By the Book

by Scarlett Parrish

  I gasped, and Daniel twisted round in his seat to look at me. “Something wrong?”

  “No.” Shaking my head, I wondered how long I’d try to deny the truth and cover it over by lying to myself. The main thing causing me discomfort was the knowledge that however strong my physical feelings for Daniel, there were emotional ones to be dealt with too. “Daniel?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How do you…?” How do you stop yourself going mad sometimes? “I know…” I know being bisexual means you have the potential to fancy someone of either sex. “But…” But what the hell am I supposed to do when I’m attracted to two people at the same time and it’s something more than mere attraction?

  “Reece?” Kicking off the floor for leverage, he turned the chair so he could get a better look at me, shifting forward as he sat so he didn’t have to let go of my hand. “Now it’s your turn to tell me what’s wrong.”

  Against my will, my jaw clenched. I wanted to speak, but my subconscious said, Nuh-huh. Shut it, Hutton. Being bisexual didn’t have anything to do with desiring two people at the same time. Being a greedy, mixed-up bastard did though. And I knew I’d still be that person if I was straight and wanting two different women.

  But I wasn’t, and I didn’t. Sarah had done it for me, but beyond that night with her and Georgia? No. Same went for the other women we’d brought in.

  Though the potential was there, this dormant, greedy part of me hadn’t awakened until I’d gotten into bed with Daniel.

  I was in trouble, whichever way I looked at it. It really didn’t matter that he was a man. No one cared about that sort of thing these days. All that mattered was Daniel existed and he’d strolled into my life with a pile of books under one arm, a laptop bag slung over the other, wings inked on his back, and a devilish smile on his lips.

  “Reece?”

  I came back down to Earth, remembered where I was and when I was. “Nothing. Really. Nothing. Forget it.”

  “Hmm.” His lips twisted in something related to, but not exactly like, a smirk. If you say so, the gesture said, and I translated it to Okay, not now, but we’ll discuss it later.

  “Come on.” I stepped back, nearing the door, and our hands drew apart. “Coats. We’re going out. Fresh air. A movie. Chewing gum for the eyes. Then you’ll come back and blast a hole right through the middle of that manuscript.”

  “Ha. Glad someone’s got such faith in me.” Daniel hauled himself to his feet and followed me out of the room, not saying anything further about the conversation we’d nearly had.

  And it was obvious to me he wasn’t the one who needed to get out of the house.

  * * *

  Sitting in the dark, as always hyperaware of Daniel’s presence, I couldn’t help but think of the first of our cinema visits, when the air between us had crackled like electricity.

  Now there was an atmosphere again but of a different sort. He seemed distracted, no doubt because of his work. Not something I could help him with beyond being there. Or keeping out of his way, depending on his mood.

  But he needed me to remind him to take his jacket off, as if he’d forgotten where he was. And he leaned on the armrest, chewing his thumbnail. When light from the screen flashed up, illuminating his face, and I caught his eye, he stopped, as if a glance from me had told him stop acting so jittery. But immediately after his arm was still, his knee jigged up and down in time with whatever internal rhythm prevented his nerves from coming to rest.

  “Hey.” I laid my hand on his leg, partly to still his restlessness and partly because I wanted an excuse to touch him and calming his nerves seemed as good a one as any. He immediately turned to me, his head moving sharply, robotically, and I jumped, though not enough to lift my hand off his thigh. “What’s up?”

  He waved his hand in what should have been a nonchalant gesture. “Nothing. Just stuff.”

  “Stuff?” I bit my lip when his brows knit together. “The book?”

  Daniel inclined his head just a touch. A yes without saying yes. But that wasn’t all that bothered him. It was a surface excuse, one used to mask his deeper concerns, whatever they were. He was transparent now, too disturbed to cover over his turmoil.

  I’d never seen him like this before—not angry, not upset, not whatever. All the things he was not did nothing to help me define what he was.

  No popcorn this time as an aid to flirtation. I had a bag of candy in one pocket but wasn’t sure he needed me lifting a “feed me, flirt with me” move straight from the Daniel Cross Handbook of Seduction.

  I leaned in, lifting my hand off his leg, and hoped my sharp intake of breath would tell him I was about to say something even though I had no idea of what I’d say. “You’re not…” I frowned, but in confusion. The furrows across his brow told of something as yet unspecified. Anger? No, not that. Frustration?

  “What?” A single word and I didn’t know if it was to urge me to finish my question, or an annoyed demand for me to just get on with it so he could continue watching a movie he wasn’t that bothered about anyway.

  Daniel Cross, a man notorious for being comfortable in his own skin, suddenly jumpy no matter what his surroundings.

  “Something’s…” I drew back, bit my lip. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Daniel’s confusion had infected me and I’d forgotten the one or two words my befuddled brain had come up with. “Listen, I…” I neared him at the exact moment he turned his head in the opposite direction, but, I hoped, not to snub me, just to make it easier for him to hear me.

  Ask him what’s wrong, Hutton. Just two words; that’s all.

  But the nearness, the sheer bloody smell of him, nervousness dusting his skin like perspiration, drew me in. And breathing him in wasn’t enough; I had to taste his skin.

  Daniel shuddered when I flicked the tip of my tongue along the side of his neck, and I swore I heard a moan when I sucked his earlobe between my lips. It could have been my imagination fooling me; the noise of the film masked most sounds in the auditorium, and the way Daniel jumped back all but convinced me he couldn’t have liked what I’d done.

  Slumping back in my chair, I shot him a sideways glance, caught the way he leaned over to his right, resting his elbow on that armrest now, as if contact with me was abhorrent. He rubbed his jaw, massaging it as if I’d hit him rather than kissed his neck, then shifted his weight as if he wanted to jump out of the seat and walk out.

  No. Run.

  Fine. I shrugged mentally; physically it was impossible, the weight of disappointment too great on my shoulders for such a casual gesture. Screw you if you won’t tell me what’s up.

  “We …” Daniel spoke just loud enough to be heard above the movie soundtrack but didn’t look at me. Sideways glances were all we exchanged. “We have to go.”

  “What?”

  “We have to go.” He pulled his jacket on in one fluid movement as if he’d been rehearsing the move in his mind since we got here. “Now.” He sprang out of his seat and only turned back to look at me when he reached the top step. “Well?”

  It took a moment for me to process what was happening. Only a moment and I pulled on my jacket and followed him out of the auditorium, blinking against the fluorescent lights when I made it through the exit door he hadn’t even bothered to hold open for me.

  It took a further moment for me to orient myself, but Daniel sped ahead and stepped onto the escalator for the ground floor. Mystified as to what the hell was going on, I zipped up my jacket as I tripped after him, wondering when he was going to stop or at least slow down enough for me to have a chance of catching up.

  “Daniel.” I panted, coughing sharply against the cold air of outdoors. He’d stopped just outside the exit as if that same bracing night air had halted him in his tracks.

  But still he didn’t look at me.

  “What the fuck was all that about?” The ticket price could go hang; it didn’t bother me in the slightest. What I couldn’t understand was his mercurial behavior. From flirtatious
in his flat to this standoffishness here. Now.

  “We shouldn’t have come out tonight.”

  Staring at him mutely, I waited for enlightenment. So now what? He regretted leaving the house, or he regretted leaving the house with me? As he’d left the screening room, he’d summoned me with that pause, that single word. If my company repelled him so much, so suddenly, why pull me along in his wake?

  “It was a mistake, I…” He pulled the zip of his close-fitting leather jacket right up to his chin, and though it was a cool evening, I couldn’t help feeling shut out, as if it was contact with Reece Hutton he shied away from.

  “It was a mistake and you what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, not nothing.” I looked around but we were alone. Leaving the screening early meant everyone else was still upstairs enjoying the movie. I’d barely taken any of it in, Daniel’s mood hanging over us both like a thick gauze through which my perception of the world was filtered.

  “Look, let’s just go home; we can talk about it there.”

  “Are you sure you want me to?”

  Daniel only then met my gaze, and this time his expression spoke clearly—ironically, of his confusion.

  Now you know how it feels, Cross. I thumbed over my shoulder at the building behind us. “Back there it was like you couldn’t stand to be sitting anywhere near me.”

  He gulped, and I imagined his Adam’s apple bobbing behind the turned-up collar of his leather. “You thought?”

  “Maybe you’d have preferred it if I’d stayed up there and you could have gone home alone?” Okay, stop now, Hutton. I’d never liked anyone whining at me, so there was no way I was going to commit the same sin in conversation with Daniel.

  “God, no. I asked you to come with me, didn’t I?”

  “That was you asking, was it? Look, something’s up. I wish you’d just…” I stepped closer. Lord knew what I’d been expecting him to do. Back away? But he didn’t. “It seemed very much like—and I’m stumped here, so help me out—it seemed very much like you suddenly didn’t want to be at the cinema with me.”

  “I didn’t,” he shot back, and his blatancy stunned me.

  “You what?”

  “I didn’t want to be at the cinema with you, Reece.” He took a step back, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cool breeze. “I wanted to be at home with you.”

  I opened my mouth to speak. Couldn’t.

  “Well?” He looked over his shoulder, just as he had upstairs in the auditorium.

  And just like I had then, I followed him now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Daniel held the door open for me—this time—and it was only after I’d stepped into his flat, apartment, whatever, that I gathered the courage to say it.

  “Are you gonna tell me what caused the mood swing?”

  His jaw stiffened as he leaned past me to lock the door without giving me room to pass by. Our eyes locked, but his threatened anger or some other emotion I daren’t articulate.

  Leaving his key ring swinging from the lock, his hand curved around my neck, the coldness it had carried in from outdoors making me flinch, but the way he wet his bottom lip warmed me up again. “I think,” he murmured, and even in the space of two words, his voice cracked. So he gave up. And kissed me.

  His lower lip dragged over mine just slowly enough for me to detect the trembling. His fingers snaked up to my hair, assertive in their tightening against my scalp, a counterbalance to his tentative kiss. “I think you know,” he whispered against my mouth.

  “No.” I blurted the word out, the monosyllable exploding in the sliver of air between us like a firework. Or a hand grenade. “I don’t know.” Blinking slowly so I didn’t have to look at him, I took a deep breath. No matter how much I wanted to stare, sometimes the sight of Daniel Cross was too much and closing my eyes against him in temporary blindness was the only way to avoid permanent damage. “That’s why I asked.”

  “In…” He bit his lip.

  No, he can’t be nervous. Daniel Cross doesn’t get nervous.

  “In my office earlier, when I got pissed off at the book. It wasn’t that which bothered me. It was…” His brows knit together as he searched for the correct wording.

  I’m right here, Daniel. Right. Here.

  “You’re here.”

  I gasped as if he’d pulled the air out of my lungs, just as he’d pulled the thought from my head and voiced it.

  “You were here earlier when I was trying to work, and you were what put me off.”

  My eyes widened, but it was a reflex over which I had no control and something blinded me. Not Daniel. My own need for him. “I thought…” I gulped back air in desperation. “I thought getting out of the house and doing something else would help. Your writing, I mean. Taking a break.”

  “God, no.” Daniel shook his head, and his lips threatened a watery smile. “My writing wasn’t the problem. You were. And I took the problem with me when we went to the cinema, didn’t I?”

  I thought of the uncomfortable shifts in his body language back at the cinema. The way he’d leaned in the opposite direction from me, veering out of my aura and telling me he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there—which had been the truth—but not for the reason I’d believed.

  “It was hellish sitting in that damn place and not being able to touch you.”

  “Come on, Daniel.” I half laughed, the sound fading as his expression came into focus. A frown, thinned lips, and paling skin. “It’s not as if you’ve never touched me in a cinema before, is it?”

  “Maybe so.” Those thinned lips at last curved, and he leaned closer, his breath warming the skin of my jaw. Though he didn’t make contact, I imagined I felt his stubble brush my skin, this image nothing more than a wish fueled by his nearness. “But I couldn’t exactly touch you the way I wanted to this evening, could I?”

  I gulped, my mouth instantly arid. “Oh?”

  “You must have known.” Daniel stood closer still, held his palm against the rise in my jeans, and I would have gasped had I still possessed the ability to breathe. “You must have been able to tell what was wrong with me.” A long, slow exhalation against my neck before he kissed me and his hand squeezed just a little tighter.

  “Fuck.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.” Though I couldn’t see his face, I felt his smile against my skin as his lips curled. “God, I want…”

  We both paused, gathering our breath.

  And he lifted his head, looked me in the eyes, and said nothing. At least verbally.

  I still knew what he was thinking. Maybe earlier in the cinema I’d been confused, but now I knew, and what I saw in his eyes scared the hell out of me.

  But nothing I saw stopped me wanting it.

  “Bedroom.” Both hands grasping my jacket, he pulled me with him as he walked backward down the hall, stopping occasionally to haul my jacket off or for me to unzip his and push it off his shoulders.

  Jackets hitting the floor were soon followed by the muffled thump of shoes kicked off and the clink of belt buckles colliding.

  I half stumbled against Daniel, half pushed him against the wall, unable to decide between pulling his shirt up and over his head and kissing him. Screwed both up, got my hands tangled in his shirt.

  “Here.” He laughed, the sound turning into a throaty growl that I had a hard job not echoing when he tugged his shirt up and off and dropped it where we stood. We’d left the house bundled up in shirts, jeans, jackets and restraint, checking most of those at the door on our return. The hallway, now carpeted with discarded clothes and self-control, led straight to the bedroom, but we still couldn’t wait. Those damn clothes had to come off now or fall away, burned by our skin into a pile of ashes at our feet.

  “The other time I…we…” Daniel’s words were all over the place, his hands all over me, and his breaths came in short, stuttering gasps. “It wasn’t enough.”

  I’d known all along what he wa
s getting at. Waited for him to say it.

  “Jesus, you have no idea how desperate I am to fuck you.”

  “Daniel.” I pulled back, frowned as I inclined my head, but he only gave me a second’s contemplation time before clasping my jaw in both hands and kissing me again.

  Breathless with wanting, he had to keep stopping to draw in oxygen, but lust abbreviated his shallow attempts at doing so. I saw it in his eyes. A flash, a momentary fuck it; I want you more than I want to draw breath.

  “Reece.”

  Who needs to breathe? Just kiss me. “Daniel.” I’m sure I was about to say something, but I just want to kiss you. “I—”

  There it was again, his tongue against mine, desperate, then gone as he broke off the kiss to breathe or utter a few words, gasping like a drowning man. “I want to—”

  “I know.”

  A frown played across his brow before desire made him forgetful of whatever had concerned him, and he shrugged. Kissed me. Again.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been wanted like this, and there was no way I was going to say no. Absolutely no chance of turning Daniel away when he was like this. He wanted to be inside me, and I wanted him to fuck me.

  Oh God. I wanted him to fuck me.

  We stumbled across the threshold into his bedroom, not even bothering to flick on the light. We knew where we were going, had walked this path a thousand times before, one of us sightless and walking backward, both distracted with wanting.

  Daniel went for my belt, and in the half-light filtering in from the hallway, I saw his hands shake. He bit his lip, trying to hide it, but the jingle of my belt buckle gave him away. He couldn’t hold himself steady. “You don’t have to… I mean, you can say no.”