Page 66 of Meet You in the Waves
I sighed again. I really didn’t want to talk this out with Nick, expose more of myself to him than I already had.
“Because it’s not like you and I … I mean, it’s not like you’re mine to tell you what you can and can’t do. And Mateo, well, I mean, he’s him and I’m me. I can’t even blame you really.”
“Why?”
“I get it. He’s insanely hot. I have eyes.”
“So does that mean you want Mateo for yourself?” Nick asked, head cocked to the side.
“What? No, of course not.”
“But you just said he’s hot,” Nick pointed out.
“Well, yeah, he is. Doesn’t mean I want him in that way.”
“Right. See, that’s how I feel about Mateo too. Yes, I know he’s hot but it doesn’t mean I want anything from him.”
“Except you did. You were together. For six months. How can I compete with that?” I asked. I took another step back until my back hit the wall, a solid mass of millions of tonnes of prehistoric rock and I knew I had nowhere else to run.
“Why do you need to compete with that?” Nick asked, taking one last step until he was bare inches from me. “Time doesn’t matter. I’m with you, not him. Not in that way at least.”
“But do you want to be with him?” I asked, voice small.
Nick shook his head. “No, Ajay. I don’t.”
“Then why?” I asked, not wanting to voice my question. Why had he spent the night with Mateo and not me?
It was Nick’s turn to sigh. “You know, when Mateo and I broke up four months ago, we made this pact that we would always put our friendship first. In fact, we made the same pact before we even started a relationship. Because it’s always been us three, you know? Me, Rob and Mateo. And our friendship was always way more important to me than anything else. We’ve both tried so hard to make that happen, to keep our friendshipalive even though it’s been really bloody hard at times. Can you understand that?”
I nodded, wanting to hear him out, wanting to try and understand what this thing was between him and his ex-lover. “I think so.”
“And last night … I mean, I guess I wasn’t really thinking. It was late and you’d already gone to bed. And Mateo and I have always been that way with each other, long before we started a physical relationship.”
I blanched at the word, not wanting to hear Nick talk about the physical aspect of his time with Mateo. The friendship thing I was coming around to. The other stuff, no. That needed to remain a mystery in my head.
“I wanted to come upstairs with you last night,” Nick continued, reaching out to run his fingers through mine. “I really, really wanted to come upstairs. But I knew if I did what would happen and I didn’t want to just out you to my friends. Not without asking first about whether … about whether this thing between us is more than just sex.”
Nick let his words dangle between us as I let my fingers curl into his. “It’s not just sex to me.”
“Me either,” Nick said, breathing out a deep sigh. His free hand came up to clasp my face, his thumb tracing across my cheekbone in a way that just felt soaffectionatethat I found myself leaning into him even though I was still feeling a little raw and tender. But he’d followed me out here, had somehow found me even though I still hadn’t worked out how, and now we were talking about what this was between us even if maybe I hadn’t been quite ready for this conversation just yet.
“We don’t have to label anything,” Nick continued, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. “I know this is all totally new for you and we’ve just jumped off this cliff together. But I want this …us… to be a thing. Do you want us to be a thing?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. I want us to be a thing.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Nick returned, that smile, the real one that lit up his eyes, the one I had kissed so many times, spreading across his face. “This is real for me, Ajay. Real.”
“It’s real for me too, Nick,” I admitted quietly. I smiled back at him then, blown away by the fondness I saw in his eyes as he looked down at me. Revelling in this beautiful man who had somehow chosen me. His hand slid from my cheek to my throat and he closed the last of the gaps between us and pressed a kiss to my mouth.
I was not ashamed to say I was feeling a little desperate for that kiss, maybe a little needy and lost and raw and I fell straight into it, into his arms as he angled my jaw to just the slant he wanted. His tongue plunged into my mouth and I found myself moaning as his hand gripped my throat and his body pressed up to mine like he owned me.
I could feel he was hard against my stomach and I knew I certainly was but I just needed a moment to get lost in this kiss with him because it was actually kind of perfect. It was actually kind of everything really, more important than all the other stuff that I knew would happen later as Nick gripped my jaw and devoured me.
We broke for air, both of us panting and a little desperate as Nick grazed kisses down my jaw and his hips rocked into me a little harder. The heavy weight of the rock at my back was immovably solid as I pushed back at Nick, wanting more. Wanting everything.
“Are your friends still at the house?” I panted as his lips trailed heavy kisses down my collarbone.
“No, I kicked them out before I came to find you,” he said.
