Damaged Like Us (Like Us 1)

“Farrow, wait.” His voice is right against my ear.

Slowly, I turn to face him, and he breathes like he ran five miles to reach me.

I tilt my head, still hesitant about the direction this all may go. What do you want, Maximoff? Stopped in place, I bear hard on my teeth.

And then I freeze. I watch him subtly check out my features: my cheeks, my piercings, the freckle on my jaw, and he finally allows his gaze to drop to my lips.

“Maximoff—”

“I can’t do this.”

A pit wedges in my ribs. “Be more specific.”

“I’m going home.” He gestures to the exit with his water bottle. “I’m leaving right now after I tell her goodbye.” He takes a half a second to kindly say goodbye to the girl. Then his focus is on me.

Heaviness hoists off my chest, my lips beginning to upturn.

A night listening to him fuck someone else averted. And I didn’t even have to be a prick.

I move to lead him out. “I’m walking in front of you.” He’s already trying to push ahead of my stride, but he stops himself short.

And he says, “Walk beside me.”

I do. We move with equally strong, determined gaits, but we’re both sitting on the beginning of something unknown. And we carry our familiar tension like a third companion and a bomb.

14

MAXIMOFF HALE

NEITHER OF US breaks the silence while I drive home. Compounding and compounding in each untouched second. Every moment weighs down. Sunken in eternal slow-mo.

Farrow reaches for the air vents. Languid, sensual—his tattooed fingers slide the vent open. Cold air gushes out. But it does absolutely jack shit to temper the heat brewing against my skin.

I lick my lips for the thousandth fucking time. My cock throbs, aching to harden. To be stroked. To be fucked and to fuck.

I force my gaze to the highway. Gripping the leather steering wheel in an iron-tight vice. His hot gaze shifts from the road where paparazzi trail after my Audi—to me. Over and over.

Road, then me. Road, then me.

I’m watched and observed all the time. By strangers. By cameramen. By people. And never, never have I come undone. Until now, until his eyes feel like hands, and I want them all over me.

“Brake,” he says deeply.

I slow the car at the last second. Hitting bumper-to-bumper traffic. Now the car is unbearably still. I feel like my Audi has shrunk into a compact.

Too small.

The middle console barely divides his body from mine. And my body from his. Do I even want a divide anymore? No. And yes. He’s my bodyguard—that’s not changing.

It’s not.

But I can’t even think about anyone else. He hasn’t just pitched a tent in my brain and dick. He’s built a fucking stone castle that no wolf can ever blow down.

What am I supposed to say to him? My cock only wants you. My brain only wants you. I didn’t pick up that girl because I only want you.

Or: if I fucked someone else tonight, it would’ve made me sick.

None of that extinguishes this one cold fact: it’s ethically wrong to be with my bodyguard.

“Maximoff,” Farrow says, my name slicing the dense air like dropping a guillotine.

I steal a quick glance at him.

He rubs his bottom, pierced lip with his thumb, and his brows rise. “Ready to talk about this?”

“This,” I say, imagining my hands ripping his shirt off his head. Muscle against muscle, lips against lips—I blink. “This traffic is fucking terrible.”

“This as in you and me.” He pauses. “Us.”

Headlights glare in my rearview. My stringent posture contracts my shoulders, my deltoids, my whole body. And I switch lanes fast. Windows of a nearby SUV roll down, a Canon pointing at my car.

Great.

I drive thirty-over just to desert the SUV. Farrow keeps an eye on neighboring vehicles while he says, “I know talking about this isn’t easy. In any other situation, I’d just kiss you.”

Fuck. I lick my lips again. Muscles flexing.

I harden beneath my jeans and boxer-briefs. “You sure I wouldn’t be the one to kiss you?” I counter.

I can feel his lips lifting. For how close we are, the space between us couldn’t feel farther away. Whoever makes the first move will have to cross miles, scale mountains, ferry oceans to reach the other side.

I glance at him.

And his amused smile stretches wider. “In your dreams, maybe you’d kiss me first.” Talk of my dreams reminds me of how long I’ve crushed on him.

Since I was sixteen.

I start to padlock my emotion with a thousand iron keys.

His smile slowly falls. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” I say instinctively, and then, “I don’t know.” Beware: he’s your bodyguard! scrolls across my vision like a tickertape warning. For Christ’s sake, we can’t even kiss without having a conversation beforehand. It’s all so elementary.

Kissing.

I want to do more. I want more. In a way that I’ve never even had before, and is that what’s being offered? Is it even possible?

“What are you thinking?” he asks. “Because I don’t know where you stand. You have so many boundaries, you’re practically a walking-talking Don’t Enter sign.”

“Like you don’t have any?” I combat.

He laughs into a grin. “I consider some boundaries like cautionary tales. Proceed with caution, but you know, still go on ahead.” He flashes me the hottest smile I’ve ever seen, and I bear on my molars, my erection wanting pressure. A mouth, a hand, an ass.

His mouth, his hand.

His ass.

I find myself shaking my head.

“What?” he asks.

I have to tell him my biggest roadblock. As though it’s not in-his-face-obvious enough. “I value self-awareness.” I take a colossal breath. “The ability to understand and perceive every facet of my own weird existence. In Greek ethics, it’s said only the self-aware understand what is right, and therefore will have the knowledge to do what is good.”

I want to do what is right. To do good.

To be good.

Farrow taps the middle console, his thumb ring clicking against leather. His hand is an inch from my arm. He nods, understanding. “And you see being with your bodyguard as wrong. And wrong leads to bad; and bad equals unhappy in your philosophically-bound head. You realize that not e

veryone thinks that way, Maximoff?”

My brows knot. “In what universe does wrong lead to rays of fucking sunshine and happily-ever-afters, Farrow? Please, enlighten me.”

“How about rewinding and asking yourself, is it really wrong? Or how about this one: what is ethical to begin with? Who decided on these moral rights?” He leans back, boot on his seat. “Or what about what Thoreau said?”

I frown. “You’ve read Thoreau?”

“I took philosophy and lit during undergrad.”

I give him a brief look like he’s flown off this planet. “That was over seven years ago.” And I doubt he reads in his spare time. While my shelves are stacked and stacked with comics, graphic novels, and philosophy texts—his one small bedroom bookshelf is bare.

“I remember everything I skim,” he says, not even lying about “skimming” texts.

One right turn and I drive onto our street.

We go silent.

I pass rows and rows of townhouses, both of our homes in view. Then I pull onto the short driveway. He clicks the garage button. And I park next to Jane’s baby blue Beetle. After shutting off the ignition, the garage door grinds closed.

We stay right here. Inside my three-car garage, sheltered from the Philly noise.

Quiet. Alone.

In one single breath, Farrow turns towards me. His arm extends over the back of my leather seat. My muscles burn and tighten like rubber bands that beg to snap. I want him even closer. But I hold still, marbleized.

His other arm rests on the middle console. His hand one move away from my leg.

Farrow caresses my gaze as he says, “Thoreau said, ‘Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.’”

His deep voice and Thoreau’s words pour through me like liquid honesty. “Be not simply good.” Self-perfection has its limits. Being moral, making moral choices—it all means nothing in comparison to doing good for others. I don’t need to be the perfect picture of morality in order to help someone in need.

I’d rather be good for something.

For someone.

So I look at him.

I’m talking a real look. Like I’m excavating his every thought and desire. My eyes bore into his eyes, and then my gaze melts in a carnal wave against his gaze.