He sounded angry. “That’s fucking stupid, Lex.” He twisted on the couch, grabbed my hands, and squeezed. “We aren’t, like, a thing, yet, and I get that. Not putting labels on anything. Don’t have to talk about us, none’a that shit. But, just bein’ clear as I can here—we are together, at least in some capacity. I got plenty, okay? I just fuckin’ told you how much. I’m as confident as I can be that you ain’t a gold digger, especially if you’re talking about paying me rent for crashing at a condo I own—when I own the fuckin’ building, babe. I could sign the deed and give you a whole fuckin’ unit if I wanted. This very one.” He arched an eyebrow. “Say the word, and this penthouse is yours. My agent might shit his pants if I gave it away, but hell, it’s mine and I can do what I want.”
I sighed. “I appreciate the gesture and the idea, Myles, but I don’t want your condo. I don’t take handouts, freebies, spending cash, none of it.”
“You’re not a sugar baby, Lex. You’re my girlfriend.”
I winced. “I thought we weren’t doing labels.”
He growled. “I mean, shit. You been in bed with me night after night for two months. If we’re not seeing anyone but each other, that’s a thing, ain’t it? I ain’t askin’ you to go tell all the world you’re my girl, and we don’t have to put that boyfriend-slash-girlfriend label on it if you don’t want. I get you may not want that right now. It’s a scary step for people like us. But at least acknowledge that we’re a thing.”
My gut flipped. Heart squeezed. “Myles, I…”
He shook his head. “So we’re just sex, then.”
“NO!” The sadness, the disappointment, the anger in his voice hurt, and I wanted to assuage it. “No, that’s not—” I paused, and tried to find some kind of words. “Myles, I like you. As a person, I like you. I like spending time with you. Being around you. The sex with you is…out of this world. You’ve pulled more of…me…out of me than anyone else, like ever, including my sisters and mom. But I’m just not ready to go there, yet. I may never be. I’m sorry if that hurts you, I just…commitment is something I don’t know if I’m capable of.”
“I ain’t askin’ for a commitment, Lexie.” He eyed me. “You lookin’ for an out in case you find someone else you’d rather fuck?”
“No, Myles,” I said, feeling another bolt of irrational anger. “I’m not looking for an out to go fuck someone else.”
“Then what’s the holdup?”
The holdup is I’m a fucked-up mess and the idea of being anyone’s girlfriend gives me hives. The holdup is I have serious emotional damage I know I’ve never dealt with and have not a single clue how to begin even examining any of it, and it all centers around men and sex. But I wasn’t about to say any of that to Myles. Because he’d ask questions and I’m even less prepared to talk about my damage than I am to think about it or deal with it. Best to just ignore it.
“I’m with you, Myles. I’m not seeing anyone else. I like being with you, I want to continue being with you. Please, just don’t push it.”
His eyes bored into me, searching, seeking, drilling. “Okay, I guess I can do that.” He scrubbed his hair again, making it stand up on end. “Shit, babe. Just do me a favor and at least let me know when you’re ready to move on, okay?”
“It’s not like that, Myles,” I whispered. “You’re more than just a fuck-buddy to me.”
“But not enough to qualify as anything else.”
“It’s about me, not you.”
“But you won’t talk about what about you that is.”
I frowned, trying to follow what he meant. “Huh?”
He laughed. “That didn’t make any sense, did it? I just meant that you’re saying your unwillingness to put a label or box on what we are—even to call it a relationship, loosely—is about your holdup or hang-up or whatever. It’s not me, but you’re not about to talk to me about it right now.”
“Oh.” I tugged on a lock of my hair. “Yeah, I’d say that’s probably true.”
“You know, I like to think I know you really well. But then shit like this comes up and I realize I don’t know shit about you. You keep stuff super close to the chest.”
I hated this line of conversation. It made me jumpy and uncomfortable and squirmy and irritable. I hated being irritable. I paced away from him, to the window overlooking downtown Dallas. Tried to figure out a way out of it without just outright shutting him down. I felt him move behind me—heard the creak of the leather couch as his weight left it. Felt the air swirling with his presence behind me. He said nothing, didn’t touch me—just stood behind me. I turned. Put my back to the floor-to-ceiling window. Gazed up at him.
Myles North was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Six-three, lean and hard, with thick messy hair a reddish-brown mahogany. Eyes blue as the sky, blue as arctic ice, but warm and fiery and fiercely intelligent and untamed and radiating a boyish playfulness and a ravenous sexuality. Everything about Myles turned me on, but his eyes almost more than anything. Almost. I mean, his hands, his mouth, and his cock turned me on more than anything, but his eyes were right there with them, firing me up and making me horny. Although, in some ways, the horniness his eyes gave me was more…cerebral, or in my heart, than in my body. Which was weird, and scary. Like everything about him.
His body was wicked. Delicious. Hard, shredded. Jupiter was the band’s personal trainer, and one of the trucks which followed the tour around was a semi dedicated entirely to fitness
