Right now, he was struggling to process the word Sorry.
So he watched her instead, allowed himself to sink into her details. The way her curls vibrated slightly, even when she seemed still; the fine lines beneath her eyes, like creases in silk; the strip of dark, shining skin on her forearm. He wondered if the cut on her ankle had scarred like that. He wondered what it was about her that seemed subtly changed, like returning to a familiar place at a different time of day.
He looked her in the eyes and said, “What are you sorry for?”
“A lot of things.” Her gaze was steady. “I don’t think I’ve always treated you that well.”
His heart caught in his chest, but it didn’t shudder to a stop. It kept on beating, even if it felt like it was shrinking. He didn’t know why she was here, but he did know that fairytales weren’t real and fantasies were easily corrupted.
“You’ve been a great friend to me,” she said, her voice quiet. That voice still sent a surge of power through him, as if his instincts had learned over the years—this is the sound of impossibility made possible.
That was the thing about Jasmine: she brought magic to life. But she was only human, and humans were too fragile to bear the weight of every dream.
“I didn’t always deserve you,” she said, “and that’s the first thing I wanted to say. But also…”
He watched as she gathered her thoughts. He could almost see her doing it. It would be easier for her, he knew, if she could just say everything that came into her head until the right words tumbled from her lips, no matter how many wrong ones came first. But she seemed like she was trying to be careful.
He didn’t want her to be careful.
Then again, what he really wanted was to touch her. To close the space between them and drag her close, and tell her not to pull this shit ever again, and kiss her like he owned her, and show her that she owned him.
His desires, frankly, weren’t to be trusted.
Rahul held himself carefully still, his muscles tight with the effort it took not to reach for her. He’d turned the lamp on, rather than the main light, but he shouldn’t have. Because now everything about the room seemed gentle and intimate, and the bare skin of her shoulders glowed, and he wanted to run his hands over every inch of her, just to know that she was there. But he didn’t know if she was, exactly. Because if she intended to leave again, she wasn’t really there at all.
“I said some things to you,” she finally managed. “Things that weren’t true. Accusations that I’m sure were upsetting. So I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for pushing you away. I’m sorry for losing my temper and… and trying to hurt you.”
Trying. Jasmine succeeded in everything she did and she knew it. Try was inadequate when it came to describing any of her actions. Everything about her was devastating, and living without her was, too.
But he’d done it, for a while. Maybe he’d do it forever. He knew he could.
He’d rather fucking not, though.
“Jas. Tell me why you came.”
Her eyes widened slightly, then skittered away from his. She hesitated.
He took a deep breath. “You’re always going to be my friend. But I can’t do whatever you want, or be whoever you need, at the drop of a hat. I just can’t. It’s not your fault that I feel the way I do, and it’s not your fault that you couldn’t feel it too. But if I’m going to get over this—”
“I don’t want you to,” she blurted out. “I don’t want you to get over this. I don’t want you to get over… me.”
Rahul stared. She was biting her lip so hard, her lipstick cracked. There was something desperate in her eyes that he recognised, something he felt in his gut, and even though he shouldn’t be getting his hopes up—
Fuck it. He moved closer and took her hand. Just her hand. The contact shouldn’t flood him with this searing, soaring, flawless heat, shouldn’t feel like the path of a shooting star burning through the night sky. But it did.
He squeezed, and when she squeezed back, contentment filled him. Against all reason, it did. God, he’d missed her.
“Tell me why you came,” he said again, his voice hoarse.
There was no way of knowing if the touch affected her the way it did him, but it seemed to steady her. To earth the tension crackling through her like electricity. She met his eyes again and said, “I came because I love you.”
He let go of her hand. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t a conscious decision so much as a sudden release of everything about him, a slackening. All the ability he had was put towards comprehending that statement. I came because I love you. Said so simply, peacefully. If he’d ever dared to imagine Jasmine Allen saying she loved him, the words would’ve been sharp with regret, or edged in resentment, or too light and teasing for belief.
“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “I didn’t mean to just—come out with that. I was going to tell you about the things I’ve been doing. Like, I’m not drinking. At first I wanted to cut down, but then I got tremors, and… you know, withdrawal symptoms. So I thought, holy shit, I might be an alcoholic. Or something. So I don’t do that anymore.” She licked her lips nervously. “And I’ve been talking to my dad about, you know, things. Well, about my mum. And I, um, I got a therapist. So I’m very responsible or whatever. And I don’t feel so… I don’t feel so detached from myself all the time and I can say what I mean now and…”
She broke off, shrugging. As if all of that was incidental. Everything about her was so vital, she seemed like her own source of light in the room. Looking at her, and hearing her, and trying to understand exactly what all of this meant, just might fry his brain.
I came because I love you.
“Oh, Christ,” she muttered. “This whole conversation was supposed to be much more elegant. Or at least vaguely coherent. But things don’t always have to be perfect, do they?” She looked at him as if she was really asking.
Hers was the most perfect imperfection he had ever known.
“What I’m trying to say is, I realised, the day we… the day I left. I realised straight away that I fucked up. I knew even while it was happening, but I didn’t know how to stop it. And the more I thought about feeling helpless in my own head, seeing something I wanted so badly and not being able to take it—” She snorted. “Fuck that shit.”
He felt his lips quirk. Then that quirk turned into a full-blown grin, one that made his cheeks ache, but wasn’t wide enough to represent the emotions swirling in his chest.
A tentative smile appeared on her face. “You look kind of happy.”
Finally, he managed to speak. “Maybe I am.”
“Right. Well, I decided to, um… I always used to tell myself that I was dealing with things. Like, I saw all the little problems inside my own head and I patched them up with shitty duct tape and said, I’m working on that. But I wasn’t. So I decided to actually try. Because when you said—when you told me—” Her stream of speech came to a jagged end, something achingly sad passing over her face.
“When I said I loved you,” he murmured.
She looked at him, gratitude in her eyes, along with something else. “Yeah. You said you loved me. And all I wanted was to be the kind of person who could take that. But I wasn’t. Only, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I was close. It was, you know, do-able. To be the kind of person who could… who could accept love. And even more than that, I wanted to be able to say that I love you too. And I suppose, well, mission accomplished!” She laughed nervously. “Anyway. If you could talk or something, that would be great. I think my palms are sweating.”
He caught her hand again. “Your palms aren’t sweating.”
“They aren’t? They feel like they are.” She used her free arm to lift up the thick weight of her hair. “I feel so hot. Is it hot in here?”
“No. Come here.” He pulled her closer, and she shuffled towards him with a look of wary hope. She was wearing her favourite red lipstick, and the kind of eye makeup she on
ly bothered with if she were doing something important. What had she said? That it was Pinal’s birthday?
Even with the makeup, and the barely-there dress, all he could see was the way she used to smile first thing in the morning, her face bare and her gaze vulnerable and her body cocooned in a burrow of blankets, even when it was warm. He released her hand, grabbed her waist, and pulled her into his lap.
Her hands settled on his shoulders, her face close to his. He pulled off his glasses and thrust them in the direction of the side table, but he couldn’t stop staring at her.
He liked seeing and not-seeing all at once. He loved it with Jasmine. It reminded him of slow mornings and moonlit nights. It reminded him of making her swim and of running through the rain. He cupped her face with his hands, then slid them into her hair. Rested his forehead against hers and let himself breathe. Felt her every exhalation. Felt her lashes flutter against his as they both closed their eyes. He drank her in as his pounding heart slowed, as this new reality settled into his bones.
She was here and she was loving him.
“Jasmine,” he whispered.
“Rahul. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
His heart swelled, joy turning molten in his chest. “I shouldn’t have tried to change you. I don’t want you to change.”
“I should have trusted you. And I—I haven’t changed. I don’t think I ever will. But I’ve grown. I’m growing.”
He kissed her. When his lips slanted over hers, something inside him cracked open. It was raw and new and natural, and it felt like a cosmic event. Everywhere he touched her, every point at which their bodies connected, became a site of transformation. He was scorched into something new, as if a layer of him had burned away and he was cleaner now.
He broke the kiss and whispered, “I love you. More than anything, I love you.”
She sobbed, and he tried to pull back, tried to look at her, but she dragged him closer. Her hands tangled in his hair. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “Ignore me.”
“I can’t ignore you.” He brushed his lips over the tears tracking her cheeks. Tasted salt.
“We probably can’t just… go back to how we were,” she said. “You probably want to take things slow. If you want to take things anywhere at all.”
“Is that what you want? Slow?” He kissed her before she could answer. She was the kind of intoxicating that memory couldn’t trap. He’d been utterly without this and now, all at once, here she was.
“I don’t want slow,” she murmured against his lips. “I feel like we’ve been slow for a thousand years.”
“Seven. Seven years.”
“Please allow me to be dramatic.”
He laughed and kissed her again. And again. And again.
The kisses weren’t supposed to turn hot and desperate, but they did, and really, he shouldn’t be surprised. It was always like this with her. A touch was all it took for him to combust. When she shifted on his lap so that she was straddling him, Rahul’s hands slid to her thighs. Her dress rode up and he trailed his fingers over her skin, anywhere and everywhere, relearning perfection. The sounds she made, soft little mewls of pleasure against his lips, tightened the need in his gut.
When she pulled away from him and stood, he didn’t reach for her. He didn’t need to. She held his gaze as she pushed down her dress, and he was torn between alarm that it could come off so easily and gratitude that it wasn’t more complicated.
She held out her hand. He took it and stood, his eyes drinking in every inch of her bare skin, every sweeping curve and vulnerable crease and achingly human line of her body. Her underwear, black and plain and tiny, cut a sharp line across her hips and cupped her pussy tight.
He slid his hands over her sides, her shoulders, down the length of her arms, and drank her in.
She smiled. “I like this.”
“You like me touching you?” He trailed his fingers down her spine, palmed the swell of her arse.
She gasped lightly and twisted her fingers in his shirt, pulling him closer. “Yes. Anywhere. As long as you touch me, I’m happy.”
Rahul hooked a finger under the tight fabric of her underwear. He pulled gently, and she reached down to shove them off. Then she looked up at him, her lips parted, her eyes glazed.
He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. “I don’t want to go slow. But if you think we should, I will.”
She took a breath. “What do you want?”
“I want to call you mine.” He picked her up, and her legs wrapped around his waist. Not for the first time, he found himself carrying her through the house while he could barely see.
“I’d like that,” she whispered, her fingers tracing paths of fire and ice over his scalp. He sighed as the touch spread through him, liquid relaxation loosening his muscles even as his cock was iron-hard.
When they reached his bed and he set her down, she looked around in surprise. “It’s different in here.”
“I don’t sleep here anymore.” But the condoms were here. He reached over to the bedside drawer and pulled out the box.
“Why not?”
“I missed you too much.”
She swallowed, turning her face towards the pillow. “Can you turn the light off?”
“Why?”
“I keep…” She turned back to face him, rolling her eyes with a rueful smile. “I keep feeling like I’m going to cry. And if I do, it’ll be a thousand times less awkward if you can’t see.”
He sat on the bed and pulled her up into his lap. “Jas. I want to see you. I don’t care if you cry.” Which was true, and undoubtedly a good thing, because she squeezed her eyes shut and a tear leaked out. He kissed it away.
“I didn’t think this would happen,” she whispered. “I didn’t think this would happen at all. I thought you wouldn’t want…”
“It’s okay.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest. “It’s okay.” He pulled back the sheets and murmured, “Go and lie down, alright?”
She gave him a damp sort of smile. “I don’t know when I got so dramatic,” she said, crawling into the bed. Another thing he’d missed: how confident she was in her own skin, the way she moved when she was naked, as if she’d never been meant to wear clothes. All she did was get into bed, but every movement seemed like poetry.
“You’ve always been dramatic. But you’re not being dramatic right now. You’re just feeling things.” He stood and stripped off his own clothes. His shirt smelled like Mitch’s cigarettes and beer he hadn’t drunk. To his unfocused eyes, Jasmine’s hair rippled like a dark sea across the white pillow. He undressed faster. Then he slid into bed with her, pressed his naked skin to hers, and pulled the sheets over their heads.
Under the covers the world was hazy, like sunlight through clouds. He kissed her, because every time, it felt like something healed inside of him. She hitched one thigh over his hip, and he ran a hand over her heated skin. “Is this okay?”
She nodded. “This is perfect.”
25
Autumn
Beneath the sheets, the air felt thick and hot. Jasmine liked the way it dragged through her lungs, because it matched the heavy warmth in her chest, and the molten desire in her belly, and the sparks that trailed in the wake of Rahul’s roaming hands.
His eyes creased at the corners as he smiled, and just the sight of him broke her heart and put it back together again. She felt like she was floating. She felt like she’d stumbled into Wonderland, and everything was upside down and back to front, because there was no way that she could be here, with him, just like that.
But she was. He pulled her leg tighter around his hip, and she shivered as the movement parted the folds of her pussy. Then she felt his fingertips graze her inner thighs, and the shiver turned into a slow, winding roll of her hips that she couldn’t quite control. “Rahul.”
“I love you,” he whispered. Every time he said that, it felt like the sweetest opportunity. Like a chance. One she was determined
to deserve.
“I love you too.” Saying it aloud was a blessing.
His fingers trailed higher, closer to the aching heat of her pussy. She tried to hold her breath and failed; it came in rapid pants, her hips straining towards him. He ignored the unspoken invitation, his eyes holding hers, his touch teasing and barely-there.
“Please,” she managed.
“What, love?” His tongue slid over her lips, dipping inside, sending a spark of pleasure through her core.
“Touch me,” she whispered. “Please, touch me.”
His hand moved higher, his fingers following the crease where her thigh met her mound. “Here?”
Sweet tension swelled within her. She felt so exposed, spread open for him, his hair-roughened chest pressed against her sensitive nipples, and he watched her with a gaze that tore her apart. She jerked her hips, her clit desperate for pressure. He just smiled.
“I want to come,” she told him, the words strained and panting.
“I know,” he soothed. “You will.” With one long finger, he stroked the curve of her labia. “You’re so hot, Jas. I can feel you burning up.”
She clutched his shoulders, her nails digging into him. “Please. Fuck, please.”
“Be patient, love. Let me play with you.” She could feel the insistent press of his cock against her stomach. All she wanted was that, between her thighs where it belonged, fucking her open the way she’d missed so badly.
Instead, he stroked the other side of her pussy, his fingers avoiding her slick, inner flesh or the tight, desperate nub of her clit. And every time she jerked her hips and gasped and begged, he smiled. Her stomach was tight, her nipples stiff and tingling and sensitive, her pussy spasming, needing to be filled. Her head felt light, her breathing heavy.
Wanna Bet?: An Interracial Romance Page 23
