by S. L. Naeole
At least you get to be single Auntie Ria again! Think of all the cats!
The sound of a door opening pulled me out of my thoughts. I turned in my seat and held my breath at the sight of Michael in a lilac shirt and silvery gray slacks. His hair was damp and slicked back, his jaw shadowed by the overnight beginnings of a beard. Around his neck sat a silver tie that flashed white when he moved. His body moved with such controlled fluidity that for the first time I understood why women threw themselves at him with only a glance. He moved the way he seduced, with a deliberateness that told you there was no avoiding what was going to happen.
“I was wondering where you went,” he said as he approached me.
Standing, I moved around the counter—and away from him—to reach the coffee pot. Its hissing gurgle announced that the brew was ready, and I needed something to distract me with him standing so close. Grabbing a stained and chipped mug from the little rack that sat beside the pot, I poured some of the dark liquid in before adding sugar and a long pour of the powdered creamer. Taking a spoon that sat in a cup beside the mug rack, I stirred the drink slowly, deliberately, tasting the spoon before nodding in satisfaction and tossing the used utensil into the sink.
Bringing the mug to my lips, I gently breathed in a spray of the sweet, creamy brew, my back still turned to Mal. I knew that he’d think I was being rude, or avoiding him, or both. And he’d be right on both accounts. I was being rude—he had locked me out of my own bathroom, after all—and I was avoiding him. Truth was, I didn’t want to face him and ask him questions that I wasn’t sure I actually wanted the answers to.
More than that, I didn’t want him to think I was being overly sensitive or overanalyzing things, overthinking his actions, because even now, as I stared at a slight crack in the wood of the butcher block countertop, I knew that that’s what I was doing. It was my job to break a painting down to its finest detail, to wheedle out everything that was wrong. And I had just done that with whatever this was I had with Mal.
“Sweetheart, did I do something wrong?”
I jolted at the sound of his voice so close to me. The coffee in my mug did not like that and splashed over onto my hand, trickling into the cast and burning my palm. “Shit,” I hissed as I slammed the mug onto the counter before leaping back at the resulting splatter.
Moving to stick my hand under the sink faucet, I shoved Mal aside and then stopped when I realized I couldn’t wash the coffee out. Instead, I turned to head to the fridge and found my way blocked by the massive bulk of Mal’s chest. “You’re in my way,” I said flatly, waiting for him to take the hint and move.
But this was Mal. There was only one place he’d ever relinquish control and power and it wasn’t in the kitchen. Instead, he moved closer and placed his hands on either side of my waist. Then he lifted, picking me up as if I weighed nothing, and placed me on the kitchen island. “Mal, I’m not—”
“Shh,” he scolded before grabbing a dishtowel that sat folded beside the sink and turning to the fridge. He wrapped the towel around his hand and then pushed the lever that dispensed the ice water from the spout in the door. I watched the liquid trickle onto the towel, then continued to stare as he moved to the ice dispenser and pushed the lever until his palm was covered in crushed slivers of frozen water.
Stepping away from the fridge, he pulled the dishtowel off his hand and then folded it over before taking it and placing it against my fingers. I hissed at the sting of ice meeting fire, and then bit back a groan when his heat trickled into me from the touch his bare skin on mine. How the hell could a man do this to a woman? How could he make me so confused and angry one minute, and then turn me into a puddle of endless want the next?
“Your jacket is in my closet,” I said for no reason other than to hide the fact that I could hear him breathing, and that it in no way matched the pattern of my own quick in-and-out puffs.
“I saw that,” he mused. His eyes roved my body, still nothing but cool orbs of unfeeling that they’d been when he’d left me on my bed. “I like the dress,” he told me in the same way you’d say you liked the color of blue ink. It was toneless, his expression unreadable. And even as I recognized this, I could see how uncomfortable he was around me.
That’s what confirmed my fears.
Sure, he was standing here in my kitchen holding my hand, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be. These were the niceties that he felt obligated to go through, the motions that existed because this was where I was and he was on his way out. Well, I’d help put him out of his misery.
Yanking my hand out from his, I slid off the island and moved around him. I headed back to my room and stepped to the closet, pulling his jacket out and then turning to grab his overnight bag. It was zippered shut on my bed, a blatant sign that he was done in here. I darted into my bathroom to see if there was anything he’d missed but it was spotless. Even the clothes I’d left on the floor last night were gone.
Huffing in annoyance and, if I was being honest, disappointment, I turned to head back to the kitchen and froze. Mal was standing in the doorway, his body leaning against the frame, his arms crossed in front of him. An expression of amusement stained his features, one corner of his glorious mouth pulled up in a half smile.
“Desperate to get rid of me?”
I hated his voice. I hated that velvety rasp that looped over my body and tightened around me, pulling me under his spell. “Only making sure you don’t have to bother coming back if you forgot something.” The bitterness in my voice and in my words made me wince, but I knew better than to be sweet and understanding when doing so would only break me.
Because standing in my bathroom, looking at him so immaculately dressed, so perfectly poised and confident, I knew that this man could completely and utterly destroy me. He could shatter me in a way that nothing and no one ever could, and I refused to let that happen.
I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor.
No. What you are right now is a coward.
“Do you not want me to come back?” There was an edge to his words that sent a ripple of something unknown coursing through me.
“I’m giving you your out, Michael,” I said firmly, giving him back his nickname and replacing it with something less informal.
He took a step toward me, my feet automatically taking me back two. “My out? What makes you think I want an out? What makes you think I’m done with you, with this? What makes you think I’d ever be done with you, sweetheart?”
In the span of two questions, I’d found myself backed up into the wall of my bathroom, my hands empty, my heart leaping in my chest to escape, to hide. My hands were pressed up against an imposing chest, my legs parted as muscular thighs found their way between them. I should have been terrified. I would have been terrified.
So why wasn’t I?
Because the eyes that gazed into mine weren’t menacing but pleading.
Because the grip on my chin wasn’t forceful but fragile.
Because the stroke over my hip wasn’t intimidating but imploring.
Because the kiss he gave me wasn’t hard and demanding, but slow and penetrating.
Everything he knew wouldn’t frighten me.
Every act is calculated.
“Why are you toying with me?” I asked between pants. “You had your night.”
Anger flashed in his eyes and coiled up in the tension that pulled his shoulders back and strained in his neck. “You think you’ve been collected.”
“Haven’t I?”
The hand at my chin dropped, only to move beside my head. His other hand, the one at my hip, took its place on the opposite side of me, effectively caging me in. He leaned down so that our eyes were on the same level, his back at a slant and allowing me to see the ripple of muscles that hinted at their strength. “Sweetheart, there’s only one thing I collect, and you haven’t given it to me yet.”
He could’ve slapped me and it wouldn’t have hurt any more than those words had. “Asshole,” I hissed.
>
“Maybe I am, but it’s only because you’re so afraid, you don’t want to see what’s right in front of your face.”
Tipping my chin up, I sneered at him. “Why shouldn’t I be afraid? It’s not like you’re eighty times my size and have me pinned up against the wall or anything.”
His features softened, but he didn’t move, the jab at my imprisonment doing nothing to affect that side of him that had been considerate of my fears. “What’s really wrong, Victoria? You’re lashing out and I don’t know why. What did I do? What did I say? Talk to me, please. If we’re going to have a relationship, you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on in here—” he moved his hand and rubbed his thumb against my temple “—so that I don’t hurt what’s in here.” His hand dipped into the neckline of my dress and pressed against my heart.
Scoffing at his words, I yanked his hand away, biting back a moan as an overwhelming sense of loss overtook me the second his touch left my body. “You can’t have a relationship when you’re locking doors,” I informed him with a growl.
He smiled. Actually smiled. A smile that could melt panties.
If I was wearing any.
“Sweetheart, I want you to listen to me,” he said tenderly, his fingers returning to the neckline of my dress and fluttering over my overheated and sensitive skin. “When I locked the door today, it wasn’t because I was done with you. It wasn’t because I don’t want to be with you. And it wasn’t because I don’t want this relationship. Stop overthinking things, please.”
“Then tell me why,” I demanded.
“Last night you told me something horrible, something so unbearably disturbing about your past that it made me question myself in ways I never have before. I was angry and I was disgusted.”
“With me,” I acknowledged as I cast my gaze to the grout lines on the floor.
His hand found its way under my chin and this time he wasn’t gentle when he lifted my head up, forcing my eyes back to his. “With the boys who hurt you,” he corrected. “With the man who saw a girl in trouble and instead of helping you, tried to take advantage of you. With the world who’d turned their eyes away from the horror and trauma of what you’d experienced and instead focused their gaze on the salaciousness of it instead.
“But Victoria, my anger and disgust at what they did to you, how much they hurt you, frightened you, scarred you is nothing compared to what sits inside you. You’ve been afraid for so long that it’s taken you eight years to open up about it. So I apologize if you felt hurt and rejected by my locking the door, but I didn’t think it would have been a good idea for you to walk into the bathroom and seen me jerking off after everything you revealed to me last night.”
My blood thickened, my mouth turned dry, and my breasts turned heavy and sensitive beneath the light fabric of my dress. “J-jer…” I couldn’t even say the words, my breaths were so uneven. The image in my head of Mal in my shower, his magnificent body glistening with water from the showerhead, his hand encircling the hard length I’d felt beneath his clothes made my bones turn to jelly and dragged a low rumble from deep in my throat. “Why were you…why would you need to…”
Mal growled, the sound hitting me low in my belly as he pushed his body against mine, his hips moving in concentrated circles. “Because thinking about you, smelling you, hearing your voice turns me on, and you’re not ready yet to do something about it.”
The feel of him, the sound of his words, the smell of him. Every pulse in my body was a tattoo of his name. My tongue wanted to taste him, my lips wanted to seal against him, my breasts ached for his touch. Fuck, he turned me on, too, and I didn’t care what he thought. I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to do something about it right now.
My arms lifted to loop around his neck and I pushed myself off the wall to connect my mouth with his. His mouth was closed, his lips firm but warm. I licked at the seam of his mouth once, twice, willing him to open, to let me inside. If he did, it would confirm what he’d told me, that he wanted me, that I turned him on. If he didn’t, it would confirm my worst fears but save me from who knew how many more nights, weeks, or even months of embarrassment.
I licked his lips once more and almost sobbed in relief when those beautiful lips parted and his tongue slipped into my mouth to dance with mine. His hands cupped my face and angled my head so that he could fit his mouth to mine the way he liked. As soon as we’d latched onto each other in a way that told me with wet suction and tangled friction that our kiss wasn’t going to stop, his hands dropped away from my face. Whimpering at the loss of his touch, my brows drew in with confusion as he bent his knees. That’s when I felt his hands move behind my thighs, gripping them with his long fingers. Before I could even think about why they were there, he lifted me up by my thighs, spreading them before pulling them tightly around his waist.
Some intrinsic knowledge within me told me to cross my ankles, so I did. That small act of submission caused something to click inside the both of us, something that went beyond words. The small swell of my breasts were crushed against his chest, my nipples rubbing almost painfully against the fabric of my dress and drawing soft mewling gasps from me.
Mal’s hands were in the skirt of my dress, wrapped around my bare thighs before sliding up and up, until finally he was cupping my ass and, holy shit. Mal was cupping my ass!
“Oh God, sweetheart, I don’t want to let you go,” he gasped into my mouth.
“Then don’t,” I insisted before sealing my lips to his and sucking his tongue into my mouth.
His hands were moving, lifting my ass and pulling, pushing, teaching me how to rock myself against him. I was slick between my thighs and so sensitive that the cold graze of his belt buckle tore a heated sigh from my chest. Recognizing that sound and liking it, Mal repeated the act. Once, twice he rocked me. Half a dozen sweeping curls of my body against his and I shattered, sobbing my release into his mouth even as my hips thrust against his involuntarily.
When we finally broke our mouths apart he was a mass of hot, damp breaths and pinning me with his dark eyes glazed with lust and need. “Fuck, Victoria. I don’t want to leave you. I never want to leave you.”
Hope and happiness bloomed in my chest at the sound of desperation in his voice, at the desire plain in his words. Which was why it was easy for me to loosen my legs from around him and lower them to the ground. “It’s only for a little while,” I told him between soft biting kisses around his mouth. “We have a lunch date later, remember?”
Capturing my bottom lip between his teeth, he tugged and suckled my softness before licking the inside as he released me. “As if I could forget.”
We pulled apart and I looked him over once more, heat flooding to my cheeks at the sight of the waistband of his pants and the foggy smear against his belt buckle. His brows lifted and dropped his gaze to where mine was pinned. Husky laughter left him before he swiped at the stickiness that spread across the buckle and part of the belt with his thumb and then brought that thumb to his lips.
“Mmm,” he murmured as he licked the fat pad of his finger. “Delicious.”
Electronic tinkling filled the bathroom and instantly the look of pleasure left Mal’s face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone, frowning at what he saw before returning the phone where he’d grabbed it. “I’ve got to go, love. Lyle is still waiting for me outside and my meeting starts in twenty minutes.”
“But you’re meeting me for lunch,” I reminded him, needing his reassurance even as he took my hand and pulled me out of the bathroom, but not before bending down to pick up the jacket I had dropped on the floor.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said sincerely, continuing to pull me through my bedroom, out the door, into the living room, and then the front door. He only stopped at the top of the stairs, turning to take my face in his hands and press a small, precious kiss on the tip of my nose.
He told me he would let me know when his meeting was over, and that Lyle would c
ome and pick me up to bring me to his office building. I’d offered to drive myself there but he shook his head. “I don’t plan on having you come back here alone, sweetheart.”
Kissing my nose once more, followed by a quick buss on my forehead, Mal walked down the stairs and slipped his jacket on before a black Town Car appeared. I saw the slight jerk of the vehicle as it was put into park and Lyle climbed out, almost sprinting to where Mal stood and opened the door. I lifted my hand to wave to him but he already had his phone pressed up against his ear. Instead, Lyle lifted his hand in farewell before he closed the door behind Mal and returned to the driver’s seat.
Once the car was gone, I returned to the apartment and to my room. My bed was a wreck, but my sheets still smelled like Mal so I opted not to change them. Instead I made the bed and decided to do my laundry instead. Walking into the bathroom I saw Mal’s overnight bag still on the floor; he’d forgotten to pick it up with his jacket.
I grabbed the bag, dropped it on my bed, and headed to my closet where my hamper sat full of clothes. Overfull, I noticed as I lifted the basket out. “Holy shit,” I coughed as I saw something laying on the top that was unlike anything else I’d ever had in my hamper before. Dropping the hamper, I hurried to the bed and unzipped Mal’s overnight bag. I stepped back at seeing its contents, my hands flying to my cheeks as if I could pat the rush of blood beneath my skin back down into my veins.
Mal’s bag was still full of clothes. Neatly folded clothes. Clean, neatly folded clothes. A pair of slacks, dark jeans, t-shirts, and a button-down shirt that still had a dry cleaner’s collar in it. There was even a pair of sneakers in the bag. I rushed back to my bathroom and looked at my vanity, my eyes lifting in surprise at the black bag of toiletries that sat beside the jar that contained my toothbrush. And my toothbrush now had a neighbor, its bristles touching mine.
Slowly, I returned to the hamper and picked up the black garment that sat on top of a pair of white panties and a khaki skirt. With a smile I closed my fingers around the fabric before returning it to the basket, marveling at how much pleasure plumbed through me.
