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“The first guy I chose to sleep with was when I was eighteen and traveling around the world. We were both tourists; it was easy. We said goodbye the next day.” If he thinks my phrasing is odd, Mal doesn’t comment. Instead, he stares darkly at me and then slams back his own shot.
I raise a brow, filling his glass again. “Your turn. Who was your first?”
He scrapes a hand over his face, maybe regretting his agreement to this game, maybe just because he isn’t sure if he should answer. “Raylin Crum, freshman year. She was a senior.”
Now I take a shot, because yuck. Knowing Mal has been with other people and talking about it are two very different things. He smiles. “I haven’t asked you a question.”
“You’re not the only possessive one in this relationship,” I mumble.
“Noted. Maybe we should start smaller.”
“Good idea.”
“Where did you go first, when you graduated from high school? I followed you on social media, but you didn’t really ever post, and when you did, it was weeks apart.”
“Social media? I didn’t really take you for an Instagram kind of guy.”
He shrugs, not the least bit embarrassed. “Usually, it’s what I pay a PR firm for. But when it came to you…desperate tools for desperate measures. Brooks wouldn’t tell me anything—you and I weren’t talking. Jacks didn’t know anything. I had to see you somehow, make sure you were okay.”
I laugh, looking down because I’d done the same thing to him countless times, searching the Internet for any snippet of information on him I could find, even when I told myself I didn’t care how he was. “My mom bought me a ticket to India for graduation, so that’s where I started, traveling in a kind of meditative learning state. I had always done yoga, but I wanted to know the people and where it started. Why they used it. So I learned, and then I worked my way to Thailand, Bali, up to China and Japan. I made my way back to Turkey before I had to spend the last of my money on a plane ticket home.”
Mal’s staring at me, mouth half open. “Why would you travel across the world all by yourself?”
“Not your question,” I remind him. He slams back a shot. I frown. “Careful, the purpose is to go slow, not to get drunk.”
“I’m a lot bigger than you and it takes a lot more for me to get drunk. Consider it payment for two questions in a row.”
I sigh, because it’s such a Malcolm thing to do, take control and force the rules to follow the way he wants them to be. “I travelled alone because I wanted to see what it would be like… to be out there, away from everything I’d known, what it would be like to find who I was without anyone who had known me before to witness it.”
He looks ready to ask another question, but I beat him to it. “Why now?”
“What?”
“This.” I motion between us. “Why now? Why not when I turned eighteen, when I graduated, when I came back from travelling?”
“That’s two questions.” I glare, but he doesn’t budge. Tilting back my shot, I hold up the glass and then set it down, waiting while he refills it.
“You left right after you graduated, and when you came home and I finally saw you, it was like looking at the same person, but not.” He shakes his head, as confused by his words as I am. “I didn’t know how to talk to you, and you made damn sure to be offended by everything I said.”
“So this isn’t just a convenience because you’re here without anything else to do?”
He moves so quickly, I don’t have time to blink let alone prepare for the way he steps in front of me, hauling me close and making sure our eyes are level. “Nothing about you is convenient, Nala.”
He crashes his lips to mine, tugging me closer until I’m wrapped around him, hands seeking under the shirt until they’re gripping my rear end, lifting me and walking me out of the room. Instead of heading to the couch, he turns down the hall, taking the short distance in five quick steps before shoving into a bedroom. I don’t have any time to look around before he’s pressing me up against the wall, grinding against me and making it hard to think.
My lips are raw and swollen when he finally releases them, his arms lifting me higher against him with ease while his lips nibble and suck at my neck. “Does this feel convenient to you, Nalani?”
He flexes his hips, pressing the hot, hard length of himself against me once more, and I moan, shaking my head. But when I reach between us to find him, he leans forward, trapping my hand and making it impossible for me to move.
“Look up, Nala.”
Crazy with lust, aching with need, it takes a minute for me to understand Mal’s speaking. He has to repeat himself twice before I finally do as he says, and then everything stops—light, sound, everything—while I stare at myself.
It’s Brooks’s work. I would know even if I hadn’t seen it at his showing last year, the one that was displayed with a tag that said “on loan from owner,” though who owned it Brooks wouldn’t say. I had been flattered, thinking Brooks had found me a beautiful enough subject to photograph, let alone for someone else to buy. Knowing that someone was Malcolm…
“When?” I ask. I don’t take my eyes off the manipulated photo, staring at the way Brooks captured my focus, my profile, my eyes…the way his talent shows the world exactly what I was feeling in that moment.
And Malcolm owns it. Not only that, he’s placed it on its own wall, facing his bed, the only thing other than the ocean that can be seen in this room.
