Hate to Want You

by Alisha Rai

  Her step faltered. To cover her reaction, she went to the sink and washed her hands. The it was a tattoo. He meant where did she want to tattoo him on his body, not where did she want to have wild animal sex. “Usually the customer decides that.”

  Not in this case. Livvy knew exactly what she’d put on him, and where. She’d scribbled it on a cocktail napkin years ago, around three a.m., when he’d been sleeping soundly next to her, his naked back bared.

  She’d like to say she’d thrown that napkin away, that she hadn’t visualized that design getting more elaborate and perfect, but that would be a complete lie.

  It was art, she told herself defensively. She didn’t throw away any of her designs.

  She dried her hands and turned to catch him undoing the right cuff of his shirt. Ohhh, she liked watching him do that too. Usually by the time he was done unfastening his tie and the cuffs, she was in a frenzy of lust. Not today, though. Today she’d be all adult and shit. In full command of herself.

  Nicholas rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, baring his muscular forearm, and rested it on the arm of the chair. She hooked her stool with her ankle and shoved it closer so she could sit next to him, contemplating his arm like it held all the secrets of the universe.

  She could do it. She could totally touch him and control her pesky base desires. Livvy pressed her fingers against the skin of his wrist.

  Her stomach clenched. Okay, maybe she couldn’t. “There?”

  “Fine.”

  She slid her fingers higher, up to the middle of his forearm, because those base desires demanded to be fed a nibble of pleasure. His late mother had been Greek, and his heritage was apparent in the olive tone in his skin. She swallowed. “Or here?”

  He cleared his throat. His hand had become a fist, she noted. “Whatever you want.”

  “What am I putting on you?”

  He released his fist, and his arm jumped. “I told you. You decide.”

  Livvy slid her finger down again, and that damn muscle responded. She kept her head bent. “You’re permanently altering your body,” she began, about to launch into the speech she’d had to give to intoxicated college students for the past year in Boston.

  “I don’t care.”

  Lies. He cared about his body. He treated it like a goddamn temple. Yet another thing for him to control. “Oh, goodie. I haven’t done any naked women in a while.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  Always so confident. “How do you know?”

  “I know you.”

  The three words had her swallowing around the lump in her throat. No, he didn’t really know her. She was hardly the same pigtailed kid who’d tagged along behind him and Paul, eager to play with them. Or the young woman he’d swept off her feet, whose virginity he’d taken in a luxurious hotel room a few towns over.

  Everything had seemed so easy then. Perfect. They’d been a magical couple, young wealthy royalty destined to unite two powerful families.

  Then it had been over.

  “You don’t know shit,” she managed, then grabbed a Sharpie from her workbench.

  He was silent for a bit. “You’re probably right.”

  She uncapped the green Sharpie and bent over his arm. A blank canvas. A tingle of excitement ran through her, the same tingle any artist would feel if they’d theoretically been given carte blanche.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I draw my designs first,” she lied. She tended to freehand most of her work, unless her client wanted to see it in advance. Then she used transfer paper, like a temporary tattoo.

  There was no way she was actually piercing Nicholas’s virgin skin with a needle, though. Otherwise she would have prepped the area properly by shaving and cleaning it.

  “Naked lady it is,” she said lightly, and bent her head to draw a woman’s head on his inner wrist, making it deliberately big.

  She didn’t have to steady him—he was unmoving—but she kept her finger right on his pulse. Its regular tempo reminded her of all the times they’d lain curled up around each other, their heartbeats synchronized. Nothing frazzled him, not even his childhood sweetheart and former lover putting permanent marks on him.

  Livvy bit her inner cheek when she sketched in huge boobs, waiting for his yelp of outrage. When she glanced up, though, his eyes were shut, head tilted back, thick lashes flaring against his cheeks. It wasn’t fair for a man to have eyelashes like that when she had to wage a war with her mascara brush every morning to turn her short lashes into any kind of flirtatious arcs.

  Was there anything she didn’t like about his face? Nope. It wasn’t perfect, but she lusted after all of it, from his fierce eyebrows to his twice broken nose to his high cheekbones to those aforementioned lashes. She wanted to drown in his eyes and be revived by his cruel lips.

  She drew the female’s legs coyly bent to preserve some modesty—Livvy would happily draw a vagina, but she wasn’t sure what level of detail she could manage in a hasty doodle on an arm, and she hated to half-ass a vagina—and continued sneaking peeks up at the man. There were new lines on his forehead and around his mouth, like he frowned a lot more now. He was thirty-three, hardly ancient, but silver threaded through the hair at his temples.

  “Why are you really in town?”

  She concentrated harder on her dumb drawing than she needed to. “My mom broke her hip. Where do you think I’d be?”

  At his silence, she looked up. His lips were compressed tight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. How is Tani?”

  At least he could say her name. “She’ll be fine. She just needs someone.”

  Not entirely true. Tani wasn’t totally alone. She lived with her sister-in-law, and she had other people who could look out for her.

  But Livvy wanted Tani to need her.

  Livvy had managed to avoid spending more than twenty-four consecutive hours in this town or in her mother’s company for longer than a decade, since her beloved father had died and everything had come crashing down around her. Her self-imposed exile had felt like protection back then. Not so much anymore.

  In a fit of whimsy, Livvy added two large wings to the back of the voluptuous female.

  “Did your brother come back too?”

  Her hand jerked at the bite in the words, the first real, non-lusty emotion Nicholas had clearly betrayed.

  She knew Nicholas probably had ten thousand unresolved feelings toward her late father but she didn’t really think he actively hated her or her mother. She didn’t even think he’d despised Paul, though Paul had been eaten up with bitterness toward anyone named Chandler. Nicholas probably considered them collateral damage in the sequence of events that had happened after the tragedy, people who were simply too painful to be around or think about.

  But her twin? Yeah, the guy who’d been arrested for burning down the very first Chandler’s was a pretty easy target for his anger. “No,” she said shortly.

  There was a beat of silence. “I’m happy to hear she’s okay.”

  “Are you?”

  Nicholas shifted, his heavy thigh brushing against hers. She scooted back a hair. Those thighs were dangerous. “Of course I am.”

  She hummed, wishing she’d kept the snarky question back. Move on. Ten years ago, she’d run away instead of staying in the dramatic role of spurned lover in this feud. She wasn’t about to start now.

  “Of course I am,” he repeated more forcefully. “I wouldn’t wish her ill.”

  She finished the outline of the woman’s legs and leaned back on her stool. “Yeah. Fine.”

  “You can believe me or not, Livvy.” His voice was downright frigid now. “I’m not a monster.”

  “My family would say differently.” She roughly capped the Sharpie, rose to her feet, and threw it on her worktable.

  “What would you say?”

  I would say I’ve never been able to hate you the way I should. “I’d say nothing.”

  His eyes dropped to her hands, and she realized she was wri
nging them. She immediately turned to her table and started to arrange and rearrange the few supplies she kept out. Though she was messy in the rest of her life, she was a neat freak at work.

  Leather creaked behind her as Nicholas came to his feet. She didn’t hear him walking toward her, but she could sense his body behind her. “Livvy—”

  “I do actually have a lot to do,” she interrupted him. “You can go.”

  “I’m not done talking to you.”

  “Well, I’m done talking to you.”

  Silence, for a long moment. “You didn’t finish my tattoo.”

  She closed her eyes at the ridiculous statement. “For fuck’s sake. There’s not going to be any tattoo.” He’d won this round of chicken. He’d won all the rounds of chicken, because she was the ultimate chicken, okay? Cluck, cluck. “We don’t have anything more to talk about. I’m only here for a month, tops, until my mom’s self-sufficient again. You can go back to your peaceful life and—” She broke off with a gasp when he grasped her shoulders and whirled her around.

  Whoa.

  He crowded her, big hands planted on the table on either side of her hips. Metal hit her ass, and his body pressed flush against her front. He should have looked ridiculous with the pinup fairy doodled on his arm, but it didn’t detract from his attractiveness. He was too close, too big, too . . . him.

  His chest was hard, and beneath her top, her nipples tightened with the friction. Without conscious thought, her legs widened, making space for him. Their clothes did nothing to disguise the thick bulge of his penis. It pressed tantalizingly against her softening core.

  “You think I can have peace with you here?”

  His rough whisper blew over her senses and her ear. Her head fell back submissively, baring her throat. “Yes.”

  His head lowered, lips hovering over the arch of her neck. “Why didn’t you text me this year?” he asked.

  She should have expected that question, as awkward as it was. Black and white. She’d ruined a precious pattern in his ordered brain.

  She could bullshit him, but he’d only poke and poke. So she’d give him a snippet of truth. Enough to satisfy him. “I turned thirty.”

  “I know how old you are.”

  “Ten years.” She licked her lips, wishing he was the one licking them. “It would have made it an even decade since we first started meeting like that.” He’d called it quits with their relationship two months shy of her twentieth birthday, two weeks after the accident that had left them both grieving a parent, a day after his dad had swindled her mother out of her half of the C&O.

  The threads that made up the timeline of their complicated past were basically a tangled knot.

  I can’t do this anymore. It’s impossible for us to be together now, Nicholas had told her, stony-faced.

  “I figured ten years is long enough for us to get each other out of our systems.” Ten years is long enough for me to be hung up on a man who hates to want me. Who I can’t seem to hate enough to stop wanting.

  He lifted his head. “Did it work? Am I out of your system?”

  “Am I out of yours?” she countered.

  Instead of responding, his hand left the table and skimmed over her hip, barely touching her. Long, strong fingers pressed against the strip of flesh bared between her pants and her bustier. Unable to stop herself, she gave one shimmy of her hips, gasping at the burst of pleasure that ran through her as his cock dragged over her clit.

  You were going to stop, she thought, with no small amount of despair. Don’t do this to yourself. This isn’t healthy.

  She took his lust because it was all she could have of him. She knew how this would end, and still, part of her brain wanted it.

  “How is it still like this?” he muttered, incredulous. His index finger inched under her top, and she ground up against him again, their breaths coming faster. His head lowered, and she lifted hers, waiting for him to kiss her. Needing something to hold on to, she clasped his forearms, one bare, the other still covered by his shirt.

  The second her skin touched his, he jerked like he’d been scalded. Nicholas straightened, separating their bodies so fast she had to grab the table for balance. “No. I can’t.”

  What?

  No.

  “I can’t do this.” He took a giant step away. “We can’t do this.”

  She was cold. Colder than she’d been in a while. “I’m not the one who sought you out.”

  “I know.” He ran his hand through his ruthlessly clipped hair. She bet those thick brown strands never disobeyed him. Even in his agitation, they only appeared slightly mussed. “But this isn’t what I came here for.”

  “Could have fooled me.” She lifted a shoulder, pretending a blasé attitude she didn’t feel. “You still clearly want me.” And as much as she knew she shouldn’t be happy about that, she couldn’t prevent a trickle of joy.

  His head moved slowly from side to side. “I’m seeing someone.”

  She stared at him, the words pushing through her brain one by one. They made no sense at first. Her body was still clamoring for attention and hungry for his touch.

  Then, unfortunately, comprehension came. And with it, a new kind of pain. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged.

  She’d never assumed he was celibate when they were apart. She wasn’t.

  She was commitment shy. She didn’t want to be tied down. A relationship would make her nomadic lifestyle difficult.

  Those were the things she’d told herself for why she only sought out casual hookups with other men over the years, until even those lost interest.

  The real, dysfunctional, fucked-up reason? It was hard to maintain a relationship when half your attention was on the few hours you might steal in another person’s arms.

  When they were together, they’d both been single. That had been part of the agreement, set that first time. One night. No one will know.

  Don’t bother coming if you’re with someone.

  Nausea roiled through her stomach. She hadn’t contacted him because she’d decided she needed to move on with her life. Funny how she hadn’t really thought about how that meant he’d be moving on too.

  She had to clear her throat twice to speak. “Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.”

  “Livvy—”

  “It’s cool.” She had to find another word. “Great. Awesome.” No, that was going too far. “Like I said, I’ll be leaving soon.” She imagined the world beyond this shop. She wished she felt excitement instead of weariness at the thought of setting out into it again. “Forget I’m here. Don’t get any tattoos.”

  Livvy couldn’t watch as he moved away after a pregnant pause and gathered his jacket, or when he hesitated at that curtain. “It’s not serious. Me and her.”

  The burst of joy she felt at that news terrified her, second only to the fear that she didn’t know if it would matter if Nicholas was serious about this mysterious woman. Even if he told her he was engaged and then opened his arms to her, would she be able to resist him? “Don’t care. None of my business. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  The blood in her veins turned to ice. Oh God. No. She couldn’t let him see how not fine she was.

  All those years ago, she’d lost her father to death, her mother to grief, her brothers to hate. And then she’d lost him. It had been her one measure of solace, when he’d smashed her already broken heart into smithereens, that he hadn’t known the extent to which she hadn’t been fine. Every year she put all her energy into proving to him how fine she was.

  Get him out. She had to swallow twice to speak, and finally met his gaze across the floor of the shop. “I’m fine. And you need to leave.”

  “I—”

  “You need to leave,” she said, with a calm she didn’t feel. But if messy anger couldn’t chase him out, calm was the only thing that would appeal to logical Nicholas. “Because the longer you stay, the more likely it is that someone will spot your car. And we both know you don’t
want to be seen with the daughter of the man who was responsible for your mother’s death.”

  Chapter 3

  NICHOLAS RAN his fingers over the curves of her breasts, along the delicate arch of her back, down her crossed legs.

  Then he reminded himself he was fondling a fucking doodle on his arm.

  He snatched his hand away, grateful the other occupants in the boardroom were too busy arguing to notice him stroking his shirtsleeve. Over the past three days, he’d picked up a washcloth no less than a dozen times, determined to eradicate the ridiculous naked fairy Livvy had drawn on him. Instead, he’d done his best to preserve the fading drawing. Last night, he’d even found himself absentmindedly tracing it as he closed his eyes and pretended he was back in that chair, calm as she ran her small hands over him.

  It had been a tiny respite. He hadn’t had calm moments like that in a long time with a woman, and especially not with her. He hadn’t even realized he’d been missing that sort of intimacy until he’d had the barest taste of it.

  Maybe you can pretend to have it with your pretend girlfriend, dumbass.

  Nicholas picked up his fork and moved the lettuce around in his barely eaten salad. Masculine voices were gaining in volume around him, which meant he needed to forget Livvy and his past, and focus on the present.

  Easier said than done.

  Talking’s not usually what we do when we’re together. She was right. Aside from gasps and filthy words, they hadn’t truly spoken in a decade. Had he really thought he could calmly ask her about her plans and they could both go on their ways? A fool, that’s what he was.

  From the second he’d walked in the door, his brain had taken a backseat to his impulses. She’d poked, he’d prodded. She’d demanded, and he’d reacted.

  Reacted in probably the dumbest, most immature way when he realized how close he was to ripping off their clothes and fucking her on that rickety table. His only consolation was not giving his imaginary girlfriend a name or backstory, and that was a thin consolation.

  He cringed inwardly. It wasn’t his finest moment, and not only because it was the sort of thing a high school boy might do.