Thankfully, Brax had set his phone alarm or we probably would’ve slept through the night.
“Come on,” Brax groaned as he pushed up to his knees. “I’ll start the water.”
“Fine.”
We had just enough time to shower before we needed to head out. Being that we did so together should’ve saved some time, but that wasn’t the case. Once Brax was under the water, I was compelled to touch him as often as possible.
“Keep your hands off my dick,” he moaned when I kissed his neck.
“I promise,” I told him, cupping his face and pressing my lips to his. “I just want to kiss you.”
“Damn, babe.” He moaned softly as he pulled me into him, his hands sliding over my back. “You don’t know how badly I want to fuck you right now.”
Oh, I knew, all right. I wanted the same damn thing.
A few minutes passed while we kissed and groped before Brax managed to extricate himself from my grip. “We have to hurry.”
“Fine.” I grabbed the body wash and smiled back at him. “You first.”
I proceeded to wash him from head to toe. Of course, I never once touched his cock, nor did I attempt to breach his ass. However, there wasn’t anything innocent about it.
When that was through—my dick in even more despair—I dug a pair of clean jeans and a T-shirt out of my bag before shoving everything else back in. Zeke insisted we bring our stuff with us, but I wasn’t sure it was necessary. I didn’t want him taking pity on me because I’d had a panic attack. I’d felt a hell of a lot better after he left. So much so, I had been able to sleep. However, I wasn’t going to defy an order from Zeke. Not until I knew what he had in mind for us.
So, after grabbing everything we’d brought with us, I followed Brax back down to the car.
“What do you think he has in mind?” I asked Brax as he drove us to the club a short time later.
“No idea.”
I sighed. “I really don’t want his pity.”
Brax barked a laugh. “Zeke? Pity? Have you met the guy?”
Fine. He had a point. Zeke didn’t seem like the type who gave a shit whether I endured a panic attack or not. The only reason it would concern him would be in regard to a scene. He was probably invested for as long as it would take to determine whether I was in the right headspace or not.
Now that we were out of the apartment for the foreseeable future, I was fine.
“I’m curious,” Brax said.
“About?”
“How is it you’ve never had a breakdown when we’ve stayed in hotel rooms? I mean, you know. The ones like the apartment. With hallways and elevators. It’s just … I’ve never seen you panic like that before, and I’m tryin’ to make sense of it all.”
That got me thinking because it was a damn good question. We’d stayed in plenty of hotel rooms over the years, a lot of them set up in buildings similar to the Chatter PR building. Vegas, for example. I never had issues there. Perhaps it was because it was temporary or whatever had been going on was enough of a distraction to keep me from focusing on it.
Or—something I wasn’t going to tell anyone—it was the apartment specifically. It brought back memories. Memories I’d spent my entire life trying to repress.
“Hell if I know. But you’re right. It’s never happened to me before.” I glanced over at Brax. “Maybe it was the long drive and the crappy night’s sleep?”
It sounded good, anyway.
“Maybe there were more windows,” Brax mused.
I reached over and took his hand. “Look, I’m really sorry.”
He squeezed my fingers. “What? No. I don’t want you to be sorry. I’m just tryin’ to figure out how to fix this. We can find a place, but it’s probably gonna take a little time. At least a week or two. If we wanna buy something, it’ll be thirty days minimum. We have to live somewhere in the meantime.”
And he was thinking the same thing I was: our time with Zeke was extremely limited. Perhaps a night or two, max.
“Are you worried about what Zeke’s gonna want from us?” It’d been on my mind a time or ten, so I could only imagine Brax was thinking about it. “He did say we weren’t goin’ back to the apartment. I assume that means we’ll be stayin’ with him?”
“That’s what I got from it. Which we both know is temporary. Maybe until our things get here?” Brax’s forehead wrinkled. “Which means we’ll have to have a place to go when he kicks us out. And yeah. I’m a little worried. It’s overwhelming. I hadn’t expected it. Maybe he’ll outline it for us. Like a timeline or somethin’.”
He was clearly relaying his thoughts aloud while I was stuck on one particular point. “You said you were worried. About us? Me and you?”
