Mine.
“No fucking way,” I hissed as the screen unlocked.
It didn’t mean anything, of course. Most people were creatures of habits. If they had been using one password for a long time, they just kept using that one. No matter how many times they changed out their phones.
It made sense that once upon a time, he’d used my birthday as his password, and then just kept doing it because it was easy to remember and familiar, reducing the chances of locking himself out of his phone.
Still, though, my heart did a little extra skip between beats as I clicked his messages.
There were texts from saved addresses.
His parents, Violet, Voss, and even some from some of the other club guys.
But there was one number right there at the top of his messages that he didn’t have saved.
Opening it up, I saw dozens and dozens of incoming messages. Every single one of them, save for one, coming in.
He’d only messaged them back once.
Saying simply Fine. I’ll meet you.
All the other messages from the unknown person, though, were vaguely threatening.
You owe us.
Don’t make me make this harder for you.
We know where you are.
What the hell was going on?
Had they had the meet-up? If so, what had happened? Why was he still looking so rough?
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t hear the water turn off.
But I did hear it when the shower door slid closed.
The phone damn near fell from my hands as I struggled to close out the texts, hit the button to turn it back off, then flip it face-down on the counter, hoping he wouldn’t realize that he’d left it face up because it was too late to turn it. The door was opening.
And there he was in a low-slung towel.
And not a damn thing else.
My poor libido took a sucker punch it never saw coming as my gaze followed a single bead of water from between his chest, down underneath the towel.
“Lulu,” he said, jerking back a bit.
Was that suspicion? Or just surprise?
It was gone too fast to tell which.
“I, ah, I came to tell you that dinner is ready,” I told him, feeling lame. I mean, he’d just seen that dinner was almost ready. I should have just, I don’t know, been washing my hands or something.
My own insecurities about my excuse seemed to be pretty damn obvious to Valen, too, because his brow rose up.
“Yeah? That’s why you’re here, standing right outside where I was taking a shower?”
“What other possible reason could I have to be here?” I asked, making my tone disinterested. To hide my guilt at snooping through his phone, sure, but also the way my body was reacting to his near nakedness.
To that, his gaze went positively molten as his arm lifted, and his finger snagged the centermost part of my pants, using it to pull me forward an inch.
I’d like to say I pulled back, but I totally didn’t.
I didn’t put up any fight at all, in fact.
“I can think of a few reasons,” Valen said, that sultry gaze of his moving down over my body.
“Really? I can’t,” I said, jerking my chin up a little bit, but it probably came off more like a challenge than actual defiance.
“No?” he asked. “Maybe I should remind you of one,” he said even as his hand slipped inside my pants, pressing against me.
“Seems like your pussy had other things in mind than dinner,” he told me as his fingers slipped under my panties, finding me already wet for him.
I couldn’t think of anything snarky to say back to that, any way to deescalate the situation either.
Because we were both intimately aware of the truth right then.
Despite whatever history and hard feelings there may have been between us, there was no denying that our bodies still ached for each other.
I had to admit that, despite my determination to hate him forever, mine probably always would.
Valen moved forward, forcing me back against the sink vanity between the bathrooms as his thumb teased up my cleft to work my clit as his other fingers slipped down and surged inside me.
It wasn’t long before my own hands were getting greedy, lifting from my sides to slide up his arms, over his shoulders, then down his back.
My fingers teased over new scars that I wanted to know the stories of. Like the one he had on his elbow from falling off his motorcycle for the first time, skinning the whole area raw. Or the group of them going up the front of his leg from when he’d broken a bone from jumping off onto a trampoline on a dare, shattering his tibia and needing surgery. You could still count the little staple marks left behind.
I needed to know all the stories.
I wanted to know what had made him into the man he’d become like I knew the stories that made up the boy I had known.