“For God’s sake, Dana, leave the woman alone,” Seton said, annoyed.
Dana shot her brother a glare before turning hopeful eyes to me.
I grinned at her. Nah, what the hell. “Sure. It’s a deal.”
She laughed and brushed a light kiss across my cheek. “And perhaps my stick-in-the-mud twin brother will join us. I shall force him to come along if I have to, promise.” She gave me a conspiratorial, we-share-a-secret-no-one-else-knows-about type of wink.
I blushed at her brazenness and glanced up at Seton. He was staring down at my feet, his eyebrows collected into a frown. He was looking at the ankle bracelet, which peeked out of my old Nikes. Shit! Why couldn’t I just take the damn thing off?
His gaze rose to mine and studied me, his face expressionless, eyes deep green pools that glimmered with an unidentifiable emotion. He surprised me by flashing me a dimpled smile.
“No, thanks, sis. Shopping isn’t for me,” he drawled, replying to Dana’s quip.
I let out a surprised breath when he suddenly curled a hand around my waist and enveloped me in a one-armed bear hug, resting his chin softly on the crown of my head. I stood stiffly against him, my arms sagging on either side of me. He lingered there as his hand slid from my waist down to my derriere—giving it a firm, possessive squeeze.
I gasped in shock and palmed a hand over his chest, trying to push him slightly off of me, but he didn’t budge an inch. So I just stayed there and took a deep breath to calm my now speeding heart, but my senses were filled with the scent of him. The spiciness of his aftershave and cologne combined with sheer masculinity did funny things to my pulse rate.
Finally, he pulled away and took a few steps back. A naughty little smile tugged his lips—lips that were full and lush and begging to be kissed. I shoved my hands into my pockets and tried to ignore the tiny sparks of desire that flared through me.
“See you soon, Miss Fordham,” he said softly, looking at me like the Cheshire cat before turning away.
Dana flashed me one last grin before she joined her brother.
I said nothing, just stood there, stunned, as I watched Seton and Dana stride toward the park’s exit and to his Mercedes. I bit my bottom lip in mortification when I heard Dana softly ask, “Did you just grab her arse?”
Chapter Ten
I knocked on Mitch’s door just before nine o’clock, two bottles of red wine in my hands. I fidgeted and bobbed one of the wine bottles against my hip as I waited. I’d had a couple of martinis at a bar on my way over to gird my loins. I would have sex with Mitch tonight, no ifs or buts. This was my last resort, one last desperate attempt to forget about Seton. It was either this or a lifetime of obsessions and heartbreak.
I had tried everything, Lord knows I had, to forget about Seton, and yet I turned to mush the moment he approached me. When he cupped my rear end at the park, I knew I’d sleep with him again if he asked me—or rather, ordered me—to do it. And speaking of which, why had he done that? What was with the public display of flirtation, and in front of his twin sister? He was just as bold when we danced at Samantha Minou’s book launch party three weeks ago. One minute he was cold and distant in public, and the next minute he didn’t seem to care if others saw us together. Which begged the question, why? Why was he so full of contradictions?
I was getting tired of trying to figure Seton out. Tonight I would enjoy myself. I’d have sex for the sake of having sex, just like old times. Just soak it up. Live for the moment. Fuck ‘em and leave ‘em. Have fun and move on. Never look back.
Mitch answered the door, looking adorable in a burgundy UMASS t-shirt (my alma mater) and black jeans. He brushed a soft kiss across my cheek as he took the wine bottles and let me in.
“You look nice,” he said as he walked to his kitchenette. He put one bottle in the fridge and twisted the foil off the other, removing the cork from the bottle’s neck with ease.
I muttered a thank you and studied my reflection in a full-length wall mirror. I had made an effort to look at least somewhat presentable for our tryst. I wore a navy blue camisole and a denim skirt that reached mid-thigh. Three-inch strappy sandals covered my feet. I wore no bra—only a blue silk thong—to feel sexier. But I didn’t feel sexy. I felt nervous. Sighing, I wound my hair tighter against the butterfly clip that held it together and ambled over to the living room.
“Thanks for coming,” he went on as he served wine into two glasses. “I didn’t think you would. What with you thinking I wasn’t good enough for you and all.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “When have I said that?”
He flashed me one of his naughty Mitch grins and shrugged. “Never. I just wanted you to contradict me. It’s always nice to be reassured.”
I snorted softly and scanned his bachelor pad. Mitch owned one of those expensive condos on New South Street. He had the usual bachelor-like furnishings—lots of leather and expensive gadgets and sports paraphernalia. He even had one of those tacky leopard-skin area rugs on the hardwood floor. Piles of boxes were strewn across one corner of the living room. He had started packing already.
“What are you going to do with this place after you move to New York?” I asked him.
He was moving around the kitchenette in an energetic, almost agitated state, putting away things, washing off something in the sink, keeping busy doing all kinds of unnecessary stuff. Hmm. How very odd. He usually just got down to the business at hand—meaning sex.
“I’m subletting it to a couple of Smith girls,” he answered after taking a long swig of wine from straight out of the bottle. Then he sauntered over to the living room with the two glasses of wine. Under normal circumstances, I would have cringed at his bad manners, drinking out of the bottle like that, but since he and I were about to exchange bodily fluids, I figured there was no point in being nitpicky about such things. “WASPs, politicians’ daughters who refuse to share a dorm room with a lowly scholarship student,” he added, scowling.
“But I thought you liked the Smith girls.”
“Not when they’re snobs.”
I smiled at that. It was nice to know that shallow Mitch had some decency after all. “Where will you live in New York?”
“I’ll be staying with one of my new colleagues while I look for my own place.”
“It won’t be easy finding a place there. You’ll be paying more rent for far less square footage than what you’ve got here.”
He sighed. “I know. It sucks.”
“Whatever extra money you make from the magazine won’t be of any use to you. You’ll spend it all in your rent.”
“Is this your way of telling me that you want me to stay?”
I laughed. “Yes, Mitchell, please stay!”
He smiled. “Sorry, babe, but I can’t. Not even for you.”
Smiling, I sat at one end of his big black leather sofa and tucked my legs up under me in what I hoped was a sexy and relaxed way. Mitch sat at the other end and set the glasses on two coasters on the coffee table. He smoothed down his jeans with his palms and threw a sideways grin my way.
“So, this is it,” he said. “Our last night together.”
Nervous, I reached for my wine and downed half of it in one gulp. “Uh huh.”
He laughed. pan>&nbRWell, don’t look so distraught about it!”
I shrugged. “I am sad. You were a good friend to me, Mitch.”
“But you don’t want to sleep with me?”
“I do want to sleep with you!”
“You broke up with me, remember?”
I rolled my eyes. “We didn’t break up,” I reminded him. “We weren’t dating. We were just fucking. So I ended our… whatever.”
He nodded. “I know that, babe. But what about tonight? Do you want to sleep with me, or don’t you?”
“I do. Why would I be here if I didn’t?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
I drank more wine. Mitch seemed strange tonight, kind of snappish. He was hardly ever snappish. He was
happiness personified. What was wrong with him? Did he need another dose of ego boost or something? “I do want to sleep with you tonight, Mitch,” I said in earnest.
He snorted softly and sank back in the sofa, one leg swinging idly. “You gulped down your drink. You always do that when you’re nervous about something.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. He’d noticed that about me? Amazing. “It’s just…I…I’m going to miss you, that’s all.”
He believed me, because he slid over to my side and wrapped a hand behind my neck, pulling me toward him so he could kiss me. Mitch wasn’t a bad kisser. In fact, he was pretty darn good. But as he moved his lips on mine, cupping my face with one hand and massaging one of my breasts through the flimsy camisole with the other, I wondered why he hadn’t stirred the same sort of response from me that Seton achieved with just one look. At that moment, all I wanted to do was push Mitch away and tell him to keep his mitts off my body, because I felt nothing. Nothing at all.
I palmed his chest with both hands and pushed him gently away. He looked at me with quizzical baby-blue eyes.
“I can’t do this. Sorry.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I…Why did you run off at the park today?” I burst out.
A confused silence filled the room. The sounds of the town square traffic filtered up from the streets below. We were on the fifth floor, a couple of blocks away from the main streets, and you could still hear all of the Saturday night hoopla from way up here. Mitch blinked at me several times before grabbing his glass and downing all of the wine. Hmm. Now he was the nervous one. Interesting.
“What do you mean?” he asked, playing dumb.
I gave him a look. “You know damn well what I mean. We’re making plans about meeting tonight and then suddenly you run off as if escaping from something—or someone. But when I looked around, I only saw David J. Seton and his sister. David J. Seton is—”
“I know who David Seton is,” Mitch interrupted, flustered. “And I know he moved here recently. Why are you asking me this?”
I shifted in my seat and was about to drink the rest of my wine when I changed my mind and placed the glass back on top of the coaster. I was a little tipsy after drinking the two martinis earlier, and I didn’t want to get stinking drunk, at least not tonight.
“Look,” I said through gritted teeth, “I just want to know, okay? Why did you run away from Seton? How did you know he lived here?” Then something occurred to me, something I should’ve thought of earlier. No one could accuse me of being a quick thinker. Sometimes I wondered if my 4.0 grade-point average was a miscalculation. “You’re his best friend from Cambridge, aren’t you?”
He seemed surprised. “What? No, I’m not—no.” He cleared his throat and started to add something, licked his lips and tried again, but all he did was grab my discarded wine, drinking it all in one go. I noticed with interest that he hadn’t placed the glass back on top of the coaster, but on the bare coffee table instead. A water ring was probably seeping through the table’s glossy black surface already, but Mitch seemed too agitated to care. Mitch was a neat freak—always making sure his apartment was spotless. Something funky was definitely going on.
“Marjorie,” he said huffily, “I don’t want to talk about this. It’s none of your business anyway.”
His words held an edge that made me immediately suspicious. None of my business? The hell it wasn’t! “It isn’t?” I countered, scowling.
He actually blushed. “Margie, I—”
He suddenly leaped up and walked with jittery steps toward the kitchen. I heard him opening and closing the refrigerator door several times.
I sucked in my breath and shot an annoyed look in the direction of the kitchenette. “Mitch, what the hell’s going on?”
He emerged from the kitchen with a forty-once bottle of beer. “Want some?” he asked, indicating the beer.
I shook my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “Come on, Mitch, quit stalling. What’s going on? You’re acting really weird tonight and it’s making me nervous.” I moved my feet from under me and sat on the edge of the sofa. “You know Seton, don’t you? Tell me, are you his best friend from Cambridge?”
“Come on, Marjorie, do I look like a fucking Ivy Leaguer to you?”
No, he didn’t, but that didn’t answer my question. Some of the shallowest people in the world have PhDs from Oxford or Harvard or wherever.
Mitch sat down next to me with his hands between his knees, beer bottle on the coffee table (no coaster). “No, I—I don’t know Seton, as such. But you obviously do.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and smoothed my skirt down so that it almost reached my knees. “Yes, I do know him. Bookends’ courting him. He’s the guy we saw at Starbucks the other day, the one who walked right by me without saying hello, remember? But how do you know him? And why are you so nervous?”
His shoulders slumped. “He called me later that day, the day we saw him at the coffee shop, saying you mentioned my name in an e-mail. I don’t know how he got my number. I figured he got it from you. He wanted to meet with me to…” He hid his face in his hands and sighed. “Oh, God, Margie, you’re going to hate me for this!”
My heart raced, sensing impending doom. I stared mutely at Mitch, waiting.
“I—” he began, but sighed again as he ran his hands through his disheveled blonde hair. “You’re going to hate me because…because—”
“Because he’s invited me here, expecting you to fuck us both,” a velvety voice drawled from somewhere behind me. “And the poor chap’s a bit embarrassed by it.”
I spun around. David J. Seton was leaning against a stack of boxes near the bedroom door, looking scrumptious and distinguished in a beige suede jacket over a white t-shirt and expensive-looking jeans. A wave of pleasure billowed through me at the sight of him, but it soon gave away to anger. “What the—what’s going on? Mitch?” I turned to Mitch to demand an explanation, but he was looking away from us. A flush of mortification colored his neck.
“I believe your toy boy is momentarily indisposed.”
I jumped up at the sound of Seton’s voice, and turned to him as he came charging into the room. “What are you doing here?” I demanded.
He stopped in front of me, one arm going around my waist, pressing my body against his. He leaned forward and brushed his lips with mine. “You’ve been quite naughty, my pet, leaving me like that,” he murmured seductively, his breath warm against my lips. “And I’m here to correct that.”
The hot, sexually-charged glint in his eyes set my pulse into overdrive and filled my brain with confusion, sending mixed signals to my mind and body. “What are you doing here?” I asked him again, breathless.
His smoldering eyes suddenly turned cold when he shifted his gaze to Mitch. “Mr. Briars, I thank you for arranging this meeting. That was good of you,” Seton said insolently before he grabbed me by the elbow and practically dragged me forward until I was standing in front of Mitch. I almost lost my balance when I tried to pull away from him, arms flailing as I almost fell on my ass, but Seton held me by the waist from behind and prevented my fall.
“Miss Fordham is courting me,” Seton informed Mitch as he steadied me. “She’s agreed to become my whore to help persuade me to write for Bookends AtoZ. Quite lovely of her to do this, wouldn’t you say?”
Mitch’s eyebrows shot up at us, shock written all over his handsome face.
“Miss Fordham here is my personal sex slave, and she’s more than happy to follow my orders. Aren’t you, my pet?”
Indignation flared through me when I realized that Seton intended to humiliate me in front of Mitch. Mortified, I opened my mouth to protest, but Seton cut me short by turning me to him and yanking my camisole off of me, exposing my breasts. I shot him an outraged look, but he ignored it.
“Now,” he said icily, “make yourself useful. Start servicing me.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Bec
ause you want me to,” he drawled urbanely. “And I aim to please. Now be a good whore and get started.”
The urge to throw Mitch’s forty-once bottle of beer at his head was so strong I had to clench my hands to stop them from grabbing it. “You’re a fucking jerk,” I snarled.
A cynical smile touched his face. “I know I am. Now do as you’re told.”
“No!”
He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Don’t defy me, Marjorie. You know I don’t like it.”
My mind whirled with disbelief and confusion. I narrowed my eyes at Seton. “When did you and Mitch arrange this meeting? Was it before or after we ran into each other at the park?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”
I glowered at him. He didn’t have to tell me, for I already knew. They had arranged this before the game. That was the reason why Mitch rushed out of the park when he spotted Seton. That had to be the reason. I mean, what else could it be?
“You’re a prick,” I sneered. “You think you can come in and out of my life whenever it suits you. I told you I didn’t want to do this anymore.”
“If I’m a prick,” he countered, “then you’re a bloody coward. Always running away from your feelings and desires. You dump men before they even think about dumping you. You always have to be one step ahead of everyone. You don’t take risks. But I’m here to change that.”
Then he smiled at me in a smug, condescending way, and it was the same smile he had flashed me after we’d had sex in his car, where I realized that he got off on controlling me not just during our trysts but also in life. His obvious intention was to provoke a reaction, and he certainly got it. Something kindled within me, a feeling so profound there was no way to describe it.
The flat of my hand landed on Seton’s face. He backed away from me, startled. Slapping him had felt good, really good, and it ignited a momentary need to take my inner turmoil out on someone, and who better than on the very person who had caused them? So I slapped him again. His jaw tightened and his eyes blazed with sudden anger. Hee! I had finally smacked that infuriating smirk (literally!) off his face. It felt so good that I slapped him again.
The Dom of My Dreams: A BDSM Novel Page 17
