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“It means everything, Jonesy…” His voice trails off to nothing, followed by a whole heap of inaudible mumbling that makes no sense to me, and I’m pretty certain it makes no sense to him either.
A short silence falls between us.
“I don’t remember having a party,” he says with confusion in his tone when he slowly inches around to face me. “I don’t remember getting wasted. I don’t know who was here, who wasn’t here. And I couldn’t even tell you what the girl with the poor taste in lipstick looks like, let alone her name. But I know I fucked her. I know I did because that’s what I do. I get smashed, and I fuck women who mean nothing to me.”
A knot twists and tightens deep in my belly. “Things are different now, Kael. Everything’s different.You’redifferent.”
He exhales slowly, and I look up to find him staring at my mouth, and for reasons I can’t explain I can’t stop staring at his mouth either. His lips are slightly parted, and the smattering of stubble on his cheeks looks rough, scratchy, and I’d do almost anything to feel his mouth on mine again. I can feel my pulse getting faster just thinking about it, and there’s heat spreading all over me.
I really want him to kiss me again.
Kael lifts his hand to cup my cheek and lowers his mouth to my ear. “I’m not the easiest person to be around,” he whispers, peppering my neck with feather light kisses, his lips warming my skin, giving me gentle kisses all the way down my neck to my collar bone.
I feel like I’m breathing heavier than normal, and I know he senses it. “Neither am I,” I say softly. His hand moves from my cheek, his fingers brushing my hair behind my ear, before sliding around to the back of my head.
“Once we start this, there’s no going back.” His eyes shift to one side, and then he looks away quickly, his jaw clenching as he struggles with whatever it is he has going on inside his head. “I’m not letting you go. I don’t know what the future looks like. I’m going on tour soon, and we’ll be apart. But we can work it out together. We’ll take it slow if that’s what you want. You’ll be busy. I’ll be busy. We’ll see each other when we see each other,” he says simply. “But we’ll be exclusive. That’s not negotiable.”
“This is all moving very fast.”
“Is it what you want?” I shiver a little from the cool breeze, and he frowns. “Tell me.”
I nod softly, running my hand up to touch the front of his T-shirt. His face softens, and when I look into his eyes, I feel my heart set on fire. All those undeniable feelings of desire rush through me, all those urges I’ve tried so hard to ignore over the last few months suddenly shatter into a million pieces, and now there’s nothing I want more than to lose myself in this man.
Kael’s eyes fall shut as his forehead meets mine. He leans in a fraction closer, and for a split second I think he’s going to kiss me again.
“Sienna,” he says with a sigh, and my heart skips a beat.
“Yes?”
“Let’s get this place cleaned up.”
He brushes his lips across mine, just once, but it’s such a barely there kiss that I wonder briefly if I imagined it, if it didn’t really happen at all.
With one last fleeting glance around the messy deck, Kael separates himself from me, and he turns and walks back into the house.
And as I watch him go, my mind reels from all the emotions and the feelings, and while there should be a huge neon sign flashing above my head right now, warning me of the danger, warning me to stay away, to keep back…
All I want to do is edge closer.
Sienna
After spending almost three solid hours cleaning Kael’s house from top to bottom—collecting trash, the bulk of which consisted of empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and frozen pizza boxes—and dumping it all into the trash cans out front, I’m thoroughly exhausted, but also super impressed with how much we’ve achieved in such a small amount of time.
Kael spent most of that time destroying all evidence of hisprevious lifeout on the deck. He refused to let me help out there, insisting he’d take care of things himself, no doubt worried about what he might find.
I shudder to think.
But somehow, he did manage to rid the place of lipstick stains and bad memories, tossing the sheets and pillows into the trash right along with everything else. Good. I wasn’t touching those sheets for all the love and money in the world.
So, I left him to it, and once he was done, he scrubbed the entire deck down with hot soapy water and what must have been a gallon of lemon-scented disinfectant.
You can never be too careful.
An hour later I found him rummaging around in one of the guest bedrooms, the walk-in closet to be exact, and with the number of full liquor bottles he had in his arms, I reckon he could have opened his very own liquor shop if he wanted to. It could be his new profession if this whole music thing doesn’t work out. He’d make a killing, too, because it was all top-shelf.
Watching him pour every last drop down the sink was both painful and heart-warming. Painful because, well come on, the two bottles of red wine were signature, expensive as hell, and a damn shame to waste. But also heart-warming because I didn’t even have to tell Kael to do it. He just took it upon himself, and I was so proud of him at that moment that I could have cried.
As it turns out, the butler’s pantry is where he keeps the mother lode. Whiskey. An abundance of the stuff. Vodka too. But to a slightly lesser degree. Tequila and rum. Down the drain they go.
