by Vivian Wood
She noticed Sean had changed out of the clothes he’d been arrested in. His hair looked slightly damp, and she gulped at the idea of him in the shower. Get yourself together. Something about the wornout denim jeans and the tight-fitting white shirt made her heart start to flutter. The officer rose up to reveal a clunky, blinking contraption that rested on Sean’s Converse high-tops.
Harper moved to the adjacent, matching loveseat and perched on the edge while the officers ticked off the rules. “ … home except for parole meetings … go outside the building and the monitor will go off … alcohol or drugs in your system will alert the monitor, too …”
Jesus. It really was house arrest. For the first time, Harper realized that meant Sean would always be here. If she were to avoid him, she’d have to leave. Suddenly the idea of it being “her home, too” seemed like a joke.
“What about AA?” he asked quietly. He’d positioned himself to face as far away from her as possible without pissing off the cops.
“We spoke to your sponsor about that,” the bigger cop said. “You can leave for meetings, as long as it’s at one of these ten locations in your area.” He handed Sean a slip of paper. “We know exactly when and where these meetings happen and how long they last. Given the radius, you have exactly twenty minutes from the official ending time to get back here. Understand?”
Sean nodded, like he’d been reprimanded by a schoolteacher.
“If you want to go anywhere else, it’s on a case-by-case basis. And your PO, me, needs to be notified at least forty-eight hours in advance. Got it?”
“I got it,” he said.
The officers never acknowledged her. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad omen. She watched their backs retreat toward the fancy entryway. It felt odd, to be in this multimillion dollar penthouse while parole officers fastened an ankle monitor to one of the tenants.
Sean shifted toward her, fast and unexpected. Their eyes met and she read it as a challenge. She wouldn’t look away first.
“Want to order some Chinese food?” he asked.
That wasn’t what she’d expected as his first words to her in “their new home.” But she shrugged in agreement. Hell, let him do whatever he wants.
He pulled up a number on his phone while Harper dragged her laptop off the coffee table. She’d left it charging there last night, not knowing how much she’d want to disappear from sight as soon as she arrived with Sean.
She went through her email and opened the Craigslist jobs section while Sean listed off way too much food for two people. She’d missed that gravel in his voice, somehow incredibly sensual even when he did something as mundane as ordering Peking roasted duck.
Harper shifted as she snuck looks at him from over her laptop. Her mind might be in a rage at him and her heart might be on the verge of shattered, but her body was still highly attuned to him. How can I hate someone so much and want them at the same time?
Okay, maybe hate is a strong word. But still …
She nearly smiled when she saw an ad with the headline “Beautiful but broke?” You got me, she thought. Harper briefly wondered how desperate she’d need to be before she forayed into the adult entertainment industry. Not that I really would, she thought. But in that moment, Sean had turned her on so much by doing nothing but ordering dinner. It had been three weeks since they’d last been together, and before that she’d grown quite accustomed to mindblowing sex on a regular basis. If I could just feel him one more time—
“What are you doing?” His gruff voice briskly pulled her back to reality.
“Oh,” she blushed and wondered if he could tell when she was wrapped up in a fantasy. “Looking for a job.”
“A job? Like a new campaign?”
“Like a real job because I got fired,” she shot back.
He blinked, and for a moment she wondered if it was the reaction she’d always feared. Is he disgusted by me now that I’m not a model? Is that downward glance really trying to gauge how fat I’ve gotten?
“Fucking idiots,” he said. “Why the hell would they fire you? When did it happen?”
“When did it happen? Oh, I don’t know. Sometime when you were in jail. I can’t recall the exact date, considering it was sometime in the past month.”
He looked hurt, but pressed on. “Come on, I really want to know. If I can help—”
“Help? How about this for some help? If you really want to know, I was on the way to tell you the fucking day you got arrested! Okay? That’s when it happened.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Sorry my little nothing news was eclipsed by all your drama.”
“Harper, I’m sorry. I truly am. I … I don’t know how else to say it.”
She looked at him for a long pause. For a second, she almost gave in. Just tell him it’s okay. She knew he’d take her back, at least momentarily, and she was so exhausted from being so scared, so angry.
But it’s not okay, she reminded herself. There was an ocean of a chasm between them that couldn’t be pieced back together. At best, we have a hell of a mess to figure out. She didn’t know if she could ever really see him the same again.
Harper snapped her laptop closed and stood up. “Goodnight,” she said.
“But what about dinner?” She let his voice get cut off by the slam of her bedroom door.
5
Sean
He pinned her down. His large hand easily encircled her slender wrists. Bound by his flesh, Harper looked up at him through thick lashes. Sean’s hardness pressed against the creamy skin of her upper thigh. The more he clenched his hand around her wrists, the more he sensed any trepidation in her vanish. She looked at him with total trust as she spread her legs wider.
She parted her lips to say something, but his other hand covered her mouth firmly. “Did I tell you to speak?” he asked.
Harper shook her head gently and he slid his length into her. Her center was familiar, warm and wet. Her eyes widened as he pressed against her G-spot and she let out a muffled cry beneath his hand.
As he began his rhythm into her, the juices that flowed were unbelievable. “How do you get so fucking wet?” he asked her. Sean lifted his hand briefly for her reply.
“You,” she gasped in a small voice. “You do this to me.”
He reclamped his hand over her mouth as she wrapped those long legs around his torso. Harper pulled him deeper with every thrust. The muscles of her thighs begged him to stay buried inside her.
He looked down to her breasts, the nipples hard and bright pink beneath him. As he released her wrists to lower his head to her breasts, the bedroom door shot open.
“LAPD,” the officer boomed. Sean looked up as Harper cried out. He felt her come and her nails, free from his bind, dug into his back.
“Mom?” he asked.
It seemed only mildly unnatural that it was his mother commanding a squad of two other officers. Her always perfectly coifed hair fanned out from below the shiny vinyl cap.
“What do you think you’re doing?” his mother asked. She reached for her baton, but pulled out a small silver flask instead. The other officers skirted the room, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from his mother, who guzzled the flask greedily.
“Fucking bitch—” Sean unwound himself from Harper and shot out of bed toward his mother, but as soon as his feet hit the floor she grew to the size of a monster.
“Why don’t you go play with your brother?” his mom asked. She looked suddenly younger, the police uniform completely disappeared. It wasn’t that she’d grown, but he’d shrunk. His childhood home, back on the East Coast, offered a perspective he hadn’t seen in over twenty years. The tables, the wainscoting, the mahogany bar that hugged the wall, they were all adult-sized. Sean looked down to see a small pair of loafers on his feet. He’d always hated those loafers.
“Mama?” he said. The voice sounded tiny, small and scared.
His mother leered at him, draped across the wingback chair that curled against
the bar. She took another long sip, still from a flask. He wondered where her favorite cut crystal tumbler was.
Far away, an alarm began to buzz. His mother and his childhood home faded to black. Sean’s eyes shot open and he reached instinctively for Harper. The other side of his bed was cold.
As he pushed himself up, his hardness ached against the boxer shorts. The sheets were tangled and damp with his sweat. Beneath him, the mattress pushed back uncomfortably. It was still too new, too hard. These dreams have to stop, he thought to himself. It was too much, dreaming about a girl who was just on the other side of the penthouse. He heard the alarm fade in Harper’s bedroom and the familiar traipse of her feet as she went to her en-suite.
Sean pulled on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and adjusted himself in his boxers. He listened for Harper, but heard nothing. Hopefully she’ll hide herself in that bathroom for awhile. The soundproofing of the largely concrete penthouse made it easy to live together, yet apart. Most of the time, except for her damn alarm, he couldn’t hear her at all unless he really tried.
He snuck out of his bedroom toward the kitchen for a glass of water. His throat was tight and dry. I gotta remember to keep a glass in the bathroom, he thought. It would mean less chances of running into her—and getting turned on in the process.
As he turned the corner into the gourmet kitchen, he saw her standing barefoot before the fridge. A long, messy red braid snaked down her back. It’s just begging to be played with, he thought. Yanked, used to control and direct her. When she reached for something in the fridge, her oversized t-shirt rose up those porcelain thighs. Any higher, and he’d get a glimpse of what was underneath. If anything at all.
He thought he could make out the bare triangle of her center, and his cock responded with an instant rehardening. Sean shifted and Harper spun around. Her eyes were like saucers, as big as they were in his dream. She clutched a jug of orange juice with an expression like she’d been caught doing something naughty. “Hey,” she said, though her voice broke.
Sean didn’t respond. He held her gaze while he opened three cupboards in search of the glasses. Fucking Connor and his impossible idea of organization. Finally, he found a glass and filled it with tap water.
“Do you want filtered water?” she asked. She watched him warily and scrambled for words to ease the silence. “We have some—”
“Chocolate,” he said.
“What?” She cocked her head at him.
“Is there any chocolate?”
“Uh, yeah. I think so.” She went to the pantry and rustled around. He watched her strong thighs as she bent and stretched. Harper examined the unfamiliar contents while Sean adjusted himself on one of the barstools.
“Cadbury,” she said. She put a small box of imported chocolates on the marble waterfall island.
“Thank god. Not that American shit,” he said. Sean picked up the solid milk chocolate bar, nearly impossible to find outside of Europe. He tore into the foil package and broke off a glossy square. As he placed it on his tongue to melt, he held out the bar to her.
“No thanks, I—”
“Have a piece,” he said. She obliged without putting up a fight. However, he saw calculations flash across her eyes.
“Oh my god,” she said. Harper closed her eyes as the rich British chocolate spread across her palate. “This is amazing.”
“You’ve never had European chocolate before,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Well. Not unless you count Cadbury eggs,” she said. “And that was years ago, as a child.”
“They count,” he said. “They’re just not the best.”
They both savored the chocolate in silence. Sean became aware of the slight hum of the refrigerator. Harper’s face was bare without a whit of makeup. Had he ever seen her like that before? He couldn’t remember. It was easier to see the spray of freckles across her nose, and her eyes looked more open than usual without the eyeshadow, heavy liner and false lashes. She looked younger, more innocent. And that made the desire beneath the flannel stir once again.
“I better go,” she said. Harper broke the silence and started to pad away with bare feet.
Sean watched her go, a pang of loneliness in his chest. Is there any way we could make this work? he wondered.
He didn’t know. There were all kinds of what ifs. What if he’d called her when he was in jail? How mad would she have been? Maybe she would have forgiven him instantly, soothed by the idea that she’d been one of the first people he reached out to.
He’d heard the stories. Supposedly, women loved it when a man showed his vulnerability. Vulnerability. It enraged him to even think of the word. He’d never needed anyone, so what could Harper have done?
Maybe it would have been different if she hadn’t seen him shitfaced and getting arrested. It was impossible to erase something like that from your memory. And he didn’t even know how bad it had been. But it couldn’t have been pretty, he told himself. Years ago, with Ashton, an acquaintance had filmed one of their drunken nights. Sean hadn’t realized it at the time, but when they’d been shown the video the next day he was immediately ashamed. Even in his drunken haze at the time, he’d been straight enough to realize he’d made an ass of himself.
On top of everything, he’d established himself with Harper as her dom. That meant he was her protector, always keeping his cool. The trust he’d broken by losing control like that, wailing on a cop, was probably irreparable.
Sean sighed and downed the last of the water. He opened the steel dishwasher to put the glass away, but thought better of it at the last moment. Instead, he left it on the island. It was a token, a challenge. Let’s see who puts it away first.
As he made his way back to his bedroom, a pinch radiated from his ankle. That damn ankle monitor. Nobody talked about how fucking uncomfortable they were. It had already started to dig into his skin.
He thought about inching a sock up between his flesh and the monitor, but ditched the idea. Hell, let it chew me raw if it wants. I deserve it. As he lay in bed, he understood for the first time why some people cut. To feel something, anything, and let some of those overwhelming emotions release into the world. He hoped the ankle monitor would cut clean through him. At least it would give the police something to grimace about when it finally came off.
Sean closed his eyes and listened hard for any sounds of Harper in the penthouse. But he heard nothing. He strained as hard as he could until sleep finally reclaimed him.
6
Harper
Harper ran her tongue along her teeth to pick up any remaining granules of sugar while she clicked through page after page of classifieds. She hadn’t heard a peep from Sean since the strange encounter that morning. What do you expect? It’s not like he can go anywhere. She’d probably sleep the day away, too, if she was housebound with no financial worries.
She went from Craigslist to Searchtempest and finally started scrounging through the local papers’ online listings. When she’d first started her search, she’d adamantly only looked for listings adjacent to modeling. Now, she filtered for any reasonable key phrase from “fashion house” to “art gallery” and “designer.”
It hadn’t taken long for her to write off the major job search sites. Whenever she’d find a good fit, she’d spend thirty minutes completing a time-consuming form only to get an auto-response email of, “Thank you for submitting your resume! All positions have been filled, but we’ll keep your application on file for future consideration.”
Clearly, these so-called employers were simply hoarding resumes for leverage and data. Harper sighed as she hit submit on the eleventh application of the day. Immediately, a series of red warnings popped up. “Please correct the entries.” Fuck. If you don’t do the formatting just how they want it, the whole thing is a bust.
Harper rubbed her eyes, but every time she closed them images of Sean appeared. The last two days, ever since move-in, he’d consumed her thoughts. It hadn’t helped seein
g his bulging erection through the pajama pants that morning, either. She’d felt his eyes on her bare legs before he’d made a sound. Harper had intentionally lingered longer at the refrigerator than necessary in hopes that he would take her from behind.
Stop it. You need to focus on yourself right now. And your drastically dwindling bank account. It was almost too cozy, this current situation. Connor and Sam told her over and over that she was doing all of them, Sean included, a favor. But it didn’t feel that way. Not paying any rent, any bills, and being showered with bedding, kitchenware and other basics kind of felt like the most awkward arranged marriage ever.
Except you’re not sleeping with the other half, and he’s got an ankle monitor strapped to him.
“Get it together, Harper,” she told herself. “Any idiot can get a job.” She’d toyed with the idea of entry-level positions. A lot of models waitressed on the side, even when they were booking shows and campaigns. She knew a lot of money could be made in tips if you looked good and flirted, but she knew she’d be a disastrous waitress. More importantly, she didn’t want to be around food nonstop. The temptation would be too much.
Her calendar popped up with a reminder. “Pay Chase credit card.” Shit. What’s the minimum payment on this one going to be?
Harper opened the calendar to click on the link and saw another, standing reminder that she hadn’t scheduled as a pop-up. “Aunt Flow.” It was marked for yesterday.
Wait. My period was supposed to start yesterday? A flurry of panic rushed through her, but she tried to push it aside. It was normal for her to miss periods or not get them at all—one of the few good side effects of having such low body fat. But for the past few months, she’d been fairly regular. She hadn’t liked to dwell on that since it was a clear reminder of how fat she’d become.
Stress can stop it, too, she reminded herself. Besides, Connor had commented when he’d moved her in that she was looking “thinner than usual.” That compliment had given her a glow that had lasted for hours. It had been awhile since she’d weighed herself. Maybe she was finally back to her goal weight. Thanks to Sean and his nonstop drama, she thought.
