Heart Thaw (12 page)

He flicks his fingers at it, like it’s a festering pile of maggots. I feel a hot flush work up over my cheeks and along the back of my neck.

“Yes,” I snap, though I try to keep my voice even. “Gorgeous things, good taste, beauty—they all impress me. And don’t try to get all holier-than-thou on me. They obviously impress
you
if you went through all the trouble of getting a bank loan just so you could fill your house with all this
shit
.”

“What if that was a lie about the loan?” he sneers, his eyes flat and hard.

“What do you mean?” I back a step or two away from him, hating the way he swings from one emotion to another, one story to the next. “Why would you lie to me? Did you deal?”

“No,” he snarls.

“Did you...
steal
?” My words shake.

“Yep. That’s it. You got me. I put a countertop and a few fucking light fixtures in my back pocket and walked out the damn store with them. How’d you guess?”

Anyone else, standing in his underwear, might feel a little exposed or uncomfortable. But Trent is so comfortable in his own skin, I don’t know if he even notices he’s half-naked. He grabs my mug off the counter and stalks to the sink, dumping the last few delicious sips of coffee without asking if I wanted more.

“So tell me, then.”

I hold my hands up, palms out.

“Just like that?” He scrubs the coffee cups with the sponge so hard, soapy splashes fly up and out of the sink. “Okay, then. What do you want to know, exactly?”

“How you managed to do all this. Get all this.”

I say the words slowly, so I can really listen when I say them. They don’t sound offensive to me at all. They sound like exactly what he advised me to do; ask him.

“You want to know about all this?” Trent dries the cups with a dishtowel and throws them back into the cabinet, tossing the door shut with a slam. When he looks at me, his eyes are blazing. “You want to know about all the shit I have now?”

Those fiery eyes make my voice catch in my throat, and I try to swallow around my panic.

I finally manage to blurt out, “Why are you freaking out? You told me to ask, and I’m asking. What the hell is your hissy fit about?”

He shakes his head. Opens his mouth. Snaps it closed and shakes his head again. Finally he grinds out, “You’re asking the
wrong fucking questions.
”

Now it’s my turn to feel complete disgust. The words toss and roil in my chest, and when I finally think I have a calm, direct statement all ready, I open up and something entirely rageful and barbed stomps out.

“
The wrong questions
? You know what? I don’t need to know after all, okay? Steal, deal, play the lotto, start your own hedge fund, whatever the hell you want to do, do it! I don’t care, I’m not interested. Let’s just get to Mom’s, and we’ll have a nice Christmas, and then I’ll be back at school and we can forget this ever happened.”

“Forget
what
ever happened?” He bounds across the kitchen, and I have to take a quick step back to keep from colliding with him. “
Nothing
ever happens when it comes to you and me. Nothing that matters, anyway.”

He’s so close, I can smell the bitter bite of coffee on his breath and the musky mix of sleep and clover warm on his neck.

He just said exactly what I was thinking It’s exactly what I thought I wanted him to say. But now that he said it, the words are a mallet flattening my heart.

“Fine. Get dressed, I guess. My mom and our sisters will be up soon.”

I know he’s about to tell me to fuck off, but one glance out the wide windows reveals the light dusting has picked up and twirls with sharp shards of ice.

“Fine,” he bites back and marches up the narrow stairs.

I hear the shower turn on and work hard to keep thoughts of Trent’s hot, wet, naked body out of my head.

I wander into his living room. I expect a huge TV flanked by a bunch of game consoles, but there doesn’t seem to be any of that. I’m surprised, but I wonder if my surprise makes any sense. What I think I know about Trent is based on our long history. Maybe I’m remembering things that aren’t relevant anymore. It’s been years since he wanted to play video games all night.

He’s a man now.

With a house and a job.

My fingers trip over the stone that surrounds his fireplace hearth. I plop on the soft leather cushions of his couch. A leather couch? Who Trent’s age can afford a leather couch? On the wall across from the couch is an enormous painting, bold and rich with deep, purposeful brushstrokes and jagged gashes of vivid color.

I’m so busy looking at the painting, my hand slips between the couch cushions and my fingers brush something lacy.

I draw the fabric out, and my eyes pop wide at the sight of a very skimpy, very sexy black bra.

I jump up off the couch, my mind suddenly imagining some very hot, very inappropriate activities all over the cushions I was relaxing on just a minute before.

My first instinct is to march the bra up the stairs and demand an explanation from Trent, but I stop with my foot on the first step.

Am I a complete and total idiot? Trent is a grown man, and he and I are
not
an item. If he wants to have sex, that’s absolutely his choice, and I have nothing to say about it.

I plop down on the stair and realize that I need to get back to school as soon as I can. Maybe I can have Ella call Lloyd or Monty tomorrow and see about getting me back. I wasn’t kidding when I told Trent I was in danger of flunking French and had no idea what to do with my almost-completed degree. Maybe my advisor will be hanging around his office a few days early. Maybe I should deal with the stack of internship and graduate school applications that towers on my desk.

I’m so deep in thought, I don’t notice Trent coming down the stairs until he’s almost next to me. I think fast about where to stuff the bra, but I wind up clutching it to my chest because I have no idea where the hell to hide it.

“I’m ready if you are. Just let me grab…”

Trent’s voice drops off and his sole focus concentrates on the bra.

I stand up and he moves past me, one stair below, so we’re at eye level.

“It’s…I should have just left it alone. It was in the couch. Between the cushions. I grabbed it…I found it by accident, and I don’t know what I’m doing with it—”

“She was just someone I met. It was a onetime thing and—”

“You
do not
have to explain to me, Trent! I mean, I was with Jace after we were…um, after we were together I was with him. I understand, is all I’m saying. I get it.”

I swallow hard. His damp hair was pushed back, but it falls forward now, when he moves his face close to mine. His words rasp out, low and ragged.

“I wanted to drive to your school and rip his fucking intestines out when I found out you were with that shitbag,” he confesses.

I put a hand on his chest and feel the thump of his heart under my palm.

“But we agreed—”

“I
know
what we agreed,” he cuts in. “And it’s not like I ever actually did anything about it. I just
felt
like doing it.” He puts his hands on my waist, and I close my eyes against the strong press of his fingers through my clothes. “Don’t you ever just feel anything?”

I keep my eyes shut tight and let everything except Trent fade away.

“Of course I just feel things.”

“Liar,” he whispers, and the tickle of his breath on my neck sends a rash of goosebumps up and down my spine. “Every time you’re about to just feel anything, you get all college girl cool on me.”

“I don’t,” I say, then lean my head on his solid, clean-smelling warmth. “Why does everyone keep saying that I think I’m so cool because I’m in college? It’s annoying.”

“You’re annoying.” I open my eyes and his smile is smug. “You were pissed about the bra.”

“No.” I shake my head and hope my cheeks aren’t bright red. “I meant it when I said you should do your own thing.”

“Remind me why you want that again?” Trent’s lips burn as they trace a path over the skin of my neck and up along my ear.

I shiver against him and lean into his kisses. I’m too tired to push him away, even if I realize what  a colossal mistake it is to let this spiral out of control again. Because, lately, when it comes to Trent and me there’s nothing except total, utter lack of control.

“The two of us doing our own thing separately makes sense. It’s not a good idea to...do this.”

His mouth is open, and the hot slide of his tongue pulls along the column of my neck. I moan without meaning to, and his hands clench around my hips in response.

“You piss me off.” His voice is low, and then his mouth sucks gently at my skin, licks, blows, and stops. “You think I’m an idiot. You underestimate me. You judge me without having a clue what the truth is.” He nuzzles the place where my neck meets my shoulder, and I go slack. “Tell me that anything else makes you feel as good as it feels when we’re together.”

“Shh.”

I shush him, because I know what he says is true, and I don’t want to face it right now.

I don’t want to face anything.

I don’t want to think.
I just want to feel.

He presses me back until I’m sitting on the stair. His hands run up and down my body, grabbing and kneading, pulling and pressing.

“Tell me that you want me,” he demands, his voice a low growl in my ear.

I moan back in answer and a hot, dry laugh breaks out of his throat. His fingers flick open the button on my jeans and tug on the tab of the zipper.

I’m positive my hands will push his away at any second, so it’s a shock when I find them curled around the step behind me. His long, strong fingers slide under the waistband of my skimpy black underwear and press down, lower and lower, and I’m still half-thinking I should stop him. Because this is a bad idea.

This is more complicated than either one of us wants.

But his hand feels so perfect, I rub close and moan against him instead, content to let all the warning, scolding thoughts in my head curl into the corner while I get lost in his touch.

His knee spreads my thighs apart, and his fingers rub in quick, light strokes against my sensitive center, already slick from drinking in his half-naked body in the kitchen, hearing his voice comfort me, smelling the clean tang of his skin. The pressure of his fingers fills me, and I arch against him.

“You’re soaked,” he breathes and locks his mouth on mine.

He slides his fingers out despite my protests, pulls me up, hoists my legs around his hips and rushes up the stairs.

His room is big and airy, painted a deep gray with black bedding. He drops me onto the bed, and there’s one quick minute when I’m shocked that there aren’t superhero sheets and dirty socks crusted to the floor.

This is not the Trent I grew up with. This is not the little brother of my best friend.

Standing over me is the grown-up version of Trent. My heart clatters in anticipation. I blink a few times, and, with every flutter of my eyelids, he becomes more handsome, more appealing. My entire body is screaming and clawing for him, and I listen to it.

I sit up and pull his shirt over his head, run my hands along the sinewy muscles of his arms and the jumble of leather cuffs and bracelets at his wrists. I catch my hands behind his neck and pull his mouth down on mine. We both move fast. My lips kiss his top and bottom lip, then press square and center. My tongue pulls along the seam of his lips, teases his tongue into the soft slide and slip that doesn’t feel fast enough, deep enough, hard enough no matter how we turn our mouths or push closer.

He unties the wraparound shirt and the black fabric falls open on either side of my body, exposing the bra I’m now so thankful Ella left in the laundry room. It’s purple lace, light on fabric, heavy on push-up, and the way Trent sucks his breath in and sits back to ogle makes a wave of pure giddiness pool through me and lap at every rough edge until it’s smooth.

“There’s a picture of you in a bikini. From the summer we went to Ocean City.” He pulls the back of his hand down between my breasts and along the soft skin of my stomach. “I jerked off to that picture for years.”

“Trent!” I laugh and blush, and there it is again; our too-close, too-tangled lives crashing and melding.

“Tell me you never did about me,” he dares.

I bite my lower lip and say, “Not over a picture from Ocean City.”

“I hope not. I was a stringbean. A pimply stringbean.” He smiles at the memory, and my breath catches. Whatever he was, right now he is the most gorgeous specimen of man I’ve ever laid eyes on. “I notice you didn’t say you never thought about me when you went to town.”

“I told you I thought about you a lot.”

I suck my breath in when he noses against my neck, nibbles along my shoulder, slides the strap of my bra down so it hangs loose by my elbow.

“Specifically, you thought about me when your hand was down your pants? That’s cool with me.”