Page 29 of Crossed By the Stars
Lía sighed, pushing back her black braid, picking up the gloves, and heading toward the mat in the corner. “Come on, then. If you aren’t going to hit the bag, we can at least do some footwork.”
I followed only because I needed a distraction—from the note, from my father’s world colliding with mine again, and from the lust in Dax’s eyes every time he looked at me. I’d been foolish to spend so much time with him right as my emotions were strung tight. Our time together never ended well for me.
It was perhaps the one piece of advice from my father I should have listened to. But like all those Romeo-and-Juliet, star-crossed-lovers sorts of situations, our parents warning us to stay apart had done exactly the opposite.
Dax and I had spent two glorious teenage years, dancing around each other in public only to sneak away and spend hours talking about nothing and everything all at the same time. The air between us had slowly grown heavier each time we met, until the weekend of my fifteenth birthday, where it had become a crescendo of desires demanding a release.
We’d stolen a bottle of champagne from my absent father’s table, ditched my bodyguard and his parents, and ended up in the Roman section of the museum.Dax had twirled me into him, dancing with me in the silence, our shoes on the marble floor the only sound.
“You’re the most beautiful girl here tonight,” Dax said.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m already going to let you kiss me, Dax. You don’t need to say something so lame to try and butter me up.”
He looked offended. “I’m just stating the truth.You glow like there’s a power inside you that no one else has. Like the moonlight casting a beam across a dark pond.”
As always, his words thrilled me, sending rivers of emotions over my unprepared soul. I never knew how to respond when he said such charming things, so I said the thing I wanted most. “Shut up and kiss me.”
And he did. He pressed his perfectly full and glorious lips against mine. Softer than I’d expected. Silky, luxurious. Heat and flame flickered to life deep inside me, growing as the satin smoothness of his tongue slid against the seam of my mouth, begging an entrance I easily gave and joining us together in the sweetest way. As if we were never supposed to be two beings, but one. His hand on my waist tightened, digging into my skin and making me ache for something I wasn’t even sure I understood.
We stood tangled together, lips and tongues learning from each other, for so long that I thought I was no longer going to have any air left in my body. But then, he eased away, a cocky, sure smile lighting up his face with one single, perfectly shaped eyebrow lifted in a devilish French god sort of way that was all Dax.
“Why’d you stop?” I asked, my voice breathy and unsteady.
“A kiss,mon amour. No more than that tonight,” he said, but I knew what he was thinking. He thought I was too young to be kissed. Too young to be devoured. He was only two years older than me, but he acted like it was twenty years.
“Don’t call memon amour. It’s cliché. Besides, who would care if we took it further? It’s not likeOtosanis going to come storming in here and demand justice for you taking my virginity.”
He paled, and I realized I’d said way too many words that were wrong. Not only the fact that I was a virgin but also the fact that my family and his were always on opposite sides of the ballroom. That nothing good could come from an Armaud and a Mori being seen together.
He’d left me that night with promises to call, promises to take me out on a proper date, but instead, I didn’t hear from him or see him again for several years. My teenage heart had been shattered. The pain of having been not only seen but sought out, only to be left in solitude once more, had been almost impossible to bear.
It was only weeks later that I’d had the brutal truth of what and who my father was thrust upon me. I’d gone down the rabbit hole of teenage rebellion using sex, drugs, and misbehavior as both a weapon against my father and a scream for help. By the time Dax reentered my world, parading around Europe with Dawson, Benita, and the rest of the vampires, I wasn’t even the same person he’d first met.
I felt like that Jada?the one Dax had first kissed?was nothing but a fairy tale. She’d never really existed. She’d lived in a pretend world, surrounded by pretend people who treated her like she was a princess until she proved she was the enemy to everything they stood for. Shaming her family name. Living loud instead of staying quiet.
The pain of those memories suddenly became a real, physical pain asLíaswept my leg and tossed me to the mat without me even reacting.
“Holy hell, Jada, where are you?” Lía asked.
I didn’t answer. I just lay there, looking at the gray cement ceiling of the gym in the basement of my apartment building. Lía always came to me, which was part of the reason she cost so much, but there was no way I was walking into a regular gym. I had no desire for my sweat-covered face to be on every tabloid cover from here to Tokyo, and that was exactly what would happen if the paparazzi found me working out in a gym.
“Got a lot on my mind,” I finally told her.
Lía sat on the mat next to me. “Want to talk about it?”
I snorted. My world was so impossible that most people would think I was making it up. Plus, I knew better than to open up. Talking didn’t solve anything, and it never ended with me feeling better.
“Nah, I just need to blow off some steam,” I told her.
“Or get laid,” she teased, pushing a toe against my leg.
She wasn’t wrong. It had been too long since I’d had sex. But thinking about sex right now only allowed visions of Dax to come slamming back into me. I sighed and pulled my weary body from the mat.
“For now, I’ll just pound the boxing bag a few thousand times and hope that helps. Can we pick back up on Friday?” I asked.
“Sure,” she replied. She picked up her gear and headed for the door. With her hand on the door handle, she looked back and said, “Try to get some rest. You look like shit.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me as she left. At least I knew I wasn’t paying the people in my life to blow steam up my ass.
