“Now get out of here.” Before I regret this.
We stood there for another few seconds after he took his phone back, and I knew I should throw him out, but it was nice to just hold his gaze, to just breathe with another person for a moment.
“Friday. We’re going out Friday. I’ll call.” He walked out and this time I watched him, making sure he got in the elevator and that it went down with him in it.
And I stayed put in my office. But inside, against my better instincts, I was soaring.
* * * *
“It’s a nice place,” I said, for the third time, rubbing my sweaty palm on my skirt underneath the table. I looked around Gaston’s, the restaurant that Nathan had brought me to, and regretted having said yes to this date in the first place. It was too fancy, too formal, too much the kind of place where you were expected to sit and talk about your lives all night long.
That wasn’t the kind of girl I was. I wasn’t made for traditional courting. I wasn’t made for a traditional lifestyle. I never had been. I had no plans for marriage, no desire for children. All the things the denizens of this restaurant had or wanted. What was I even doing here?
Nathan looked at me over his glass of chardonnay and narrowed his eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I lied. I’d agreed to this thing to get him out of my hair, to get him out of my office. All I had to do was get through one night and then I could explain that it wasn’t working out and send him on his way. “Everything’s fine.”
Nate scanned the restaurant, his head tilted to one side as he considered. “You know, I brought you here because my friend owns this place, and I thought it would impress you that I could get us in on such short notice. But now that we’re here, it doesn’t really seem like our type of place, does it?”
My body reacted in some strange, inexplicable way when he said “our.” Goosebumps ran down my arms, and I shivered. It had been a long time since I’d been part of an our, and even back when I had been, I’d never really liked it much. The word always felt like fetters, like bondage. Not the good kind of bondage.
But somehow when Nate said it, it didn’t feel like he was trying to trap me into anything. It felt like he was exactly right. This wasn’t “our” type of place.
“Well, it’s just dinner,” I said, trying to be polite. It was easier now that he’d acknowledged having similar feelings.
“All we’ve ordered is the wine,” he said. He caught the eye of our waiter and gestured him over. “We’d like our tab, please.”
“Sir? Is there something wrong?” The waiter seemed distressed at the suggestion that we’d leave even before our meal.
“We just realized we had somewhere else to be,” Nate said, meeting my eyes. “Can you recork the wine for us? We’ll take the bottle.”
A little more than an hour later, we were sipping wine and eating pizza at a bowling alley on my side of town in Greenwich Village.
“I can’t believe you got three strikes in a row,” Nate said admiringly.
“I can’t believe I’m bowling in my work clothes.” I could barely move in my tight skirt, but I’d managed to bowl a good game so far.
“I think it’s hot,” he said around a bite of pizza.
I blushed and looked away, embarrassed by the compliment. “You’ve been rolling a pretty good game yourself,” I said, nodding at the scoreboard, though I was secretly pleased to be in the lead.
“I’m not a bad player, I won’t deny it. But you’re really good. When did you learn?”
I shrugged. “I’m one of nine sisters from Long Island. Bowling was one of the few family entertainments we could all agree on that didn’t involve fighting over clothes.”
“Nine sisters?” He nearly dropped his slice of pizza.
“I’m second to last.” And maybe that was why I didn’t care about bringing a husband and babies into the family. There were already more than enough of them to make my mother and father happy for the rest of their lives. I’d spent enough time feeling crowded and overlooked.
But it wasn’t just feeling neglected. I just hadn’t ever wanted in on the traditional family style that everyone else seemed to be drawn to. When my sisters were playing “bride” with their Barbies, I was playing “orgy.” When they were playing “mommy” with their baby dolls, I was off making mud pies with the boys or sneaking my aunt’s trashy romance novels.
For years I’d been dragged to church, been made to feel by the nuns that my lack of desire to grow up to be a wife and mommy were failings to be overcome. Thankfully I had parents that understood and encouraged my individuality. They didn’t understand, but they loved me despite my unwillingness to conform. And as soon as I was old enough, I was the only child of theirs they supported living on her own in the city.
And, thank the lord, because that’s when my life finally began. My adulthood was for me. My space. My time. I lived the kind of life I’d always dreamed of, and I never regretted it.
Well, almost never.
“Nine sisters? That’s insane!” Nate exclaimed.
“They were trying for a boy,” I said, rolling my eyes. “As all good Italian Catholics do.”
“I’m glad they kept trying.” Our eyes met and I felt a wave of heat crash into me. There was so much tension between us. Good tension. The kind of tension that I knew how to work with. I moved a little closer so that my knee would press against his, accidentally of course.
“What about you? How did a millionaire ad executive become so good at the game? This doesn’t look like the type of environment where I would think Reach execs would hang out.”
“Some of them would,” he said, considering. “Cade plays a pretty good game, but he’ll hustle you. Unlike most of the rest of them, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. This was my type of thing growing up as well.”
“You’re from New York City?” I couldn’t hear any accent in his voice to tell for sure.
“Southern California.”
“How did you end up here?” I didn’t know a lot about the ad firm he worked for, but I knew some. Like that there were five men who owned the worldwide conglomerate, and most of them had been well-bred financial moguls, carrying on their family traditions. It was easy to see how they’d all met and ended up working together, except for Nate. How did he fit in?
“Well, that’s an interesting story,” he said. “I met Donovan Kincaid a while back, when he was looking for someone to be in charge of Creative in the company. At the time I was an art dealer.”
“An art dealer.” Explained his eye for detail. “That sounds sexy. How did you get into that line of work?”
“I kind of fell into the business after school. I was good with art. Always had an eye for it even though I wasn’t the best artist myself. I worked at a gallery for a while learning the ins and outs, met the right people, then got hired by a private donor. Soon I was dealing in high-priced art. By the time I met Donovan I’d made a fortune in the biz.”
“Wow. I know nothing about that kind of work. What was it like?” Was it as awesome as I assumed?
“Amazing. Glamorous. It was a job that took me around the world. I saw a lot of things, met a lot of people. It was a really crazy, fascinating time in my life.”
“Then how the hell did Donovan Kincaid convince you to give that up and come work in an office behind a desk?” His life before Reach sounded so exciting, so thrilling. Exactly the kind of thing I would be into in another time and place. I couldn’t understand why he’d want to trade the world, a life of travel and prestige, for something so stifling—a nine-to-five at a desk trying to please clients and sell customers with his team’s ads.
“It’s definitely not as exciting,” Nate admitted. “But it’s a hell of a lot more legal.”
I gasped. “You dealt in stolen art?” I didn’t know if I was appalled or turned on. Both? It was so nervy. So outrageous. So adventurous.
“A lot of it was stolen, yeah.” He looked down at his win
e, a bit ashamed, maybe. Or maybe he didn’t want me to see how unashamed he was. “It was a lot of fun. But high stress. When Donovan approached me, I was about to turn forty. I figured it was time to settle down, so to speak. Not that I’m completely settled,” he corrected. “I still travel a lot. Still grab waves whenever I have the chance to surf. Love my bike. Still deal a piece of art here and there. Legal art, these days. Of course.”
“Nathan Sinclair, you might be the sexiest man I’ve ever met. And I have met a lot of sexy men.”
He found my knee under the table, and he pushed his hand higher, up under my skirt to my bare thigh. “Does that mean I can come home with you? Because I really, really want to fuck the hell out of you right now.”
And it was stupid, and it was not what I’d intended for the evening at all, but I answered in exactly the same way I had the last time he’d asked. “Okay.”
Chapter Seven
“So the waves are because you like surfing. And the koi, because you were in Japan when you got the tattoo.” I took another bite of bacon, then fed a bite to Nate. We were eating breakfast in my bed the next morning. We’d effectively spent sixteen hours together now—a record date for me—and I wasn’t ready for it to end anytime soon. It was the weirdest sensation—wanting Nate in my space, not minding that he was here. But being conscious of it all the same.
It was still my space. My apartment. I was the one who’d made us a breakfast of bacon and pancakes, and fresh fruit I’d picked up from the market. I didn’t feel comfortable with him going through my cupboards or my drawers. I still had to take deep breaths when I thought about the fact that I’d let him stay all night in my bed.
“Yeah, I got the arm tattoo in Japan with Cade—he’s one of the guys that owns Reach,” Nate said, feeding me a bite of cantaloupe. “I was there helping him and Donovan set up the office when the company first started. Sold a couple of pieces while I was there too. Legal pieces, of course.”
“Of course,” I chuckled. I crossed my legs and finished off the bacon. Nate was sprawled out in front of me and I was sitting up, the plate of food balanced on his torso.
I traced the pinwheel symbol on his chest. “And what does this one mean?”
“That’s a stylized version of a spider’s web,” he said.
“Why did you get that?” I was eager to learn more about him, even though just a few days ago I’d sworn that off. I couldn’t help it. I needed to know him—he was a drug and I needed another fix.
He chuckled. “For one thing, if it was a normal spider web, people would assume I’d done time. But I like what it stands for. Spiders are amazing. It takes a lot of wisdom to be able to spin a web as strong and useful as they do, and the result is often a genuine work of art. Cultures from the Celtic to Hopi to West African have religious stories featuring spiders and webs as a metaphor for spinning your fate. So it stands for creativity and wisdom, in other words.”
I ran my index finger down each of the six spokes. “And you got it because you wanted to be wise and creative? Or because you are wise and creative?” It was so fascinating why people chose to be imprinted with symbols. I loved tattoos, but I didn’t have any on my own body, because I could never decide what I wanted to be marked with forever. What if I changed my mind? What if the thing I loved today wasn’t the thing I loved tomorrow? Or next week? Or next year?
“I hope I’m wise and creative,” he said, his eyebrows raised, fishing for compliments. “But I got it when I was much younger, when I was about twenty-two or so. And then I wanted to be wise. I didn’t feel like I was back then. I’d made a lot of bad decisions. My parents agreed. I’d blown off college, I was heading nowhere. I loved art but I wasn’t good enough to sell any of my own pieces. And I just wanted something to remind me that I was the master of my own fate. Maybe I could be like a spider, weaving wisely and creatively. I could find my place in the world, the way they do.”
“Those nasty little creatures.” I was teasing him. I actually thought what he had to say was pretty honest and amazing. “So it’s like a Post-it note. A memo to yourself, but on your body? I like that.”
“I like you.” He looked at me like he was memorizing me. Like maybe he was tattooing me on his brain.
I shivered, even though inside I felt warmth rushing to the very core of me. Not just in a sexual way, but to where my heart was, where my lungs were. It was a light feeling, like floating, like being lifted in a helium balloon.
But in my head all I could see were chains and obligations and commitments tying me back to the earth. Were the floating and the tethering inseparable? I didn’t want to be tied down, bound to anything, but I liked him too. And I wanted to enjoy this feeling before acknowledging the sharp tug of the string.
“I’m really glad you stayed here last night,” I said. It was the closest thing I could give him to a return of affection. It was big for me to even give him that.
“I am too,” he said. He moved the nearly empty dish off of his torso and put it on the bed next to him so that he could sit up, and then he kissed me as he ran his hands underneath the T-shirt I’d donned earlier in the day.
One kiss somehow turned into lots of kissing, and soon he rolled me over on my back, and the plate went flying to the floor with a loud clatter. We broke apart abruptly, and Nate looked down to see if the plate had survived.
“It’s not broken. But probably quite a racket for the neighbors.” He brushed a long strand of hair out of my face and traced his thumb along my lower lip.
“The downstairs neighbor is a flight attendant. He’s never home. No worries about next door either. It’s been empty for the last several weeks. It’s on the market. So we can be as noisy as we like.”
Which reminded me.
“Hey, speaking of apartments… What’s with yours?” That probably didn’t come out the right way. I tried again. “I mean, I know you’ve been living here for a while, but it looks like you’ve barely moved in. You hardly have any furniture. It’s not very decorated. Doesn’t look like it’s very much of a home.”
Nate shrugged. “I’ve never been attached to places, I guess. An apartment is a place to sleep. A place to store your things. I work too much to spend very much time there. I don’t even own it, so why bother personalizing a rental?”
I supposed I could understand that way of thinking, but I loved my apartment. It was one of the few things that I truly did own. One of the things that really belonged to me. Maybe because I’d grown up sharing a room, it had become important for me to have a space of my own as an adult, and I’d been eager to do that as soon as I could.
So I did. I bought my apartment as soon as I qualified for a loan.
But I could relate to Nate because his desire to not get tied down to places sounded a lot like my desire to not be tied down to people.
Rental or not, I thought space should always reflect the person in it. And not seeing Nate reflected in his left me with more questions.
“What else are you thinking?” he asked, searching my eyes, apparently reading my hidden thoughts. “Go ahead and ask, whatever it is. I have no secrets.”
“I was wondering about the Open Door. How come you just showed up there for the first time? You’ve obviously got the connections. And I’m pretty sure you’re into the kink scene. So why are you just getting into bed with us now?”
“That’s what you’re wondering about? The Open Door is not the only kink game in town, you know. I just hadn’t met the right people to be invited to yours until recently.” He grinned when he said “yours,” acknowledging the fact that I wasn’t quite the right people either.
“You mean you’ve been attending other kink parties the whole time you’ve been in New York?” I couldn’t decide if I was jealous because there were other kink parties that I didn’t have invitations to, or if I was jealous because other people had played with Nate before I had.
“Yes. I’m not a frequent attendee, though. I’m more of a voyeur, because I don’t like
entanglements. I work too much to be bothered with the hassle. But I do like the party scene. There are several that I attend now and then. I’ll take you with me sometime. If you’d like.”
My stomach did a flip-flop. I was as giddy as I was the day I’d been asked to senior prom. “I would genuinely like that.”
And since we were talking kink parties, and since he’d just opened even more doors to me, I decided to do something very out of character.
“Do you, uh, want to go with me tonight? To the Open Door?” I stared at the spider web on his chest while I asked. I couldn’t even look at him. I was nervous about his answer. On one hand, I didn’t want an entanglement either. But on the other, I was having a very hard time imagining a sexy night that didn’t involve Nate in some capacity.
“I wish I could, baby. There’s nothing I’d love more than exploring the scene with you, but I have a thing I have to go to.” He lay back onto the bed next to me with a sigh. “You know, you could go to my thing with me. If you wanted to.”
“What kind of a thing is it?” I sat up, eyeing him suspiciously. If I was going to give up a night of kink for him, I had to be sure it was a low-key event that we’d be attending.
“Just a work thing. It’s really complicated to explain what it is exactly, but long story short, I’m obligated to be there. It’s black tie. I know you don’t like to mix work and pleasure.” He stretched his hand over to me and ran it up my thigh, caressing my skin. “But I’d really love to have you there. It would make it less of a drag. Besides, it’s my work, not yours.”
I rolled my neck to one side. He was right. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do for the night. My only plans were to attend my regular party, and I’d already decided that wasn’t going to be any fun without him.
Dirty Filthy Fix Page 7
