Page 52 of Crossed By the Stars
“I told you, entertainment.”
“Can’t we just watch a movie or something?”
I shook my head. “Vanya uses this place to escape the world, so no TVs allowed.”
She stared at me for a moment. “That’s not very hospitable of him. What about his guests?”
“I think I’m the only person he’s ever had here besides his partners.”
She stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re bi? Or pan? Or something? Were you and Vanya an item?”
I chuckled. “No. You’ve never seen me with a guy, have you?”
“That doesn’t mean you weren’t hiding it.”
“If I were bi, or pan, or something,” I said, throwing her words back at her, “I wouldn’t care to hide it.”
She pushed the bowls away.
“Done?” I asked.
She nodded, and I took the tray and set it outside the door to deal with later. As I came back to the bed, I picked up the book and sank on top of the covers, determined to keep our skin as far apart as possible.
“Where’s my book?” she asked.
“You don’t need one. I’m going to read to you,” I told her. “Just close your pretty little eyes and relax.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with the real Dax Armaud?” she demanded.
I grinned. “This is the real Dax Armaud. The suave guy you see out and about is the act. Don’t you remember me telling you how much I loved books?”
It was one of our early, teenage conversations. I wondered if she’d purposefully buried the memories, whereas they were all painted in vivid Technicolor in my brain, kept safe in a special vault with her name written on it.
After I’d read a few pages, all the while trying to ignore her eyes on me, she interrupted me by saying, “It’s better in Japanese.”
“You’ve read it?” I asked, surprised.
She nodded. “The question is, have you? Or is this your first time?”
I set the book down and met her gaze. “There was a time in my life where I read Japanese literature almost exclusively.”
Her eyes widened just a hair, glancing down to my mouth and then back up. God, I’d love to kiss her. To have those goddamn perfect lips on mine. To caress the soft shape. To taste her once more. She watched my hand as I slowly reached up to tuck a stray strand away from her face much as I had earlier. When I withdrew just as slowly, her gaze followed the movement.
“You can’t say things like that. It isn’t fair. To either of us,” she told me, eyes glimmering with anger but also longing.
I didn’t look away. I took in how her breathing had increased and how her chest heaved more under the covers. I took in the way her mouth parted and her tongue ran along her bottom lip in nervous energy. I felt the increase of my own breath in response, the tingling that took over every fiber of my being as energy zipped between us.
“I hate this,” I told her softly, and she instantly bristled.
“Well, I didn’t fucking ask you to bring me here.”
“That isn’t what I meant. I hate that I’m attracted to you with a force I can’t forget but will only hurt the people I love most. I hate that I left you alone like every person in your life has done and that you let me. I hate that there’s a target on your head I can do nothing about.”
She didn’t fly back at me with another angry comment, which meant she understood, if not agreed with, everything I’d said.
