At the words, Farrah’s smile slipped away.
Oliver silently cursed. “That’s not what I meant, baby.”
Farrah shook her head, trying to regain the light spirit of a moment before. “Of course not.” But it was the truth. He was literally dying because of her.
Farrah tilted her head down again, not wanting him to see her face or any emotions she was unable to hide.
“Damn it, I ruined everything, didn’t I?” Oliver muttered.
Farrah’s head snapped up again. “You ruined everything?”
Oliver was silent for a second. “Joint effort?” he said, as though he were offering a truce.
Farrah’s lips twitched.
“That’s better.” His thumb was there, suddenly, tracing Farrah’s lower lip.
“What do you…what has to…happen…to keep you from dying again?” Farrah asked.
She could hear Oliver’s heart rate increase. “Um…I just have to…come,” he said haltingly. “With you,” he amended quickly.
“Through intercourse or….”
“Well, I’d like it to be that way.”
Farrah could hear the smile in his tone, and she smiled back at him.
“But, no,” Oliver said. “It doesn’t have to be through actual sex.”
“So, I could just—” She moved her fingers back to his cock. “With my hand?”
Oliver’s breaths were ragged in a second’s time. “Yes.”
A few minutes. A man’s life saved. Why wouldn’t she just do it right now? Farrah worried that she hesitated. That she felt sorrow over a missed opportunity. That she would not get to have sex with this man. That she would leave right after.
She swallowed her hesitation and moved her hand, forcing his underwear down. She wrapped her fingers around him just beneath a tantalizing ridge at the head. She would do this. Set them both free.
“Farrah,” Oliver said suddenly. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “Wait.”
“Oliver?” a male voice called from the living room.
It took a moment for the voice to register with either of them, but as soon as it did, Farrah gasped, reaching for the blanket, desperate to cover her body. Oliver’s hands joined hers, jumbling together and creating more chaos.
“If you fucking come in here, I’ll tear your head off,” Oliver yelled to the next room. To her he whispered, “He can’t see you, baby. Everything’s okay. You can relax.”
At his words, she immediately stopped panicking. She loosened her fisted hold of the blanket, and Oliver smoothed it up and over her chest, tucking it beneath her arms. He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be right back, okay? Save my spot?”
Farrah’s heart was still beating erratically, but she nodded.
“That’s my girl.” Oliver left the bed. There was a rustle of cloth. A metallic jingle. Then he left. The door closed behind him with barely a sound.
Farrah covered her face with both of her hands, the ebb and flow of adrenaline making her shaky. What she had almost just done. What she had done. What had been interrupted. She was so conflicted over it all, feeling waves of emotion over each and every memory.
Oliver’s voice rose in the living room. Farrah frowned. She pushed the cover down and swung her feet out, finding her discarded clothes on the floor with her toes. She dressed quickly and padded over to the door.
When she opened it, she could hear the other man’s voice. It was soft and comforting. “I didn’t want to leave without trying to set things right.”
“Luke, there is no setting this right!” Oliver yelled. “I cannot be happy about you going off to your death, and you can’t ask me to be.”
The other man—Luke—sighed. “All right,” he said in the most sorrow-filled voice she’d ever heard. “I love you, brother. I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah, fuck you, Luke. And you’d better see me soon, because if they kill you, I’m going to track you down in whatever afterlife you end up in and kick your ass.” The end of Oliver’s tirade rose in volume and was punctuated by the very soft closing of the apartment door as Luke shut it behind him.
Luke was gone. And the last words Oliver had said to him would haunt them both.
“You go after him right this second,” Farrah ordered, her entire body shaking.
20
Oliver reeled around almost drunkenly, finding Farrah in the open doorway to their room. Her glorious hair was waving all around her, but her expression was pissed off as hell. Her tiny fists were clenched at her sides.
Just the sight of her calmed him down considerably. “Farrah,” he began.
“No.” She cut him off. “You do not say that! You do not say those things to people you love!”
Oliver pulled his head back, almost as though he were dodging a blow she’d thrown with words. He was still raging on the inside, though. “He is leaving us, Farrah,” Oliver yelled back.
“People leave!” she retorted immediately. “They leave all the time. What you do in response is completely up to you. You can react, like a belligerent child, or you can learn.” Farrah’s shoulders dropped. She covered her eyes with a shaky hand. “It did not sound like Luke was leaving you, Oliver,” she said wearily. “Sometimes people do what they have to do. We may not like it, but they do not always have a choice.”
“He had a choice,” Oliver said, wincing when his words sounded childish and unsure.
Farrah raised her head and pinned him with a glare so penetrating he wondered if she could see through him all the way to what he was feeling. “If you are sure, then fine. If you are not….”
I’m not sure. He knew it in an instant. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“Do not let him leave thinking you hate him,” she said. “You do not want him thinking of anything but what he is sent to do. No distractions.”
Double fuck. Without a word, Oliver turned on his heel and sprinted for the door. As soon as he hit the hallway, he bellowed Luke’s name, which was, it turned out, unnecessary as Luke was leaning against the wall opposite Oliver’s apartment. His head was down, but as Oliver’s shout rebounded through the tiled hallway, that rusty mop of hair went flying as Luke’s head snapped to attention.
Oliver cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. Oh, hell. “I—” Don’t be a pussy. He closed his eyes. “—love you, too, man,” he said quickly, spitting the words out. “Be careful. Stay focused. Come home.”
Oliver wasn’t quite looking at Luke, but he saw the man move, his boots stopping inches away. Luke grabbed Oliver in a rough hug, smacking his back so hard with both hands his lungs jostled.
“Thank you.” Without another word, Luke released him, turned around, and walked away.
Oliver stared at his back until he disappeared around the corner, wondering if he would ever see him again.
Am I never going to get my life back?
Oliver jolted. Wait a minute. Luke wasn’t part of Oliver’s life “before.” Before the fruit. Before imprisonment. Before Impulse-Pairing and dying over and over. Somehow, his friendship with Luke had infiltrated Oliver’s life story to the point that it was impossible to imagine a time when they didn’t have each other’s back.
Oliver was rocked. He wasn’t sure he wanted his old life back if it meant walking away from the relationships he’d forged during his most difficult times. And if he wasn’t sure of that, what the hell was his entire life’s purpose now?
He thought back to minutes before, when he’d been on the edge of being cured of this death curse forever and how—idiotically—he’d grabbed Farrah’s wrist and told her to wait.
Wait when he’d been an embarrassingly short amount of time from achieving his goal. Because, in some primitive part of his brain, he knew Farrah would leave right after, and he didn’t want that.
Oliver was sucking in loud and harried breaths, and he still felt like he was suffocating. He looked over his shoulder at the door to his apartment. She was in there, waiting for him. Would probably pick up right where they left off
if he asked her to.
He broke into a jog that turned into a dead run after only a few feet. He stormed through the main room and didn’t stop, not even when he arrived at the gym. He just jumped right onto a treadmill and kept going, dialing the speed up to fifteen miles per hour and escaping into the heavy thuds of his boots against the rubber belt.
He dimly noticed the two other people in the gym eye him warily before slowly backing out, as though escaping a dangerous animal.
What do I want? What do I want? What do I want?
The question turned into a rhythmic montage that coincided with each stride.
His left knee gave out, and he tripped, landing on the moving belt with first his knee and then his shoulder. The belt spit him out onto the ground, and he rolled over and looked up at the drop-tile ceiling, his vision dotting and the breath knocked out of him.
His diaphragm released its death grip on his lungs, and Oliver sucked in a hacking wheeze and blew it out with a muttered, “Shit.”
He raised up his left leg, grabbed his thigh with both hands, and pulled until he could examine his knee. Yep, a huge raspberry that stung like hell but was overshadowed by his stung pride. Without looking, he knew his shoulder would be in similar shape.
At least they would both heal before anyone else saw what an ass he’d made out of himself. He pushed himself up until he was sitting and shook his head, clearing some of the dots. He squinted up at the clock on the wall, and his eyes widened.
It was evening. He’d been running—at 15 miles per hour—for about five hours. No wonder his knee had given out. Even immortal, he’d driven his body beyond what it could take.
He made a mental note to let Abilene know what he’d been able to do so she could add it to her studies and then rose to his feet with a groan. He stumbled toward the showers, limping along the way: a reminder of his stupidity.
He shoved his clothes off and tossed them toward a bench in the locker room and then stood beneath the showerhead, turning on the water and not caring that it started off frigid cold.
Like magic, the combination of mind-exhausting physical activity and body-invigorating cold water began to give Oliver some perspective.
What was a goal without bumps along the way? It made victory even sweeter. Luke was awesome, and Oliver wanted his friendship in his life, even when he got his life back. But Farrah, who kept secrets and couldn’t be absolved of guilt—he didn’t need her in his new life. He needed her for his new life.
He canted his head to the side. Well, his old new life. Whatever.
No more waiting.
He shut off the water with a vicious twist, stormed over to his clothes, and pulled them back on over his wet body.
Time to end the curse.
21
He’d been gone for hours. She was…worried about him.
She more than anyone knew the pain of being separated from someone she loved. Farrah hoped that she was learning from it. That she had forgiven her mother for bringing a kidnapper into their lives. Surely, her search for her mother proved that. Did it not?
And this plan with Oliver—if they went through with it, she’d be able to provide a home for them both in order to make up for all of their lost years together. The past was the past.
Wasn’t it?
It had taken her way too long to figure out the television and which buttons to push to make it spring to life. Once she succeeded, however, she did not want to watch it. No matter how many buttons she pushed, she could not find any more Star Wars.
Someone had dropped off the items she’d ordered to make firni, and—heart in her throat—she had made it. By herself. Successfully.
Her chest had hurt too much for her to truly appreciate the accomplishment, however, and wasn’t that just sad. Discovering she had not lost a part of herself that had brought her joy should greatly overshadow any angst over her man being upset.
She groaned. Had she truly just referred to Oliver as her man? In her mind? That was more disturbing than referring to him as such with her mouth. The entrenched responses of the mind were harder to break.
Her stomach growled, and she prepared to ignore it before she remembered she was in a situation that did not require that reaction anymore. She had food. She could eat.
It was more confirmation that she was doing the right thing with Oliver. Emotions were secondary to the primary goals.
She could eat firni, but the idea of wading through memories attached to Oliver to do so nearly killed her appetite. She wandered through the kitchen, riffling through cabinets and trying to determine what supplies were suitable for cooking in this bachelor’s kitchen. Everything seemed to be in boxes, which provided a challenge as there was no way to smell or feel the identity of the items.
At last she touched something she recognized: a bag of rice. It was not an ideal meal, but it was far more than she was used to and was easy enough that she would be able to cook it without sight and while distracted.
She was just finishing when the door to the apartment opened. She knew by her body’s responses that it was Oliver walking through the living room.
She swallowed. Should she greet him? Welcome him home? That felt like a wife’s duty, and she was definitely not that. She opted for silence and focused on transferring the rice from pot to plate. His silence was growing oppressive. “Would you like some?” she blurted.
“Yes.”
She could feel him next to her, and goosebumps lit up over her chest, the air between them charged in a way that had become oh-so-familiar to her. She wordlessly made him a plate as well. Should she go to the table? He seemed unusually quiet. She didn’t imagine she could bear sitting silently at the table with him, so she just began to eat her plate of rice right there in the kitchen. From the scraping of fork against plate, she deduced that he was doing the same.
Expectation hung heavily in the air and made things between them tense, but Farrah couldn’t figure out why. It hadn’t been this awkward between them since the beginning when they were screaming in each other’s faces. The rice, which she knew she had flavored well, filled her mouth like flour paste, and she swallowed every bite with great effort. As soon as she eased the hunger pangs in her belly, she turned to the sink, rinsing her plate.
“You aren’t hungry anymore?” Oliver’s whispered question came from right behind her, startling her into dropping the plate into the sink.
She shook her head.
He pulled in a sharp breath. “Good.” And then, as though he’d been waiting only for that, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. With a gentle tug, he began leading her through the apartment.
They were headed toward the bedroom. Her stomach fluttered, and Farrah was not quite sure if it was from some sort of anticipation or nerves. She could think of only one reason why Oliver was taking her to the bedroom.
The time had come to make the decision.
They stopped just before the bed. Oliver sat down on it, the springs protesting, and then pulled her forward until she was standing between his spread legs. The insides of his thighs burnt the outsides of hers, and that flutter picked up speed.
Oliver held both of her hands; his thumbs drew lazy circles right above her wrists. “Have you thought any more about our agreement?”
She had. Ceaselessly. Now, with the heat from his inner thighs enfolding her, she knew exactly what she wanted. She nodded.
Oliver pulled in a loud breath and blew it out. “And?”
“I agree. I think I have always agreed,” she admitted in a whisper. “But you wanted more time—”
“I—” He broke off with a chuckle. “I didn’t want more time, baby. Trust me, I’ve had plenty of time.”
The goosebumps returned with a vengeance. Were they going to do this? “So….”
“You know that we don’t have to sleep together. We can do whatever you feel comfortable with,” Oliver said in a rush. “It can be over quickly, and we can both get our lives back.”
In th
e stunned silence following his harried words, Oliver cursed beneath his breath, and she couldn’t help but think he hadn’t meant to say that and immediately regretted it.
Her lips twitched. God help her, she did not even consider his lesser offer. “You said you preferred intercourse.”
“I do,” he said slowly.
“I do as well.” She supposed. She did not actually know, but she did know she wanted to do this.
“I was not expecting that.” A ragged breath. “I mean, I was hoping—”
Farrah felt her cheeks heat up as she waited for him to move. To touch her. Something. But he didn’t. Farrah frowned. Why was he hesitating again?
She released one of her hands from his grip, and, reaching forward, found his cheek with her fingertips. She traced along the edge of his cheekbone and wove her fingers into his hair. “Oliver?”
He groaned long and low, and in the next instant, he griped her by her upper arms and swung her around. She landed on her back on the mattress so hard she would have bounced, but Oliver spread himself out on top of her, pushing her further into the bed.
The slight disorientation from the quick movement was replaced by liquid heat from the weight of his body. Delicious. He was so heavy, and every place his body touched hers licked with fire. His chest pressed her breasts; his stomach covered hers. His hips were between her thighs—thighs she spread even wider on instinct, wanting him as close to her as possible.
His hard cock—she barely hesitated as she thought of the word this time—pressed right into her, rubbing her in a place that shot beams of pleasure through her entire body.
She gasped and clutched his shoulders, her nails digging through the shirt he wore. His rough cheek scraped against her collarbone, and she craned her head to the side, begging him the only way she knew how to continue scraping her skin with the wonderful texture of his day-old beard.
He followed her urging like magic, and the flick of something hot and wet in the hollow of her throat wrenched a moan from her that was embarrassingly loud.
Of Blind Fate (Operation: Middle of the Garden Book 5) Page 16
