by Julie Kriss
“Next question.”
She looked at her phone. “Um, what’s the new thing Okada is working on?”
“No one knows,” I said. “It’s been kept so far under wraps, even my contacts can’t tell. And I know a lot of hackers. All I have are theories.”
Now she looked curious. “What do you think it is?”
I scrubbed a hand through my damp hair. “Well, Okada never does any press, but one of my contacts found out that Okada’s mother died of cancer a year ago. He wrote the aviation program after taking a flight that had to get rerouted because of an error, so he tends to invent things he has personal experience with. There was no coverage of his mother’s death at all, so it’s personal to him. I think whatever he’s doing next has something to do with cancer treatment.”
Ava blinked. “So you think your nerd brother might actually be working on curing cancer.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a theory.” I walked to the sofa and sat down next to her. I didn’t miss noticing how her gaze stuck to me like glue as I walked, since I was only wearing a towel. We’d had sex just this morning, and Ava already looked like a hungry woman being shown a steak.
She lifted her feet, making room for me as I sat down. “Okay,” she said, sitting up and putting down her phone. “If you’re going to meet the man curing cancer, you should definitely cut your hair.”
“No.”
She got on her knees and moved closer to me. Her gaze dropped to my chest, my shoulders, and she made it move back up to my face. “How can I convince you?”
“You can’t.”
“I can.” She swung a leg over and landed in my lap, her hands on my shoulders. “I can convince you of anything, Dane Scotland.” She leaned in close to my ear, so close I could smell the sweet scent of her skin. “I’m not wearing any underwear,” she whispered.
And just like that, my pulse sped up. This was the effect she had on me. I may be thirty-four, but in the past three days I’d outdone even my most vigorous sessions as a newly devirginized twenty-three-year-old. Apparently, it was all about motivation.
Ava lowered her ass—bare under the T-shirt—onto my thighs, rubbing her bare skin over the towel. Undoubtedly she could feel me getting hard under there, since by now she’d felt it enough times. “Cut your hair,” she said again. “I could call Tyrell and he’d take you if I begged him. He’s the best in town.”
“You like the long hair,” I said, putting my hands on her waist over the tee and running them over her curves. “Admit it. You think it’s sexy. You always put your hands in it when I fuck you.” I moved my hands to her belly. “Besides, you’re not going to beg anyone but me.”
“You’re an animal,” she said, and I knew she intended it to sound critical. Instead, she sounded turned on.
This was how it was with us: a few words and we were ready to go again. I moved my hands up and cupped her breasts over the tee, covering up the X-Men graphic. “Your turn for a quiz,” I said. “Name one of the X-Men. No looking and cheating.”
She tried to look annoyed, but it wasn’t working. Her eyes were going hazy with lust as I cupped her. Ava’s tits were her kryptonite—which was a coincidence, because they were also mine. “Um,” she said, the word coming out slowly and sounding like porn. “Claw-hand guy.”
“Close,” I said, trying not to laugh at her description of Wolverine. “Who else?”
“Um… there’s a blue guy and a guy who goes really fast. I win.” She lifted her perfect ass, reached down, and yanked my towel open.
Four hours. This was over in four hours. The thought hurt, an ache deep in my chest. “Let’s go out tonight,” I said.
Ava shook her head, rubbing her pussy deliciously up the length of my cock. “The meeting.”
“Fuck the meeting. I’ll stand him up.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said, distracted because I was moving my hands again, rubbing her breasts and then dipping my hands under the T-shirt. “Everything will be—oh, do that.”
I was stroking her pussy now, moving my fingertips over it. My voice was choked when I spoke because I wanted her so bad. “Do what?”
“That.” She squirmed. “Do more, Dane. More.”
“How much?” Though I already knew the answer.
“All of it.”
So I did. I put my hands on her hips and moved her onto my cock, and she sunk down with a moan. I did it because I couldn’t stand to be without her for another second. I did it because I would do anything she fucking asked, and she had no idea.
She moved her hips, tangling her hands in my hair like she always did, and I already knew I was going to lose her. Somehow I knew. This was a fantasy, Ava and me holed up in my penthouse with the world far away. The real world was messy. Ava was messy, and so was I. In the real world, Ava was going to panic, and then she was going to run.
I pulled her down to me and kissed her deep as I flexed my hips, making her gasp. “Say you’re mine,” I said, knowing it was futile but trying anyway.
“Nice try, Dane Scotland,” she said, and her eyes closed in bliss as I moved again. “How do you do that? It feels so good.”
“Say it,” I said again.
“It’s like some kind of black magic or something.” She arched her back, lost in the sensation, and I took a second to admire the view. It was pretty gratifying, especially for my ego. “We shouldn’t be doing this at all, and yet you’re about to make me come. Again.”
“I’m good at it,” I said.
Ava was gasping, but she still had to one-up me. “That’s because… I taught you. Don’t stop.”
I didn’t. Because she asked me. I stroked her until she came, and then I came. Then, even though it was the middle of the day, we went to bed.
When I woke up, the bed was empty. So was my penthouse. Ava was gone.
She’d left a note on my kitchen counter, written on a torn piece of paper. It said only four words: Sorry. I need time.
I stared at those four words for a long moment, feeling them go through me. Sink into me. Become part of me. I knew that her mother had damaged her, that life had damaged her, that she couldn’t always control her reactions to things. I knew that she was trying to defend herself because everything hurt too much. I knew she had to put up walls. I knew she’d do this, but it didn’t hurt any less.
I looked around: at the mussed sofa, the remnants of the coffee on the counter, the rack of suits hanging pristinely next to my desk, at the boxes and bags that were the evidence Ava had been here. That even for a little while she’d been in my space, turning everything crazy and messing me up.
I picked up my phone, pulled up her number, and sent her a single text.
Then I searched the name she’d said: Tyrell. He had some kind of top secret ultra-private phone number, but I hacked it in less than four minutes. When he answered I said, “My name is Dane Scotland, and I need a haircut.”
The magic hour was over, and it was time for real life to start again.
Nineteen
Ava
* * *
I slept on the entire flight from Chicago to New York, passed out as if I hadn’t slept in days. It was some kind of crazy exhaustion, because when I woke up we were landing and I felt tears in the back of my throat. Don’t have a nervous breakdown now, I told myself. Keep it together, girl. You’ve got this.
I was wearing a white drapey top, the tightest jeans on the planet, and black stilettos. My hair was tied in a messy bun on the top of my head and I’d done a proper smoky eye with my makeup, layering the dark and black tones to look dramatic, because I felt dramatic. Like a woman who has just left her crazy mother and three days of sex with the best man in the world, a man who she’s maybe dumped, in order to go back to her failed career and wonder if she’s pregnant. That kind of dramatic.
It was a great look, but it was not made for crying. I wasn’t allowed. I swallowed the lump in my throat and put on my biggest sunglasses as I dragged my bags out of the airport.
Why did you leave, Ava?
“I had to,” I said out loud as I stood at the taxi stand. What was I supposed to do, stay in Dane’s penthouse for the rest of my life? Move to Chicago? I hated that city. The only thing I liked in it was Dane.
What were Dane and I supposed to do? Play house? Be a power couple? He was a multimillionaire, and I was broke. He was a geek and I loved fashion. We could barely even agree on a restaurant when we weren’t in bed. Besides which, there was the small problem of the fact that he was my brother’s business partner and no one knew about us. I had the feeling that when Aidan found out—he’d probably find out, if not from Dane then because I was a terrible liar—he’d be angry. My mother had rewritten me out of existence, and Aidan was the only family I had. Now he’d be angry at me, too.
But even though those were big things, they weren’t the main thing. The main thing was that I was barely holding on from one breath to the next. I felt cracked and jagged, lost. Weak. The three days of sex had been a nice vacation from my life, but that was all it was. I couldn’t be with Dane, couldn’t even think about it, while I was like this. Part of me really, really wanted to stay in that penthouse and let Dane take care of everything so I could stop making my own decisions. It would be so easy to let him take care of me. Pay my bills. Solve my problems. Take over.
But if I did that, I’d lose myself. Maybe I wasn’t doing the best job of managing my life, but it was still my life. I’d built it from nothing, and I’d never taken any charity. I’d always made my own decisions, even if they were the wrong ones. If my life needed a change, it had to be me that changed it.
I just had to figure out what that change was. And while I did that, I had to put space between me and Dane.
I could probably have handled it better—a goodbye note was a little rough. Maybe he’d forgive me and maybe he wouldn’t. I’d have to take that risk.
My heart stuttered in my chest as I thought about the first change I’d already made. A baby. I hadn’t planned that, and I couldn’t explain it, except that once I was in bed with Dane at last, it felt right. I was thirty, and even though it made me a walking cliché, the thought of having a baby… it made me weak in the knees. All kinds of things bubbled up with the possibility. My own mother, who had done such a terrible job; my desire to be the mother I’d always wanted to be; the feeling that I was still unfinished, that there was more I could do in life. And if I was going to have a baby, the father would be Dane. He was the only candidate I’d consider. After what we’d been through, losing a baby years ago, there was no one else it could be.
He’d known exactly what we were doing, what we were risking. And he’d agreed.
Which meant that if there was a baby, I’d have to have some kind of relationship with him.
I’d think about that later. In the meantime I took the train to Brooklyn, feeling exhausted even though I’d slept on the plane. Feeling a deep ache somewhere inside me that throbbed and never quite went away. It was hurt. I was used to hurt—I’d been dumped, told I was stupid and fat, ghosted, cheated on more times than I could count. But this hurt was different. This felt a lot like I was missing Dane, and part of me wanted to turn around and go back to him. But it was too late now.
I took the rundown elevator in my building to the fourth floor and rolled my suitcase down the hall, digging out my keys. I could hear the TV in the apartment, and I sighed inwardly. Living with a roommate was part of the reality I was going back to. The luxurious quiet at the Langham was a thing of the past. Now my life would be full of TV shows I didn’t want to watch, noisy sex in the next bedroom, and someone else’s mess in the kitchen.
I opened the door and found my roommate, Tara, sitting on the couch with her boyfriend Rob, watching an episode of House Hunters. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, and Rob suddenly looked like someone had shoved a stick up his ass. “Oh my God,” Tara said. “You’re home.”
I frowned at her, pulling my suitcase through the doorway. “Of course I’m home. I live here, remember?”
“Um.” Tara and Rob exchanged a look that looked a lot like panic as Tara tried to form words. “You didn’t, I mean, it seemed like… we thought you moved to Chicago?”
I straightened my sore back and stared at her. “Moved? Of course I didn’t move. All of my stuff is still here.”
“I know,” Tara said. “But you were going to do some big assignment for your rich brother, and he was sending you to Chicago. We just figured…” She glanced at Rob again, and they both shrugged. “We just figured you weren’t coming back.”
“I mean, your brother has all that money,” Rob added, sounding a little defensive now. “Why would you come back here?”
I pulled off my sunglasses. Objectively, that was a good question. I’d spent this morning in a luxury penthouse, with the hottest man on the planet giving me orgasm after orgasm. And I’d opted to leave and come back here to this shoebox that smelled like old ramen. It wasn’t something a sane woman would do. But, as it happened, it was something I would do.
“I live here,” I said again. “I wouldn’t move out without telling you.”
“It’s totally cool if you did,” Tara said too quickly. “I mean, if you get an opportunity, you take it, right? I’d totally understand.”
“What are you getting at?” There was definitely something going on. “You’re trying to tell me something, so just spit it out.”
Tara and Rob looked at each other again. This was getting old fast. Luckily Rob got up the courage and finally said, “I took over your room.”
“You moved in?” I looked back and forth between them. Tara looked guilty and Rob looked annoyed, which was his way of looking guilty. “Where’s my stuff?”
Tara pointed. Against the wall was a stack of boxes and a couple of full garbage bags. My life, dumped in a pile.
“You can’t just kick me out,” I said.
“Rob already paid half the rent for next month,” Tara replied, as if this was an answer.
“You didn’t say you wanted him to move in!” I said to her. “Just last month you were thinking of dumping him because he never gives you oral.”
“What?” Rob said. His cheekbones went red. “I do it. I just have to be in the mood, that’s all.”
“Well, you’ve been in the mood exactly once in the past three months,” I said. “I know, because I’ve had to hear about it. But apparently you get to kick me out of my room even though you haven’t stepped up your game.”
“Ava!” Tara looked embarrassed. “It’s fine,” she said to Rob. “Totally fine.”
“I have to be in the mood,” Rob argued. “Really. That isn’t a lie or anything.”
“Hello?” I waved at them. “I’m homeless over here. Are you going to move out of my room?”
“No way,” Rob said. “I paid rent and I gave up my old place. I live here now, too.”
Tara put a hand over her eyes. “Oh my God, this is so complicated.”
“Complicated how?” I said. “When I left here a week ago, I lived here. I paid rent and had a room to keep my things in. Honestly, it was really simple.”
“She told me I could move in,” Rob said. “She said it was fine.”
“Ugh, I hate confrontation,” Tara said. “This whole thing is stressing me out.”
I closed my eyes and let out a breath. The universe was telling me something, right? Hadn’t I just got off a plane while thinking about changing my life? I hated living here anyway. The problem was that I had nowhere else to go.
“Fine,” I said. “Can I at least sleep on the sofa for a couple of nights until I figure out where to go?”
They said I could, and when I glared at them, waiting, they turned the TV off and left the room, going into Tara’s room and closing the door behind them. I wasn’t sure why Rob needed his own room since whenever he was here he spent most of his time banging Tara, loudly and apparently not very skillfully. My memory had a hot flashback of Dane and his genius oral skil
ls, and then I pushed the image away as I sat on the sofa and kicked my heels off of my aching feet.
I needed somewhere to live, stat. I’d had no phone calls for work since Jared had called me to be the fill-in on the Bergdorf shoot I should have been hired for in the first place.
I had the check Aidan had given me. He’d called it an advance for expenses, but even with all of the clothes I’d bought Dane, it was too much money. No doubt my rich brother had padded his estimate of how much I’d spend—that sounded like a sneaky way of giving me money. Normally I’d be offended, but I was too tired now. I’d use the money, and I’d have to ask him for the rest of my fee now that the job was done. Which meant talking to my brother after spending three days in bed with his best friend.
Oh, and I couldn’t have a drink because there was a good chance I was pregnant.
I sighed and pulled out my phone. I’d powered it off when I got on the plane, and now I powered it on again. There was a text from Aidan: Call me and tell me how it went in Chicago.
And there was another text, this one from Dane. No anger or recrimination, no emotion at all. Just a street address and then a jumble of numbers.
I squinted at the text. What kind of nerd message was this? Did he think I was going to do some kind of math? And then I remembered.
Me, trimming Dane’s beard. Standing between his knees, trying not to admit how much I liked being close to him. Talking about why I liked the fashion business. Dane telling me about the house he’d bought on an impulse after only seeing a few pictures. A house on Long Island.
I need time, I’d written in my note to him. And instead of arguing with me, of telling me he knew better than I did, he’d replied with the address to his beach house. And the numbers were the security code for the front door.
“Damn it,” I said, because two tears had spilled over onto my cheeks before I could stop them. “Dane, you ruined my smoky eye.”
I sniffed. Fuck it. I’d go to Long Island. It was better than sleeping on this sofa, and it would only be for a few days while I got my things together. I’d repay Dane somehow. This would just be a temporary loan while I needed a place to stay.
