Page 63 of Fish Out of Water

“You promised me you could keep a handle on it.”

“I promised you.” Jake took a deep breath against the oppressive ache in his chest. “Don’t go, Robbie,” he murmured.

“What about your rule?”

“Fuck the rule.” Jake regretted the words as soon as they left his lips. He was being reckless at a time when he absolutely couldnotafford to be.

Robbie’s jaw twitched. He looked like a deer in headlights. “I don’t know, Jake.” He drew out the words, filling them with a deep longing. “It won’t end well.”

“You’re right.” Jake folded his hands in his lap.

Robbie’s gaze flickered down to them. He swallowed hard. “What doyouwant?”

“I want to go back to before I ever came here. I want to pretend I never met you, so we wouldn’t have to deal with all this.” Jake raised his hands in the air, drawing them in an imaginary arch. “But I can’t. We can’t ever take any of this back. Give me one good reason we should do this, and you know I’ll fold.”

“Just one?” Robbie’s eyebrow lifted, the slightest trace of a smile crossing his lips.

His hand moved to rest on Jake’s leg, fingers crawling up his inner thigh, where they rested just below the fly of Jake’s jeans. Jake looked down to take one last look at Robbie’s perfect hand, framed by the charcoal-colored watch he sometimes wore, and then closed his eyes.

The curtains on the window by the door were open, letting anyone walking past see into the house. The clock on the wall ticked away, each second giving Jake less and less time to change his mind. Robbie kissed him, those few seconds feeling like minutes. Jake’s paper-thin resolve was slipping away fast.

“What about tomorrow?” Jake asked weakly, clawing at whatever he could use to prevent himself from making the second greatest mistake of his life. “It’s getting late.”

“Do you need to be anywhere tomorrow morning?”

“You do.”

“I can manage my own time, Jake.” Robbie’s hands trailed down Jake’s chest till they reached the hem of his shirt. With Jake’s help, he pulled it off, tossing it off the side of the couch. “You want me, Jake,” he murmured. Every time he said Jake’s name, Jake’s heart skipped a beat. “Admit it. Youneedme.”

Jake opened his eyes. Robbie’s own eyes sparkled, piercing directly into him with their desire. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t. And I don’t hate you. We never hated each other.” Robbie pulled Jake’s lower lip between his teeth, and Jake whimpered.

“Fuck, how do you do this to me so easily?”

Robbie sat back enough to look Jake up and down. “I know you,” he said, “and I know how to get to you. It’s a skill.”

Jake thought back to the lunch, and before that, the alleyway, and his heart fluttered again. “You should use it more often.”

“You know how dangerous that can be.”

“So what’s changed to make you do it now?”

“Because I have no self-control when I’m around you, and we both knew that from the very beginning.”

16

BREAKING THE RULES

Robbie’s words hung in the air uncomfortably, but that didn’t stop them from continuing down the path they had forged weeks before. Jake let his tongue run along the smooth edges of Robbie’s teeth, grinding into Robbie’s lap while his fingers closed around delicate mother-of-pearl buttons.

Robbie’s shirt joined Jake’s on the floor, and a satisfied sigh escaped Robbie’s lips as his hand trailed down Jake’s back.

“We should go to the bedroom,” Jake breathed. “No one can—” Their lips met again. “No one’ll see us in there.”

Robbie glanced up at the window. The neighbors across the street still had a light on inside, and a dog barked somewhere nearby. “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea.” He brushed his hair out of his face as he waited for Jake to move.

They made their way down the hall, where Jake opened the door to the small, dark room. Robbie closed it behind them by pushing Jake against it, keeping him there long enough to get a few more kisses.