Page 44 of Break Away
Dark. Private. Safe enough for what I allowed safe to mean.
When I looked back, Easton was still waiting without pushing, teasing, or dressing impatience up like charm.
He was waiting.
I swallowed around something I refused to name. “No lights.”
His brow barely moved. “We’re outside.”
“Then we stay where it’s dark.”
“Not what I expected, but okay.”
“No getting me naked.”
His gaze flicked down, not crude or lingering for show, only aware of how little I was already wearing. “Define naked.”
“My bikini stays on as much as I decide it stays on.”
“That’s not a definition.”
“That’s the rule. If I let you inside me, you do it my way.”
His mouth curved, but his eyes stayed serious. “Okay, rules. Got it.”
“And no names.”
That one changed his face only a little, but it was enough to tighten the air between us.
“No names?” he asked.
“Not during.”
His gaze searched mine. “During what?”
I gave him a look.
He didn’t smile this time. “I want to hear you say what you’re agreeing to.”
A hot rush of irritation and something much worse moved through me. “I’m agreeing to fucking, Easton. Do you need a signed affidavit?”
His name came out sharp, but it didn’t push him back. If anything, his attention locked harder.
“No,” he said. “I need to know you’re saying yes because you want me, not because you’re trying to shut me up.”
I stared at him.
The worst part was that he wasn’t wrong.
Kissing him had started as a way to end a conversation and have fun the first time we met at Hockey House when summer started. Touching him now had the same easy shape. Shut him up. Blind him. Make the room physical before he could ask emotional questions I did not owe him. I knew that trick. It had kept me safe more than once.
Easton looked at me like he knew the trick and still wanted the truth beneath it, and I hated that. I wanted him so badly my skin hurt. Both things could exist because I was, unfortunately, a woman of range.
“I want you,” I said.
His breath changed, only a small, controlled inhale that made every inch of me aware he had been holding himself still on purpose. “Good,” he said, his voice rougher now.
“Good?”
