A green haze covers my vision, rogue thoughts of Sofía’s past relationships swirling through my mind. Her brows dip, and then she’s kissing me, melting away the unwanted emotions.
“Not with you,” she says against my lips, one hand trailing down my abdomen.
She wraps her fingers around my cock, lazily pumping as the kiss deepens, shifts, and morphs as we take and relinquish control. I drag her bottom lip between my teeth, and she squeezes my shaft, increasing the pressure at the base. Energy crackles down my spine, pleasure pooling like water ready to overflow the rim of a cup.
Time stretches until there’s nothing else but us, right here, suspended in the weight of the connection. My orgasm barrels in strong and fast, overtaking my vision as I spill into her hand and stomach.
Her smile forms against my lips, a pleased, satisfied thing, and I kiss her once more before I slip into the bathroom to clean up, returning to do the same to her.
A string pulls taut between us, tugging me back to her every time I step too far. I don’t know how I’m supposed to cut the cord so soon.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, finding a shirt and offering it to her. “We could get something to eat.”
The fabric hangs off her in swaths, bunching at her thighs when she crawls back into bed.
“Can I use your phone to order us food? Mine’s dead,” Sofía asks. “I don’t want to go out into the heat.”
“The code is 1419.” I drop my cell into her hand, followed by a charger. “Order whatever you want.”
The bedroom is eerily quiet as I shave, and when I return, Sofía is curled in on herself, staring blankly at the screen.
“Can’t decide?” I ask, dropping behind her on the bed and wrapping my arms around her shoulders. She tenses beneath me, and alarm bells blare in my mind. I sweep away her wet hair, kissing the column of her throat before leaning my chin on her shoulder. “What’s on your mind?”
“Who is Grace?”
The blood drains from my face.
I thought I had more time—time to work through what I wanted to say, how to say it, how to spin myself as someonedesirableafter she knows the truth.
“She texted you,” she continues, voice wooden as she lifts the phone in my direction. “Misses you and wants to know how you are.”
In a panic, I swat the phone out of her hand and onto the floor. Sofía’s head jerks to the left, and she stares, wide-eyed and confused.
“Too bad,” I declare.
“What?”
I slow down my words to make myself clear. “I do not care if Grace misses me. At all. RIP to her.”
Her eyebrows rise.
“She’s not dead, just dead to me.”
“So Grace is not your secret East Coast girlfriend you go to visit every two weeks when you have abusinesstrip to New York?”
Uh…that is a specific scenario.
“No,” I confirm. “Grace was my…last girlfriend. I was with her for about five years before we broke up.”
I didn’t think Sofía’s muscles could get any tighter, but they do, and I release her to avoid the pit in my stomach from swallowing me whole. I’ve never had to do this—never gotten far enough in dating that I had to share this shameful truth.
The idea of telling her how it ended, of her seeing me in the same frame as Grace…it terrifies me. More than the plummet off the side of a plane or cage diving with great white sharks.
Power.
Sofía holds absolute power over me—to destroy me with a few dismissive words. Not even Grace had that. I was crushed, sure, but the devastation Sofía could leave in her wake would be catastrophic. And I’m too far gone to turn back now.
I slide back on the bed, leaning against the headboard, with her sitting between my outstretched legs. She doesn’t face me when she says, “Five years is a long time.”
