Plain old boring me has yet to speak. Years of fantasizing about this, and I don’t have a single word at the ready. There are too many questions, too much history to sum up in a simple greeting. All I know is that when I do find a way to articulate the things I want to say, I don’t want to speak them on the threshold with the cold blustering in around us.
I reach out and wrap my hand in his plaid wool coat and tug him inside my flat.
Face to face in my entry isn’t necessarily any better. Here I catch his oak scent, as familiar as if he’d just walked out yesterday. It triggers my muscle memory, and before I can catch myself, my fingers are floating toward his face to scratch along the scruff of his jaw the way I did so many times back then.
I stop just in time and let my hand fall to my side, even though I’m dying to touch him. Dying to be sure he’s real. That it wasn’t a ghost that turned up on my step after all—a very real possibility. There’s too much I need to know before I let myself get carried away, and if I touch him, I’m sure that’s exactly what will happen. I’ll be swept up in his current and lose sight of the shore before I realize I don’t have a life jacket.
“Are you here for good?” It’s the most important question, and somehow my mouth forms the words perfectly, shaping them into respectable dialogue.
His answer comes just as steady. “I’m here for tonight.”
With that, the parameters have been set, and I immediately feel confined. I spin on my heel and head to my kitchen. A plate with two slices of seven-grain bread sits on the worktop next to a plastic container of chicken salad, the sandwich deserted with the knock at the door. I ignore it again now, and standing on tiptoes, I reach into the top of the cupboard where I keep the liquor. The hard liquor. I pull down a bottle of bourbon and a shot glass. When I turn around again, I see that Harrington has followed.
“Would you like one as well?” I offer. I’m already loosening the cap and filling my shot.
“I’m good, thank you.”
I’m not. Not good. Not even close to good.
I throw the liquor back and savor the burn as it slides down my throat. It tastes like Harrington smells, comforting and masculine. Then I fill the shot again.
“You need another?”
Harrington was never judgmental when I knew him. Not of me, anyway, and his appraisal now gives me pause. Irritated pause. It’s a little presumptuous for him to waltz in here after all this time and then cast aspersions.
I raise one eyebrow at him. “I’ve just seen a ghost. Forgive me for needing to steady my nerves.”
Before I can bring the glass again to my lips, he grabs my wrist. The bourbon sloshes over the rim and onto my hand. His too, perhaps, but I can’t bring myself to look anywhere other than at his face, at his cool blue irises. They’re still as clear as they were the last time I stared into them. Still pools of tranquility, no matter what he may be feeling—or not feeling—inside.
“I didn’t come back to fight you off of me, and I’m not fumbling around with you half-pissed, either.” With his free hand, he takes the shot from me and sets it on the worktop.
I want to argue with the myriad assumptions in his statement, but I can’t. He and I both know that I turn randy when inebriated. And as much as I’d like to take a bit more of the edge off, I’d regret it later if every detail of our night wasn’t crystal clear in my memory.
He’s brought us to an important question though. “Why are you here?”
“I had a meeting in London.”
A meeting with them? I’m not allowed to ask because he’s not allowed to answer. I already know more than I’m supposed to, and it’s practically nothing. Harry was born in Wales, but since he lived most of his life in the U.S., I don’t even know if the them he works for is here or there. I don’t know if he’s CIA or MI6. I don’t know if he’s James Bond or Ethan Hunt. Perhaps he’s someone else entirely.
I scowl, hating the boundaries around me. I’m someone who likes to break through boundaries, through glass ceilings, through red tape and bureaucracy.
So fuck the rules. Fuck what I’m allowed. “You had a meeting? For…‘work’?” I press in the same way I pressed back then, when I first found out about them to begin with.
“I had to see someone, yes,” he clarifies without clearing anything up at all, but before I can push back, he says, “And I couldn’t not see you, too.”
His grip on me relaxes, but he doesn’t let go. Instead, he turns my hand so my palm is face up. His thumb draws small circles on the inside of my wrist, and I dissolve into someone I haven’t been in a long time—a woman happy in love.
Goosebumps sprout across my skin, and my pulse quickens. I know he can feel it through the thin skin he’s touching, can feel exactly the effect he’s always had on me.
“I can’t stop looking at you now,” he says, and I can barely breathe. “Can’t stop touching you. I want to touch more of you.”
My hand reaches up to brush a finger along his scruff like before, but this time I don’t stop myself. My touch is tentative at first, then more confident as I bend my knuckles to stroke along his jaw.
He leans into my hand, and for one perfect second, nothing has changed.
“Amy,” he says, his voice taut with restraint, bringing me back to the present. It’s one word. Two simple syllables, but the underscore is clear—I’m the one who decides what happens next. The steering wheel is firmly in my hands.
One thing that hasn’t changed in fifteen years—I still fail at self-preservation. Sure, I’m a single, self-made woman in the advertising world. A saleswoman that no man can rival. My colleagues respect me. I’m at the top of my game. I’ve risen above the racial prejudices leveled against me by my mixed Iranian/African/British heritage. I have an active sex life with no emotional attachments. Nothing hurts me. No one breaks my heart because I don’t give anyone access to it.
But when it comes to Harrington—Harry—I’m defenseless.
It happens so fast, our coming together. Like it’s automatic. I raise my chin and lean in, and that’s all it takes before we meet, and his mouth is on mine, crushing me with his kiss. My lips move against his with an urgent desperation I’ve never known. It feels like grasping at sand. Like there’s no way I can hold him, and even though my tongue is gliding against his and my hands are tangled in his hair, he’s already slipping from my grip.
I’m frantic to clutch on, to seize as much of him as I can in the moment I have.
Never breaking the kiss, I slide my palms down his oh-my-God-still-so-firm chest to land at his belt. I fumble with the buckle as he pushes me back into the corner where the bar meets the worktop. My leg is already hitched up around his thigh when he lifts me onto the counter. He pushes my skirt up and shifts my panties aside so he can find the sensitive bud buried in the dark curls.
He smiles against my lips when he realizes how wet I already am. I’m not even sure when that happened—if I started drowning when he touched my wrist or when I first saw him on my doorstep, but I’m slick and slippery and he takes full advantage of it, rubbing my clit with his thumb while sliding his fingers along my drenched seam.
His touch is instantly familiar. These are his moves. If I were naked and blindfolded in a room of strangers, I’d still know this pressure, this pattern of swirls. My body remembers, and the knot of tension is quickly pulling taut, spiking pleasure across my core.
No one else has ever made me feel quite this way, something I had forgotten until he takes me there now.
Despite the distraction, I’m determined to feel the silk of his cock under my palm. I manage to get his trousers open, and I slip my hand under the elastic band of his boxers and wrap it around the thick steel I find underneath. It’s an old friend, warm and solid in my grip. I slide my thumb across his head before tugging his length furiously. Punishingly. As though it’s his cock that has me angry.
And I am angry. Maddeningly angry. I tell him with my kiss as well as my hands, biting at his
lips, growling low in the back of my throat when he nips back. He stands his ground against me, bracing a firm palm behind my head to keep me in place while he continues to devour me with his mouth, while his other hand continues to wreak havoc on my nervous system.
His assault strengthens my strike against him. I increase the tempo of my handjob, determined to make him come first, or at least at the same time. I refuse to be weak and vulnerable alone. I’ve been weak and vulnerable alone for far too long.
I manage to hold my own in this war until he enters me with one long finger.
I gasp at the invasion, breaking away from his mouth to suck in the air I so desperately need. Harrington takes advantage of my lapse of control and brings out the big weapon—his filthy mouth. I’ve never been able to resist his dirty talk, and he knows it.
“Look how you swallow up my finger with your cunt,” he says, his wicked eyes gleaming with pride. He presses his forehead to mine and crooks his equally wicked finger to massage against that spot—that fucking spot that only he has ever owned so precisely—and I immediately gush wetter.
“Yes, drench me, Amelia. Just like that. Show me what that pretty pussy is holding back. It belongs to me.”
I’m still jerking his cock, but my hand stumbles noticeably in its stroke.
Harrington chuckles. “You know you can’t win this battle, baby. Fall apart on me. Lose control.”
It’s the term of endearment that does me in—after all this time, after all these years, I’m still his baby. It doesn’t matter that he might have said it without thinking or that he might have said it to countless women. I hear the naked honesty underscoring the simple word, and I shatter.
My body quivers, and spots form in front of my eyes. When they clear, he greets me with a smirk that tells me how much he enjoyed watching me come apart on his hand.
“Better now?” he asks as though his sexual charms are potent enough to fix everything that remains unspoken between us. Emphasizing his confidence, he sucks my juices off his finger.
Fifteen years older and Harrington Steele is still a cocky bastard. It’s reassuring to know that there are some things in life that are constant.
Despite the renewed simmer of arousal in my belly, I roll my eyes and stare down at his abandoned cock, still hard and throbbing. My fingers close again around him, but he stops me. “Let that wait.”
If we aren’t going to fuck, then what does he want instead? He’s still standing close, still caging me in. His gaze catches on my lips, and I suspect he’d be content to stay just like this—his hand stroking my arm, his lungs sharing the same air as mine.
It’s extremely intimate. The kind of intimate that falls thick and heavy like the snow in the Alps. If I stay standing in its path, I’m likely to be crushed underneath the weight. Fucking would be easier. Fucking would be less intrusive.
But he’s putting himself away, and I’m not in the mood to seduce him.
I push at him to move, then hop to the ground when he does. I head toward the bowl of chicken salad and the waiting slices of bread.
“I was just making supper. I assume you’re staying?” It isn’t really a question. I pull out the loaf and reach for another plate from the cupboard even before he answers.
“I’m yours all night.”
The comment smarts for complicated reasons. Because I’ve longed to be his for so long. Dreamed of it for all these years. Then, when I finally reclaim the title, it has a time limit attached.
I swipe at the sting like it’s a pesky mosquito instead of the tightening of shackles that it feels like. I concentrate instead on my task, spooning the filling onto the bread, smooshing the slices together.
“Chicken salad’s on the menu. Sorry. I know it’s not your favorite.” Not that I’d been expecting him. I hand him a plate, recognizing how pathetic it must seem that this was how I’d planned to spend my Valentine’s Day evening. Frankly, I hate the holiday and choose to ignore it. It’s perfectly normal to be alone on a Wednesday night after work. And a sandwich is perfectly suitable for a weekday dinner.
Still, I’m compelled to snatch a bottle of Chardonnay from the wine fridge to fancy the meal up.
A few minutes later, we’re settled on the sofa in front of the fire. On the surface, it seems terribly romantic, but it’s a gas-lit thing, only turned on with the flick of a switch, and I’d already had it going before my visitor arrived. The wine has been poured, though, and Harrington is sitting too close, his body turned in toward me. There’s nowhere for me to move—I’m already seated against the arm. I consider asking him to back up and give me space, but, in the end, I like him this close as much as I don’t.
We eat in thick silence, the kind of silence that’s alive. It crawls along my skin and breathes heavily in my face, and everything, everything I want and need to say to this man hides in its shadow, gathering courage to step into the light. It’s possible that I’m not that brave. Not that open to vulnerability.
“This is rather good,” he says, halfway through his sandwich.
I chortle. “Please. You don’t have to patronize me. I know you’d prefer corned beef or pastrami.” He’d always liked his food “manly.” Anything mixed with mayonnaise, and, god forbid, grapes, was immediately qualified as feminine.
“I’m as surprised as you are, but I’m quite serious.” His brow knits as he considers the remaining half in his hand. He looks at it like I might look at a spreadsheet, determined to tease out the pertinent information. “Perhaps it’s the pecans. I find the crunchy texture appealing.”
I study his forehead as he talks, noting the new lines that mar the once smooth plane. I find these appealing. I long to trace them with my fingertips.
I also find them infuriating. Each groove is part of the story of his life, a life that has been lived longer without me than with. Stories he can never tell from a life I could never share.
My eyes sting suddenly, and I turn my head away. I feel him scrutinizing my profile, and I lose my appetite. I stack my plate on his and set it on the side table before concentrating on my wine, praying that the numbing effects of the alcohol take effect as soon as fucking possible.
It’s not soon enough because I still feel too much when he sighs and says, “Oh, Amy, Amy. I’m dying to know what’s going on behind those muddy eyes. Tell me some of it, won’t you?”
My lids close briefly, an attempt to buffer the connection between us. It doesn’t help. I still feel him reaching into me, sneaking under my skin with long, electric tentacles.
I clear my throat. I swallow. “Soraya passed,” I say finally. “Three years ago now.” My grandmother and I had been close, and Harry had known her well. We’d spent long hours at her studio, listening to her chatter in her broken English, watching as she painted her vibrant, abstract views of the world. She’d loved us together, loved the way we loved each other, and I was fairly certain she’d attempted to capture us in her broad-stroked art. The two had wound themselves together in my mind, and the joy in her paintings is always mingled with the want of him.
When she’d died, I’d wanted Harry desperately. I was sullen and sad and convinced that no one could understand the depth of my loss except him. The cavity she left behind merged with the crater of emptiness that he’d created when he left. It made sense to believe he was the only one who could give me solace.
But he hadn’t been there, and somehow I’d survived. Or I’d thought I had. Sitting here, speaking of her now, my voice trembles, and I sense the coming wave of grief.
“I knew that,” he says softly. “I’m deeply sorry.”
The grief halts abruptly, and a storm of rage begins to gather in its place. “You knew?”
“I watch out for you. You’re always on my radar.”
“You knew and yet you let me suffer alone? Couldn’t bother to reach out? Send flowers? Or a note?”
“Amelia…” He reaches out to stroke my cheek, but I jerk my head away. His hand falls to his lap. “You know any c
ontact with you jeopardizes your safety and mine. I couldn’t live with myself if you ever became a target in order to hurt me.”
I swallow back the rest of my wine in three big gulps then slam the glass down on the table so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t break. “No contact, but you’re here now.” Now, when I want him but I don’t need him. Now, when it’s convenient for him but not when it was urgent for me.
His blue eyes cloud.
“It’s complicated. I was already coming to London, and I took precautions when I came here tonight. It’s safe. Probably.” He shoves a hand through his short hair. “Or maybe not. I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “It is safe. It will be because I won’t be here again, and I’m not in the middle of anything at the moment that would draw enemy attention. It was a risky decision, all the same. I’m aware. But, like I said before, I couldn’t not see you.”
I contemplate him as he works through his justification. Sometimes, when I’m feeling in the mood to pick the scab, I watch James Bond movies. I prefer the idea of a gentleman spy to whatever today’s militarized equivalent might be. And I know full well that the girl of the day is always the one in danger, either way.
It’s satisfying on some deep, selfish level to realize he’s thrown caution to the wind for me. His reality is too foreign, too abstract for me to find truly frightening, so his behavior doesn’t feel quite as risky to me as I know it does to him.
It knocks down a barrier between us, and I reach out again to rub the scruff on his jaw while I consider what else to share with him, since he seems keen on talking. There’s no one in his own family to inquire after—it was part of what made him the perfect candidate for undercover work. I was only ever his one liability. And I already know he’ll share nothing of his actual work.
The frustration of that subsides under the relief that I won’t learn anything that will keep me up at night worrying for him.
But that leaves me to bear the brunt of the conversation. It’s funny. All the moments, all the individual events that have transpired over the years that I’ve wanted to share are absent from my mind now. There’re too many of them, too many starting places in a large ball of yarn, and I don’t know which thread to pick at first to unwind the history of Me Without Him.
Dirty Sweet Valentine: And Other Filthy Tales of Love Page 5
