Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 220
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
He shakes his head. A ragged breath parts his lips. “No.”
“No? I could draw blood, dude.”
“No, I don’t like the idea of you putting your mouth on any guy.” His brown-blue eyes redden considerably. “Do you understand? I am that fucked up right now. That the idea of you biting another man completely wrecks me. I don’t get like this, Tom.” He fists his journal, but his eyes don’t break from mine.
My throat swells under his gaze. We’re both being blasted by a megaton load of jealousy, but where does this leave us if I’m still not ready to take a gamble?
I throw the banana peel toward my trash bin. Then I collapse backward on the bed and reach for a pillow. Smothering my face beneath it and groaning in absolute, total frustration. Why am I like this? Why can’t I just give in fully to him and not feel like I’m destroying everything I’ve worked for? Why is this so fucking hard for me?
Phoenix pries the pillow off. He chucks it aside. He’s propped on his forearm, staring down at me. “Can we agree on something?” he asks, breaking my thought spiral.
“I agree.”
His lips twitch, and he pushes his dark hair out of his face. “You have no fucking idea what I’m going to say.”
“Dude, it has to be better than the self-flagellation in my brain.”
“Don’t do that,” he says harshly.
“Trying. Trying.” I turn my head on the bed, looking up at him. “What is it?”
“Let’s get through this album without fucking other people. That’s what we’ve been doing so far anyway.”
I sit up on my elbows, more winded. Our deadline to finish the album is at the end of this month, and it’s still the first week of March.
“You’re hesitating?” Phoenix frowns.
“Yeah, not because of me.” I put a hand to my chest. “I can do no sex for another month. Hell, I could probably go without it for a while. It doesn’t bother me. You were strung out last night, dude.”
“I think we can establish that I wasn’t strung out over sex as much as I was strung out over you.”
I start to smile.
“That feel good?” he asks. “Or do you hear it all the time, nepo baby?
“Not all the time. Definitely not with a nepo baby attached.” I realize now that things have already changed between us. We can’t rewind to the moment we wrote “Nuclear Winter” or when we recorded “Dirty Rise,” and what if the rest of the album turns out weak as a result? But what if it becomes worse if we sit in stagnation at a red light? What if our sound becomes even better if I let myself be with him?
What if, what if, what if.
The what ifs in life are variables and paths I can control. I can choose which one to take, but I can’t decide which path is the best for us and our music. I have to believe it’s one in the same—that what’s good for us is what’s good for the band.
I gaze up at Phoenix as he pushes his hair back again. We’re lying on the bed together, but while he’s propped on his palm, he’s slightly hovered over me, looking down at me with questions spurred by silence. My pulse hammers in a new beat of anticipation I want to jot out and memorize for later.
“What if…” I can’t stagnate here. We can’t stagnate. “What if the red light turns yellow? Maybe I can do yellow and everything won’t fall apart.”
“I need more than a maybe.” His chest collapses in a deep breath, like I’m wrenching him up a stadium of stairs. “Tom.”
“I can possibly do yellow.”
His eyes grip hold of me, but the rest of his body has gone still. “We’re playing red light, green light.” He doesn’t say it like a question.
“Red, yellow, green. Yeah. If you finally researched my family, you’d know we like games. Chess, Scrabble, Battleship—I fuck hard with Snakes and Ladders.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Phoenix releases a rough breath. His graveled, throaty noise is a new sound I want right against my ear.
“What if I don’t?” I breathe just as hard, just as staggered. I stretch even higher on my elbows, depleting the aching space between our mouths. “What are you going to do to me?”
His hand clasps my jaw, and his thumb makes a tormenting trek across my bottom lip. Holy shit. “More than you can fucking handle.” The dark threat in his eyes is rushing blood to my cock. “I can’t hit the gas until you change the light. Until you fucking say it. You get that?”
“I get it.” I bring my forehead to his, our gazes fisting. I can’t catch my breath. Tendons in my neck, legs, arms pull blisteringly taut. My body is vibrating against a frequency of resistance and desire, and all I want is to let go and be set free against his hands, his mouth, his affection.