Dane reached for my arm. Miles turned and looked at him. Just looked with that flat, patient, utterly immovable stare that projected all his quiet confidence without uttering a word.
Dane let go.
We walked out into the crisp night air, and the door swung shut behind us. I stood on the sidewalk with one eye already throbbing, and Miles’ arm still around me. I felt something shift in my chest that I wasn’t going to be able to shove back in a drawer this time.
CHAPTER 7
MILES
I satBrett on the edge of my bed and got the first aid kit from under the sink.
His eye was already swelling, a deep red flush spreading toward his cheekbone that would be purple by morning. He sat there and let me examine it without complaint, which told me how rattled he actually was. Brett Calloway didn’t sit still for anything.
“Hold this,” I said, pressing a cold pack against his eye socket.
He hissed, but held it.
I pulled my desk chair around and sat in front of him. His knees were on either side of mine. He didn’t move them away.
“You didn’t have to take the hit for me,” I said.
“I know.”
“But you did.”
“Yeah.” He shifted the cold pack slightly and winced. “I did.”
I looked at him with his swollen eye, knowing that cock cage was sitting quietly and patiently under his jeans. He looked nothing like the person who’d leaned over a pool table only four nights ago, radiating easy invincibility.
He looked better, actually. More real.
“I’ve been thinking about you all week,” he confessed.
My pulse spiked. I kept my face even. “I know. You sent a lot of thumbs-up emojis.”
He almost smiled. “Miles.”
“Brett.”
“I mean it.” He lowered the cold pack. His eye was bad, but his gaze was fixed on me, dark and direct. “You’ve been on my mind constantly. It’s like—” He paused, searching for the right words. “Being locked up, it’s like it unlocked something else. Something I didn’t know was in there.”
I looked at him for a long moment. “This was just supposed to be a stupid bet,” I said.
“I know what it was supposed to be.”
“Seven days. Clean and simple.”
“Yeah.” His jaw worked. “Nothing about this has been clean or simple.”
The room was very quiet. Outside, a car passed, music thumping briefly, then the distraction was gone. I was acutely aware of how close we were sitting, his knees warm against mine, the smell of him cutting right through the cold pack, and the antiseptic, and everything practical I was trying to stay inside of.
“Miles.” His voice dropped. “Will you?—”
He stopped.
“Will I what?”
He held my gaze. The flush on his face wasn’t entirely from the bruise. “Will you fuck me?” he asked. “I want to feel you inside me.”