Cradling my face in his big hands he looked at me, and I wanted to look away because this was so raw, visceral. I was held captive by his gaze. Tor wouldn’t let me forget where I was, not even for a second. As he pushed inside of me, filling me, I knew I never would.
And then we were there, and I was spiraling out of control. Losing myself, but Tor was holding me, and rocking me, and kissing me and telling me not to cry.
I touched my cheek.
It was wet. I didn’t even realize.
Then I looked at him and he closed his eyes.
“Don’t leave me, Jamie. Just let me hold you. Just for tonight, and then I promise,” he said, turning back to me, “you can go and I won’t say a word.”
He slipped out and once again I felt strangely void.
So empty.
I should go. I should leave now; I’d gotten what I’d wanted. But the tears wouldn’t stop.
He was rolling over and taking me with him, wrapping his arms so tight around me and he kept whispering the word he’d used just moments ago. Elskede. Elskede.
Over and over, and it sounded so beautiful and I was so tired. So tired of hurting, of feeling so alone. I didn’t want to do the things I always did to myself when these moods came upon me, not tonight.
So I wrapped my arms around him too and sighed when he kissed my temple. His voice was so soothing as he talked to me in his strange, beautiful language. I closed my eyes and decided that just this time, it was okay to let go.
***
Tor
If she only knew what I was saying, what I was calling her. What I’d always wanted to call her. What I’d wanted to say since the moment I’d seen her and my heart knew she was mine. Jamie was more than what I’d imagined. Her passions. The depths of her soul. I’d felt it all tonight, she’d laid it all out there and it was lovelier than I’d ever imagined.
She would leave me in the morning. I knew it, and I was prepared for it. But I wasn’t really sure I could let her stay away forever.
This woman had been crafted by the gods just for me—she was mine. I owned her soul just as she owned mine. I’d not felt this depth of emotion for another in years. Not since losing my Ida. I’d thought I could never love another again.
But tonight I’d discovered that for the lie that it was. I did love Jamie. I think maybe the emotion had been sneaking up on me for years, but it wasn’t until this moment that I’d actually recognized it.
This had been more than just sex. I knew she had to have felt it too. This may have started out as just a one night stand, but I felt the rightness of us, and tomorrow I was determined to prove that to her one way or another.
Chapter Two
Jamie
I groaned when the sunlight punched me in the face. Where the hell was I? Sitting up, I recognized I wasn’t in a room I knew. I was also naked. My cheeks heated the second reality intruded on the peaceful lull.
“Oh no.” I shook my head. Because what had seemed so vital during the night now seemed so wrong on so many different levels. I could blame it on one too many shots of whiskey, but I remembered the long drive, the walk down the hallway, and the memory that I’d not left myself an out to excuse what I’d done.
I’d known exactly what I was about, and while the sex had been amazing, what I’d done was thoughtless. Especially considering the circumstances.
There was a loose sheet of paper on the pillow next to me. Snatching it up, I read it with fingers trembling:
“I’m at work. Eat whatever’s in the fridge. Don’t worry about the bed, I’ll make it when I get back. Jamie, I’m going to be honest with you. I know all about Angel, and I know you probably have no intention of leaving him. All I want is to be your friend. I expect no more than that, so don’t be weird.
~Love,
Tor”
Love.
My heart pounded furiously. Guys never signed a note “love,” not unless they meant it, right? But it wasn’t as if I’d had many booty calls in my life. In fact, this had been my first, and try as I might to feel humiliated by what I’d done, it still wasn’t there.
I was anxious and nervous as hell, I felt bad because of the timing, but I wasn’t ashamed.
Which was just more proof of how bad I was. Because really, who cheats on a person right after discovering he’d been taken to the hospital?
“Crap.” I dropped my head. The hospital waited. Thank God I worked out of the house; work would just have to travel with me today.
Not like it was hard—it’s what Angel always told me. I was a prissy, silly girl who had life way too easy. A fact that always made me feel kind of guilty because he was right. Compared to his, my life was easy.
So why was I such a freaking mess?
“Damn it.” Angel’s family was going to be so pissed, and the last thing they’d want to hear was that I hadn’t shown up because I’d been getting it on with a big, sexy Viking.
“Damn it!” I swore again, hoping the second time would magically help me to feel better. But it really didn’t. Yanking on my pants, I shoved the top back on. I’d go home first, get presentable, grab a manuscript, and then I’d go. Really.
I wasn’t dragging my feet or anything. Right? But deep down I knew that’s exactly what I was doing.
But if Angel had died, they would have called me by now.
The second I thought it I cringed. How heartless was I becoming? What was wrong with me? Growling, I snatched my purse up off the floor and ran out his apartment, making sure to lock the door behind me.
And for just a tiny little second the thought that it might have been nice to wake up beside Tor flirted through my mind.
“Oh God, gotta get outta here now,” I muttered. What was wrong with me? Why was I doing this? Then it dawned on me that I could feel the cold floor beneath my feet. Well, one foot.
“Dammit.” I’d left my shoe in the house. I’d been in such a rush I’d not even realized I wasn’t fully dressed. Looking down then up at the door then back down again, I knew it was gone. I’d locked the door and I had no way to contact Tor. Not that I would have anyway.
Shaking my head, I ran for the elevator. So grateful no one caught me doing the walk of shame. Thank God he’d driven my car here last night. Getting into the Jeep, I backed out in a squeal of rubber and stomped it for home.
I needed to talk to Zoe, like, yesterday.
“God, I’m an idiot.” I slammed my palm on the wheel, relieved to feel the sting of hard plastic. The second I got in my apartment, I jumped into the shower. Memories of Tor, of what he’d done to my body, how he’d made me practically purr kept slamming into me.
How he’d looked last night, like a fantasy breathed to life by me. Like I’d plucked him straight from the pages of my innermost heart. So big, so strong and gentle.
My pulse throbbed. Breathless with desire all over again, I gripped the shower railing and held on tight. Relaxing into the hot water, breathing in and out, trying not to panic.
What was everyone going to think?
They’d know. One look at me and they’d know I’d been up to something. What would Angel’s mother think? His sister? Oh God.
I squeezed my eyes shut as adrenaline hammered in my throat.
More than just going to the club when I’d known it would just be me there was the fact that I’d attempted an escape out the back, knowing full well it would take me past Tor. A man I knew liked me because Zoe always took every open moment to tell me so.
Subconsciously, I’d known exactly what I was doing. If I hadn’t wanted it to happen, I would have gone out the front. But I’d gone through the back knowing he would see me, hoping he would stop me.
I was a bad person.
Feeling myself about to have a full-on, nuclear-level panic attack, I turned the tap off and jumped out of the shower slipping instant
ly the second my wet feet hit the tile. “Get yourself together,” I muttered, waiting a nanosecond before I released the wall and much more carefully rushed to my phone. Dripping wet and naked, but I didn’t care. Snatching it up, I pressed one—speed dial for Zoe—and stuck my thumbnail between my lips while I anxiously counted the rings.
One.
Two.
“Hello?” Zoe’s happy, warm voice flowed down the line.
“Zo!” I cried—well, shrieked really—and then plopped down onto the couch. Thank God the blinds were all closed and that I now lived alone. Or else someone would catch sight of me and swear all the rumors of a wild woman were true. “Ohmygod,” I sobbed as the dam finally burst.
Immediately I sensed a shift in Zoe’s happy mood. “Jamie, what’s going on? Are you okay? Where were you last night? Marianna called me all night long looking for you. You heard about Angel, right?”
And that was it. The tears were streaming. Coming so hard I couldn’t even contain them and I was trembling, shaking from the reality of what I’d done.
“Oh shit,” Zoe whispered, as if divining it all immediately. “What’d you do, honey?”
Taking two deep breaths, forcing my body to stop acting so freaking wimpy, I stuttered out, “I…I slept with him.”
“Wait! What?” she practically shouted, and then there was a rustling of the phone, like she was covering the receiver with her hand, and Zoe was whispering, “It’s Jamie, she’s fine, Alex. But I’m gonna have to go to her, ‘kay, babe?”
Biting down on my lip to just the point before I split it, I rocked on my bottom, staring around at the apartment I’d never even bothered to decorate yet. The walls were white, bare, and empty. There was a TV, a couch, two lawn chairs, and loads of boxes.
Boxes I’d never unpacked since moving into the one-bedroom two years ago. I guess in my head this place was never supposed to be anything but temporary. Because at some point Angel was going to get his crap together and we’d marry, have two point two kids, build that white picket fence, and everything would be perfect.
“Jamie.” This time it was Alex speaking to me. “You good? Need me to bust someone’s ass for you?”
As much as I’d not liked the cretin first time Zoe had met Alex, thinking he was no good for my bestie, somewhere along the way I’d come to love him just as much as I loved Zo. Snorting, feeling only slightly better now that I was actually talking to my friends, I shook my head. “I’m a wreck, Alex, but I’m not gonna die. If you could send Zo to me for like the next hour, though, I promise to bake you a giant batch of chocolate chip cookies, deal?”
Those two were inseparable. Like Siamese twins, where one went the other was bound to follow, and I wasn’t going to lie and say that some days I didn’t envy the hell out of them. They’d been together two and a half years now and were seriously planning marriage the moment Alex wrapped up his master’s degree. It made me happy, if not a little lonely sometimes.
“Get your purse, Z,” Alex shouted. “Make sure she bakes them with the super chunks, cause those are my favorites.”
Zoe laughed and then she had the phone back and was saying, “You’re devious, J, be there in two shakes of a tail feather.”
Grinning, I rubbed my brow. Already the panic attack was lessening—that was what those two did for me. They were the calm in the storm that was my life. “Zoe, that doesn’t even make sense.”
“Pft,” she laughed. “You’re just jealous ‘cause you’re not cool enough to get it.”
Zoe always had an effervescent quality to her, like nothing was ever that bad, there was always good just around the corner. It was why I’d clung to her like a leech and refused to ever let her go.
Hanging up, knowing Zoe would get here within fifteen minutes or so, I ran to my room. Grabbed the first things I found and yanked them up.
Which just so happened to be a bright blue t-shirt with a picture of a Tardis on it and seafoam-green booty shorts I’d washed three days ago but hadn’t folded that were now a wrinkled mess.
No, I did not look my best. But at a time like this, that was the very least of my concerns. Brushing my hair out, I pulled it into a messy bun and was just getting the ingredients together to make cookies when the door opened.
Zoe had a key.
She’d chopped her hair to chin length and it now had streaks with thick chunks of red in it. Shoving razor-edge bangs out of her eyes she cocked her head, studying me with her lioness gaze. Dressed in blue pedal pushers, a prison-striped off-the-shoulder tee, and red velvet pumps, she was the essence of hip and I adored her.
Then with a shake of her head she kicked the door shut and rushed me. Pulling me into her arms for a big bear hug. I shuddered into her. Zoe was so tall, freakishly tall for an Asian, nearly six feet, and I, on the other hand, was the exact opposite.
“Making cookies,” she said after a minute, “is never a good sign. What happened?”
Before I knew it we were falling back into our old routine. Her walking to the cabinets and pulling out a filter and ground coffee, me whipping together a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies—because they made everything better—and finally I felt that horrible tension ease.
Clicking on the oven to preheat, I shook my head. “I lost my head last night.”
The aroma of roasted beans filled my kitchen and made my stomach growl. I’d not eaten a thing this morning. Grabbing two cups, Zoe sat them on the counter before taking a seat at the bar.
“Jeez, J, you really need to dress this place up.” She glared around as if offended by the sight of such a sterile apartment.
I shrugged as I dumped the flour. “Whatever, I thought I’d be out of here before now anyway.”
Drumming long, red-lacquered nails on the countertop, she crossed her legs and stared at me. “Okay, I’ve got about a million questions, so where do I start?”
I cracked an egg and plopped it into the batter. “How’s Angel?”
It sucked that I was asking her that, I knew it. I was officially the world’s worst friend.
She lifted a dark brow. Her smooth honey skin pulled into a tight frown as she said, “It was close. Like closer than ever before.”
I grimaced, whipping the batter harder.
“They pumped his stomach. Marianna said he was puking up green sludge for a couple hours.” She sighed, peered at me, and then frowned.
“Don’t say it, Zo. I already feel like the biggest ass alive, believe me.”
“Say what?” she snapped, full-on glaring at me. “That this shit is old, that I’m so sick of him screwing with you this way? That you’re always blaming yourself for him being too weak to get his act together? Which part exactly do you not want me to say?”
I dropped the bowl. It clattered hard against the counter. If it’d been porcelain like the one I’d almost grabbed, it would have shattered. “I slept with Tor last night!”
I yelled it. And then immediately realized the walls here were paper thin, that my stupid, noisy punk, barely-out-of-his-diapers college frat boy of a neighbor could hear everything if he was home. I clamped my lips shut, eyes going wide.
She just sat there. Staring at me, and there is nothing worse in the world than to confess your sins and have someone just look at you. Like they hadn’t heard you, or maybe they were too stunned, too shocked by what you’d said that their brain had temporarily fritzed out.
“Did you hear me?” I planted my hands on my hips.
“I heard you.” Her tone was even, perfectly collected.
I shook my head, because I knew if she’d really heard me she’d have laid into me. “I don’t really think you did.”
“Oh, trust me.” She hopped off her stool, walked over to the coffee pot, and poured two cups before handing me one of them. “I totally did. And right now I’m having a very difficult time pretending I’m not happy about
it.” Her smile was huge.
“What?” The coffee in my hand sloshed onto the bottom edge of my shirt and I hissed then slammed it down and grabbed a rag to dab at it before finally tossing the towel away in disgust. “How could you even say that?”
“God, J, you are so freaking blind.” She tapped her forehead, sat back on her stool, and took a sip before looking me dead in the eyes. “Look, I get you want to be Angel’s angel, fine, that’s normal. He’s in the hospital, so yeah, you should go to him and you should tend to him, if you want.” She stressed the word with a roll of her eyes. “But I’m going to tell you what I’ve been telling you for years. That man is toxic, and you’re lucky you weren’t the one in the car with him last night. Because that girl he was with, she broke her neck. Neither one of them were strapped in. So if that’s what you want in your life, and you want me to tell you that sleeping with a man who’s quite possibly the most perfect example of a male on this world—and you know I adore my Alex—then fine.” She flapped her wrist. “Shame on you. But let’s not forget, you and Angel aren’t actually dating anymore.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“No, it’s not.” She sipped and then tipped a brow.
“Then don’t turn it into one,” I growled. “And as far as Angel and I not dating, yes, true enough. But we’ve been on and off for so long that we might as well be. We were supposed to talk last night. Reconnect. Figure things out.”
Sighing, she sat her mug down and I was gearing myself to hear the same old thing. The ‘dump his ass’ speech Zoe gave whenever Angel did something stupid. And admittedly he was in the hospital and I should feel a lot more sorry for him than I did, but it didn’t negate the fact that what he’d done last night was stupid. The only reason I got so pissed whenever Zoe brought it up was because I knew she was right.
But instead of nagging me, she just shook her head and sighed. “Oh, Jamie.”
And the completely defeated tone in her voice had me twirling on my heel, because heat was pricking the backs of my eyes and I wasn’t going to let her see me cry.
I shrugged. “I’m fine.”
Rockers After Dark: 6 Book Bundle of Sexy Musicians Page 57
