The Keys to Jericho (35 page)

He sourly frowns. “No.”

“Ever?”

“It’s just sex.”

“Oh.” I bite my lip and wince as he goes to sit up, but he didn’t move fast enough.

Jared hurriedly leans close to me again. “Kit Kat. I… You’re… That’s not… Shit.”

As the chill sets in, I wriggle out from under him and get out of bed. Realizing I’m naked and he’s staring, I wrap my arms around me as I search the area for my shirt. “No, it’s fine. I’m just going to go back to my room.”

Jared sits up and my gaze involuntarily glides down his glorious body. The sheen between his legs from our lovemaking, or
fucking
if he had to describe it, catches the light from the desk lamp. He rests his hand on his propped knee and says, “Wait. You said…this…would change things.” His light brown eyebrows tighten and he shakes his head. “Don’t let it be a bad change.”

I blink out of my trance to continue looking for my shirt. He picks it up from next to him and hands it to me. Taking it, while still trying to hide myself with one hand, Jared’s greenish eyes travel my body. “Why are you covering yourself? We just...” His gaze returns to my face and he sighs, most likely knowing that no word or phrase he’s going to use will be a good choice at this moment.

I turn away to briskly slip my shirt over my head. As I pull my hair out of the neck, I shrug to the wall. “I’m not. Just cold.”

I glance sideways to the bed when I hear it squeak in succession. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Jared reaches for my wrist and swiftly pulls me to him. His look is inquisitive. “We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

My eyes well up, and turning away again, I nod at the door. “I really need to go to bed.”

Jared gently shakes my arm until I look at him. “You can sleep with me tonight.” His lips curve into a smile. “You know. Actual sleep.”

I shake my head and peer above his caramel-tinged hair. “I can’t.”

His hands go to my lower back and push me closer to him. It’s so tempting to lift up my long shirt to straddle him until he’s hard and inside me again.

Jared sexily whispers, “Come on. I have a big bed that’s screaming your name.” Leaning his head back, he crooks up an eyebrow at me. “But not louder than me.” He grins when I unwillingly crack a smile.

I sigh and roll my eyes at his ridiculous smile, which makes me smile more. “Okay, but I’ll go to my room early so nobody sees me.”

His smile ebbs. “I told you, I don’t care.”

“I do.” I feel weird about taking Dash’s advice, and I don’t want Dash teasing Jared about us sleeping together, not needing Dash critiquing my skills with Jared, either. I want this to be just between Jared and me. Talking about sleeping with Jared to get him to fall in love with me is one thing, but to actually do it, is utterly another.

His forehead crumples and he narrows his eyes. “What do you think they’re going to say?”

I tip my head, and my gaze lands on his dick, quietly waiting for the next round. “They might think I’m easy.”

He disbelievingly laughs. “Easy? Christ. It’s taken me since my junior year to sleep with you.
Not
easy.”

Looking up, I smile at his exasperation. “You wanted to sleep with me then?”

He nods without hesitation. “I wanted to drive
you
, not the fucking car.”

I giggle, not intending to, but I can’t help it. “No, you didn’t.”

Skeptical, Jared asks, “You couldn’t tell? I was always some degree of hard around you.”

Smiling again, I shake my head. “I never noticed.”

He smirks. “I must’ve been awfully good at hiding it and distracting you when I couldn’t.”

“Wow. You must have.”

“Yeah. It was a process.” Jared’s fingers press into my back and he whispers, “No more hiding from you or distracting you now.”

My real smile dwindles in exchange for one that’s forced. I’ve opened Pandora’s Box.

Suddenly drained, I move to get in bed, but Jared clamps his legs onto me, holding me there. His eyes scour mine. “Just so you know—what we did? That was phenomenal.”

I take a deep breath and hold it, asking, “Is that what you say to all the girls you have sex with?”

His face crinkles and he shakes his head. “No. I’ve never said that before.”

“But you thought it?”

Still confused, he warily says, “No, Kit Kat. That was a first.” I love how he’s resumed calling me
Kit Kat
again so easily. I loved hearing him call me that in school.

Jared’s hands slide down to my hips, his thumbs smoothing over my nightshirt. He looks up at me, but his eyes subtly shift when he asks, “What did
you
think?”

I want to say I loved it and him, but I instead say, “It was unbelievable.” I lean my forehead against his and whisper over his face, “The best of my life, Jared.”

Almost as if on impulse, Jared slants his head to capture my lips. His mouth moves greedily over mine, and I have to keep up, while feeling eager twitching against my thigh, but as our kiss heightens, Dash’s voice is heard in the hallway, stealing our attention. Rio’s quieter response follows, and Jared sighs against my cheek.

He quietly says, “Don’t worry about them. It’s our business what we do.”

Watching the door like it’s going to blow open, I reply, “Not if we’re all in the same house for the weekend.” Jared kisses my cheek and I turn to him, his lips close to mine. “They’re bound to find out we slept together, and will have something to say about it.”

Jared’s lips brush mine as he whispers, “I’ll deal with them.”

He might, but he doesn’t even know what his friends already know and think.

After I rocked Jared into an orgasm outside, Rio stopped me in the hall as I went to get a shower.

“Hey. Everything good with you and Jare?”

I shrugged, but nodded. “I guess. It surprised me how upset he was. This was a bad idea.”

Rio crossed his arms as he leaned against the wall. “Oh, you know how little boys tease little girls when they like them. Some are even downright mean because they don’t know any better. Yeah. That’s our Jared Beckett.”

“You really think so?”

“I told you on the ride over, he’ll be glad you’re here. And he seems to be now. Jare has been mad at me plenty. Through college and up until three years ago, I had lived with him. When I got a job outside Baltimore and moved closer to work, he wouldn’t talk to me for months, and wouldn’t tell me why. I figured he was feeling abandoned, so I visited him a lot and he got over it. He had left Dash to move to Baltimore, so it seems Jared can only do the leaving. Not the other way around.”

“You and Dash are such good friends to him.”

He sighed. “We try, but there’s only so much we can do.”

“What makes you stay friends with him?”

“It’s not all his fault the way he is. His mother had a lot to do with it. Jare is a great guy, but he’ll argue that he’s not. He’s funny, he’ll do anything for his friends, and he’s a good listener, even if he doesn’t want us listening to
his
problems.”

“I wish we had kept in touch all these years, but he had my phone number then. He never called or looked back.”

“He never looked back because he never moved forward. Like I tell Dash, Jared is unconsciously conscious. He lives without knowing it.”

“Why does he do that?”

“The path of least resistance. Yet, that road’s only leading him to a lonely hell. He’s stuck in the past and now that his past is in his present, he’s losing it.”

“I wish there were something I could do to help him.”

Rio nodded. “There is.”

“What? Try to get him to talk? If he won’t talk to you, he’s not going to talk to me. He likes to keep things to himself.”

“True, but he’s way more apparent than he thinks he is. I knew about you before I actually met you at the club.”

“How? He actually mentioned me to you?”

Rio shook his head. “No way.”

“Dash mentioned me then?”

“Nope. Jared makes fun of me for laughing in my sleep, but when he gets drunk, he talks in
his
. Our freshman year in college, he was drunk more times than he was sober. He’d fall asleep on the couch and talk about
Kat
. How pretty she was, how she didn’t want him, how he missed her, and some other things. It was years later, and he was still talking about this mysterious
Kat
. One day, I asked him who
Kat
was, and he denied knowing. After that, he stayed in his room to drink. When I met you, I knew you were the one he was talking about.”

“He did that? He missed me? Since we’ve been hanging out again, he’s never once said he’s missed me. Maybe he hasn’t.”

Rio smiled with a skeptical laugh. “Jare thinks he may be good at keeping secrets, but he can’t hide his actions or reactions. His facial expressions or body language. He’s
extremely
bad at hiding those. You’ve affected him and he’s freaking out about how much.”

I looked out the window. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll be leaving soon, so he can calm down about how much.”

“Do you really think he’ll be able to now?”

“Why wouldn’t he be able to? He did it all these years.”

“Because now, he’s realizing how much he loves you.”

Stunned that Rio said that, I gasped and looked back to him. “Jared doesn’t believe in love.”

“Show Jared Beckett what love is. Convert him to a believer. He’ll catch on.”

Easier said than done.

Resisting the need to kiss Jared, and inevitably leading us to more meaningless sex for him, but more turmoil for me, I untangle myself from his legs and crawl into bed.

Sighing, he stands, grabbing his underwear and shorts, and I settle into the far side of the bed, facing the wall. He says, “I’ll be back.”

The tears quietly fall onto my cheek and pillow. If I keep crying around him without a good excuse, he’ll become suspicious and possibly, distant. More than he already is.

I can’t stomach the thought of him going to Philadelphia and having sex with other women, while I’m in Annapolis yearning for him to only share himself with me. I want him to tell me I’m his only love. Yet, that’s something I’ll never hear from him.

Quickly drying my tears, I remind myself that I’m in this situation totally on my own free will. I’m not a hostage. I could have chosen to only have casual contact with him at my mom’s or just in the car, but I didn’t. I kissed him and it lit a fire within, enlightening me of how much I loved him, and still do. Then I took Dash’s advice, and now it’s killing me that I got exactly what I hoped would happen with Jared. It’s both a dream come true, and a harsh punishment rolled into one delusion.

Other women would be happy to be in my place. Random sex with a hot guy, who is also a friend. Not me. I thought I would be okay with just having sex with Jared until he leaves, but I’m not okay. However, I’m caught in his web and he’ll devour me, and since I’m in love with him, I won’t put up a fight.

The mattress slopes as Jared climbs into bed behind me, and my body already tingles for his touch, which is both good and bad. He nestles against me, putting his arm over my side, and kisses my neck. As much as I want to turn around in his arms, it’ll lead to more sex, not a sweet confession. Although I know I’m in this for a worthy reason—to win Jared’s love—I know I’m also surrounded by even more reasons not to do this. I feel like I’m prostituting myself without the cash exchange—a barter trade for his driving lessons. It’s my turn to pay up. The fact remains that he’ll never love me the way I need him to. It hangs between us like a sword ready to sever our relationship, or whatever the hell it is that we’re wrapped up in together. 

I lie still, not responding to his kiss, pretending I’m asleep. It’s the only way I can get space from him, without leaving him. If we’re friends with benefits, I need to redeem all the benefits I can get.

Fuck. Who am I kidding? This entire situation has
loss
written all over it.

Since I kept repeating in my head before falling asleep that I had to wake up early, I did. It seems to work most of the time, not that I slept much last night. As Jared soundly slept next to me, I stared at the darkened, beige wall the majority of the night.