Page 66 of Jealous Guy

I have an answer.

“Orion.” My voice clanks off the concrete around us. It’s louder than usual, and the sound of it startles me. It breaks my concentration and gives the storm of nerves gathering in my belly the opportunity to cause chaos.

Shit! Is it can I or may I?

Quick! Can I or may I?

Oh fuck, I don’t know.

I’m panicking, my breathing faint and irregular. I stay where I am and do the same thing I always do when I’m in trouble.

I turn to Orion.

“I-I want to kiss you,” I blurt out.

His reaction is instant. A sharp intake of breath. A widening of dark eyes that’s so quick it looks like he’s been pushed backward.

Hot and cold dread washes over me.

Things fall into place slowly, and in the worst possible way. Orion said he didn’t kiss when he hooked up. He said that to me weeks ago when I asked him.

He doesn’t want to kiss me.

I’m just a hookup to him.

Oh Jesus. I need to walk this back.

“I mean, only if you want to. I-I understand if you don’t want to. I get it completely. It’s no big deal.” I’m spinning out, speaking so fast that my words are running into each other. “Actually. You know what, forget I said anything.”

Orion lowers his chin fractionally, looking up at me through a forest of lashes. The outline of him is hard. Severe and unusual. It unnerves the living fuck out of me.

Neither of us moves for several long seconds.

“You want to kiss me?” His voice is nothing like it normally is. It’s deeper, for one thing, and gravelly. So sexy it sounds like something that has traveled for miles to get to me.

“I…” I swallow so painfully that I hear a loud click. I know I should take it back. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable. I can’t, though, because even though he looks nothing like my friend right now, I can’t lie to him. “I, yeah, I want to.”

He looks so unfamiliar that I’m unnerved. His eyes have gone black, liquid shadows rippling through them menacingly, and the sinews in his neck are tensed hard.

He’s holding both of our kit bags from the cabin. His hangs on one shoulder, mine dangles from a hand.

He drops his bag onto the ground first, shrugging offhandedly to shake it off, just hard enough to make the strap fall from his shoulder. He unclenches his hand and drops mine next. It lands at his side near his feet.

He doesn’t look down at it. His eyes are fixed on me.

My heart beats in my throat. A loud drum that echoes through every inch of my body, and I watch Orion with an intensity I’ve never watched anyone with. An intensity I didn’t know existed before now.

When he starts moving, he does so like someone with the ability to move through time. To slice through it and carve it up into something different. To walk through dreams, lucid and languid, changing them without leaving a trace.

His right arm sways. His torso curves. His hips, knees, and ankles work in perfect concert with each other to propel him toward me. By the time he reaches me, there’s no air in my lungs. His hand is outstretched, fingers tensed and splayed open. The look in his eyes is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s so dark, so heated, so haunted and burned, it would scare me if I saw it on anyone else.

His hand floats through the air, getting so close to my face that it dips out of my field of vision. A split second later, I feel it.

It’s on me.

He’s taken my jaw in his hand and he’s holding it firmly. Very firmly.

I see a flash of enamel and a slow curl of lips.