“I run sometimes, I mean, even when not being chased. You know, lung capacity and all that. I bet you have some awesome running playlists from working at the store.”
Again with the smile, and good lord, a lip bite too.
Invite me. Invite me to run with you, Troy. Please.
He’s quiet though. We turn onto my street. My house seems like the most dismal one on the block, hidden behind unkempt hedges, lurking beneath a tree dying a slow death. Dark. My roommates must not even be home. “That one,” I gesture toward its unwelcoming facade.
“Already?” Is it me or does he sound disappointed? He pulls up to the curb and turns off the car but neither of us jumps out. Well, I guess I’m the only one who’s supposed to jump out. I just sit there, wishing I had the guts to invite him in, but I don’t.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say. The last of the light fades from the sky, leaving both of us tinted glowing dashboard gold. “It was nice meeting you. Like, officially.”
He shifts sideways in his seat, turning toward me, draping an arm over the steering wheel. “The pleasure was mine.” It’s other level gallant, even with the Indiana twang. Aren’t crushes supposed to disappoint you when you meet them for real? Not Troy. It’s one charming revelation after the next.
“I totally owe you, like coffee or something, a drink…whatever.” I’m just stretching the moment here, hanging on by a thread, not wanting to leave.
His eyes drop, I feel like he doesn’t want to go either. But he shakes his head like he’s trying to break a spell, suddenly jittery and keyed up. “I have, um…plans tonight, otherwise I’d take you up on that. I mean, if that’s what you meant.”
The car seems small, and so quiet, and shit, it’s Troy, right there with me. I swallow hard. “It is what I meant.”
His phone pings urgently, the impatient bleep of four text messages coming in at once. “Fuck, I really gotta go.”
I nod hastily and climb out, wrestling my backpack behind me. I give him a little salute of thanks and step back, shutting the door. I don’t leave the curb though, waiting for him to drive away.
The car starts, and then it turns off again. The driver door opens and he steps out. “Look, Jonas, this might sound crazy, but…you wanna come check something out with me?”
I try not to get too excited. “What’s the crazy part?”
Troy puts his hands on the roof of the car and stares at me across it. Jesus, the guy has smolder. “It’s a thing at the art museum, there might be champagne. I might keep you out late. Like…really really late.”
So much for not getting excited. “Not really dressed for a soiree,” is all I can think to say. My Chuck Taylor’s are sadly scuffed, and my jeans aren’t my best pair.
He laughs and looks himself up and down. He’s not exactly dressed up either, though the dark hoodie and a corduroy suit jacket he put on before we left the store give him a kind of academic élan I’ve never been capable of. I can rock a suit, if I do say so myself, or really casual, but in between is hard for me. I can’t pull it off the way he does. “It’s not a big deal. Want to go? I promised I would, and I’m almost too late.”
I shrug. I realize I’ll go anywhere with him. Just to see what happens. But I laugh and say, “You said you weren’t asking me on a date.”
He shrugs back. “I am large. I contain multitudes.”
“What?” I feel like I can’t breathe for a second. His eyes are intense.
“Whitman.”
Incredible. Handsome jawline can quote poetry too. I’m doomed.
But I’m saying yes. I’m getting back in the car. I’m going where Troy leads.
It’s really a quick jaunt. We pass through the heart of campus and drive right by the museum in all its glass and angles. Rainbow light cascades up the front wall.
“Gotta park in back.”
Inside, as near as I can figure, there’s some kind of charity fundraiser. I feel simultaneously out of place and completely relaxed. As a performer, I’m used to crowds, small talk, hobnobbing. But I’m ill-prepared and poorly dressed, so it takes some work to get my stage face in place. Troy doesn’t seem to worry about it. He wears that shy smile like a magic shield, tattoos creeping up his neck like armor. There’s a chamber group playing, and the sound of the cello both soothes and excites me. I adore the cello. Troy finds a short, pretty girl with outrageous glasses, and they exchange a hug that makes me mildly jealous.
“Gina, this is Jonas,” he introduces me.
Gina gives me a dazzling smile and exclaims, after a quick up-and-down assessment, “Well, don’t you have lovely posture.”
“He’s an opera singer,” Troy explains. I incline my head graciously. The posture comes from singer’s training; I can’t help it. Then he adds, “He’s also not castrated.”
I blush and glare at Troy. Does he wink? Yes, I think he does, and that makes me blush in a different way.
Behind her outrageous glasses, Gina’s brows shoot up and her eyes dart between us. “Figured that out already, have you, Troy? Nice work. Definitely worth the effort. I approve of both your industry and your choice of subject.”
Troy grimaces and rolls his eyes, and the color that shows on his cheeks makes me very happy. “Everything go okay?” he asks his friend and snags a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, shoving one into my hand as well.
“Everything’s ready,” Gina says. “You have like, twenty minutes to get up there. After that, the only way out is over the edge.”
None of that makes any sense to me, but his face lights up in a way I’d like to replicate. He whispers something to her and when she nods with an exaggerated eyeroll, he gives her a kiss on the cheek then turns to me. “Come with me?” he half asks, half orders and holds out his hand.
I reach out and take it and we touch skin to skin for the first time. A charge zings through me—all the way through—straight to my uncastrated bits. It’s electric. His eyes ping to mine so he must feel it too. After all this time just looking, it’s surreal to feel him link his fingers through mine. Weird but good, nice, blissful, knowing he wants me there. With him.
His hand is warm and strong as he tugs me to the side of the atrium. I’ve been in the art museum a few times but never at night. It’s an incredible space. Like one of those sci-fi buildings you don’t really think exist outside of CGI—walls and ceiling of glass, terraces and the trailing green of vegetation, mustard-colored stone steps and air that swallows sound. He downs his champagne with a haste that surprises me and leaves it on a table. Never one to back down from a challenge, I follow his example.
Divested of bubbly, he ushers me toward the hallway where the restrooms are, but blows by them to a stairwell, the door banging loudly in the metal-filled space when he opens it. Letting it shut less loudly behind us, he turns to me, and—oh, shit—leans in. His green eyes search mine for approval, then drop to my lips, asking without asking, can I kiss you?
Kissing is absolutely not something I expected to happen today.
But I absolutely do not disapprove.
His lips brush mine, softly at first, and the same electricity as before sparks higher. I groan, or maybe he does, or we both do. I used our linked hands to pull him closer. He presses me back against the door.
I could shove him off, but I don’t. He’s not forcing me, I welcome him. I let the hands I’ve admired from afar hold me firmly, one of them moving to my neck, thumb caressing my face in the way you see teens kiss on TV shows, and it always looks better than any kiss ever has in real life. More meaningful, adoring and longing, urgent yet reverent. Troy’s kiss is as hot as those TV ones, all fierce and somehow revved up and shockingly knowing considering we’ve only been on a first-name basis for like an hour. I slip my hands inside his jacket and find the fissure between hoodie and the waist of his jeans, reaching in and yanking his hips closer with the hook of one finger while my other hand searches for skin. I feel him jerk when I find it.
“Do you trust me?” he
breathes against my neck, and I can’t explain the thrill those four words give me in his low, clouded voice, chiseled lips still brushing against my skin.
I ruin the moment and answer with a sadly noncommittal “I guess?” He smiles as he pulls away and drags me up the stairs. Up, up, up, all the way to the roof. Alarm will sound, but it doesn’t, and then we’re out under the stars, the light from the atrium shining upward like a beacon. It’s warm for early spring, and Troy shucks his jacket, pushing the sleeves of his hoodie up.
“What are we doing?” I ask, following him toward several bundles hugging the low wall at the edge of the roof.
He turns and walks backward, and it makes me nervous because I don’t want him to fall off. “I asked the wrong question,” he says, transformed somehow. Not shy anymore. Crackling with confidence, on fire with nervous excitement. “I should have asked if I can trust you. If you can keep a secret.”
“It’s a little late now, isn’t it?”
He shakes his head solemnly. “Not yet.”
Fuck. The thought crosses my mind that I don’t really know him at all. Have I made a mistake letting him bring me up here? “Is this secret going to hurt anyone?”
“No,” he scoffs. He drags his sleeve up higher and taps the tattoo I’d admired earlier. “The oak. You said you like it. Love is love?”
I’m taken aback by the sudden shift in topic. He pulls his other sleeve up and shows me the little OK oak leaf that mirrors the first tattoo. Despite my trepidation, a bizarre desire to lick it rushes through me. Tattoos should taste like something, even though they don’t. Nothing except person. I wonder if Troy the person tastes good. I wince at the direction of my thoughts and squeeze my forehead between my fingers. “Yeah. I love that shit,” I say, deliberately casual.
He puts his hand to his own chest the way I do when I accept applause, open palm on my heart. The simplest expression of my gratitude to the audience I could find, one that feels genuine, not showy. I do feel grateful people appreciate what I do. When they hear me the way I want to be heard.
“I’m the oak,” Troy says, pressing into his heart. His eyes dare me to argue, dare me to love him for it. “Troy O’Keefe. OK, you see?”
My mouth literally drops open. I cover it with steepled hands. He closes the distance between us and pulls my hands away from my face, cradling them in his. I’m dumbfounded. “Why are you telling me?”
“I like you,” he says earnestly. Then his eyes hide from mine. “And I gotta confess something.”
“You just did,” I say with a laugh. He’s still holding my hands, his grip on my wrists firm but gentle. Thumbs slide over fragile skin, and I worry my pulse is racing too fast.
His eyes come back to mine, the rainbow beams from the famous light totem display out front playing over his face. “Something else.”
I could confess too. You’re turning me on, Troy O’Keefe. More than that. You’re making me feel alive.
The lights go golden for a second, and he practically glows. “I know you,” he says. Does he? I hear it in the ancient sense, the profound sense. It thrills me, so low and warm, serious with intent. “I knew who you were when you came in. I’ve heard you sing. Your voice, your gorgeous fucking voice haunts me.”
It hits me like when someone hugs you from behind and you don’t expect it. Jarring, knocking the air out of me, but warm and welcome at the same time. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Firm but grim. “I also loved that you stood up to that guy, the big wig. That you called him out.”
“My shining hour,” I crack. “Opera’s #MeToo poster boy. Yay.”
I yank a hand out of his and rub it across my head. The news had traveled far, I guess. I’d experienced it not at school but at a summer thing. A man twice my age and ten times as important. I still didn’t know how bringing it into the open is going to affect my life, my career, everything I want out of singing. I may have ruined it all. My future. Personally, I haven’t gotten past it. It’s the thing that’s sort of deadened me inside. I still dread one on one coaching, even with people I know and trust.
“I admire you,” he says with a shrug.
I take my hand away from my face. Back to normal. “Well, then it’s mutual, but I didn’t know you were you.”
He shakes off my admiration. “I have to ask you fast. You wanna sleep with me up here?”
If he couldn’t feel my pulse before, surely now he can see my actual heart beating right out of my chest, like a goddamn Bugs Bunny cartoon. What did he say?
3
Flapping a hand in front of his face impatiently, he laughs. “I mean, you want to sleep up here with me? On the roof. Not have sex with me. Not that.”
“Not yet,” I drawl, trying to cover my surprise and equal disappointment.
He’s still holding one of my hands but drops it, the better to gesture wildly toward the bundles at the edge, voice going all Indiana with his passion. “I’ve been planning this for months. I’m gonna hang some art, a banner of sorts, over the wall of the museum. But I want to wait till morning, so I’m gonna sleep up here, then drop it, then shimmy down a rope over the wall before the campus truly wakes up. I know I probably should have told you all this earlier, like in the car, but…are you in? They’re going to lock up in a few minutes. If you want out, you gotta go now. Gina said she’ll give you a ride home.”
“Why morning?”
“I want the max number of students to see it. In the sun. If I time it right, people are moving through here, pictures will be good. Maximum impact.”
My mind spins through possibilities. What if we get caught up here? Would I lose my place in the program? What if one of us falls getting down? Would we die? What if he did? What are we gonna do up here all night? That last one burns. “Do you actually need my help?”
“It wouldn’t hurt. It’s awkward with one person, but I can do it. Only stay if you want to. Really want to.”
Shit. I’m starving, having saved dinner for after rehearsal. Exhausted too. But right then, watching him sizzle with the thrall of his plan, I know I’m not going anywhere. “You sure no one’s going to get hurt?”
“Depends. Are you good with rope?”
My mind goes dirty places with that thought. I suck my lower lip under my teeth.
He grins. “I mean…getting down one.”
I can’t help it. I want to frazzle him too. “Yeah. I’m good at going down.”
We both laugh, and then for a minute, we stare at each other. I swallow hard. He looks away first. “You’re going to stay.” The way it comes out wants to be an order, but his voice hitches a tiny bit. It’s vulnerable, sweet, eager. It kills me.
“Yeah,” I agree, and let the weird tilting feeling that comes with doing something rash, something nuts, something that might change your whole life wash over me. “I’m staying. Why the hell not?” I don’t miss that he ducks his head to hide a smile. By some mutual agreement, we walk to the edge and look over. There’s always a dozen or so students lying on the pavement with their feet up the wall, watching the light shift and change.
“Why’d you start?” I ask him. “Love is love.”
He gives me a long hard look. “There’s a little work to do. Can you help me? I’ll explain while we do it.”
As he turns away to go to those mysterious bundles, I snag his arm. “Wait,” I say, digging my heels in. I’ve been stumbling along trying to keep up with him, but I want him to know I have ideas of my own. I owe him one for the kiss in the stairwell that shocked the fuck out of me. “Before we start…” I want to say more but get tongue-tied. He’s got me reeling, I’m not usually like this.
He frowns, trying to figure out what I need, impatient to get to his work. I’d rather see him smile. With a huff of frustration at my lack of voice, I take his jaw in my hands and press my lips to his. I want to know if what happened earlier was true. He accepts the kiss with a little sound of surprise, then I feel him give over to it, mouth opening to mine. I kiss like I
sing. I don’t half-ass it. I put everything into it. Every time. If my voice is an aural expression of my soul, then kissing is how I do it through touch.
I groan. He feels nice. So nice. He’s taller than me by an inch or two, and fit—hard muscles like warm marble under my touch. His hands skitter over me, trying to find purchase, first my waist, then my back, my neck, my arms, my ass, pulling me firmly against him. Our mouths mesh seamlessly, perfectly. Everything aligns. The give and take between us is like a duet, push and pull, advance and retreat, tongues sliding over each other, heads turning this way and that. I don’t want to stop.
“Jonas,” he sighs it out like a miracle when I shift my lips to his jaw, hiding it within our ragged breath.
I draw back. “Shit, sorry. I just…I liked it earlier.”
It’s been awhile. I’m not so good at casual things. I haven’t had a boyfriend for a long time, and since last summer, what happened, I haven’t exactly been popular. Nor have I been seeking people out. I’ve been trying to focus on singing. But, you know, I have needs. Things I long for. Stuff I miss. Not sex necessarily, but God…touch? Closeness. Trust. I slide my grip along his arm until he does that thing again, threading our fingers together, and I know he liked it too.
He’s looking down and away, hiding that smile again, flustered, and I feel a little less lost knowing I could do that to him. We break apart and he crouches down by one of the bundles and starts untying it. I hear him take a deep breath and release it. I know that sound. It’s the sound of getting yourself under control again.
“So, I did this piece on grain sacks. Dyed and printed. I have to sort of assemble it a bit. I figured it would give me something to do while I wait.” He finds a backpack amid the stuff. “Ah, cool. Gina and company left us some food and drinks too.”
“Your friends got this stuff up here?”
“I’ve been sneaking things in over time, stashing them throughout the back areas of the building, then we moved them up today. A few of us, so as not to arouse suspicion. I’m well connected in the art world.” He delivers that with a laugh. “By that I mean, I know a lot of art students, and some of them work at the museum or have keys to things they shouldn’t.”
Rogue Passion (The Rogue Series Book 5) Page 21
