Jonah missed his warm touch and sighed. “Yeah. Okay. I’m rattled. Not about the boys, Carl and Nico can handle themselves. It’s what happened to Winona that bothers me. Why do people think it’s okay to violate women like that?”
“I cannot explain why the world works the way it does,” Sacha said. “It is not okay, though. It will never be okay.”
“Thank you for being nice to her.”
“It was not hard. She is nice girl.”
“I know, I just—”
“What?”
Jonah wished there was a wall behind him he could bang his head against. “I couldn’t look at her.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Yes, Jonah. I do.”
How could he? He’d asked Jonah about the “man with the unspeakable hair”, but Jonah had never answered him. How was it possible that Sacha had watched events unfold tonight and seen them mirrored in an insignificant, years’ old incident Jonah had spent most of his adult life trying to forget?
It wasn’t possible. And to think anything else was ridiculous. Jonah was ridiculous, shivering against a man he barely—
“Jonah.”
“What?”
Sacha grasped Jonah’s chin with insistent fingers, forcing Jonah to look at him with the lightest touch. His gaze seem to have darkened as they’d huddled on the stairs, and the gold in his eyes shimmered with the gaudy Christmas lights someone had wrapped around the worst Christmas tree in the world. Warmth and conflict battled for dominance, and it was an even fight. No winners. No losers. Just Sacha leaning ever closer as Jonah’s pulse hammered his eardrums.
He’s going to kiss me.
Sacha’s lips on his surprised him all the same. A staggering shock that lit a new fire in the inferno of desire Jonah already carried for this man. Sacha’s lips were soft and smooth, contrasting with the scruff on his unshaven jaw, and his kiss was dizzying. Even sitting down, Jonah swayed with the gentle impact, blood rushing, veins hot with pleasure. Behind the scenes, his brain still ran a thousand miles an hour, but the noise was quieted, snuffed out by Sacha’s lips.
Jonah reeled, snatching a breath. Then his faculties returned to him and he kissed Sacha back, shifting on the cold stone until they were facing each other.
His hand found its way to the nape of Sacha’s neck. The change in angle deepened the kiss. Jonah opened his mouth, Sacha’s tongue slipped between his lips, and his giddiness reached new heights.
A soft moan pierced the quiet air. Him or Sacha? Christ, he had no idea. All he knew was the longer they kissed on the stairs of a building where neither of them lived, the further they were from a place where kisses could become something else.
Something magical.
He pulled back. Sacha stared, unblinking, as if frozen in time.
Jonah kissed him again, soft and sweet. “It’s cold,” he whispered. “Will you come home with me?”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Be specific. I like it.”
“Okay then. Because you’ve been an angel tonight and I don’t want to let you go.”
“I am not an angel, Jonah Gray.”
Jonah kissed Sacha’s lips again, and then his jaw, and his cheek. Sacha smiled a little and it was the kind of smile that changed his whole face. It softened his masculine features and hard jaw, and it was all Jonah could do not to kiss him again.
They scrambled to their feet—at least, Jonah did. Sacha moved with grace and poise Jonah had never had—and ducked out and into the waiting car. It took them to Jonah’s penthouse apartment, then slipped back into the city traffic as unobtrusively as it had arrived.
The lift ride was quiet. On the landing, Sacha was, as ever, transfixed by the view. Jonah didn’t like to disturb him, not even for another kiss. He opened his door and waited. Eventually Sacha came. “I like it up here,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I see the lights in your eyes every time you look down on them. The view…it pleases you.”
“You please me too. Do you think I could use your shower before I show you how? It has been a long day.”
Jonah swallowed thickly and pushed his door further open. “Of course.”
Sacha preceded him inside. Jonah followed, heart beating a slow tattoo as they took their coats and shoes off, then moved through the apartment to his bedroom.
After a brief moment where he appeared enchanted by Jonah’s Christmas tree, Sacha disappeared into the bathroom. Jonah sat on the edge of the bed and stripped to his underwear, glad he hadn’t reclaimed the bloody T-shirt he’d pressed to Carl’s head. Another shiver passed through him, but not from cold, and only the sound of the shower turning on kept him present.
Idiot. It’s been years, and he’s not even here. Sacha is. Focus on him.
Jonah shifted and lay down on the bed, gaze fixed on the ceiling as he listened to Sacha move around the bathroom. It was as familiar as it was brand new. Comforting, almost.
Closing his eyes, Jonah chased every sound, from the groan of pipes, to Sacha’s low humming. His body buzzed with anticipation, craving the wildness Sacha brought out in them both whenever he made good on his filthy promises.
It was a nice place to be, and Jonah fought to stay there.
“I’m not an angel, Jonah Gray,” Sacha had said.
You are tonight.
10
It was an accident to wake up in Jonah’s bed, one that had started when Sacha had fallen asleep. He hadn’t meant to. In fact, he hadn’t meant to wind up in Jonah’s bed at all, at least not to sleep. But then he’d come back from the bathroom to find Jonah already passed out, and slipping under the covers beside him had happened before Sacha comprehended what he was doing.
Now it was morning—early, just before dawn. Jonah was still asleep, and Sacha was still in his bed. And they weren’t even naked. How is this my life today?
Sacha knew how. Because he’d been so perturbed by the disquiet in Jonah’s usually sunny gaze he hadn’t been able to leave him. Still couldn’t, despite the fact that he’d had no trouble leaving him in bed before. And wasn’t that an odd case of affairs?
About as odd as spending most of his day placating agitated FG employees he neither knew nor cared about because he couldn’t bear the stress lines—both imagined and real—on Jonah’s lovely face.
You are overtired. It makes you emotional.
Sacha couldn’t argue with that, but with no way of lightening his workload in sight, the butterflies in his chest any time Jonah was near weren’t going anywhere.
And neither, apparently, was Sacha.
He settled back in Jonah’s comfortable bed. There was plenty of space for both of them, but somehow they’d wound up sleeping with a Bible’s width between them, less in some places, like their feet that were pressed together.
The contact made Sacha warm inside. Before Jonah, he’d had frequent sexual partners, but never sleepovers. It had been years, and he couldn’t clearly recall a time when he’d simply slept with a man. Shared his bed and body heat. Counted his breaths and watched him dream.
In fact, he’d never done that with anyone.