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Imagine my surprise when Ari hadn’t fallen on his knees, begging me for forgiveness for his dangerous lie, on our first face-to-face encounter. No, he was pissed at me. What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck? He’d been the one to lie about something that could have very well sent me to jail and marked me as a sex offender for the remainder of my life…and he was pissed at me!
Once again, I’d struggled…even considered going back home and trying to forget how much my heart ached for him. I have a dominant personality that demands to be in control of every situation, but I can’t control my own heart. That, it seemed, was truly fucked up.
So, here I was—on a gay cruise with him, in the same cabin for seven fun-filled days, with him hating me to the point that he’d gone online and created a new identity in order to try and escape being near me. My head told me that things were only going to get worse with each passing minute of each day. My heart, however, told me to stand my ground—go big or go home. This could very well be my last chance with Ari, so if I failed, it needed to be a failure based on me giving it everything I had and him rejecting it. I truly believed that was my only hope of getting Ari completely out of my head, heart, and soul…if it was even possible.
My night was spent either on the balcony or sitting in the large chair next to the bed just watching him as he slept. Back and forth from one spot to the other, my mind racing with plans to win him back while my heart tried to prepare for rejection. Now, as the early morning sun began to creep through the cracks in the closed curtains, looking at him made me smile. He was sprawled, catty-cornered, on the king-sized bed, taking up as much space as humanly possible. It had been that way the entire night, but with different positions every time I’d return from the balcony. One time he’d been longways across the bed. The next time I’d checked, his head had been at the foot of the bed and his feet were resting on the pillow I would have been using if we’d shared a bed last night. Another time, one leg had been dangling precariously off the side of the bed. All through the night, he’d flipped and flopped into different positions…telling me he’d be hell to try and sleep with.
And heaven.
I’m sure he wouldn’t remember that I’d removed his shorts, T-shirt, and flipflops before tucking him into the bed. I hoped he wouldn’t remember my gasp of surprise and arousal when I found that beneath his shorts, he wore nothing but a pair of rainbow print itty-bitty briefs that failed miserably at covering the gorgeous globes of his ass or the impressive package in front. Always reserved in the past, I’d expected to find tighty-whities on my man. When it’d been something else, something even sexier, I was torn between arousal and jealousy. Arousal because he looked fucking hot with all his junk barely hidden beneath the flimsy fabric but jealous because someone other than me had been the man to convince him to be a bit more adventurous.
What else about him had become more adventurous? What things had other men taught him while I’d been away…licking the wounds he’d inflicted on my soul? Who’d been his first? His second? Was he with someone now, like he’d insinuated? I had hundreds of questions but suspected I wouldn’t like any of the answers.
I was still staring when his green eyes slowly fluttered open. He looked confused at first as his gaze swept around the room, stopping when it landed on me. I sat perfectly still, waiting for the attack that I suspected would be coming my way. It would either be that or he’d be making another dash for the bathroom because the sea sickness pills weren’t working properly. He did neither, though—just lay there, looking at me with a strange expression on his face.
When the silent stare became too much for me to handle, I whispered, “Happy Birthday, Arizona.”
A soft smile, the first one he’d directed toward me since I’d walked back into his life, curved his plump lips. “You remembered,” he answered. His voice sounded scratchy from the horrible heaving he’d done before his stomach finally settled enough for him to drift off to sleep.
“Of course, I remembered,” I answered. “I tried to wait until your twenty-first birthday, but found my desire to be near you again just too much to resist…so here I am.”
“Bullshit,” he muttered but the prettiest blush in the world colored his cheeks.
He wasn’t nearly as immune to me as he liked to pretend. Whether he cared to admit it or not, the bond we’d once shared was too hard to break. I continued to stare at him while he continued to have an odd fascination with every spot in the cabin except for where I sat. That was fine; I was a patient man. I had seven days to win him back.
