The Marked Men 3-Book Collection: Rule, Jet, Rome. Jay Crownover
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a silver flare lit up his pale gaze. “I’m not going to be one of many. Like I said, I had my reasons for letting things happen the way they did, but if you think I’m signing up to be a bed filler because no one else is fitting the bill right now, you are sadly mistaken. I know you, Rule; I’ve known you since you first figured out girls were more complicated than boys, and you’ve never wanted to put the work in.”
The feather-light sweep of that thumb across my cheek almost had me melting into a puddle at his booted feet. “So this time I will. We’ll hang out, do shit together. I mean, we’ve known each other forever but I honestly don’t really know anything about you. Come on, Shaw, what do you really have to lose?”
Not my heart, because he already had it even though he didn’t know it. “So you want to, like, date?”
He laughed. “I’m not really the dating type, but I swear that while we’re trying to figure out what’s going on I’ll keep it in my pants. No screwing around, no other girls. I owe it to you and to me to see what’s here or if it was just a fluke.” He sounded so sincere; he looked serious and determined to make me believe what he was saying.
I cleared my throat and bit my bottom lip a little. Sure it was what I had dreamed of—Rule suddenly realizing I was a girl and wanting to be with me. Granted, in my fantasy, it always came with his profession of undying love and devotion. In reality, his curiosity and promise to at least feel things out was probably as good as I was ever going to get. I didn’t know how much I trusted him, but I had always, always wanted him, and it just wasn’t in me to turn that down when it was being offered up on a silver platter.
“If we do this—hang out, spend time together—your parents, my parents, Rome, none of them are going to like it very much.”
“Who cares?”
I guess I did, but I always was the only one to worry about that stuff.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
I breathed out a soft breath and as it whispered across his mouth he briefly closed his eyes, so I did the only thing that was left to do. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. It wasn’t with the same desperation as it had been the last time; there was no panic that he would change his mind, no years upon years of pent-up desire and frustration, no regret that it was only going to be a one-night thing—just the sweet press of my lips against his and the soft bite of his lip ring into my lower lip.
Kissing Rule would always be uniquely different from kissing anyone else. There was just something about it that put it in a class all its own. I felt his lips turn into a grin as audible sighs from several of the tables around us were heard. He pulled back and tapped a finger on the tip of my nose.
I sat back in my chair and cleared my throat. “Well, then.”
He barked out a laugh. “Yeah, at least that part of it seems to be a no-brainer.”
I shifted in my seat and motioned absently to the work still sprawled across the table between us. “As nice as this little visit was, I have to finish this presentation.”
A quick flash of disappointment blazed across his eyes but he hid it behind his easy grin. “When do you work this weekend?”
“I work all weekend, but I’m first out on Saturday night. I just have to be in by ten on Sunday morning.”
“Busy girl.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“So, this hanging out thing might be harder than I thought?”
He said it lightheartedly but I knew Rule; he was an instant-gratification kind of guy. If my tight schedule made it hard for us to spend time together, I had no illusions that he would wait around for me to be free—he would move on to something easier and more manageable.
“I’ll be out around ten on Saturday and usually I’m out by seven on Sunday. The Sunday shift is optional. I just picked it up because we stopped going to Brookside and I figured I might as well make a little extra money.”
“My buddy Jet is playing at Cerberus this weekend, why don’t you grab your roommate and come hang out Saturday night?”
“What kind of music is it?” Cerberus had a pretty rowdy reputation in town. It was located in the warehouse district and had been shut down more than once for one thing or another. It wasn’t the kind of place I would normally consider spending time. In fact, it was the kind of place I normally avoided at all costs on the off chance I would run into someone I knew and they would rat me out to my parents, but if I was going to commit and try to spend time with this boy I had wanted forever, then my horizons were going to have to expand.
“Metal.”
I snorted a little. “Ayden is from Kentucky. She likes Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood. I don’t know that I could wrangle her into that.”
“They’re actually really good; they went on tour with a pretty famous band last year. Besides, Ayden seems like a pretty cool chick. I bet she would go just to be your wingman. If she doesn’t come, just come alone. I won’t leave you hanging.”
“What about Rome?”
“He has to go to Fort Carson for the weekend. He has to set up meetings with his VA counselor. He’s having a rough time since he isn’t healing as fast as he thought he would be.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I’m not going to hide this from anyone, Shaw. If you want to play those kinds of games maybe you need to rethink whether this is something you really want to do or not.”
I grabbed his forearm and let the tips of my fingers dig into the body of the snake that was marked there. “No, I’m not going to hide. Just don’t make me look like an idiot, Rule. This matters.”
“It matters to me, too, Casper.” He climbed to his feet so that he was towering over me. He bent down and pressed a soft kiss to the crown of my head. “By the way, you look good in jeans. Come to the show Saturday.”
“All right.” I watched him walk out of the coffee shop and it wasn’t lost on me that so did every other girl in the place. I stifled a sigh and ruefully shook my head. I went to flip the top of my computer back open when the girl sitting directly across from me caught my eye. She was a little bit older than me, had long dreadlocks that were a startling ocean blue, and she was staring at me in open envy. I had to blink a little bit because I was so used to being the one who looked at the girls crawling out of his bed like that. She gave me a sheepish grin.
“You’re going to have your hands full with that one.”
Considering I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure what we were doing, I had no doubt she was right. It wasn’t like he asked me to be his girlfriend or even out on an honest-to-God date. He just said he wanted to hang out and spend time together. That wasn’t defined or clear and I didn’t even know what that meant to him. I appreciated that he told me he was willing to keep it in his pants, that he was aware that whatever was happening between us was important enough to try to figure out without the complication of other girls involved, but I was acutely aware that old habits tended to die hard, and Rule was not known to practice restraint. I huffed out a breath. “You’re telling me.”
The girl laughed a little. “He actually tattooed a giant lotus flower on my friend’s leg; she spent all three sessions trying to get him to ask her out on a date. I guess I can tell her he has a girlfriend so it’ll make her feel better.”
I picked my coffee back up and tried to get my head out of the Rule fog it had descended into and back into good-college-student mode.
“I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Really? It sure looked like it.”
“We’ve known each other a long time; it’s complicated.”
She winked at me and gave me a saucy grin. “Oh, honey, when