by Nikki Sloane
Shit! It was too late to slam the computer shut, she’d already seen me.
“Uh, hi. I’m . . . a friend of Dominic’s. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
She leaned forward to her screen like she was taking a closer look at me. A faint smile curled on her lips. “You’re American? And pretty. Where the heck did he find you?”
“Naked in a blindfold club” wasn’t going to work, so I skewed the truth. “I’m on a long vacation in Tokyo.” I had to find something to distract. “You’re Meredith?”
Oh, that was the wrong thing to say. Her faint smile got wider. Yes, I knew his sisters’ names. And the smile she gave me now was identical to the one I often got from the man in the room next door.
“How long have you two been together?”
Together? Like a couple? “We’re not dating.”
She blinked her skeptical eyes at me, probably staring at my bedhead and my braless tits beneath my tank top. “It’s, what, eight-thirty in the morning there?”
She had a point, but I didn’t care for her passive-aggressive statement. “And? Just because I fuck him doesn’t automatically make him my boyfriend.”
Shit. Why couldn’t I keep my stupid mouth shut?
She gasped and frowned. “I can think of one thing it makes you.”
My annoyance with the bitch went from zero to sixty in much less than four seconds. “Yup, you’re right, that’s what I am.” I reached forward to slam the computer closed—
“Wait, wait! Crap, sorry.” Her scowl intensified, but I could tell it was at herself. “It’s none of my business. Please, I’m sorry.”
I drew back my hand and shot her a dark look.
“I’m glad he’s . . . made a friend,” Meredith said. This was free from judgment and my heart rate ticked down a notch. “You know my name. What’s yours?”
I wanted off this call as soon as possible. I didn’t want her to ask whatever her next question was going to be. “Payton.”
“Where are you from?”
Ugh. “Chicago.”
Meredith’s pretty eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, wow, small world. Dom’s got a place in Chicago.”
I swallowed hard. Dom. The flashback to our first night together was unavoidable. “Yeah, I think he mentioned that. Hey, he’s still asleep, so I’m—”
“What do you do?” She took a sip of her wine and set it down on the desk. When I didn’t answer immediately, she blinked and tilted her head to the side. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re like a model or something.”
“Or something.” At least I didn’t have to lie to her.
“Damn it. His ego is already huge, and now he’s going to brag about dating a model.”
The laugh I gave was involuntary. “Not a model, and again, we’re not dating.”
I’d swear I could feel that penetrating gaze of hers all the way from across the Pacific. She was protective of her younger brother. We sat in silence, evaluating each other, for a long moment.
“Where the fuck’s my morning blowjob?” Dominic teased from the doorway, one hand buried beneath his boxers. He couldn’t see the computer screen, but he heard the sharp gasp come from the speaker.
“Oh my god, Dominic!” Horror splashed on his sister’s face.
“Meredith?” He snatched up a blanket off the couch and banded it around his waist, then thundered over to the laptop to confirm. He gave me a ‘WTF?’ look.
“She was trying to call you,” I said. “I didn’t mean to answer it.”
That look faded and was replaced with amusement. The couch jostled as he dropped down beside me, throwing an arm casually over the back. Around me.
“Seriously, I’d smack Mike if he talked to me like that,” Meredith said. It looked like she hadn’t quite recovered from the comment.
He brushed it off. “I see you’ve met Payton. What’s up?”
“Not much. Mom’s been guilting us all in to calling you more often, and I saw you were online.”
I climbed off the couch, pretending to want to give them privacy, but all I really wanted was to get the fuck away. Because I liked Dominic. I was exclusive to him. Living with him. Now I’d met some of his family. If that wasn’t the definition of an acting girlfriend, I didn’t know what was.
My shower was almost over when he came into the bathroom and stepped into the tub beside me.
“That was informative.” There was a sharp edge to his words. I turned to face him and was greeted with a scowl. “Not dating, huh? What the fuck are we doing then?”
I wished I hadn’t answered that call for the millionth time, and put my hands on my hips. “I told you, from the very beginning, I don’t do relationships.”
“Just like you don’t do conversation.” The aqua eyes flared with accusation. “Like you don’t do kissing.” His voice rose steadily as he closed the distance between us. “Like you don’t sleep beside me.”
“That’s all you. You ignored my rules!”
“Yeah, I did. And get ready, because I’m gonna ignore this one, too.” His jaw tightened and his eyes were pure and determined. “Go and put up your walls, Payton. They don’t stop me.”
They didn’t even slow him down.
His kiss was wild and ferocious. An assault that I couldn’t defend against, even as the panicked voice in my head urged me to. His touch lit me on fire. Made me come alive.
“This is more than just fucking,” he said, his kiss traveling lower. “I know you feel it. C’mon, tell me I’m wrong.” His challenge was issued at the base of my throat, his hands cradling my head.
I was unraveling like a pulled string on a sweater. If Dominic kept tugging, I was going to come apart completely. His kiss carved a path toward my lips but he pulled back at the last second. His expression was intense and inescapable. “Is this just fucking?”
There was no point in lying. My voice was breathy. “No. It’s more.”
He squeezed me to him so tightly I could barely breathe, and dragged me back under the stream of water while his kiss obliterated all thought except for one. I’d told him that night at the club I didn’t do relationships, but I’d also told him I don’t do love.
Was he going to disregard that rule, too?
chapter
SIXTEEN
My flight home was Friday afternoon, which meant I had three days left with him. Neither one of us mentioned it. We didn’t talk about if this relationship was going to continue with ten thousand miles between us, or how it was going to work if it did. Maybe he was like me, pushing away the things he didn’t want to deal with until he was out of time.
The weekend had gone faster than the elevator that took us to the top of the Skytree tower on Saturday, which gave us unbelievable views of the city. It had gone faster than the bullet train that took us the two hours to the base of Mount Fuji on Sunday. We’d done a tour and a gondola ride to the summit of the gorgeous, snowcapped volcano that was the icon of Japan.
Last night, it had been Kabukicho – Tokyo’s famous red light district. Nothing in common with Amsterdam’s red light district except for the lewd signage in a mixture of languages.
Neon. Neon everything. So many signs you didn’t know where to look, and you felt like you were on some futuristic porn movie set. This was where the love hotels were and the hostess bars Dominic had talked about. We gawked and grinned together at the perversion, and shrugged away from the barkers who tried to get us to come inside their bars. Shit, it was fun.
But tonight, we both wanted a break from all the Japanese.
“An American dinner,” I’d told him as he got ready for work. “That’s what you’re getting tonight, because I don’t know how to make anything else.”
There was a smug look on his face. “Cooking dinner for me? Such a good little housewife.”
“I’m going to rip your balls off if you ever say that again.”
His smile continued when he leaned down and kissed me goodbye.
My first thought was spaghetti. No. No noodles. Someth
ing fried and greasy. After I ran three miles on the treadmill in the basement, I went to the market and got everything I’d need to make fried chicken.
At six o’clock I’d successfully decimated his clean, tiny kitchen. But the test batch I cooked was awesome, and, holy shit, I was excited to get to do this. A normal, low-key dinner with Dominic, whom I sort of belonged to now.
My phone rang. Dominic. Why didn’t he just text me? Calls were outrageously expensive.
“Payton.” His voice was weird. “I’m on the train heading home, but I’ve got to turn around. The ship’s coming back to port with some instrument malfunction.”
My gaze dropped down to the mess of dishes and the sack of flour on the counter.
“I have to stay with the inventory,” he continued, “until the ship pulls back out again or I make the call to receive the inventory back into production.”
I didn’t want him to hear the disappointment in my voice. “How long are you going to be?”
“Hours. I’m sorry.”
I sat down at the dining table, feeling like I weighed five hundred pounds. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know, but . . . still.”
Three days left with him, and now one of them had been taken away.
“I understand,” I said, my voice tight. “I’ll see you when you get home.”
There was a soft sigh. “Please don’t wait up for me. I’ll feel even worse if you do.”
I held my tongue from asking if I had anything better to do. “Okay. Hope they get it figured out soon.”
“Me, too.” He paused. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
After the call was over, I fried up the chicken, ate a little, and put it in the comically small refrigerator. I drank one of the beers I’d bought, surfed mindlessly on the Internet for a while, and avoided thinking about him or what next week was going to be like. Probably a lot like this. No, it’d be fucking worse. I hadn’t even thought about the time difference.
One week ago I’d thrown a fit about sleeping arrangements. Now I was alone in his bed, pissed off, wishing he was here. Not just for the sex either, although I had no complaints there. Every day since our safe word discussion he’d edged a little closer to the line I’d asked him to cross.
Sometime later, the bed jostled and woke me.
“You’re awake?” he whispered.
“Yeah.” I rolled over and tossed my arm around him without thought, but the action wasn’t lost on either of us. I didn’t snuggle, I merely allowed him to. Something as simple as this was huge for me. I kept my voice even, but my arm where it was. “What time is it?”
“A little after two.” Dominic drew me in closer so I was tucked beside him. I had a hand on his chest, and beneath my fingertips, his heart raced.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine.”
I didn’t need to see his face, which I couldn’t in the darkened bedroom anyway, to know he was lying. “What is it?”
“Come to work with me tomorrow. You can ride the train during rush hour and get the full experience.”
“Is it bring your girlfriend to work day?” I asked, skeptical.
His heart beat faster. “My what?”
Jesus, what was with me tonight? Who was I turning into? “Shut up, you obviously heard me. All I meant was, is that all right?”
His hand skimmed over my forearm, past my elbow, traveling up to my shoulder. “It’s okay. I’ll give you a quick tour and we’ll stay out of the way. I probably don’t need to be in the office until later anyway.”
The warm hand settled on my jaw, his thumb brushing over my cheek. I was curious to see where he worked. “Okay, sure.”
For the first night since we’d arrived here, there was no sex. Instead he gave me a kiss that was slow and hypnotic. He kissed me like a man with all the time in the world, though we had only two days left. I didn’t just allow this kiss, I liked it. I craved more. I craved being in his strong embrace. His effect over me . . . I was fucking powerless to stop it.
“No,” Dominic said in the shower. “We don’t have time for that.”
Of course I took it as a challenge.
Harsh hands yanked me upright as I tried to kneel. “I’m serious. My cock’s off limits right now.”
“I don’t know,” I gazed down, “sure doesn’t look like he’s closed for business.”
The vibrant blue eyes glinted with lust. “You’ve trained him. Just getting near this shower gets him hard as a rock.”
“You don’t want me to help with that?” I purred through the steamy air. “Don’t you want my lips wrapped around you, sucking you until you’re dry?”
His gaze turned cloudy as he rinsed the last of his shampoo from his hair and I followed the bubbles cascading down his slippery skin.
“Are you already done with your shower?” he asked.
I nodded. We had plenty of time–
He yanked back the shower curtain and forced me from the tub.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. I stood on the rug, drenched and dripping, glaring at him as he yanked the curtain closed, separating us.
“I don’t trust myself with you, devil woman. Go put some clothes on. I’ll be done in a minute.”
My blood boiled while I shivered in the cold.
“Wear a skirt,” came from behind the curtain.
I made a loud noise of frustration and stormed away.
“Are you really that mad because I didn’t let you go down on me?” he asked when we were pulling on shoes at the front door. I’d sipped my coffee in total silence. Hadn’t said a word to him since the shower.
Yeah, I was mad. I only had a few mornings left with him. Why had he denied it? “Maybe I’m worried something’s wrong with you. What guy turns that down?”
He gave me a weird smile. “Maybe the one trying to keep you from falling into a routine. You know, so you don’t get bored.”
That just made me more annoyed. I marched beside him toward the station, pulling my jacket tight around me. It was cold and overcast this morning, matching my mood.
“Are you claustrophobic?” Dominic stood beside me as we queued up to board the train. All around us, business people waited, polite and orderly. It was mostly men with briefcases and newspapers tucked under an arm.
“No,” I answered. “Why?”
“They’re going to pack us into the train car. Like, literally. Stay close to me or we’ll end up on opposite sides.”
The train’s light leaped into view and focused as it barreled at us. It slowed to a stop, the doors peeled open, and there was a surge from behind, propelling us forward. I gasped as we compressed with the line of people in front of us, mobbing onto the car where it was already standing room only.
I pivoted in my spot, only to shuffle backward as the wall of people continued to push and thicken. I was pressed up against Dominic, but also the Japanese salarymen around me. Jesus, when were the people going to stop trying to get on? I was crushed against the people around me. At the doors, a pair of conductors pushed at the body parts sticking through the doorway until the doors could finally close.
I could feel the man behind me breathing, I was that tight against him. I looked at the other human sardines around me. No one cared. They stood in total silence. No one on cell phones. No one moved, not that they could, I assumed out of respect. Dominic was right. This was wild. We stood chest to chest and I lifted my gaze to connect with his.
I smiled, wanting him to know I was enjoying this.
He was tired. He’d only gotten three hours of sleep last night. But when he returned the smile, the exhaustion faded from his eyes.
It was a fifteen minute train ride and it delivered us close to the harbor. The salty smell and seabirds announced which way to go, but I put my hand in his anyway. Fuck my rules about getting intimate. It was futile. I was attached, and going to stay attached as long as possible.
There was a small building no larger than a trailer sand
wiched between a seemingly endless maze of different colored containers, some towers stacked six high. I ascended the metal stairs behind Dominic while he unlocked the door and pulled the clipboard from the box attached to it.
His office was organized, but also like stepping back into the 1980s. A massive desktop computer. Fax machine. Filing cabinets. Stacks and stacks of paper. The window on one side of the narrow office faced the cranes that loomed over the water’s edge.
I stared at the sad looking office, and I got angry.
“You spend all day here?”
“When I’m not counting inventory.” He scanned the clipboard and set it on the desk.
“This place sucks.”
He laughed. “Yeah, it’s not great. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
We walked through the rows of containers as he described his system for receiving the inventory through customs . . . basically it was a lot of paperwork. It wasn’t the most boring job in the world, but close.
I followed him as we wound deeper and deeper into the container maze. “Where are we going?”
He pulled me to a stop, his eyes shifting left, then right. Hands closed on my hips and urged me around the corner until metal was hard against my back. We were in the shadow of a tall tower, stacked very close to another. Secluded and hidden, but not out of the realm of possibility that someone could wander by. As we’d worked our way to this spot, we’d passed a dock worker, and I could hear forklifts running in the distance.
My pulse quickened when he tugged loose the belt on my wool jacket as if desperate to get inside. His hot mouth claimed mine as he continued to undo the buttons and flung the jacket open. His fingers were under my shirt instantly, gliding over my belly and sliding upward.
“Your hands are freezing!”
He chuckled. “It’s warm in here.”
The cup of my bra was tugged out of his way, and his icy hand closed over my breast, pressing me back into the metal wall.
“Is someone going to catch us?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” His mouth roved over mine. “If someone came around the corner and saw me fucking you?”
My body burst into flames with desire. “You’re going to fuck me here?”
