nipples all bunched up into tiny hard points.
His cock trembles, and it’s as impressive as West’s was—long, and thick, silky skin stretched tight over steel, but paler, the head darkening as I watch. Smells good, too, like exotic spice and salt.
My mouth waters, and without another thought, I bend and lick the underside, from root to crown.