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“Yeah,” I say, mimicking his heavy tone. “I threw you so many curveballs, and you managed to dodge every single one of those little bastards, choosing to believe I was some innocent, naive little girl when all I wanted was to know what it was like to be yours.”
“You were always mine, Rae.”
“You know what I mean,” I tell him. “I wanted to be with you. I wanted you to be my first.”
A heaviness comes over us, and he pulls me back into his arms. “I know,” he says. “I wanted that too. I wanted to be every first you ever had.”
I shrug my shoulder. “I mean, I suppose there’s a lot of things I’m experiencing with you for the first time,” I tell him. “I’ve never come during sex until you. Never been able to take control. Never actually enjoyed it.”
“What do you mean?” he questions. “You haven’t enjoyed sex until now?”
I shake my head. “After everything my father put me through, I wasn’t exactly willing to put myself out there. I’ve pretty much avoided men. You’re the only one I’ve allowed to touch me.”
Ezra rolls on top of me, bracing himself on his elbows to keep from crushing me, and I can’t help but twist my legs around his. “I am?” he asks, a strange joyfulness flashing in his eyes.
“Yeah,” I say with a dorky smile. “It’s only ever been you.”
He dips his head and kisses me before abruptly pulling back. “Wait. In the pool—”
“I suppose, I’m kinda counting that as my first time. My first real time. It’s the only one that counts.”
“But wait,” he says, rolling right off me and sitting up, horror darkening his stare. “Fuck. If I’d known, I would have done it differently. It was so rushed and desperate. I could have made it special or—”
“Stop,” I laugh, reaching for him and pulling him back to me. “It was special. It was everything we both needed in that moment, and let’s be honest, that night was a little . . . wild. Apart from crazy, desperate sex, we weren’t going to be able to manage much else. We had to get through that to be able to get here. I wasn’t in the right headspace for this.”
He fixes me with a hard stare before settling back over me, his lips casually dropping to mine. “I wanna make this right, Rae. How do I fix us?”
A stupid grin pulls at my lips. “Well, for starters,” I say as my fingers brush over his chest and up around the back of his neck. “You can stop writing songs like ‘Cold Hearted Bitch.’ ”
Guilt flashes in his eyes. “Yeah, that wasn’t exactly my brightest moment,” he admits. “I never should have written it.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say, reluctantly. “You wrote what you were feeling in a dark time of your life, and I get that. There were a lot of shitty things that went through my head too. Granted, I didn’t write them down and encourage the whole world to sing along.”
Ezra groans and grabs me, rolling us so that I hover over him, his hands resting at my waist. “You wanna know something I’ve never told anyone?” My brow arches with a deep suspicion and as a wide grin stretches across his face, I feel myself growing anxious to find out whatever’s on his mind. “Demon’s Curse. You remember the day we came up with the band name?”
I give him a hard stare. “You mean the day my mother died?”
He cringes. “Fuck,” he says, and it’s not as though he’d forgotten about that time in my life, but sometimes, moments from so many years ago blend together, and it can be hard to remember the exact timing of when things went down. “Sorry. That was all on the same day, huh?”
I nod. “Same day Dad started drinking.”
“Shit. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“I know,” I say, dropping my hands to his chest and trailing my fingers over the lines of his tattoos before settling them over my favorite one—the one just for me. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to know whatever you were going to say.”
Ease settles into his features, and I watch as his eyes soften. “The name Demon’s Curse. It’s about you.”
My face scrunches, and I stare at him as though he’s just lost his mind. “Huh?”
Ezra laughs and reaches up, his fingers grazing over my lips as though still unable to believe I’m right here in front of him. “Back then, in those early days before anything had really started between us, I was trying to keep you at arm’s length, and it was torture. Not getting to make you mine, I always likened it to some kind of curse.”
My jaw drops, and I gape at him. “What? You named the band after how you felt about not being with me? There’s no way Axel would have been okay with that.”
He smirks back at me, his eyes dancing with silent laughter. “Axel never knew.”
“Oh my god,” I laugh, crashing down next to him and falling straight back into his warm arms. He holds me tight, pulling the blankets up to keep us both warm as I stare at the ceiling that somehow feels a million miles away. “You know, this house is way too big for just one person. You realize this, right? Nobody needs a house this big.”
He laughs. “Oh, I’m more than aware,” he tells me. “But I bought it for you.”
