Page 46 of Rock Giant

“They’re contained.”

Nash filled the doorway.His hair was crushed flat on one side, and creases lined the cheek on that side too.Seemed they’d both been attempting to sleep their woes away.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

Nash lay down behind her.After a second or two, he looped an arm around her waist and pressed his nose to the back of her neck.“You’re lathered,” he said.“It’s like an inferno in here.”

He’d left the inner door flap open, so at least it was cooling.

“Aren’t you speaking to me?I’m sorry.I shouldn’t have said those things, Jo.”He found her hand and curled his palm around it.“You took me by surprise.You know I didn’t mean it.You forgive me, right?”

“I shouldn’t have done what I did,” she croaked.“I should have seen the band with you, instead of taking mushrooms.”

“You were tripping on ’shrooms?”There was almost a chuckle in his voice.“Babe, what the hell?You don’t even like the normal kind.”

“I know,” she said, and he squeezed her tight, letting her know she was forgiven.Tight enough to squeeze out a few more tears that trickled along familiar salt tracks.“I don’t know…I just…” She didn’t have even a halfway decent explanation for her behaviour, so she could hardly blame him for his initial reaction.

“Did you fuck him?”he asked, voice still soft.“The guys said not, but…”

“No.God, Nash, no.”She tried to turn, but he held her fast against him.“Not last night.I would never—”

“Not last night?”he seized on her qualifier.She guessed she owed him the truth.

“I—I met him ages ago, and we…” She gave a one-shouldered shrug.“It was just one time… Long before we met.”

She didn’t want to get into the details.Nash knew bits about her past, but mostly she didn’t talk about it, because she’d worked hard to leave all that shit behind.That night she’d spent with Rock Giant had started her transformation into the woman she was now.Still a screw up, but far less of one than she had been back when her home life was toxic, and she routinely did dumb shit just to attempt to exert some control over things.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”she echoed.

“We both had lives before each other, and we agreed when we first got together, we’d never hold stuff we’d done in the past against one another.”

Right, yes, they had.Although, there’d been some caveats for illegalities.Did her first encounter with Rock Giant fall under that?She had kidnapped him, be it accidentally when she’d borrowed his tour bus.Technically, borrowing buses was illegal too, but Nash wasn’t acquainted with her joyriding past.It was a part of herself that she’d left behind.

In any case, the details of that initial hook-up with Rock Giant were irrelevant.If he wanted to imagine she’d met him in a club somewhere, or that she’d finagled a backstage pass out of a roadie then she was fine with that.The details weren’t important, nor the fact he’d been a pretty epic lay.Nor did she need to share anything about how that night was a cherished memory.A favourite memory.

“We’re still a team,” he said, bruising her shoulder with his chin.“You believe that, don’t you?You’re the most important person in my life.”

She sniffed, and gave a nod, not trusting her voice to hold, or herself to say the right things.Nash loved her, and he was going to forgive her.Everything was going to be all right.

“It’s so hot in here.”He let go of her for a moment and took off his hoodie.Only when he lay back down did she realise he’d shed his T-shirt too.Warm, bare skin pressed against her.He put his arm around her again, only this time his hand pushed up under her top.Having found her breast, he rolled her nipple between his thumb and index finger.

Evidently, they’d reached the point of make-up sex.So where was the rush of relief?Instead, her throat felt thick.

Nash’s breath warmed the shell of her ear.“What’s this interesting little thing I’ve found?”

He kept on plucking at her nipple, coaxing it to steeple.

“Nash,” she said uncertainly, straining her neck to see him.

He lifted from where he was nuzzling the side of her throat, and rolled her onto her back, before straddling her legs and snatching up the hem of her shirt.He pulled it up her body.The fabric clung to her in the sticky heat, but he soon wrestled it over her head, leaving her naked save for her knickers.

“Let’s get these off, too, eh?”

She didn’t much enjoy her own nakedness in daylight.Too many wobbly bits for that, even though she did her best not to cave into the brainwashing that the media portrayal of womankind bombarded everyone with.