Page 36 of Fire
He nods and answers the phone while both of us try to prepare ourselves for some shitty news.
Instead, Johnny’s voice sounds like he’d just won the lottery as he tells us that Cash finally woke up and that, other than being a grumpy-ass patient, he’s on the mend.
He goes on to tell us that, thanks to Eli arranging for the live streaming of the death match between Cash and Johnny, the FBI has been able to obtain warrants for every Reivers chapter and is raiding them as we speak.
The Reivers are going down.
I feel like a ten-ton weight is off my chest, and looking over at Luca’s shocked but smiling face, I’m pretty sure he does, too.
Johnny finishes off the call by warning us that though the Reivers are well and truly fucked, we should probably remain in our safe house because fully rounding up every Reiver may take a while, and Patriots Now is still a big threat.
Johnny’s warning doesn’t do much to dampen our spirits. Luca hangs up the phone and goes straight to the kitchen and the bottle of tequila he bought when he picked up supplies. He holds it up. “Wanna celebrate?”
“I thought people celebrated with champagne.”
“Tequila is the champagne of badasses.” He pours two shots of tequila and hands me the Tajín. I set it up just like Dream taught me to do, and Luca and I clink glasses. “To us,” he says, and we drink our shots.
It’s the perfect night. I keep asking questions, and he keeps indulging me by answering with complimentary, bordering on flirty answers that send a warm shimmy through me every time. I can’t get enough.
I find out so much about him. He has a dog, that he helped liberate from Digger’s dog fighting pens, but because it sustained internal injuries it had to be operated on, and is currently going through a rehabilitation program at a local vet. He also admits to getting his GED and afterward, taking a few college classes. The structure wasn’t for him so he prefers reading books if he’s curious about a subject.
He gets me to talk about myself too. It’s hard to be self-conscious when he looks so interested in my answers to his questions. I tell him about how I found Delilah as a stray, and about my favorite college classes. I even tell him about the time I got locked out of my apartment in only my underwear. One of my most embarrassing moments suddenly turned laugh-worthy when I have Luca to share it with.
We go on like this for hours, and I realize how natural it feels to laugh with Luca and how I hadn’t once worried he might make fun of or be mean to me.
The only bad part of the night is the end of it. Luca puts the tequila away and readies to sleep on the porch even though a late storm has blown in and it’s freezing outside.
I watch him button up his sheepskin coat, which I can’t imagine will be comfortable sleeping attire.
“Sleep with me,” I blurt out. I then glare at the bottle of tequila on the counter, totally blaming it for my outburst.
Luca’s head shoots up, and he stares at me.
“It’s cold out there, and it’s a big bed.” I try to list all the good reasons for him to stay, but they don’t seem to work. He returns to buttoning up his jacket, but this time, he seems to be in a hurry like he’s in a race to get out the door. “I don’t want to have sex with you,” I finally shout in a last-ditch lie to keep him from freezing to death and to pathetically feel his warm body against me and pretend for just a little while that he’s mine.
His hand freezes on his button. “You don’t?”
“Yeah.” I shrug like his relieved response didn’t just gut me. “We did that already, right? Got it out of our systems. No need to go back for seconds.”
“No need,” Luca repeats stiffly but starts unbuttoning his jacket, and when it’s finally off, he follows me to bed and turns off the lights.
Chapter 14
Luca
Here I am in bed with my arms around Evan like I swore to myself I wouldn’t let myself do again.
But it’s okay because Evan doesn’t want to have sex with me again. Like I suspected, once was enough for him.
The fact that during the night, while he was sleeping, his body searched me out and demanded to be in my arms. He may not want my body for sex, but he sure in the hell wants it for warmth and to use in place of a pillow.
My greedy arms don’t care—they like holding Evan. My more than greedy dick is happy too, but beginning to complain that snuggling Evan is not enough. It’s my greediest body part of all—my heart—that suffers most from this situation. It wants more than a ‘once is more than enough’ manto love.
I know I planned on keeping myself away from Evan for his safety, but a part of me hoped I could play the long game with him. That someday, when the whole Reivers mess was settled, I could ask for more from him. When Johnny called last night with the good news about Cash and the Reivers getting brought to justice, I felt freer than I had since I was seventeen and first put on the Reivers cut. I looked over at Evan, who was laughingat some wise-ass comment I’d said to Johnny, and I thought I might deserve to ask for more for me, too.
Of course, even with the Reivers cut down, Patriots Now had to be dealt with, and that meant keeping myself in bodyguard mode, so I’d shelved my fantasies along with the tequila and started buttoning up my coat to spend the night in the cold when Evan told me to sleep with him.
I froze, trying not to act before I could think, which was hard because all my blood was flowing in the opposite direction of my brain. One simple sentence from him, and all my good intentions fucked right off. I was seconds from tackling Evan into my bed—until he added in that he didn’t want to have sex with me.
