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“Slept might not be the word I’d use.”
Jace stared back at me, giving me the once-over. “No,” he admitted. “Probably not.”
Was he being sullen? Or just tired? I couldn’t tell.
“Are you okay?”
He sat up straighter. “Seriously? I should be askingyouthat, no?”
“Why?” I shrugged happily. “I’m fine. I just had the best night of my life.”
“I know, but—”
“Jace, don’t worry about me. I’m serious. Iwantedthis. I was the one who asked for it.”
His mouth twisted sideways, like he was thinking about something. He’d been doing it for as long as I could remember.
“You didn’t drag me into anything I wasn’t ready for,” I continued. “And in fact—”
“But Dakota, you’re Tyler’s sister!” he cried. “And I didn’t just sleep with you, I… I…”
“Shared me with your two closest friends?”
His shoulders slumped guiltily. He said nothing.
“Friends who are comrades in arms?” I went on. “Men who are more like brothers to you than Tyler ever was?”
Jace’s eyebrows crashed together. “Don’t go diminishing my friendship with your brother.”
“I’m not. It’s important to you, I can tell. Tyler too. But what Iamsaying is that it’s been a long time, Jace. Things aren’t the same. You and Tyler took radically different paths, and have different lives now.”
In the pit of my stomach I was just as worried about Tyler as he was, but it pained me to see him like this. At the same time it also felt good knowing this bothered him. It would be worse if it didn’t.
“You’ll always have Tyler’s friendship,” I told him solemnly. “That’ll never change. And I appreciate how loyal you’re being to my brother.”
I rose slowly, moving to his side of the table. Pushing my leg through the slit in the bathrobe, I straddled his lap and kissed him.
“But I’m my own person, Jace,” I said gently. “I never asked my brother’s permission for anything. And I never will.”
His hands slipped around me, settling somewhere down near my bathrobe-covered ass. Just touching him brought back memories of last night. It made me shiver.
“This is something I could’ve never done with just anyone, you know,” I told him truthfully. “Not with ex-boyfriends, and certainly not with strangers. Only with someone I really loved and trusted.”
Tyler pushed his sunglasses down his nose to look at me directly. “Loved?”
“Of course!” I smiled. “I’ve loved you all my life, Jace. In my home, you were practically family.”
I thought back to Jace’s absentee father, and his constantly-working mother: a functioning alcoholic if there ever was one. Jace had spent so much of his childhood at our house because his own home was empty.
“I felt like family,” he eventually admitted. His gaze drifted somewhere very far away. “Youallfelt like family.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “And we always will be.”
I screwed myself even deeper into his lap. Maybe it was a negotiating tactic. Maybe it was something else.
“Hey,” I murmured, tilting his chin upward again. “What we did last night was pretty next level, I’ll admit that. But we didn’t do anything wrong, Jace. We merely shared an intimacy we couldn’t before.”
I took his glasses the rest of the way off, then set them on the table.
“Now… where are the others?”
His eyes came into focus again. The question seemed to bring him back from wherever it was he’d gone.
“Merrick’s on base all day. Aurelius had some errands to run, but he said he’d be back early afternoon.”
“Good,” I smiled, kissing him again. His lips felt impossibly soft, especially in contrast to his hard, masculine jawline.
“After the gauntlet you three put me through last night, I think you owe this girl a big breakfast.”
