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Drake shifts under the water. A few seconds later, the exercise shorts he’d been wearing float to the surface. “Me neither.”
For a second, I forget how to breathe. Bubbles churn on the surface of the water from the jets, obscuring the lower half of his body. But it doesn’t take much effort to imagine what is waiting for me under there. It has to be the heat making me feel faint and not the fact that it’s taking every ounce of willpower I have not to join him.
“Just give me the key so I can go back to bed.” My voice comes out breathier than it should and I know he can hear it. “It’s late and I’m tired.”
“I’m tired too, baby. Come here and I’ll let you have the key.”
“Another lie?”
“I’ll never lie to you again,” he replies with deadly seriousness.
His hand slips below the water, his bicep flexing with the movement. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture him touching himself. The thought wrenches an unwilling gasp from me.
Drake only smiles in response.
I know it’s a trick even as I slip off my oversized t-shirt and shorts before stepping into the water. I didn’t wear a bra to bed and his heated gaze lingers on my chest until I sink below the foaming surface all the way to my chin.
When I’m just barely within reach, I hold out my arm. “You said you’d give me the key.”
“I did,” he confirms, slipping the stretchy plastic band off his wrist and placing it on mine. Then he lunges forward and wraps an arm around my waist. “But I never said that I’d let you leave after I gave it to you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gigi actually seems surprised when I grab her. Water splashes over the sides of the hot tub as she grasps at me for purchase when her feet go out from under her. I easily lift her body and settle her across my lap. The look on her face is halfway between anger and arousal, like she can’t fully commit to one or the other.
When her arms come up, I grab them before she can decide if she wants to push me away. I press them behind her back, forcing her chest against mine.
Our mouths are close enough that her breath tickles the air above my lips as she whispers. “Are you going to let me go?”
“Do you want me to?”
She doesn’t answer for a long moment and I’m patient enough to wait her out. If she wants to play the coward and go running back to her room, then I’ll let her. But she’s going to have to say it.
My head tips to the side, so my mouth coasts across the curve of her cheek. Gigi lets out a breathy sigh in response, but still doesn’t say a word.
It’s been hard for her since her sister showed up and blew her world to pieces. I know it bothers her that Olivia won’t tell her anything about what happened or why she came back here. That thirst for answers has been eating at Gigi like poison, burning from the inside out. Whatever bit of the pain she shares with me just barely scratches the surface of what burns inside her.
She has already forgiven me for lying to her. Both of us know it. But she has to cling to her anger with me because it distracts her from other things that she doesn’t want to acknowledge she feels.
The easy thing for me to do is provide a distraction. I’m more than happy to do it. But my girl needs something even more important than that.
Reassurance.
She needs me to affirm her place in the world. We love each other. That is the only port we have left in the storm raging around us.
I force her hips to grind down on mine, smiling when she lets out an involuntary gasp. “Maybe I’ll just take it. Save you the embarrassment of admitting what you really want.”
But we’ve also never been sweet. Our relationship has always been fire and friction, with no small amount of venom. This is the type of love that sometimes hurts.
Which is exactly how we both need it to be.
Wet hands skate along my shoulders. The edge of her nails digs into the skin hard enough to leave marks. “God, you’re mean.”
“You want me to be nice? All you have to do is ask.”
I’ve been hard as a rock and aching from the minute I snuck into her hotel room, but I refuse to lose this particular battle of wills. Gigi needs to know that nothing between us has changed. We’re both as fucked up as we’ve always been.
A tremor moves through her when I lick a trail down her throat. “Not on your fucking life.”
