Sinful Like Us (Like Us 5)

Akara drops his duffel on the floorboards. He wears a baseball cap backwards and unzips his red winter jacket. I watch him shift aside the heavy, floral drapes. He assesses the window.

Security has already swept every inch of this house, but double-checking gives him an excuse to turn his back to me.

You’d need a fucking jackhammer to dent the tension in this room. I’m the world’s worst at apologizing. I should unlace my boots and place them against the nightstand.

I should rack out and give him space.

But fuck it all. I’m tired of shutting up when I crave skin-and-fucking-bones to make amends.

Akara spends an extra long minute running his fingers down the window’s seal.

“We’re going to have to talk at some point.” My voice sounds too loud in the quiet.

He goes still. “We probably shouldn’t make that point today.”

My muscles tense. “You need to get something off your chest? I can handle it.” I’d much rather him just ream me the fuck out. I’m used to superiors spit-yelling at me. I’m used to shackling on the blame, but I can’t do that until he gives me the weight.

Akara turns around finally and leans back against the windowsill. He crosses his arms over his chest, and his expression is one of profound discontent. “Like I said, you don’t want to do this today.”

“What if I do?” Just yell at me, goddammit.

He shrugs. “It’s your funeral.”

I nod, ready for it.

Akara takes a breath and sizes me up. “Normally, I’d love this twin swap. Pulling one over on Epsilon—classic.” His eyes land on mine in a glare. “But I honestly hate this whole thing because I could have had a week without you. Joke is on me, per fucking usual.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go back in time,” Akara says coldly. “The moment you started fucking your client, you come to me and tell me you crossed that line. That’s what I want, but we’re too late for that.”

I grimace. “I didn’t want to put that on you—”

“I’m your fucking lead.” He steps away from the window in hot angered movements. “You, out of everyone, should understand what that means, but instead of giving me the same respect I would’ve given you, you decided to shackle me and dump me on the bottom of an ocean. We could have come up with a solution together because that’s what friends do. But you and me, we’re not friends, are we?”

Hurt claws down my back.

I can count on my hand the amount of real, honest and good friendships I’ve made over the years. Ones where people don’t treat me and my brother like one person or an object or something to poke fun at.

Akara might have been the most real friendship I’ve ever had, and I feel it slipping through my fingers, already obliterated to dust.

“I blew it,” I tell him, my chest on fire. “I didn’t know how to tell you about Jane without implicating you.” I inhale sharply, bottling a stronger emotion. “Akara, I thought I was sparing you the blame.”

“You’re on my Force. You’re one of mine.” He removes his baseball cap and bunches it in a tight fist. “Your mistakes are my mistakes. What you were trying to do isn’t even possible. And I feel like such…a fucking idiot.” He sighs in frustration and throws his cap onto the mattress.

I’m rigid, muscles strained. “Are Price and Sinclair still giving you hell?”

He glances over at me and raises his brows. “That’s what we’re not going to do. You lost the privilege to talk with me about that shit.”

“You’re really going to shut me out?” I lower my voice. “Banks isn’t here. Who else do you have to talk to about that shit?”

It was always him and me. My brother couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the lead position, but Akara and I were bred for this.

“No one,” he says. “But lucky for you, we don’t have to spend another minute together.” He bends down and grabs the strap to his duffel. His eyes ping to the bathroom door. It’s a Jack & Jill style that leads to another bedroom where Jane, Sullivan, and Luna sleep.

I shake my head, fucking confused. Maximoff and Farrow handed out room assignments, and they intended for me and Jane to use the bathroom as a way to secretly switch during the night. They also put O’Malley, Tony, and Will on the furthest side of the house, so they wouldn’t overhear Jane and me.

But that plan involved Akara agreeing to it.

He didn’t.

“I don’t understand.” I rest my hand on my taut shoulder. “If I remember correctly, you said fuck no, I’m not letting you get laid every night.”

He nods. “You don’t deserve it. But I realize in this moment that I don’t deserve having to share space with you. Have whatever sex you want, I’m out.” He aims for the door.

My pulse hammers, and I take a couple strides to intercept him. “Wait.” I grab onto his arm.

He stares at my hand and then at my eyes.

I don’t move. “If I had told you I was sleeping with Jane, do you really think the outcome would have been different? There was no way out of this, Akara. You: on this shit-end of Price and Sinclair’s judgment, and me: axed from her detail.”

His face breaks into pity, and it’s like being swallowed by a black hole. Endless nothing on the other side. “You spent less than a year on Jane’s detail,” he says, his voice softer now that we’re closer to the door. “Do you realize that I spent more than three years as a bodyguard to a Cobalt? Two of those were on Connor’s detail. And you know what I learned from that time?”

My stomach twists, a sickening feeling surging all at once.

He looks up with that same pity. “There’s always a way out. You don’t have to fall on a sword because it’s sitting in front of you, waiting. You put together the team that’s going to find the right exit. You sidelined me. That’s on you.” He pushes my hand off his arm. “Move.” He reaches the door, gripping the knob, and leaves.

Akara just cock-blocked my mind.

When he leaves and Jane enters, I wrestle with two conflicting sides. I want to fuck my girlfriend, to please Jane how she needs and deserves to be pleased, but it doesn’t feel right to be happy or satiated after everything I’ve done and everything he said.

I untie my boots while Jane lights candles around the room, a tartan blanket warming her shoulders like a shawl, and we sneak these smoldering glances that burn my soul into blistered pieces—and I’ve craved to tear off her jeans, her shirt, her bra.

To hoist her in my arms and kiss the nape of her neck. For her fingers to claw at my hair. To hear her hungered moans against my ear.

I’ve never been with a woman who loves sex like I do. With an animalistic ferocity. Who needs carnal touch like water, quenching a desperate thirst. Jane is my match, my mate, and I swear to all that’s holy, I’d give her my breath, my body—but guilt is slowly destroying me.

I set my boots against the nightstand, and I rise.

She shakes out a match, waxy candles lit on an antique dresser. I near Jane, my muscles contracting and my blood pumping into my cock, and I watch her breasts push out with shallow, wanting breath. She eases back into the wall, waiting for the inevitable moment where we collide.

I place a strong hand on the burgundy wallpaper. High above her head, and before she speaks, I have to lay down ground rules. “We’re doing things a bit different tonight.”

Her brows quirk. “Are we?”

I slip the button through her jeans. “You ready to go for hours and be spent in my arms?”

She almost moans. “Yes.” Her hands clutch my ass, her hips bowed towards me. “But that’s not so different from most nights.” Curiosity sparkles her blue eyes.

She’s flat-out beautiful.

Gently, I peel her fingers off my body, and her lips part in confusion. I clarify. “You can’t touch my ass, my cock—I’m not getting off, only you are.”

Jane frowns. “I don’t like this.” She searches my hardened gaze. “What’s going on

, Thatcher?”

I tell her everything about my conversation with Akara and finish with, “I’ve disrespected him enough, and having sex is another bullet in a gun I’m firing.”

She catches my wrist before I unzip her jeans. “We don’t have to have sex.” We’re breathing like we’re already making love against the wall.

My gaze slips down my girlfriend in a sensual stroke, her wide hips still arched towards me. Her freckled cheeks are flushed and eyes big. She needs more. I need more. My dick twitches, and I expel another hot breath through my nose.

“Okay?” she breathes, her fingers hooking my belt loop. Tension snakes around us, threatening to choke us to fucking death, and the cold house suddenly blazes at a million degrees.

“No.” I brace my forearm to the wall, only a sliver of space separating our bodies.

Jane melts. “Thatcher.” It’s a wanting, needing, pleading Thatcher, but she adds fast, “If you plan to punish yourself, then you better include me. We’re in this together. So if you can’t come, then I can’t either.”

My jaw tenses. That will kill me.

She tries to read my features. “Frankly…” Her voice softens. “I’d much rather you not punish yourself at all because it won’t make you feel any better.”

I know she’s right.

But I’ve never known how to let myself off the hook that easily.

I shake my head. “I deserve hell.”

“You deserve to be happy,” Jane combats with so much conviction, and I hear my grandma’s soulful voice—be happy.

It’s not a single step into happiness. Not for me. To let myself have that is five-hundred klicks away, and my trek only just began when I chose something happy in my life, for once.

When I chose Jane.

I cup her cheek. The plaid blanket slips off her shoulder, heat brewing between us.

I put words into the quiet. “I can be happy without sex for a night.” Really, I might be fooling myself this one particular night.

She lifts her chin. “So can I.” She puts her hands on my flexed abs in attempt to shove me back, but she applies no force.

We stare into each other.

We breathe heavier.

“I don’t need you,” Jane suddenly whispers.

Something sharp impales my chest. “Say again?”

“I don’t need you.” In the candlelight, I can see her eyes reddening. “I can get myself off.”

I go rigid. “I don’t doubt that, but would you rather have your fingers or my cock, honey?”