He wanted to go to her, touch her so badly, but he didn’t deserve the comfort of that. “Don’t do that. Don’t let me off.”
“We didn’t plan this thing between us, and I spooked you.” She came closer. “We don’t know what potential there is long-term and it’s irrelevant because we’ve already flipped the coin. I’m leaving and I always was, and you’re staying because this is your home, where you’re building your career and your life.”
It was a cold, clear, emotionless analysis, but it soothed him, it gave him a sense of order, a way to evaluate what he felt. He didn’t know how this would play out in the long term and he didn’t see the upside, just the fact that they were very different, that he wouldn’t have chosen Flick, and she wouldn’t have chosen him.
He stepped in from the balcony. “That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, Flick.” The confusing thing is that I’m consumed by you.
She looked at the ceiling. “You could’ve told me that this morning.”
“I fucked up.”
“I get that now. I thought—”
He cut her off. “Don’t. This doesn’t have to be the end of us.” They could try flipping cities, seeing each other weekends.
“I can’t do something half-baked, Tom. That’s not how I roll.”
They were separated by the coffee table; it felt like they were already in different states. “I love you, Flick.” God, how it felt to say those words, to see her face as he said them, the way her lips caught in her teeth, her eyes closed tight and then were glassy when she opened them. “I’ve never said that to a living soul. I love you and I didn’t expect it, and I don’t have any experience dealing with it, but I know it’s not enough, not on its own. For a couple to make it, they need more.” They couldn’t be Josh and Wren. “Shared life expectation. More time together living in the real world.” Not playing a coupon-based simulation.
She broke eye contact, and that infinitesimally small retreat was another shift in his balance. “I thought you might’ve gone. I would’ve chased you down to have the chance to tell you how I feel,” he said.
“Considered it. Wanted to give you time to deal with the explosion.”
“I dealt with it badly.”
“You’re here.” She looked up. “We’re talking. You’re getting there.”
“Where exactly is there, for those of us who are slow on the uptake?” Was this it, they were roommates who’d be awkward around each other again?
“We have a thing. A really wonderful thing. We didn’t expect it to happen. You feel it, I see that in you. We’re calling it love, this thing, and it’s enough for now.”
“For now?”
“We’ll always have it, but we’ve both got things we want to do, different agendas, life expectations.”
“You make that sound so rational.” He’d expected drama. Tears. To be frozen out at a minimum.
“I’m just using language you know how to process to get us to a favorable outcome.”
“Which is?” That they were talking calmly should be enough. Never would be enough.
“We have ten days left to be together. We have years ahead of us to be good friends. Neither of us is into pretending this didn’t happen or that we could stay involved long-term.”
“As easy as that?” She’d made it into a negotiation, a sensible business plan.
“Hormones can be irrational, lust can be deceiving, having a life shouldn’t be. We have coupons still to do.”
What? “You want to do the coupons?”
Her posture changed, everything about her softening, her shoulders lowered, one knee bent and her weight shifted, and only now did he recognize how tense she was. “I hate sleeping alone when I don’t have to. It’s ten days, Tom. We were having fun till I shot us in the foot—let’s enjoy being together. You’re about to have a birthday.” She pointed at the table. “Pick a damn coupon.”
In the face of her generosity, her acceptance, he could barely choose to put one foot in front of the other, to close the space between them. “You pick it.”
She bent forward to peer at the tabletop and picked up a coupon. “This one. Since Lulu’s I’ve wanted to know what your fantasy was.”
Ah, no. “Told you it wasn’t enough, that you’d need more.” That one coupon was the story of them. Not even his fantasies were big enough to contain Flick.
“I’m wrung out, Tom. I don’t go around spilling I-love-you juice everywhere on the regular either. It’s sticky and sweaty and stains. Why do you think I was still awake?”
“Plotting your revenge.”
“I had the first five scenarios down before lunchtime.” She dropped the coupon on the table. “I need a hug.”
“From me?”
“It’s not a trick question, you big lump of granite. I declared I loved you this morning and after your exit pursued by a bear I didn’t stop loving you. You’re the best friend I have sex with, it’s been a crappy day, and I need you.”
The fastest way to put a stop to the hurt he’d caused was to walk over the table, scattering the remaining coupons to get to her. “I’m sorry.”
“Shut up and fantasy me.”
He stood in front of her feeling every crack and bruise, knock and splinter and concussion he’d ever received, his body aching with them. She looked up at him with a defiance that was breathtaking, but under that was a ripple of defeat he’d put in her eyes. He had a choice to make, to live in the moment with all its heightened emotion or back them away from the crumbling edge.
I’m sorry I don’t have more, can’t be more, can’t be what you deserve.
He put a hand to the back of her neck, felt the tension there and moved his thumb over the tight cord of muscle. “In my fantasy, it’s a warm night like now. It’s late and dark and we want each other. We make love on the balcony with the stars above us and the city below.”
You’d be lucky to see a damn star out there. He’d tried to make fucking her on the balcony sound romantic. After Lulu’s and Kama Sutra and everything he’d done with Flick and the confusion of this day, it was violently underwhelming.
She put a hand to his chest. “You want the thrill of being seen without the likelihood it will happen.”
He huffed a surprised gasp. She read him so well. She went to her toes and wound her arms around his neck. “It’s a warm night and the stars are so pretty and the city is asleep. I want you. Make love to me, Tom.”
He kissed her in awe and relief and fear and disappointment, and all those barrier feelings got swept aside and replaced by need and urgency and passion when she kissed him back with soft wet lips and cascading sighs and the urgent press of her body to his.
They stripped in increments, pulling at each other’s clothing, marveling at each other’s skin, stealing each other’s breath. Tom was close to forgetting the fantasy because in Flick’s arms, he had all he needed, but she pulled away and walked naked out onto the balcony.
He trailed her to the edge of the room. The whole city could see them if it looked. Take photos, shoot film. Send it live. Make them social media porn stars with pixelated bits, and strategically placed black boxes and rough humiliation deep enough to derail a career, a life. They’d both seen it happen. The up-and-coming politician, the high-profile sportsman, the business leader, the ordinary citizen caught doing an unacceptable thing, dragged down by a tantalizing slip of information, a peep at them undressed and unbecoming. Undone. Reputation torn and tattered, able to be mended but never fully repaired.
That was the risk.
Flick stood against the half wall, arms along the railing. She was exposed in ambient city lights and bathed in enticing shadows and braver than he would ever be, and he didn’t care about the downside, only about having her, making her a part of him for as long as she would grant him the privilege.
“It’s a pretty night and we
should worship it,” she said, arm up to beckon him. “You have no idea how much I want this. Just looking at you. That extraordinary body. I can see the fear in you, know you want me anyway. Come get me.”
Blood thundered in his ears. He didn’t hear his own reply, but he felt the cooler night air on his skin as he stepped outside, and then the heat, the unbearably glorious silken heat of Flick’s skin as they came together. The sliding wetness of her mouth and the glistening sweetness of her core, and the way they fit, a miracle of form and fluid need that broke the logic of their badly matched physical selves and wrapped them safe and wild inside an impermeable atom of their own matter.
Flick’s first orgasm came as he took her from behind while she gripped the railing. Her second came beneath him on the sun lounge after he woke the heavens shouting her name, the roar of his voice part of the shock wave that took them both.
He carried her to bed and held her so she wouldn’t leave it. It was an act of utter futility. The real fantasy.
In the morning, she kissed his throat, delighted when his voice was more than usually husky.
“All it takes is a little semi-public nudity and nastiness to get you to shout,” she said.
That wasn’t it. What it took was how she’d accepted him, right through his dull brick-wall exterior, to his failure to love her enough. That had loosened something wound tight inside him, spooled it out like a long hike soothed his temper, cooking a meal eased his tension.
Joy made him shout. Flick was its agent provocateur, and he needed a way he could keep hold of that feeling while their clock ran down. She’d already given him the agenda.
He’d moderated his hours in the office, peeling them back as far as possible so he didn’t miss time with Flick. Wren kept giving him silly looks, which was better than when she wanted to smack him, and he took control of the remaining coupons.
He brought Flick breakfast in bed. Took her out for a picnic lunch. Laughingly failed a sixty-nine. Wrong proportions. Cornered her for a quickie before she dressed for work, and gave her a massage that went from pretend professional to spectacularly, bone-jarringly erotic. It all happened in the wrong order—the massage should’ve come last—it was a gap in his thinking because Flick always caught him by surprise.
Meanwhile he waited to hear from Denise Revero, and he didn’t miss the next call from Beau.
Despite having rehearsed the conversation, and being in a better state of mind, it didn’t quite go as planned.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Flick had only ever agreed to be tied up for sex once, and even then she’d only offered one arm and one leg, unwilling to give over total control to a hit-it-and-quit-it partner. He’d been a gentleman. It’d been a fun night and she’d been overly cautious for no good reason.
She was downright reckless to let Tom tie her up.
Not because he did it with any savagery, with any mock threat—he was kind and slow-moving, watched her face carefully and constantly asked for permission—but because of those things.
Tom wasn’t comfortable with this, but he tied her to his bed, spread-eagle on her back, because he thought it was what she needed, just like he’d made breakfast in bed, given her an erotic massage and brought her a picnic lunch. It wasn’t her wrists or ankles that felt constricted by silk scarves, it was her throat and the muscle behind her eyes and the emotions jammed tight in her chest.
Since her blurted declaration and calm reconstruction of the state of play between them, he’d been quick to run the coupons his way. He was trying to earn the forgiveness she didn’t owe him.
She didn’t have to cook again, and his servant-for-the-day activity was limited to providing the snacks and operating the pause button on the TV remote while they binged on Game of Thrones.
If this kept up, he would wreck her, leave her unable to stand, to walk about in her body. He would ruin her for other relationships and stop her wanting other men in her life, and that was impossible. She was lovesick and it might be seriously injurious to her long-term health.
He stood at the foot of the bed. He’d tied a sloppy bow at her ankle, and with a wriggle she could get free. She was naked and he was still dressed in his suit, a deliberate move that was a masterstroke of a turn-on.
“Not too tight?” he asked.
“It’s not.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a pillow?”
“I want some action.” She needed some other way to mask the feelings crowding her vision and shorting her breath, or he’d think he’d done this wrong.
She was the one in the wrong because it was bullshit. Everything she’d said to him the night he’d shouted her name on the balcony was bullshit.
You got as many flips of the coin as you wanted, the upside was where you made it, nothing was certain about the long term until you acted to make it certain. But she was paid a good salary to be convincing and Tom bought her argument without a single counterpoint, so ending this was real for him and she knew where she stood.
You didn’t always get to have the family you wanted, or the education you needed, or the support you deserved. You didn’t always get to keep your dearest friends forever. You didn’t always get the job, or the client, or the peerless reputation, or the win. Those things only worked sometimes, for some people and Flick had scooped up her fair share of the prizes. She didn’t get to have Tom too.
She could’ve chosen to fly out early. She was functionally redundant in the office now, useful as an excuse for long lunches and rambling farewell speeches, but she stayed and she could tell herself it was because she hadn’t found a new apartment and wanted to save on accommodation costs as much as she wanted. That was bullshit too.
Like Wren had said, it would be worse if she didn’t remain friends with Tom. And the sex—well, the sex was an appropriate bonus for the heartsickness that was about to follow. It would be the same as grief. She’d mourn Tom like she’d already mourned Drew and would again when he died.
Until she got over Tom. And that wouldn’t start till she left.
Unless she stayed.
You didn’t get to have everything. But you got to make the choices.
I make it happen.
“Whenever you’re ready, O’Connell.”
He raised a brow at her peremptory tone, while he took his tie off. “You’re not in any position to make demands.”
She made demands on herself all the time. Get away from her family, take the help that’s offered, make Drew proud, study, stop caring what people think, graduate, go to college, learn to dress the part, work hard, keep learning, put things in perspective, build something of her life she could be proud of.
“I—”
He was beside her, sitting on the bed in the second it took her sentence to falter. “We can do something else tonight. There are a few coupons left.”
Not many. Tomorrow, Friday, was her last day in the office. Sunday was Tom’s birthday and she flew out Monday.
“I’m all tied up with nowhere to go—we wouldn’t want to ruin that.”
He put his hand to her hip over the rash of broken capillaries, like the burn scar he never saw as ugly, and trailed it up her side, tracing the script of her tattoo before moving over her shoulder and throat, to stroke her cheek. It was such a loving, mindful touch she had to close her eyes and hope he read it as lust.
“Flick, look at me.”
“Are you any more naked than you were a moment ago?”
“Flick.”
One choice from here, two styles of approach. She couldn’t stay for a man who didn’t love her enough to think about leaving with her. She was going to lose control one way or another, and better it be frustration than tears.
She opened her eyes. “I need a striptease pronto. I need your hands on me. I need your mouth on me. I want to be screaming in the next five minutes or I will sprinkle a
ll the leftover glitter on every piece of clothing you own. You’ll never get rid of it. Six months from now, you’ll be in a serious meeting with a big-bucks important client, and she’ll be thinking, hmm, that Tom O’Connell is a mighty colorful character, might not trust his advice on this highly sensitive, confidential life-and-death matter.”
He leaned down over her. “There’s leftover glitter?” He looked appalled, and she jerked on both outstretched and pinned-down arms trying to grab him for a kiss.
His amused laugh was a warm puff of air by her ear. But he followed with the kiss she needed and he got with the action. He stripped and it wasn’t a tease, because it wasn’t Tom’s way to put on a show, but it was a visual feast all the same. He was down to his briefs, the delicious ladder of his abs, those cresting dips at his hips made for her fingers. You’re really something, you know, Tom O’Connell. It didn’t take much to embarrass him. Her scrutiny was enough to make him angle his face away.
She didn’t think of him so much as granite or marble, as unbendable or immovable anymore. He was physically imposing, tall and broad and hard-muscled. He could throw her around, tear her apart if he chose to. Her skin, her senses knew him to be easy and gentle and safe. Even when safe was terrorizing her with touch she couldn’t return, with lips she couldn’t catch and caresses that tickled where she’d never been ticklish before.
“Oh my God, Tom. Stop.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Yes.” She rolled her head. “No.”
He laughed again, his discomfort gone, his enjoyment evident, and he made her his servant in a way she’d never intended. She saw stars behind her eyelids that she couldn’t see from his balcony. When he used his fingers inside her, pinpoints of light exploded like fireworks. When he got inventive and used her vibrator, she swore at him; it only egged him on. By the time she got his tongue she was doing her best impression of a scene from an exorcism, trying to levitate off the bed. It was gruesome and irritating and startling and wonderful, and next time she wanted to try it with a blindfold.
The Love Coupon Page 26
