Had it not been good for her? Was my radar that off? I supposed it was possible. Or was it worse? Did she feel that I'd taken advantage of her? I didn't think she'd been that drunk, but I supposed anything was possible.
Wouldn't she have been angry at me if that had been the case? I couldn't see Livie being the type of person to take something like that lightly. She was more of a punch-a-guy-in-the face kind of gal.
Had she been drunk? No. I was usually really good at knowing if someone was too drunk to consent. I'd had a couple clingy girls complain after a night together, but it had been obvious they'd just been after money. I'd never taken advantage of a woman, and I was certain I hadn't done so last night.
I walked over to the stove and took her up on her offer of bacon she'd made. I hadn't even been aware that we'd had anything here to make breakfast. My idea of home cooking consisted of reheating take-out or putting frozen meals in the microwave. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd used my oven for anything other than keeping food warm.
As I started to put together breakfast, I realized that there were groceries in the cabinets and refrigerator. Livie must've gone shopping yesterday before coming to the club.
I frowned as I grabbed an energy drink. I still didn't get it. Even if she had been so drunk that she didn't remember the two of us sleeping together, she'd remember meeting me at the club, right? Why would she want to deny that?
Everything before the kiss had followed her previous 'rule' about physical contact. In fact, the things we'd discussed had only set up a few guidelines about living together. I would've thought she'd want to remember that part, especially considering her recent parting comment about boundaries.
I sighed as I sat down at the table. I'd spent a good part of my life since I was fifteen hitting on women, charming them. I'd never had a hard time figuring out what they wanted. Most men acted like women were so complicated, but I'd never found them to be. Focus on one at a time. Or two, if they were okay with sharing. Buy them expensive drinks and occasionally offer expensive gifts. Take them to exclusive clubs and hard-to-get-into restaurants. Let the paparazzi snap a couple pictures. That's all they wanted. Nice shit and fame.
Then there was Livie. She'd been upfront about wanting the connections I could offer as she worked on her clothes design business, but she'd made it clear that she wasn't going to ask me to pull favors. She wanted to leverage my family name to help get a business loan, but didn't want my help paying it back. She didn't ask for gifts and had even been reluctant to accept the engagement and wedding rings I purchased. She hadn't wanted to buy anything on our honeymoon either. I'd had to convince her that it would make our marriage more believable.
I didn't get her at all.
She was kind and intelligent, but didn't let anyone close. When she needed something, she was clear and honest about it and anything she kept to herself wasn't used to manipulate me or anyone else. The woman didn't have a deceitful bone in her body. Or at least I hadn't thought so. Not until now.
Yet one more way her reaction didn't make any sense to me.
I munched on the bacon and leaned back in my seat. Women. Go figure.
Chapter 2
Livie
Things with Blayne were going far better than I'd imagined. I had assumed he and I would spend at least the first couple months adapting to each other’s schedules, apologizing for tripping over one another. I thought for sure there would be many awkward moments, times when we would see more of each other than we wished to. It would be difficult, I assumed, to go from being a bachelor who was used to walking around in various states of undress and having half-naked women running around to living with a woman he wasn't sleeping with and who had no desire to see him naked. No desire at all.
The honeymoon had gone well and when we'd gotten back, things had continued to go smoothly over the last couple days. We'd seen each other a few times, but it had always been polite, cordial.
Until this morning.
I'd gotten up hungrier than usual, but that wasn't exactly a surprise. I had been so caught up with work yesterday that I was fairly certain I had forgotten to eat dinner. I was like that sometimes. My sister often teased me about how focused I became when I worked. I never denied it. There were times when I would spend hours at my computer or my sketchpad. I’d become so focused that everything around me faded into the background. Last night wasn't the first time I'd forgotten to eat.
I'd gone down to the kitchen and pulled out some of the food I'd bought. I'd actually been feeling pretty good. I'd dressed more casually than usual, finally starting to feel like this could be home. The food was cooking and I'd actually been relaxed.
Then he'd walked over and tried to touch me. I'd seen him leaning toward me and knew what he was going to do. He'd had the same look in his eyes he'd had on our wedding day before he'd kissed me, except this morning, there was more of a sparkle in his eyes, a heat I didn't understand.
I'd shoved him back harder than I intended, surprised by the way my stomach had twisted at the look in his eyes. I didn’t want to think about what it meant. Then he'd started talking crazy.
At first, I had thought it was a language issue, that I was misunderstanding what Blayne had meant. There was no way he could seriously think we had done something last night. I hadn't even seen him. I might not have remembered to eat, but I certainly would've remembered having sex with someone, especially my husband.
I hadn't bothered arguing with him after I'd made it perfectly clear nothing had happened. I may have been a bit abrupt when he shortened my name, unnecessarily insisting that he use Livie, but Liv felt too much like an endearment and had caused another unwelcome surge of warmth. I'd simply reacted. I didn’t want him calling me anything that made me feel like I was special to him. Maybe in a year when we'd built up a solid friendship, I wouldn't mind so much, but not now.
With that in mind, I offered him breakfast and then went to my room to work. While I was still getting used to calling this place home, at least my room felt like it was mine. It had been a guest bedroom before, which meant there had been nothing to make me feel like an intruding. I’d been able to put my things up and make the place feel new.
I had left all of the furniture back at the apartment, as well as some of the things Katka and I had purchased over the past couple years. I didn’t want her to feel like my moving out left her with nothing. Orphans didn't usually have much, especially ones who had been orphaned as young as she and I had been. It was even worse in our home country. The group home we had lived in was better than some of the others, but they’d focused on keeping us alive, not making us family. That meant there were no resources or encouragement to build memories or keep mementos. Katka and I didn't have anything from our childhood. We'd come to America with very little and nothing that was personal. Everything sentimental I owned had been purchased here.
Usually, when I needed to clear my head, I'd look at the things I had accumulated. There wasn't much because, unlike my sister, I didn’t spend frivolously. I chose every purchase carefully, associating each one with a specific positive memory.
Today, however, even trying to recall some of my fondest moments over the last few years couldn't get my mind away from the encounter in the kitchen. I tried thinking about the first time I'd seen New York from the sky. The train ride into Philadelphia. Katka and I entering our apartment for the first time.
Instead of those memories, all I had in my head were Blayne's claims and the look in his eyes when he'd leaned towards me.
What could have made him believe that I wanted him to kiss me? Had I been giving off signals I had not intended? That wasn't generally the case with me. I usually put off a very cold and stand-offish persona, or so I'd been told. My work as a bartender was especially difficult sometimes. I would ask myself, ‘what would Katka do’ during those times requiring a more fun loving personality. I wasn't naturally flirtatious or even warm. I had to work at being friendly with people, even thos
e I genuinely liked. And I did like Blayne. He wasn't nearly as much the spoiled rich kid as Katka had made him out to be. Well, not exactly anyway. He was a bit irresponsible and even had a hint of the entitlement attitude that had always bothered me about some types of people. But I’d never seen him treat others as if they were less than him because they were of a different class. It was more like he just didn't understand the way the world really worked. In some ways he was like a young boy.
I frowned at my toast. Why was I defending him? He had no need for my protection and what he did was his own business. He wasn't family, not really. We were barely acquaintances, bound only by a legal contract.
That was one of the reasons I found his behavior so odd. I didn't believe there had even been enough time for us to have mixed signals.
Unless... an idea came to me. Perhaps it wasn't a matter of him reading into something or trying to prompt a reaction by his behavior. Maybe he truly believed we'd had an encounter the night before because he'd dreamed it. I'd had dreams that seemed so realistic I could have sworn they really happened. Some were nightmares, memories of actual events I felt I was reliving, but others were just dreams. Ones that, when I woke, I would almost expect to see consequences of those actions. A hangover after a dream of being out with Katka at a bar. A sore throat after yelling back and forth to Katka across a canyon. Sometimes the dreams made sense – they were real places with real people. Others were weird, like the whole canyon dream. I'd had that one a couple times over the past several years. Katka always insisted they meant I needed to listen to her more. I don’t think so.
The more I thought about it, the more my theory made sense. A dream would be a strange, but plausible reason. I knew Blayne was physically attracted to me. After all, he'd come on to me before the whole marriage thing came into play. It would make sense that, after the past few weeks, his subconscious would have me star in a sex dream. It didn't mean anything. And him acting on it only meant he wanted to get laid, nothing more.
Now that I had a reasonable explanation, I should have been able to focus on my work, but even as I sketched out lines for a new design, my brain kept returning to the same thing.
What had he dreamed?
In my own imagination, a dream about someone like Blayne would be sweet and romantic. A picnic in the park. Maybe dinner at a five-star restaurant in the city. There'd be a stolen kiss, something spontaneous that make my knees weak and my heart melt...
“Focus, Livie,” I scolded myself. “You should not be thinking these things about him. This is business.”
That little pep talk gave me about a two minute reprieve.
Instead of thinking about what my dreams would be, I started to imagine what someone like Blayne would dream. While I didn't sleep around and didn't crave sex, I wasn't a nun.
Had he dreamed we'd gone dancing? Bodies swaying together, intimately pressed against each other until the dream melted our clothes away. His hands sliding over bare skin as I felt him harden against my hip. Entering me slowly, as if our dance had continued...
“Dammit,” I swore. “Blayne is not that sort of man.”
I couldn't say I knew that for sure. For all I knew, he preferred sex to be slow and sensual. But I told myself he preferred something painful and raunchy so that I would quit thinking about him in that manner.
It didn't help.
In my mind's eye, I could see him bringing me home after being out dancing. Not slow dancing, but the kind of dancing my sister did. He would tear off my clothes, ravaging me with his mouth.
My nipples hardened under my sweatshirt as I thought about how it would feel to have his mouth on them. It had been too long since I'd been with a man. I never had a problem getting myself off and there was something to be said for self-gratification. It was better than the emotional mess involved with having a partner, but there were certain sensations that were impossible to duplicate alone.
My pussy throbbed as my thoughts wandered even more, imagining Blayne on his knees in front of me, my back against the wall as he hooked a leg over his shoulder and put his mouth on me.
Then his body. With my knack for fashion, I was usually accurate when it came to seeing beneath the clothes, so I didn't have a problem forming a picture in my mind of what he would look like naked. The broad shoulders, firmly muscled chest and back. Narrow hips. Muscular legs, but not too much so. A tight ass. And a package I was sure lived up to expectation.
I shook my head. No. I wasn't going to think about him that way. He was attractive, yes, and I had no doubt he was as good in bed as my imagination said he would be. No good would come of me fantasizing about him. If I gave in to his desires and we slept together, it would ruin everything. I was closer to my dream than I had ever been. I couldn't let anything get in my way, and Blayne would definitely be in the way.
No, it was better that he come to the realization that he had been dreaming and let it go rather than act it. Either outcome – a one night stand or the pursuing of a relationship – would be bad. The first would make things awkward. The second would be worse when I had to end it. I didn't want a relationship of any kind. I had to look out for Katka and myself. She was my responsibility and nothing could get in the way of that.
Best to put all feelings aside and focus on the work. While Blayne's money and influence would help, it would be my own hard work that would make dreams come true for my sister and me, and that was what mattered.
Men came and went, but family was forever.
Chapter 3
Blayne
I ended up going to the gym after my confusing breakfast and spending all of Sunday morning there. The rest of the day I spent on the couch watching a football game I didn't really care about, drinking beer, and trying not to think about sex.
It wasn't easy. I wasn't the kind of guy who was used to denying what I wanted. If I wanted a drink, I got it. Drugs, same thing. Sex, no problem. I never forced or even coerced a woman into doing something she didn't want to do, but I also had no problem walking away from a woman who didn't want to fuck and finding one who did. I wasn't in the habit of denying myself any sort of gratification, and overnight, I'd been expected to become a monk.
I'd known sleeping with Livie was a mistake, but three weeks without sex had made it a little difficult to think straight. The problem was, now that I'd had sex, it wasn't making things any better. All I could think about was her. I spent pretty much the entire day with a raging erection that I didn't want to take care of because I knew whose face I'd see when I started jerking off. Fantasizing about her after she'd so firmly rebuffed me felt wrong.
Finally, I ended up taking a cold shower and a sleeping pill before turning in early. I did, after all, have a job to go to in the morning.
One of my father's other requirements for maintaining my lifestyle and my inheritance had been to get a job. I planned on taking advantage of his lack of specifications in that area as well, getting a job at Exotica or some other bar or strip club just to piss him off. Money wasn’t the issue. Dad wanted me to be responsible rather than some lay-about who spent all of his time partying. It hadn't been until partway through my honeymoon that I'd realized there was a serious flaw in my master plan.
My dad's infidelity clause.
There was no way I could handle being around strippers or gorgeous drunk women and not fuck them. I remembered all too well that, until last night, the last woman I'd slept with had been an Exotica dancer. She'd been a great lay and had offered me sex whenever I wanted it.
As my father had pointed out on more than one occasion, I wasn't a man of strong moral character. If I worked at one of the places I liked to party, it wouldn't take much for me to succumb to temptation and ruin everything. And I had no doubt that my dad had spies at all of the places I usually frequented. The sad thing was, that wasn't even me being paranoid. He'd straight up told me that he would have people watching me to make sure I didn't cheat on Livie.
So, going against everything I'd ever
wanted for myself, I'd told my dad I'd take him up on his offer to work at one of our family businesses. I'd actually been a bit afraid of what he'd do if I agreed. Considering I had no college degree, no work experience and my father thought I was the biggest fuck-up our family had ever seen, I'd pretty much expected to be stuck in the mailroom or on the janitorial staff.
It made sense, though, that my dad didn't do either of those things. Or, more accurately, he didn't do those things to our family. Once I thought about it, it didn't surprise me. There was no way he would let a Westmore clean toilets or deliver mail. I'd caused enough embarrassment to the family; he wouldn't add anymore. He would expect me to do a real job.
So there I was, Monday morning, up earlier than I had been since school – unless I counted the times I'd gotten home around this time from being out all night. I was dressed in a suit I usually wore for required family gatherings and wondering what in the world a junior VP in charge of sales did.
Fortunately, Dad hadn't put me at one of our bigger businesses where my eldest brother, Benjamin, spent most of his time. The only person who thought I was a worse screw up than Dad was Benjamin. I always figured he felt that, as Dad's namesake and heir, he needed to outdo the old man. I could barely stand being in the same room as Benjamin when it was family stuff. I'd last about three seconds if he was telling me what to do. I doubted our father would take it very well if I decked my big brother at work.
Dad had me at one of our smaller businesses, the one Samuel had actually started. I had a vague recollection of my other brother telling me about a research and development business he was interested in. Not some big drug company thing or anything like that. More like gadgets or widgets and shit. I hadn't really paid that much attention. I loved Samuel and he was pretty much the only one of my siblings who even liked me, but when he started in on the geek stuff, I kind of tuned him out.
Today, I wouldn't be able to do that. It was embarrassing enough that everyone would think – correctly – I'd gotten the job because of who my family was. I couldn't imagine how it would look if Samuel had to fire me because I was incompetent.
Twisted Affair: The Complete Series Box Set Page 10
