“Shit.” Jackson leapt toward him, grabbing the man’s wrists to pull them away from his face and look him in the eye. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m so sorry.” He rested his forehead to Fletcher’s, trying to emulate his shallow breaths. After a while, he did and green eyes met with his. “I’m sorry your boyfriend’s a fucking lying sleazeball but I don’t know how that’s got anything to do with me.”
Fletcher stared back at him, green eyes vacant and void until all the hurt and anguish seeped out when he said, “Diego.”
“What about him?”
“I’m pretty sure he planned it. What I don’t know is why.”
Jackson closed his eyes, limiting the fallout from the realisation it had gone this far. “Because he’s a scary piece of work,” he said through a clenched jaw.
“Looks like we both have arsehole ex-lovers then.”
Jackson opened his eyes, forcing himself to look Fletcher in the eye despite the fuzzy vision from being so close to the man. He breathed out a laugh, loosening the grip on Fletcher’s wrists. “True,” he finally croaked out.
Fletcher nodded. But he didn’t pull his arms away, seemingly content to let Jackson hold him and allow for his thumb to stroke the soft, delicate skin on the underside of his wrists.
“You should have told me about all this before.” Although his voice was light, he lowered his gaze to find Jackson’s and gave him a stern eyeful. “I should have known what I was walking into before I agreed to it.”
“An innocent woman was murdered in her bed, next door to this room and what, you thought this would be a walk in the park?”
“I didn’t know I would be threatened. Or that they’d use my partner’s lack of any decency to get to me.”
“Why did you think I was trying to rush this? There are those who will try to silence me. If I’m not the killer, it’ll force people to look at who is. So who’s shitting themselves right now, Fletcher? Who’s trying to silence you?”
“Kris.”
Jackson staggered back, letting Fletcher’s arms go and losing the warmth offered with just his proximity.
“He says you’re unstable,” Fletcher continued.
Jackson burst out a nervous laugh. “Of course I’m unstable! I’ve had everything taken from me. Everything. This is all I have left. A story to tell. And I want you to tell it.” Jackson grabbed behind Fletcher’s neck, tugging him forward to rest their heads together once more. “I need you.”
It took a moment of those words hanging in the air, bouncing off the walls and echoing in his ears before that invisible lure he’d been trying to ignore tightened. He couldn’t step away from Fletcher. He couldn’t move. He didn’t want the man’s warmth to evade him and turn his skin cold. Fletcher’s eyes searched him, penetrated him, delving deep into him and reaching depths that hadn’t ever been claimed.
There was a pull. A tug. Something tying itself around Jackson and winding toward Fletcher. Something enveloping them both. Persuasive and binding, Jackson wanted to haul Fletcher in and taste him. That soured aftertaste from the man’s once hateful words had now made way for a sweetness that fizzed on his tongue.
So he did. He crashed his mouth onto Fletcher’s, slamming his body against him to pin him to the wall. Fletcher’s startled reaction was to curl his arms around him, whether to keep from falling or from his own suppressed longing, Jackson wasn’t sure. But nor did Fletcher push him away. The returning kiss was explosive. A passion-fuelled heat that sizzled in Jackson’s stomach and seared into his groin. The bath towel didn’t allow him to hide his reaction to a kiss that chased him with each parting of their lips.
Fletcher’s tongue entwined around his own, like the hidden threads that had them locked into place. Hunger rippled through him when Fletcher didn’t let up, didn’t stop, didn’t resist.
It was only when Fletcher roamed his hands down to grip his backside and wrench him closer, no doubt feeling the hardness behind the soft cotton, that Jackson forced himself to pull away, to breathe, to pant out the words he hated to say. “We should stop.”
All Fletcher did was nod, peering down, cheeks flushing. When he made no attempt to move, Jackson lifted his chin to look him in the eye. “I don’t want to,” he said.
“We should,” Fletcher croaked out, his voice hoarse.
“Yeah. It’s not exactly convenient.” A faint smile tugged at Jackson’s lips, as he attempted to lighten the situation the only way he knew how. Through deflection and years of experience. “Considering we’re meant to be hiding right now.”
“And this would only be a rebound.” Fletcher wriggled free, ruffling his hair and sliding a hand down his face to scratch his stubble.
Jackson watched him, heart jolting, slamming against his chest and hitting the wall that Fletcher had just built back up with careless words. “Right,” he said. Because what else could he say?
Even though that kiss had been an explosion of something inside him. Igniting him. Sparking something in him that he never wanted to bury… It had clearly been something else for Fletcher.
And that hurt more than it should have.
“Get dressed.” Fletcher ripped open the bedroom door. “Pack a bag. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Like a Ninja
Fletcher was in some serious trouble. That much he knew.
He had to adjust himself and could hardly hear his own breathing through the pounding of his heart as he made his way back down the stairs. That kiss… that earth-shattering, pulse-electrifying, life-changing kiss. He’d never in all his years had such a reaction to something that shouldn’t be anything at all. That shouldn’t have even happened. That was wrong on so many levels.
Jackson had squirmed his way into Fletcher’s very being with every touch, every breath, every abrasive moan and he wasn’t sure if any of that was a good thing.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he peered out of the windows. One of the robot men stood out front, where Diego had said he would wait whilst he went to check the B&B. The press, too, all still hovered around the communal entranceway toward Kris’s house.
How the fuck were they meant to escape from here? They were surrounded. And closed in.
He stepped away, wracking his brain for a way out. Instead, his mind drifted. It was preoccupied. Filled only with thoughts of Jackson Young.
“What’s the plan?” The man himself trundled down the stairs, his whispered words jolting Fletcher from his catatonic state. He was dressed. Jeans, jumper, hair scraped back, and a bag slung over his shoulder. He looked pale. Worried. Apprehensive.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Had the kiss even affected him?
Jackson was notorious for a party lifestyle. A kiss to him was just another day at the office. It had been nothing more than a way to snap Fletcher from his incessant babbling.
That was all it was.
His heart wouldn’t survive another Cameron.
“There’s a man outside your door and press gathered in the street,” Fletcher said, his voice shaking the more he spoke.
Jackson was standing too close, peering over his shoulder and out of the window. Fletcher couldn’t control his thumping pulse. Despite the threat, the danger, he wanted nothing more than to push Jackson against those stairs and kiss him, grind against him, feel the sharp edges of Jackson underneath him and set him free.