by Aiden Bates
I knew he’d message me eventually. It had never crossed my mind that things would ever play out otherwise. But until he did, Kieran Drake was a wave mounting on the horizon, and I was just the poor bastard who had to stand on the beach, wondering whether or not it would break before it reached the shore.
But when the text finally came in, I discovered that my gamble had changed the goddamn tides itself.
My parents are coming in from Texas tonight, it read. Want to meet them?
My heart did acts of gymnastics that should have landed it in the fucking Olympics themselves as I texted back, Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.
As soon as I got to the steakhouse, I realized I’d made my first mistake. One glance at the other diners in their blue jeans and button-downs, and there I was in my best pair of slacks. Immediately, I regretted taking a cab instead of driving. If I’d driven, at least I could have thrown my idiot blazer into the car.
I spotted Kieran first, his auburn hair slicked back and a George Straight t-shirt on. He looked every bit the cowboy he played on stage, except that his boots actually looked like they’d been made for wearing, and he’d pulled on denim instead of his assless chaps.
“Nice look,” he called out as he came up to me, laughing as he looked me up and down. “You come straight from a funeral?”
“My own, from the looks of things.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling embarrassed for what might’ve been the first time in my entire life. “Could’ve warned me about the relaxed dress code, you know.”
He shrugged. “I did mention we were from Texas. I thought relaxed didn’t need saying.” His grin widened as he glanced at the shine my shoes had to them. “What was it you said to me last week? It won’t matter, you won’t be wearing it long anyway?”
“Good thing I’m starving,” I grumbled, offering him my arm. “You know how much I love eating my own words.”
The hostess took Kieran’s name at the entryway, guiding us back to a beautiful blonde woman and a broad-shouldered man. It was immediately clear where Kieran had gotten his good looks from. His good genes were more than just his taste in denim, apparently.
“It’s nice to meet you, Duncan,” his mother said, offering me her hand. I considered playing up the charm, kissing her fingertips and giving her one of my infamous grins. But I could feel her eyes boring into me, taking inventory of everything I was and, I felt, immediately determining that she hated it. “We’ve heard absolutely nothing about you.”
Ouch. So Kieran hadn’t exactly written home about me, then. I immediately thought better of my original tactic and shook her hand firmly instead, then offered my hand to Kieran’s father, who barely acknowledged my presence at all beyond a disinterested glance.
“Not a cut of steak above twelve ounces,” he scoffed, staring down at his menu like it had just delivered him a death threat. “Guess that’s what happens when you leave Houston.”
I glanced over at Kieran, looking for guidance, but he merely smirked as he slid into his seat.
“Duncan, meet Mom and Dad. You can call them Michelle and Phil, if it helps.”
“It does,” I said levelly, even though it didn’t. Just based on the thirty seconds of interaction I’d had with Kieran’s parents so far, I had a feeling that the only thing that was going to help me through the evening would be a stiff drink.
“Can I get you folks our beer menu?” a golden-haired waitress asked, showing up at our table like an angel with a gap-toothed grin.
“Water,” Michelle and Phil said simultaneously, not even looking at the poor girl.
I watched her face fall as she turned to Kieran and I.
“Water’s fine,” I assured her.
Kieran laughed, giving her an apologetic smile. “I’ll have the biggest glass of cider you’re allowed to give me, and keep them coming.”
The silence that followed was the heavy kind that sat across my shoulders like the yolk of a guillotine. I didn’t know whether to beg for mercy or just let the blade drop—which, given the atmosphere, would be a mercy of its own kind.
“So, Michelle,” I started instead, deciding that she was the more personable of the two—if just barely. “What do you do for a living?”
“Kieran hasn’t told you?” She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me, the green in her eyes turning to venom on sight.
“I haven’t had the pleasure yet. If I had to guess, I’d say you were a hand model.”
I nearly kicked myself as I said it. As he tried to contain another laugh, I was surprised Kieran didn’t do it for me. Hand model? What kind of backhanded compliment was that?
But to my surprise, the flicker of a smile appeared on her lips as she glanced down at the ruby red of her talons.
“I did a little in college, actually,” she said, and just like that, the temperature of the room raised half a degree. “I work in accounting now. Phil and I both do.”
“That’s interesting,” I started, ready to launch into some grade-A Duncan Rourke signature small-talk.
But immediately, with just two little words, whatever ground I’d won, I lost.
“Hardly,” she said, her voice cold again. “You do know what accounting is, don’t you?”
Kieran and I shared a glance, the kind that told me he was loving watching me fail. But I wasn’t giving up that easy—and my look told him so.
“I do, actually. You must have quite the head for numbers. I shoot pool with some guys from our accounting department at Sterling about once a month. Smartest people I know.”
To my continued surprise, Phil finally glanced up at me from his menu.
“You shoot pool?” he asked, arching a bushy eyebrow of his own.
“Sure. I like to think I’m not bad at it. There’s a nice bar a couple blocks from here with some gorgeous old billiards tables. Antiques, a lot of them.”
Phil rolled his lips between his teeth and made a pleasant little hum. “Didn’t know there was anything to do up here other than drink cocktails and get into trouble.”
“I love antiques,” Michelle said, perking up and pressing her photoshoot-worthy fingertips to her blouse. “We keep meaning to go upstate and pick up some new pieces, but…”
“I’ll give you the number of my guy, then. Friend from college, specializes in restoring post-colonial stuff.”
Michelle and Phil shared a tentative, cagey look, like two foxes who’d just found themselves tempted toward a particularly enticing trap. Meanwhile, I could feel Kieran giving me a look of his own. One that said, holy shit, what the hell kind of spell are you casting on my parents?
“You’ll have to,” Michelle finally said as a smile crept into her lips again. “That sounds so nice. It’s been terrible every time we come up this way. Kieran is always too busy at his job to take us.”
I gave the waitress a polite nod as she delivered the waters, her hands trembling. In a way, I felt a sympathy for her that I couldn’t completely convey. We both knew that Kieran’s parents were dying for the excuse to eat us both alive—the way that Michelle had said job just then made that much all too clear.
“Have you ever seen Kieran work?” I asked. “He’s a fantastic dancer.”
I could nearly hear Kieran’s teeth grind as I mentioned it. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the color drain from his face.
“Oh, we don’t approve of Kieran’s dancing,” Michelle assured me. “All those years in school, and he’s just wasting his talents on silliness. It’s so sad.”
“I wouldn’t call it silliness.” I slipped my arm around Kieran, enjoying the tension I felt in his shoulders as I maneuvered my way through the minefield that had been laid before us. “He’s a hard worker. Talented, too. It’s obvious that he was raised right.”
And never mind the way that Kieran sniffed as I said it—he didn’t have to tell me that with parents like this, he’d spent most of his childhood navigating a minefield of his own.
“Well, that’s just…that�
��s very sweet of you, Duncan.” Finally, Michelle gave me the full smile I’d been angling for. It was a shame it looked like she didn’t do it more often—there was something warm there that finally began to remind me of Kieran himself. “He’s lucky to have someone like you looking out for him.”
“Not at all.” I grinned a toothy grin of my own as I squeezed Kieran’s arm. “If anything, I’m the lucky one.”
“Are you folks ready to order?” the waitress said meekly, taking her chance to speak up while the atmosphere was finally slightly above freezing.
I pulled my card out of my pocket and handed it to her. “I think we are. Do you have any bigger cuts of steak in the back? These folks are from Texas, after all—we wouldn’t want them feeling any less at home here in New York.”
She caught my eye with a knowing smile. We were in this together now—and she knew an opportunity for triumph when she saw one.
“I’m sure we do,” she said, slipping my card into her apron. “I’ll ask the chef and be right back.”
11
Kieran
As we left the restaurant and hugged my parents goodbye, I didn’t know whether to hit Duncan Rourke or kiss him.
“How the fuck did you do that?” was the first thing that left my mouth as they headed back down the sidewalk toward their hotel.
But Duncan only raised his hand to bid my parents adieu a final time. “Nice people, your folks. Thanks for introducing us.”
“Nice people? That’s rich. They should’ve eaten you alive in there!”
I wheeled around to face him and found myself immediately wrapped up in his arms. He pulled me against him, palms smoothing down my back like they were trying to soothe away my confusion and the strange tinge of annoyance in my voice.
“They weren’t very kind to you growing up, were they?” Duncan asked softly, running a thumb down my spine through the thin fabric of my t-shirt.
“They were…fine.” I wanted to look away from him, stare down at the way long-ago discarded pieces of gum spotted the cracked, rugged sidewalk, but there was something in his eyes that held me captive. His gaze bound me to him now just as much as his hands held my body against his. “I was an accident. They never planned on having kids. Had a lot of expectations on me that I didn’t live up to. Don’t think they ever adjusted well to the idea of being parents.”
“You’re many things, Kieran,” Duncan said softly. “But you’re sure as hell not an accident.”
“I just don’t know how you did it,” I repeated, pulling away slightly to get a better look at him. The furrow in my brow was so deep, it made my head ache. “You in your designer suits and your city-boy manners…They should’ve hated you. They always hate men like you.”
“Men like me.” Duncan’s lips turned up in a soft smile at the sound of that phrase again. “Is that why you invited me?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure out if you asked me there to watch them sink their teeth into me like half-starved coyotes spoiling for a fight, or if you asked me there because you knew it’d piss them off.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” I answered with a little laugh. In truth, it’d been a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. The idea of annoying my parents with a man like Duncan and watching him squirm all night? It had been appealing in more ways than one. “I’ve failed on both counts now. Mom’s going to expect you to go antiquing with her next time they’re up.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
I glanced around, seeing the way people were watching us on the street as they walked by. Duncan in his best suit, me in my George Straight t-shirt and cowboy boots, his arms wrapped around me and my lips turned up toward his like we were frozen on the poster of some romance movie, seconds away from a kiss.
“I’m still not sure,” I admitted, feeling something warm and foreign flood my chest. Not longing—though, there was that. Watching Duncan work the magic of his charms was like watching David Blaine make an elephant appear in the middle of Central Park. Captivating, exciting—and I still didn’t know how he’d done it. “Want to take me home?”
“Because you want to get out of here, or because you want to strip me down and make sure I wasn’t wearing a wire?”
I laughed. “Who knows? Maybe you’ve got an earpiece in with a buddy on the other end of it, scrolling through my parents’ Facebook pages and feeding you lines.”
Smirking, he dipped his ear to my lips, pressing his cheek against my cheek. No earpiece or wires in sight.
“Have you considered that maybe it was just me? That your parents genuinely just like the kind of guy you’ve brought to dinner for once?” he purred in my ear.
My dancing had always been such a sore spot between my parents and I—they’d always wanted me to use my psych degree for something they could brag to their friends about, and I’d always wanted to do nothing of the sort just to prove that I was made of more than just bragging rights. But then, there was Duncan, swooping in to defend me like some kind of knight in shining armor that I’d never believed even existed—let alone one that I’d ever really need.
“I’ve considered it.” I smirked against his ear. “But maybe I’d like to get your shirt off anyway. Just to make sure.”
The cab ride back to my place was so tense, the cabbie didn’t even bother talking to us. The poor man must’ve taken one look at us and seen the tension draped all around our shoulders, winding us together like a tangle of silk rope. Somehow, against every expectation I’d had for the evening—every wish, even—he’d managed not only to pull through with aplomb, but he’d created some kind of bizarre bridge between my parents and I with the sheer force of his charms, closing a distance between me and the people who had raised me that I’d felt my entire life.
For the whole rumbling, start-and-stop ride, I didn’t know whether to grab Duncan by the collar, pull him to me and press his lips against mine, or open the cab door at the next stoplight, jump out and take the subway the rest of the way home.
In the end, I did neither. His hand was laid close to mine, close enough that I could casually inch my fingers across the seat and lay them against his, just barely touching, but still very much there.
When he felt me do it, I saw that dastardly smirk rise up on his lips, and I started questioning it all over again. Hit him, kiss him, or run away completely?
By the time we got back to my apartment, every cell in my body felt tense. Trembling. On edge. The things I’d felt for him last week at the speakeasy had abated to a tolerable degree, only to pick back up where I least expected them to with twice as much force.
I wanted him, I realized as he came around and opened my door. As I placed my hand in his, allowing him to help me up onto the sidewalk outside my building, I realized exactly how much I wanted him: very. Immediately.
And as we moved side by side up to the door of my building, I realized that this time, if I gave in, he wouldn’t stop me.
He stopped at the door, turning to face me with a glimmer in his chestnut eyes. We hadn’t spoken a word the whole way home. We hadn’t needed to. I didn’t have to tell him how infuriated I was that he’d ruined my plans to make him crawl in his own damn skin. How attracted I was to the way he’d been able to charm my parents so effortlessly, a task so fucking Herculean that even I had never been able to accomplish it. How turned on I was by everything else about him—the way his broad shoulders looked so strong and well-muscled and capable beneath the perfect cut of his suit jacket, the way his hair lay in a set of dark waves so exquisite I wanted to both run my fingers through it and yank on it so hard, he’d moan in a delicious mixture of pleasure and pain.
I was simultaneously delighted that someone like him even existed, and annoyed that he’d even dared to do so, and the bastard knew it, too. Like he was reading my goddamn mind.
“So.” He reached out to me, brushing a non-existent wrinkle out of the shoulder of my shirt. “What happ
ens now?”
And for the first time in my life, I really didn’t know.
My head was a fucking maelstrom of wants and needs and desires, all of them conflicting, none of them worth a damn. But as I glanced at my door, reaching into my pocket for my keys with trembling fingers, one feeling broke the surface of the mire and hit me so hard, I had to draw in a breath before it pulled me under completely.
I grabbed him by the lapel and pulled him to me, my lips moving in silence to answer his question without words.
His mouth was a hard-set line, unmoving as I kissed him. Like he was indulging me. Letting me explore what it felt like to give into him, to finally take what my body wanted without his own desires butting in and giving me any reason to stop. My keys jingled against his ear as I brought my hand up to the side of his head, finally clawing the short crescents of my nails against his scalp in a way I’d been itching to do since I first laid eyes on him.
I kissed his upper lip, then his lower, testing all the little ways we fit together with no motion at all on his part. He was firm and corporeal, solid as a statue—like throwing myself at Michelangelo's David. But then, in some twist of fairytale magic, my kiss finally brought him to life and I found myself pinned against the red paint of the door, his hips grinding against mine and my t-shirt clenched in his fists.
“Unlock the door,” he growled, lips pulling back to bare his teeth as he broke our kiss to speak.
I slipped my keys down to the lock, scraping them uselessly against the wood. Fumbling until they slipped into place as I kissed him again.
Inside, it was like the elevator didn’t even occur to us. After so much time standing around quipping at each other, things were finally in motion. The idea of standing still was impossible—my legs had to be moving now, and so did his. We took the stairs two at a time, my hand clasped tightly in his. Our bodies slammed against each other at every landing, making the cheap reproduction art hung there shake in their frames as we flung each other against the walls. My mouth was wet. I was salivating with want of him, and he was hot and hard and forceful enough to keep it that way.
