India
“Iwish you could stay.” Asa’s low, rough murmur brushes my ear. “I want you to stay.”
I glance over my shoulder, and though I left his bed not ten minutes ago, just meeting those dove grey eyes sets off sparks on kindling that’s always ready to be set aflame when I’m in this man’s presence.
I want you to stay.
For someone who’s been abandoned, denied, and betrayed, those words are pure temptation. My heart yearns to reach out for it, to trust it. But my head… my head that remembers every single time I’ve been left behind, that I’ve been devastated, warns me to be cautious.
The simple truth is I’m afraid to trust Asa.
With my body, my pleasure? To not physically hurt me or violate the boundaries I set? Yes. All day I trust him with those. But with my heart? The hope that keeps trying to climb in my chest and take root? No? For him, there isn’t a world where he can have both me and his friendship with Jessie. I don’t know if it’s possible either, but there’s a part of me that’s willing to find out. But Asa? Regardless of what he said last night—regardless of how he broke my chest open with hope—I still have zero doubts who will always be his first priority.
Jessie. Not me.
And I promised myself that I would never settle again. Never reduce myself so someone else could feel comfortable, important, or worthy, rendering me none of them.
Yet…
Yet, I want to stay.
I want to believe.
I want to be his.
“Considering I’m Rose’s vice principal, and if she wakes up and sees me here, it’ll be all over the school on Monday, I think it’s best I leave now,” I drawl, shrugging into my jacket.
“Yeah, she has no filter.” He huffs out a short chuckle. “She won’t do it on purpose, but she will spread our business faster than an STD in a frat house.”
I scrunch up my nose. “Nice.”
“India.” He shifts to my side, cups my face. “It doesn’t stop me from wanting it. Tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow, we need to talk. Really talk.”
“Tomorrow is today,” I whisper.
“Yes.” A smile ghosts across his lips. “Today then. We’ll talk today.”
I nod, though my pulse crashes in my veins, under my skin.
“Today.”
He pinches my chin, tilting my head back. When his mouth claims mine, I close my eyes, luxuriating in his taste, in the texture of his sensual, firm lips, in the erotic play of his tongue. It would be a very tragic thing if he ever suspected how much he owned me.
Releasing me, he reaches behind me, twisting the lock and grabbing the knob. A hard pebble of dread takes up residence between my ribs, and part of me almost turns around and marches back up those stairs to the sex-scented sanctuary of Asa’s bedroom. But I step back, and as he pulls the door open, I dismiss that kernel of unease. It’s ridiculous—
“Oh shit, you scared me.” Jessie laughed, a key dangling from his fingers. “I was coming by to crash on… your…”
Ice slithers through me, coating my veins, my organs, my very blood. And as Jessie’s stunned gaze collides with mine then jerks to Asa, I’m left frozen, unable to move, unable to escape this horrible scene that has been set on a collision course from the moment we kissed two years ago.
“What the fuck is this?” he demands, his voice growing louder with each word until he’s nearly shouting.
“Keep your voice down,” Asa growls, the gentle touch on the small of my back belying the fierce frown darkening his face. He ushers me out of the house, forcing Jessie back off the front stoop and down the stairs. Once we’re at the end of the walk, he stops. “I get we’re going to have this out, but my niece is in that house.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “So keep your damn voice down so you don’t upset her.”
Jessie glances at the house, and though the fury doesn’t abandon his expression, when he speaks, his tone is lower. The anger, though. The anger saturates every syllable.
“You’re so concerned about Rose, but unless I’m reading this shit wrong,” he rotates a finger back and forth between me and Asa, “you were in there fucking where she’s sleeping. So make that shit make sense.”
“Don’t do that, Jessie,” Asa says, and the quiet warning in those words, coupled with the stillness of his large frame, send a shiver coursing through me. “Don’t go so far you can’t walk it back. Now, if you want to address what’s in front of you, we can do that. But leave Rose out of it.”