Page 14 of Tell Me Something True

And what did he decide?

To sit his ass down in the middle of the couch like he didn’t have a care in the world. Posture indolent, arms spread along the back, bent legs wide and taking up as much space as possible.

“Take your hair down.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, confused and nervous at his gruff tone. Irritated with herself at how she had to curl her fingers into her palm so she didn’t do as he said.

“Take your hair down. Slowly.”

“I’m not much for putting on a show.”

“Everything about you is a show. Everything about you is an act. A character you play. But I don’t want whoever it is you’re pretending to be right now.”

“You mean you want the girl I was when I was with you.”

Pretty. Malleable. Convenient.

“No. I want the real Tabitha. The one you never showed me. I want what’s real,” he said, voice dropping to a low murmur. “I want what’s true.”

He made it sound so simple. As if he was asking for no more than his due. Something he had every right to want. To expect.

Except there was nothing simple about the truth.

Nothing safe about it.

“We don’t talk about the past,” she blurted, heart racing at the mere thought of what she was about to do. What she was about to promise. “Or the future.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, the lamplight casting shadows over the angles of his face, making him look hard. Unyielding.

But then he did yield. And proved, finally, that she wasn’t in this alone.

“No past. No future. Just tonight. You tell me the truth about what you want. About what you like. About what you don’t like.”

She could do that.

What she couldn’t do was walk away.

She raised her hands to her hair.

And took out a bobby pin.

Chapter 3

Miles’s whole take down your hair, and do it slowly, while I watch was another test.

He was taking the king part of his king of the one-night stands title a little too seriously.

And she refused to be relegated to the role of bowing, scraping peasant. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t go along with this power play. Just to see where it led.

She pulled a second bobby-pin free. Then a third and fourth. Glanced around for a place to set them. Miles slid his left arm off the back of the couch and held his hand out to her, palm up.

Stepping forward, she dropped the bobby-pins into his hand, making sure not to touch him as she did so. She’d already taken the initiative a few times tonight.

She wouldn’t touch him again.

Not until he put himself out there, too.

He kept his hand out, patient and silent as he waited for her to carry on with his bidding.

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