Page 7 of After Dark
Arlo had to wonder if it was possible that this time around, he could make her feel whole, too.
But it all came down to honesty, and he didn’t know if that was possible.
“If you come back to me,” he said, very intently, though he was hard and greedy already, and could feel the clench of her pussy around him as if he was still inside her, and that still didn’t solve the trust issue here, “it can’t be the way it was before. You lied to me. You hid from me. You pretended. But you showing up here like this, it makes me think you wish you could change how that went.”
“I do,” she whispered.
“You know what I’m like,” he continued in that same dark, hard tone. “You know what I want. This time, you know exactly how demanding I am going in.”
Another long, visible swallow. “I do.”
He moved closer and he watched the way her eyes widened, her pupils dilating. That was something, anyway. Her body had always been honest about what was happening. Radically honest, in fact.
“I don’t trust you,” he told her, baldly. “I can’t trust you.You made that happen, Josette, and I don’t know if that will change. If it can change.”
“I know,” she said softly.
“You say that now, but what happens down the road a ways? When you stop missing me, and settle back into the way we live?”
The last time he’d asked her a question like this, she’d answered it so prettily. He’d believed her so easily.
But they weren’t the same people tonight. Her eyes filled with emotion, then darkened. “I don’t know. I hope, though, that I’ll find a way to let you know long before I get to that point.”
“Oh,” he said, almost like he was considering laughter, “you will. Because you and me? It’s radical honesty or nothing. One lie, one tiny little lie, Josette, and we are done.”
Her gaze darkened even further. She dipped her head into a nod.
“Words,” he told her. “I’m going to need the words so there can be no misunderstandings this time.”
“I understand,” she told him, her voice sounding faintly scratchy. “One lie, and that’s it.”
“Good girl,” he murmured, and he watched her change right in front of him.
He watched her soften. He watched that flush staining her cheeks, because her body really couldn’t hide anything from him, not with that pale skin and all those freckles. She was a wide open book, and he’d thought that because he could read her body so easily and so thoroughly that it meant he’d had access to her mind, too.
Arlo knew better this time.
And sure, maybe it was psychotic to jump right back in this fast — but he was a man who knew his own mind. When it came to this, to them, it had always been all ornothing. They’d fucked within an hour of meeting each other and they’d met at a stuffy business function, not a sex club. She’d moved in by the end of the week. If they were near each other, they couldn’t be apart. On that level, he understood why she’d put states in between them.
This was going to have to be a campaign, but the good news about that was that Arlo was very, very good at waging wars. And winning them.
He reached out and stroked his thumb down the side of her cheek, soft and silken.
“Kneel,” he ordered her, a soft reentry to that world of theirs. To the scenes they’d always played out between them, living their life more in a scene than not. It had all bled together and maybe that was the problem. He knew some people drew strict boundaries between actual scenes and the rest of their lives.
He and Josette had never been good at lines, only at blurring them.
Arlo decided he could worry about that later, when she was back in his life and in his bed and tangled up with him again, the way she was meant to be.
Besides, he saw the way relief swept over her because he’d issued that order. Because he’d let her back in.
He moved them deeper into the little alley and put his back to the entrance. It was much darker now than before, but he knew that the shape of him alone was enough to deter most. But he’d moved them far enough into the shadows that someone would have to know they were here to see them.
Even so, they would look at him. Not at her, not tonight. Not in a moment like this.
Not in the middle of this renewal.
Josette settled down easily, not making the faintestsqueak of protest as she knelt on the ground, even though it was dirty. Even though she was going to get some of that dirt on her pretty knees and might even mark them up a bit with all that concrete.
