by Jenika Snow
About ten minutes later, Freya was knocking on his front door, and he knew it didn’t take that long to come up from the garage. He could see her standing on the other side of his door and even lingering in the elevator for several minutes, contemplating why she was here, what she was doing, and how things were playing out. Hell, Elijah had thought those things since the moment he first saw her again after four years and especially over the past week.
She didn’t have to tell him she felt something or that the spark of awareness didn’t have anything to do with the fact they knew each other. He’d felt it when he saw her last week, saw it on her face, the way she looked so nervous, so unaware of the electricity that passed between them.
He couldn’t explain it or rationalize it. It just was. But just because Elijah found Freya gorgeous, so fucking gorgeous in fact, that didn’t mean he’d planned this dinner to try to get her in bed. He wouldn’t do that to her. She wouldn’t be just another notch in his bedpost.
She was special, really damn special, to him.
He’d gone so many years living a successful life even though it felt meaningless. Never again would he allow himself to get wrapped up in a pretty face and fall for a woman who didn’t see him as anything but a paycheck like Meghan. But that had been so many years ago, well before he’d made it big.
He just wished he hadn’t been so blind to the person Meghan had really been. He’d been stupid, blinded by superficial things, and he’d missed out on years of his life living with a woman who hadn’t wanted more than what was in his bank account.
No, Freya was different. He’d seen her back in the day as a young woman who didn’t know what she wanted in life or where she was going. She was trapped in a life she didn’t want because that was her only option. But then she’d moved out, moved on, and four years later, she’d made something of herself … found herself. Elijah could see that in her face and in the way she held herself.
He took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly.
Making his way toward the front door, he opened it. Freya was wearing this loose-fitting white blouse with tiny blue buttons going halfway down the front, and it was hard not to notice the way her breasts pressed again the material. She’d thickened out in these past four years, but it was in a good way. She wasn’t too thin, not like the women he’d surrounded himself with since his divorce.
She was perfect all the way around.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi. Come in.” He held the door open and moved to the side, letting her enter. She was looking around at his place as she passed the threshold, and all Elijah could do was stand there. She smelled incredible, and the scent that came from her, all sweet and lemony, had his cock stirring. But he had strong willpower and knew how to control himself, so he stopped his arousal as best as he could. He wouldn’t ruin the relationship with his sexual thoughts, not when they hadn’t seen each other in so long, and that would definitely be going in the wrong direction.
But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he’d thought about her in the dirtiest of ways, especially during this past week. And that made him feel like a fucking bastard.
She walked in, and he shut the door. For several minutes, he let her look around. He didn’t say anything, yet he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. She was small compared to him, probably at least a foot shorter than his height. The pants she wore did nothing to hide the fact she had a full ass, and he could see her very womanly hourglass figure. God, he felt like a pervert for thinking these things about her and seeing her as some kind of sexual object. But she wasn’t just a sexual object to him. She was Freya, a grown woman he’d felt protective of when he’d been married to that bitch Meghan.
God, just thinking about Meghan had his blood boiling even all these years later.
“Do you still talk to her?” Freya asked. She had her back still to him, but she was farther in the house now. She took the three steps it required to get to the living room and the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city. Currently, it was dark, and the lights from the buildings made a million twinkling glows in front of them.
“Her?” Elijah had an idea of who she meant, even if no name had been said. Freya was either a mind reader, or this was just as awkward for her as it was for him because of their past, and the one person who had connected them for those years.
Freya stopped at the couch, ran her fingers over the back of it, and looked over her shoulder. He could tell she was nervous, but she was hiding it well. What she couldn’t hide was the fact her fingers lightly shook.
“Meghan?” Her voice kind of cracked at the end, but she turned away quickly, obviously realizing she’d just voiced her uncomfortable feeling.
Elijah hated this, hated the tension, so he walked toward her, stopped behind her. As much as he was trying to look at the view and not her reflection, he couldn’t help it. She stared back at him, the glass creating this false confrontation between them. He was a few feet from her, not touching her, but he could feel her body heat and smell the sweet scent of her.
“She moved away with her new husband. I haven’t talked to her in years, but the last time we spoke, which happened to be by chance since we ran into each other, she made sure to tell me about how wonderful her life was.” He lowered his gaze to Freya’s cleavage, what he could see in the reflection that was.
“Is this as strange for you as it is for me?” she asked in a very soft voice.
He didn’t respond, just nodded. He took hold of her shoulders, turned her around, and as much as he wanted to kiss, her these feelings were coming out of left field.
“Listen, it’s just you and I here, just friends,” he said, wanting her to be comfortable. Her eyes widened for a second, and then she lowered her head. The dark fall of her hair covered her face so much that he couldn’t get a good look at her.
“Friends, you’re absolutely right.” She lifted her head and looked at him again. “I think it’s just weird seeing as we haven’t seen each other in so long.”
His heart was beating fast, and the urge to say fuck that invisible line he shouldn’t cross waged war inside him. But he took a step back, gestured to the table, and put on the fakest fucking smile he could muster.
“How about we eat before it gets cold?”
She seemed to relax slightly, nodded, and they made their way to the table.
For the next hour they ate and talked, and he asked her every conceivable question he could think of. He wanted to know everything about her, and the longer they spoke, the more he realized she’d grown so much. He wasn’t speaking in the physical sense, although she had done that as well. Elijah was speaking about the fact she was so damn smart, witty, and intuitive.
He could listen to her for hours, and he did that instead of eating, finding the taste of his food bland compared to the melody of her voice.
Fuck, he sounded like a schoolboy now, for sure, but he couldn’t help it. Compared to the women he’d associated with before and after Meghan, Freya was a breath of fresh air. She wasn’t conceited, didn’t think about herself before others, and had made it her career aspiration to help the less fortunate and those who were sick. Just watching her face light up as she told him about her time in college, about how she’d been afraid to come back home in case everything resurfaced, brought out this very protective side of him.
“Dinner was wonderful. Thank you for inviting me.” She smiled, and he was glad to see she’d seemed to relax in his company.
But still, he had this urge to hold her, to kiss her … to make her his. She was so different from what he was used to, and damn was that a good thing, a refreshing thing. Being with her made him feel as though he wasn’t alone, and his life didn’t have to be lived in solitary. All these feelings came out of the blue, but the fact remained they were real. Despite always being surrounded by people because of his profession, spending these past few hours with Freya made him feel … alive.
He didn’t know why he felt like this, bu
t he knew he wasn’t going to walk away from what he felt for her. He couldn’t.
7
This might be what a stalker or at the very least a creepy man did. As Elijah stared at Freya’s house, a house he’d lived in for several years, it seemed foreign, almost as if he’d dreamed the entire thing.
But he hadn’t moved. Instead, he was just sitting in his car because he didn’t have the nerve to go up and ring the doorbell. He worried about what she might say at his unexpected arrival.
It had only been a few days since Freya had come to his house and they’d had dinner. He said he’d call, that they’d meet up again, but nothing had been set in stone. He was really just trying to read her body language as far as how to proceed next.
But he hadn’t tried calling in these past few days because he didn’t want to come off as persistent. He wanted to see her again, wanted to have dinner, see a movie, hell, do something normal that people did on dates.
A date.
Yeah, he wanted to take her out on a fucking date, but bringing this up to her might be the worst thing he did. It could ruin their friendship or make her feel weird even just conversing with him. She’d especially feel that way if she had no feelings for him, and he’d totally read her wrong.
Elijah hadn’t been on a date in years. He couldn’t remember the last time he was even interested in a woman long enough to want to spend more than one night with her. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, his nerves running wild inside him. But just as he was about to start his car and leave, maybe call her later and talk to her, the front door opened, and she stepped outside. She had a large, brimmed hat on, sunglasses in her hand, and was wearing these little shorts that had his cock instantly hardening. God, even now, from just the sight of her, all he could think about was how much he wanted her. But even if he had her in his bed, Elijah knew it wouldn’t just be for that one night.
He sat there watching for a few seconds as she made her way over to the side of the house where the garage was, grabbed a bag of potting soil, and proceeded to start planting flowers in the pots by the side door. It was such a mundane act, but it still brought a smile to his face to know she was at a comfortable place in her life and in this house.
He knew she’d hated living here, especially after her father passed away. Legally, she’d had to stay with Meghan as she was her legal guardian and Freya had no other family, but even still, being around a person she hated in a place that had to have memories was an awful thing.
Elijah let go of the steering wheel and climbed out of the car. He walked over to where she was, clenching his hands at his sides when she reached out and grabbed a gardening tool, and he saw the shorts she wore molding to her ass. God, she had a gorgeous ass.
Focus, man. Fucking focus.
He stopped right behind her and could hear the music coming from her earbuds. She didn’t know he was standing right behind her, and that made him feel even more like a fucking creep. He reached out and touched her shoulder, and she jumped and made a squeaking sound of surprise. She spun around, pulled off her glasses as if on instinct from her fear, and pulled her earbuds out.
“Elijah?” she asked and squinted. The sun was behind him, and without her glasses on, he could see a swatch of light cross over her face.
“Hey. Sorry for just showing up like this.”
She stood, brushed off her hands on her shorts, and smiled. “No, don’t be sorry. I’m surprised to see you, but it’s nice you’re here.”
Shoving his hands in his jean pockets, he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing here or what he was supposed to say.
You know why you’re here. You know you want her and want her to desire you the same way. Be a man and grow a set. She’s not a kid. She’s a grown woman, and you’re not with Meghan anymore. This isn’t wrong.
“I should have called, but I was in the neighborhood.”
Fucking liar.
Her smile told him she knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
“You’re at least a half hour from here, and that’s without traffic,” she said with a chuckle.
Yeah, she’d just called him out on his lie, and all he could do was laugh.
“So I wasn’t in the neighborhood, obviously.”
“I figured,” she said. “You want to come inside for something to drink?”
Elijah nodded. He followed her toward the front door, and once inside, he took a look around. She’d remodeled or at least redecorated. The house was still structurally the same, but he was pleased to see she’d made it her own.
He walked into the living room when she went into the kitchen. The couches were new, gray with white and yellow flowers all over them. There was a light yellow rug under the glass coffee table, a few floor lamps, and the pictures on the wall were black and whites of her mother and father, and who he assumed were her friends from college. But one picture piqued his interest and even had his heart racing a little.
Walking up to the bookshelf, he picked it up, and the longer he stared at it, the more his body tightened. It was a picture of him and Freya the day she went off to college. He remembered that day well, remembered everything about it, in fact. She was smiling at the camera, and he had his arm wrapped around her. Meghan had been the one taking the picture, and she’d bitched the entire time. Fuck, she was such a bitch to both of them, but to Freya especially, and he hated her for that.
He smoothed his finger over Freya’s image, her sweet, young face, the fact she’d been so broken back then.
“Is it weird I still have that on display?”
He set the picture back and turned to face her. She held two glasses of what he assumed was lemonade. “Is it weird that I like the fact you still have that?” He said it like a question, but he was teasing her … mostly. He did like that she had it. Elijah walked up to her and took the glass she held out for him. They went over to the couch and sat down, and for a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
“I like what you’ve done to the place.” He hadn’t realized how clichéd it sounded until the words were out of his mouth. “You’ve really made it your own.”
“Thanks.”
He looked over at her and saw she was smiling. She looked around the room, brought the glass to her mouth, and took a sip from it. He watched her lips curve around the rim of the glass as a drop of condensation moved down the glass and dripped onto her chest.
Fucking hell.
When he lifted his gaze back to her face and saw she was watching him, he was embarrassed for the first time in his life. Yeah, she’d just caught him being an asshole and checking her out. He should apologize because that sure as hell would have been the right thing to do, but then again, that would mean he’d admit to being inappropriate, and he didn’t want it to be uncomfortable.
“Why did you really come by today, Elijah?” she asked, but it was spoken softly without accusation in her words. “Not that I don’t like spending time with you, because I do.” She smiled. “I’m just curious.”
She had every right to feel a bit weird that he was here in her living room, drinking lemonade after all these years. He hadn’t tried to contact her after that first time, and although he thought about her, work and life had gotten in the way.
It was a shitty excuse.
He set the glass on the table, leaned back on the couch, and stared at that picture of them from four years prior. “I thought about you a lot when you were away. I wanted to call, but I guess shit just got in the way of what I really wanted to do.” He looked at her then. She’d shifted on the couch to face him fully.
“I wanted to call you, too. I thought about you a lot, wondering what you were doing and how things were.” She looked down at her hands on her lap. “I read about you in those big-name papers, though, and knew you were doing well.” She lifted her head again. “Things were just busy and hectic for both of us.”
“I know. It’s easy to let life get in the way.”
She nodded. “I’m really glad I cam
e back, and we ran into each other again.” She sounded nervous again, but it was understandable.
He was nervous too, and the way she was moving slightly on the seat, as if she couldn’t control her nervousness, told him this attraction wasn’t just one way. Right now, her cheeks were rosy, her pupils dilated, and her mouth slightly parted. Did she realize that these little telltale signs made him feel like a beast ready to pounce and take down its prey?
And she’s the prey, the vulnerable, innocent prey you want to devour like a damned depraved beast.
They stared at each other for several seconds, neither speaking, but the heat and electricity moving between them was tangible. Yeah, he knew if he stayed here any longer, he might do something that jeopardized their friendship, even if she was acting like she wanted him.
Elijah didn’t want to push things or cross that fucking line, but he also knew he wouldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t.
8
Freya’s heart was beating a mile a minute, but she was trying to keep her composure. The thing was, she knew she was doing a shoddy job at it because Elijah could see the emotions written clearly across her face and in her body language. She kept shifting her body on the couch, she knew that, but the fact was he stared at her, looked at her with those piercing eyes, his big body so masculine, so powerful, that everything in her was on edge.
“Freya…” He said her name softly but deeply. His voice could make a woman drop her panties and grab her ankles, and as crude as that statement was, Elijah was one of those insanely handsome, magnetic men. He could make women do whatever they wanted with just a snap of his finger or a lift of his eyebrow. He was so attractive in his suits, but in this casual attire, the jeans and loose-fitting shirt, he screamed masculinity.
He screams masculinity, sexuality … power, no matter what he wears or how he acts.
“I really want to kiss you right now.” He leaned in an inch closer, his arm on the back of the couch as he came closer. She didn’t move, couldn’t.
