I clasp her forearm and help her up, but she staggers against me. It’s easier for me to carry my wife, so I cradle her in my arms and kick open the door before it closes, then Ryke helps Daisy the same way.
“We’ve decided on a sleepover,” Daisy declares behind me, her arms wrapped around Ryke’s neck as he carries her into the room with one king-sized bed.
I set Rose on the hotel bed and she sprawls out and hugs a pillow. “No boys allowed,” Rose adds a requirement, which further leaves me alone with Ryke. We have four hotel rooms, and I hoped the girls would want to talk with each other for another hour and then let us split them apart.
Clearly that’s not happening in my favor.
Ryke obliges and actually tosses Daisy on the bed beside her sister. She laughs, and Rose spreads out her arms as though she’s suddenly at sea, sinking on the Titanic. Her hairband is lost in the depths of the white comforter.
I lean over my wife and comb her hair out of her face, and her eyes narrow at me, even glazed they still contain heat. Blood pools in my cock. I can always tell when she’ll start her period because my body grows more primal, attracted to every physical move she makes.
She emits pheromones around this time, and the chemicals usually send me over until I fuck her—but tonight is different.
She looks closely at my lips. “Why do I love you?”
I rile her. “If you really want me to list all the reasons why, I’ll be here all night.”
She tries to cover my mouth with her hand, and she misses completely, swatting air beside my head. I laugh.
I notice Ryke sitting on the edge of the bed with Daisy lounging drunkenly across his lap. “Big bad wolf…” She reaches up to touch his hair but her arm sags limply next to her. “Eat me.”
It’s a provocative, intoxicated statement that I do my best to block out.
Ryke lowers his head to her, kissing Daisy once…twice and then he says, “Every fucking day, sweetheart.”
“Where’s Lily?” Rose asks me.
“Her hotel room with Lo.” They’re fucking, something I’d prefer to be doing with Rose, instead of sharing Ryke’s company.
“Where’s Poppy?”
“Her hotel room with Sam.”
“Where is Willow…and where’s her boyfriend?” Rose swats the air for answers. I clasp her hand.
“Lo’s sister didn’t want to go out,” I remind Rose. Willow turned eighteen last week, but Lo said that she preferred to spend the night at her apartment and read a comic book. “And she doesn’t have a boyfriend.” I know Rose must be referring to Garrison.
Rose snorts and tries to wave me off, but I have possession of her hand. “I’ve seen them flirt,” she says matter-of-factly, as though that’s evidence enough.
“Your logic isn’t sound, darling.” I tug her dress down when it rides up her thigh. I’d let her be, but Ryke is on this bed too. “We flirted for years, and you never called me your boyfriend.”
Her mouth falls and eyes flame. “What we did wasn’t flirting.”
I arch a brow. “When I was seventeen you said you wanted to perform an autopsy on me, to crack open my ribcage and squeeze my heart until it burst between your fingers.” What is that—if not flirting?
She lifts her head off a pillow to near me, propping her elbows on the mattress. “That was me hating you, Richard. I dreamed of your death.”
“You dreamed of clutching my heart,” I rebut.
“Of killing you,” she emphasizes.
I lean closer to her, our eyes locking. “Vous m’aimiez.” You loved me.
She breathes shallowly and collapses back against the mattress, conceding early, mostly due to the alcohol. Her heavy-lidded eyes fight to stay open longer, just to glare at me.
When I turn to look at Ryke, he’s staring between Rose and me with more suspicion than I’d like to meet. “You know,” he says, “for so many years, I’ve never fucking understood why you both occasionally use vous instead of tu.”
My muscles still stay flexed, even if this is a pointless topic for me.
Rose answers before I do. “It’s formal.” We’re both not natives of France. Since we usually only converse with each other, we do what we want.
“You were fucking dating and now you’re married,” Ryke retorts. “Your relationship is informal.”
“We weren’t always dating and we weren’t always married,” I explain now, referring subtly to our days in prep school where we were competitors. “We began as formal and so now we switch between the two whenever we like. We’re well aware of the rules. They just don’t apply to us.”
Rose is grinning from ear-to-ear.
She says she hates when I’m conceited, but I’m more than certain she takes pleasure in the real me, even if I’m an arrogant prick.
Ryke shakes his head like he wishes he didn’t ask, and then Daisy rolls off of him, closer to Rose, and the girls begin whispering together.
I stand off the bed the same time as Ryke, and we exchange a look of recognition.
We have to spend actual alone time together, beyond just passing each other in the morning and conversing sporadically for ten minutes. No Daisy. No Loren. Nothing that bridges us together.
Wonderful.
[ 33 ]
CONNOR COBALT
I finish taking a shower after Ryke. We spoke a few words earlier that basically confirmed we’d be spending the night in this hotel room together. We don’t hate each other enough to hassle the front desk at 4 a.m. for an extra room on St. Patrick’s Day. And I’m not foolish to believe Ryke would just drop his suspicions if we separated.
He’ll bring them up sometime, so he might as well let it out tonight.
After I brush my teeth and put on pajama pants, a light still floods beneath the door. I assume he stayed up to question me, and I never really thought he’d go to sleep without broaching the topic.
I quietly exit, passing a mirror-covered closet and entering the main portion of the modern hotel room: a desk, a chair and one king-sized bed, nothing more. Before Ryke sees me, I catch him on his side of the bed with his knees bent, something hidden behind them.
He’s in gray cotton track pants, bare-chested with a dark tattoo along his shoulder, rib, and hip. When one of his knees falls, I spot his scar from the transplant surgery. It begins right below his sternum in the exact center of his chest, and it stops before his belly button, veering beneath his ribs, almost like the shape of the letter L.
It now accompanies the small scar on his eyebrow from the Paris riot.
I’ve never viewed people as physical canvases for their life, revealing time and memories outwardly like Ryke, whether by choice or by circumstance. I may be a blank slate, but not all people are.
I move closer, and he drops his other knee, his head rising. That’s when I notice the book in his hand. He’s reading. Strangely, I’ve never seen Ryke read before.
He stuffs the book behind his pillow. “I have to ask you something,” he tries to distract me.
My curiosity has escalated, and I’m not about to let it go. I head over to his side of the bed, and he immediately stands and blocks my passage to his pillow, his jaw hardening and features darkening.
I’ve never been intimidated by him.
“I have to seriously fucking talk to you.”
I know. “Why are you so ashamed of what you’re reading?” I question, knowing it’s not about shame.
“Fuck off.” He scowls. “I’m not ashamed of anything, so don’t twist this your way.”
I am twisting it my way, but I’m not done yet. “If you’re not ashamed, then you shouldn’t have any problem showing me the book.”
His nose flares. “What does it matter to you if I read the back of a shampoo bottle or Ulysses?”
“I value intelligence,” I say easily. “I find it agitating that you hide yours.”
“Well there you go.” He gestures between my chest and his. “I don’t rank people above or below me based o
n whether or not they can outscore me on a fucking math test.”
That’s how he sees me then? I shake my head. “You’ve pegged me wrong. I’m not saying I look down on Lo or Lily because they’re not as intelligent as me. They have other qualities that I admire and value and that I personally lack, but they don’t hide these qualities from anyone.”
“I’m not fucking hiding.”
“Your book is literally sitting behind a pillow, hidden from view.”