I simply pointed to my book. “Umm…getting my copy signed, obviously.”
She shook her head again and closed her eyes for a second before she focused back on me again. “But…how? I mean…what…where…” Even more head shaking.
“I’ve freaked you out, haven’t I?”
She sighed a heavy breath. “Yes. Yes, you have. How did you find me or even know I was here, who I was? I never gave you my name.”
I pulled the flier Trin had given me from my jacket pocket and held it under Eden’s nose. “No, but…these are all over town. I got this from the bookstore at the U-Dub. I recognized your picture, and…voilà, here I am!” I finished with a provocative grin.
She returned a similar gesture. “Yes, here you are indeed.”
“So?” I shrugged.
Her brow rose in question. “Soooo…what?”
I chuckled and pointed to the table. “You gonna sign my book or what?”
Eden chuffed in embarrassment. “Oh…yeah…of course. I, um…I’m sorry. You must think I’m an idiot.” She looked down at the page and paused then glanced back up at me again. “I’m sorry, what did you want me to write?”
I chuckled again, “Just…whatever you want. I’m easy.”
Her eyes tensed for a split second before returning to the book in front of her. “Okay. How about ‘Happy reading. Enjoy. Now please stop stalking me. Eden MacLaird.’?” she said aloud as she wrote in a flourished script, ending with a lavish swirling line beneath her inscription. She made a show of dotting her i’s and crossing the t’s before slapping the cover closed and sliding the book back across the table. With a false smile, she added, “Thanks for coming in. You have a nice evening.”
That said, she turned away and began to gather her things, stuffing them into her briefcase, the expensive Mont Blanc fountain pen shoved into her designer crocodile handbag. She stood and pushed the bag’s strap over her shoulder as she leaned down to grab her attaché. When she stood up, her bag caught and tipped the end of table, causing her stack of hardcover books to tumble off the edge into a messy heap on the floor.
“Oh crap!” Eden swore and dropped her bags before kneeling to clean up the mess.
“Here,” I said and leaned down to gather the books. “Lemme help.”
“No, that’s not necessary. You’ve done enough.” She sighed in irritation and hauled a short stack back onto the table.
I picked up the rest and laid them beside her pile. Allowing but a moment to pass, I caught her eye and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. And I swear, I’m not stalking you. I just thought it was, you know, serendipitous, to find that flier and know you were here, so close by. It was like, I don’t know, like gravity, pulling me closer,” I explained and heard her catch her breath.
“Gravity?” she repeated, her eyes wide and glued to my mouth for a moment before snapping up to meet my gaze.
I shrugged. “Yeah. Gravity. Weird, I know, but…there it is. What can I say?”
Her attention moved back to my mouth once more. “Nothing,” she breathed quietly, her concentration broken when the store owner locked the front door and turned off half the lights. She offered me a hesitant, tight-lipped grin. “I’m sorry for being rude. Can’t be too careful, you know. There’re a lot of weirdoes out there.”
I nodded. “I can appreciate that, but I assure you, I am not one of them. Never have been.”
She agreed with a casual nod of her own. “I kinda felt that about you. The other night, I mean. You were…I don’t know…different. Most guys would’ve bent me over the men’s room sink after the stunt I pulled.”
I barked a laugh, but instantly reeled it in. “Sorry, it’s just that… Well, to be honest, the thought had crossed my mind. But you know, you looked too classy for that, so…” I shrugged yet again, unsure where to go after that admission and pissed at myself for even acknowledging it.
“It’s okay. I’d probably be offended if the thought hadn’t occurred to you.”
She stared at me, and I stared back. Regardless of how this had started or Trinitee’s insistence that I pursue her, there was obvious chemistry between us. Calling it gravity wasn’t off-base at all. So, I decided to go for it. Take the next step.
“Ms. MacLaird,” I began, then thought better of it. “Eden, would you care to have a drink with me? The Matador’s right across the street. It’s quiet, casual, low key. We can chat about your book. I missed your reading, after all. Or maybe we can talk about your cheating husband and disloyal best friend. Whatever you want. Like I said, I’m easy.”
Uncertainty skittered across Eden’s face. She looked around for the store owner then out the storefront window at the pedestrians passing by. “I don’t know…” she answered hesitantly.
“Okay, tell you what. You go put your things away in your car. I’ll walk over and grab us a table. If you don’t show up, I’ll cry in my beer and call it a night.”
She smirked ever so slightly and looked toward the rear of the store. “Okay, well…I’m parked out back. Can I just drive over?”
“Uh, yeah, sure, I guess, but it’s a one-way street, so you’ll have to drive down Market, go left on Shilshole, left again on 22nd, then again on Ballard. It’s a bit convoluted.” I paused and dipped my chin as I looked at her. “Or I could just walk you over myself. I can even carry your briefcase.” I slipped on my most seductive grin, knowing it had worked wonders for me in the past.
It worked on Eden, too. She beamed the most charming smile yet and held out her case for me to carry. I offered my elbow, and she slipped her arm through as the store owner appeared and opened the door for us. We crossed the street to The Matador, where I pulled the door wide.
“Age before beauty,” I threw out with a devious smirk.
She thumped me in the chest as she passed by. “Pearls before swine, you smartass,” she returned with an equally sly grin.
We seated ourselves at a small U-shaped booth in a far, dark corner of the bar. I ordered an IPA and suggested we share a plate of nachos. Eden settled on a Cosmopolitan. I couldn’t help but notice how nervous she appeared as she picked at the chips. She downed her drink in three swallows, so I ordered her another. She drank half of that before even working up the nerve to engage with me. Her face pinkened noticeably, visible even in the candlelit recess of the bar. She sat back in her seat and tapped her fingers against one thigh.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled down at the hem of her short, billowy, black skirt. “This was a bad idea. I should probably go. I’m not very good company.”
I smiled at her and said, “Let me be the judge of that, okay?”
She offered an uneasy grin and finished her second cocktail. I raised my finger at the waitress and ordered her a third. By the time it arrived, Eden was beginning to loosen up. Her eyes focused on me, a subtle spark kindling within.
“So, you know who I am, obviously, but we’ve never been formally introduced. I’m Eden,” she said, her slender hand raised in greeting.
I accepted with my right and placed my left over top, unwilling to let her go too soon.
“A pleasure, Eden,” I said, enjoying the feel of her name on my tongue. With a pause, I gazed into her eyes and answered before I could stop myself. “You can call me…Daniel.”
“I can call you?” she asked. “Is that not your name? Are you playing games with me already?” She pulled gently against my grasp, but, though I loosened my grip, she seemed just as hesitant to break contact as I did and only retreated once I let go.
“I rarely play games,” I replied. “In this case, I simply share my father’s first name, so I often use my middle name instead. I hope you don’t mind.”
She considered me for a moment. “No, I guess not,” she said, her uncertainty lingering. “So, what do you do, Daniel? For a living, I mean. You do work, correct?”
“I do, yes, but only part-time while I finish grad school. But even that’s been a bit difficult the last few d
ays. I’ve been very…distracted ever since our encounter last Friday. I haven’t been able to think of much else, really. You made quite the impression.”
Eden began to fidget once again, spinning the stem of her cocktail glass between her fingers. “Yes, well, that was…unexpected, to say the least.” She looked up and caught my eyes. “I hope you don’t think I go around kissing all the boys—”
“Boys?” I interjected. “I assure you, Eden, I’m no boy.”
She held up a hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I just meant, you know, the considerable difference in our ages and all. I know you’re not a boy.” She snuck a quick glance around the room, then, as she tucked her hair behind one ear, she leaned in closer. “You’re a very gallant young man, and I appreciate your discretion the other night. I was rather upset when you found me.”
“Yes, I remember. And I’ve been curious. So tell me, Eden, how did all that work out for you? Did you confront your husband, or that best friend of yours?”
“Oh, God, no.” she answered with a stern shake of her head. “I’ve been avoiding Declan like the plague, and I haven’t returned any of Aurelia’s calls or texts.”
That surprised me, considering her public persona on social media, not to mention the characters she brought to life. I’d come to think of Eden as strong and self-assured, much like her heroine, not one to tolerate deceit or betrayal. But then again, I didn’t really know her. I planned on changing that very soon. Maybe even tonight if she was game. Though I feared she might flit away at any moment, I itched to test her limits.
I leaned in closer, as well, and stroked the length of her hand, then her wrist, before backtracking and rubbing my finger in circles against her palm. I swept my gaze up to her face and saw her attention was fixed on our hands, but she must have felt me staring, because her eyes snapped up to meet mine as another bright flush crept across her cheekbones.
“You gonna leave him?” I asked. “Get a divorce?”
She was breathing heavily and curled her hand tighter against my intrusion, but, unwilling to relinquish any ground, I flattened my palm against hers and pressed her hand between both of mine.
“I, um…no,” she stammered and shook her head again. “I couldn’t…do that. Leave him, I mean. I… It just… It wouldn’t work.”
I turned her palm upward and stroked the inside of her wrist. Without breaking eye contact, I asked, “And why not?”
“Well, you know, it’s just…it’s very…complicated.” She squirmed in her seat, though I wasn’t sure whether it was from me holding her hand or the subject of her cheating husband.
“What divorce isn’t?” I asked, pausing one heartbeat. “So, what’s the real reason, Eden?”
Though she sighed and her shoulders sagged, her pulse quickened beneath my fingertip. “It’s just that…I rely on Declan financially. He holds the deeds to our homes, our cars, our businesses, to everything really. He hides them from the IRS inside his corporations, over which I have no control whatsoever, at least not while he’s alive. So he has all the power.”
“But you’re doing well in your writing career. Google told me so, and Google never lies.”
Her brow lifted high. “You Googled me?”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”
With her eyes tense, she pressed her lips together. “I don’t know about that, but, as far as my career goes, yes, I’m doing well on paper. But it’ll be a while until I earn out my advance and receive any royalties. So I’m stuck, for now anyway. And you know, my mother raised me as a single parent. I remember what it’s like to struggle. It’s not something I ever want to experience again.”
She grew more fidgety, but I couldn’t tell if she was excited or agitated, so I turned her palm flat on the table with mine cupped on either side.
When I felt her pulse calm slightly, I asked, “Have you considered my suggestion?”
Her eyes popped upward. “Your suggestion?”
“Yes,” I said as I thumbed her diamond wedding rings, spinning them around her slender finger. “Retaliation. It might prove quite…satisfying, I would think. Wouldn’t you?”
Eden picked up what remained of her drink, emptied the glass, and placed it back onto the table, her movement slow and deliberate as she stole a few moments to think. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes against me.
My heart raced unexpectedly, and I squeezed her hand. “Make no mistake, Eden. I’m no boy. I know you want me. I can see it. I can feel it. Just like I did at the bar when you kissed me. You admitted it then, said it was ‘payback.’ Your word. Not mine. So…here’s your chance. What are you waiting for?”
Her eyes fluttered open, and a single tear rolled down her flushed cheek. She shook her head, just a tiny bit, but that single gesture said so much, spoke of the tumult roiling inside her.
“I don’t know,” she whispered and turned her hand, tentatively lacing her fingers between mine.
And in that moment, I felt her surrender. I knew I had her. All I had to do was take what I wanted, what she was offering. But something unforeseen shifted inside me, and, while I was sure I wanted her—badly—I wasn’t quite sure why anymore, if it was still just my latest game of conquest, or perhaps something else. Something more.
With her subtle acquiescence, I realized I no longer wanted to be that guy—a player. Sure, Trin tried to convince me this might end up being something more, but could it really? If I allowed Trinitee to maneuver me, I was little more than her pawn, and this was nothing more than a game, her game. And that was no longer something I wanted. To me, Eden was more than just an acquisition. She had a heart—a tremendously bruised one—and she was placing it in my hand. How could I betray that trust?
No way. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
But after Hayley, I wasn’t sure how to proceed.
So I thought it best to let Eden pave the way, at least for the moment. I would take the lead once she acknowledged her own desire, but it was important she made the conscious decision. I brushed her tear away with my thumb and cupped her cheek, reveling when she leaned into my hand.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “I do want you, partly because I just need to feel wanted again. No one has in such a long time. But mostly, like you said, because I want to get back at him.” She paused for a moment. “But…I can’t. That’s not me,” she added. “I don’t cheat.”
“I understand, but…where has your loyalty gotten you, Eden? Why not explore your own needs, like you have the characters in your book?”
She huffed in embarrassment and covered her face with her free hand.
But I pulled it away. “What are you so ashamed of?”
“You read my book.”
I chuckled. “Well, no, not entirely. Only parts of it. The good parts though. There’s a Goodreads discussion group that was pretty helpful.”
“Oh God!” she lamented with a groan.
“No, don’t do that, Eden. That’s not you.”
“You don’t know what’s me and what isn’t.”
“Maybe not, not yet anyway, but I want to. I want to know everything, like how you know if what you write, what you have your characters do, is real, is true. If you’re the good girl who never cheats, who never strays, who never experiences what that’s like, how do you know what to write and if it’s authentic?”
“I read in my genre. I know what readers like, what they want. I’m a good writer.”
“But how do you know what you write is believable?”
“Hey, I just wanted to prove erotica could be well-written, that it could be sexy and provocative without being vulgar or distasteful, that dominance was not the only way to express sexual power over another person.”
“What? No bondage or pain?” I asked, more as a joke than real curiosity.
“No, more like possession, complete ownership of the heart.”
I couldn’t hide the doubt in my eye. She couldn’t hide the defiance in hers.
“Eve
ryone knows Fifty Shades of Grey was a cult hit. But not many understand the real reason why, that it struck a chord with women stuck in tired, loveless marriages, worn down by crisis after crisis during the recession. These women needed the release. Their stressed-out husbands were so mired in financial ruin, they had little to offer their wives, who, in turn, became lonely and desperate for attention. And that book helped them feel alive again. They read it in secret, then in groups, dissecting every scene, baring every nuance. They became bold in their newfound sexual re-awakening, so bold, they began to share passages with their husbands. And do you know what happened next?” she asked.
I shrugged. “No, but I imagine they—”
“Saved their marriages,” she interjected. “Became different people with the very men they’d known most of their adult lives. They experimented, bought toys and role-played, breathing life back into their love lives, into their marriage beds. And suddenly, life didn’t suck quite so much anymore. Regardless of what people might say, that book saved a lot of marriages.”
“Hm,” I reacted, none too thoughtfully. “Well, then why’s it so heavily criticized?”
“For one, it opened the floodgates to a new wave in publishing. First it was BDSM clubs, then motorcycle gangs, stepbrothers. And, oh, let’s not forget the sex slaves. There are countless books about young women being abducted then raped by some ridiculously gorgeous billionaire, which, of course, makes it acceptable.”
“Acceptable?”
“Yes, women are eating it up, which I find a little disturbing.”
“Because…?”
Eden’s eyes bugged out. “Because it perpetuates rape culture. When I wrote Joust, I wanted to show women they could submit their bodies without subjugating their identity, that having choice forcibly taken away—no matter how good-looking or wealthy the man—is not romantic.”
In the middle of her rant, Eden had pulled away and wrapped her arms around herself. I signaled our server for another round then focused back on Eden. The booth’s seat cushion moved as she crossed and re-crossed her legs, her foot tapping and swaying restlessly. I laid a hand against her wrist.
Stirred Page 7
