He smirked. “Lex, those are so your lips.”
She pursed the real ones and tried glaring at him a little. He laughed.
Then, under the table, he nudged his foot with hers. “Your turn. Show me something. Show me something you can do.”
“I can’t draw. I can’t shake an egg.”
“C’mon. Something no one else knows you can do.”
Intimacy. It was what he was asking for. But in the small confines of her office, it was already there. The two of them, eating, laughing, him looking at her close enough to draw her with puffy lips and to shape her pupils like little hearts. Which gave her an idea.
Looking around, she grabbed another piece of thin paper. Biting her lower lip, she took a moment, trying to recall the steps. When she was thirteen, she’d worked at this task until she could do it with her eyes closed, but she hadn’t attempted it in years.
Then it came to her, all the flips and folds.
She wasn’t as quick as Bing with his dream house, but in a few minutes she had completed the sole piece of origami she knew how to make. Glancing up, she smiled. “Ta da!”
He whistled. “A heart.”
A flying heart. On either side of the shape was wings. She almost told him about the girl who had showed her how to make it. She almost explained what had happened to that girl, the one who had loved her brother so very much it had nearly destroyed her…and how it had affected Alexa for so many years that she’d shied away from passion. Still did.
Instead, she looked straight into his blue eyes and felt her stomach drop. Her defenses dropped too. Her smile died. His face went serious too. The chemistry that usually bubbled in the air between them stopped its spurt and sizzle. It quieted, as if waiting for one of them to make a move.
Alexa did. Lifting her hand, she sailed the small piece of paper his way. It soared toward him, hitting him straight in the chest. As it fell, he caught it in one big palm. Seemed to cradle it.
The moment felt…meaningful. Huge.
Because the next move was his.
He stared down at the scrap of paper, then looked up at her. Alexa held her breath.
“Lex…” The expression on his face was…tender.
Her pulse stuttered to a halt.
Sounds rustled in the hallway behind her back. A footstep. A gasp. Bing’s gaze shifted over her shoulder. Then his jaw hardened and a new tension infused the room. Alexa glanced over her shoulder to see a woman framed in the doorway. Platinum blonde and built, she was looking at Bing with something indecipherable in her eyes.
He shoved to his feet, drawing Alexa’s attention back to him.
The origami heart he’d been holding fluttered in the air and spiraled to the ground. His big boot trod upon it as he strode from the room, just as surely crushing the brief moments of closeness they’d shared.
*
All afternoon, Bing pretended to be busy. He pretended to his twin, he pretended to the guys who worked for him, he pretended to himself.
He sucked at pretending.
So finally, a little before five, he banged out of the construction office with the intention of going home and then going on a run long enough to escape the ghosts that kept dogging him. He’d been shocked as hell today by the one standing in the hallway outside Alexa’s office.
It was then he remembered he’d left his tools and bags in the storage room at Bella Bridal. They’d be safe enough there, of course, but that oversight now seemed to present a perfect opportunity. Alexa usually left for the day at four, even though the shop stayed open until six. If he headed over there now, he could collect his belongings without having to confront her.
Better yet, he could finish the work in the storeroom—stay all night if he had to—and then not have to face her fresh face and paper hearts again within the confines of that place filled with all that damn wedding frippery and finery.
Given how the day had gone already, he should have known there was more shit in store for him.
The repaired bell over the door rang as he entered and there she was—Alexa behind the counter. The place felt deserted outside of her presence.
Her gaze leaped to his face and he saw her hands curl around the glass countertop. Small hands, elegant even. They’d moved nimbly, folding paper this way and that, creating a piece of whimsy that had floated through the air and hit him in the middle of the chest with the force of a sledgehammer.
Such power from such a small person
Power to make him want.
He rubbed his palms against the denim covering his thighs, trying to wipe away the itch there. The urge that was pooled in the cups of his big hands that demanded he touch her. Greedily. His fingers would curl in the collar at her throat and he’d yank, shredding fabric, destroying his ability to hold back, feeding the lust that insisted he take her breast in his mouth and suck hard. The lust that wanted to seek her heat and thrust deeply into the wetness between her thighs.
The lust that wanted to taste her all over with tongue and teeth.
Bathe her in his possession.
She made a low noise as if she were reading his mind. Her knuckles turned white.
He forced himself to head for the storeroom. “I left my stuff here.”
The tool belt was where he’d dropped it. She’d offered him lunch and he hadn’t given her an opportunity to renege. He’d wanted to be with her, if just for a few minutes. He’d wanted her smile as part of his day and he’d relished every little thing she’d said to him during their meal, brushing each word toward him like a dropped bread crumb.
There was no explanation for why he wanted that.
Only all the reasons he shouldn’t.
He’d sully her with his desires. Leave ugly traces of his past on her pretty cotton dresses and on her tender golden skin.
Bending, he hefted the leather.
“So, you know Terry Grant?”
The belt slipped out of his hand to fall with a thunk to the floor. Slowly, he straightened. Alexa was strolling into the room, her expression unreadable, the hem of her little dress swinging around her knees.
He swallowed. “Seems you know her too.”
She got so close she had to tilt her head to look at his face. He could smell her faint, fruity scent. It made saliva gather on his tongue and he was forced to swallow again.
“Just met her today,” Alexa said. “Her sister is one of our brides and she came along to a gown-fitting and to see the progress on the website I’m building.”
“Ah.” He reached for his tool belt again, and then strapped it on as if it were armor.
“You…dated?” Alexa asked.
“That’s personal.”
“She said you dated.”
He could just imagine what Terry Grant said about him. “I’ve got to go.”
Alexa put her hand on his chest. The weight of it felt heavy, and beneath her palm he could still feel the brand that paper heart had left behind. “What did you do to her?”
Anger surged from the reinforced toes of his boots to his throat. It felt tight as he brushed her hand away from him. “It’s none of your fucking business. Don’t pry.”
“I—” She looked down. “You’re mad.”
He shook his head, lips compressed. Get away. Get out of here. But when he took a step to the left, she took one too, barring his getaway.
“Bing, I just want to know—”
“It’s none of your business.” His hands found her shoulders and he pushed her back.
“Bing—”
“No.” Another thrust made her retreat farther. Then another push and her shoulder blades met a free expanse of wall. He didn’t think it through, but just moved right in, his palms planted on the plaster at either side of her head. Her fast exhales landed on his neck. Her gaze was trained on his.
He wished she looked afraid.
“You’re mad,” she said again. “It’s just—”
“Why the fuck would you assume I’m in the wrong?” But h
e didn’t want to hear her answer so he lowered his head and kissed her.
Dirty-kissed her, his lips hard and his tongue diving in immediately. He pushed hard, forcing her to widen her mouth to take everything he was giving her. Her fingers curled into the cotton at his back, a little fist that she used to hold herself up.
Because she’d gone soft, as she always did.
It turned him on. He shoved his knee between her thighs, lifting it to the notch of her legs, pressing there. No warm up, no gentle teasing touches. Just this, his bone to her clit, his tongue fucking her mouth.
His cock was granite, hard going harder as her pussy pressed against his leg. He swore he could feel the pulse there, her hot blood rushing to plump her labia and to fill that bundle of nerves with more sensation. Reaching around, he shoved his hand beneath the skirt of her dress and then under the elastic of her panties so he could feel the slick wet of her seeping from her opening. It coated his fingertips.
She made a sound, an eager noise.
Tinder to his lust. He drew his lips over her chin and down her neck, breathing in the scent of her skin. His thumb pressed her hip and his fingers slid a half-inch deeper as his mouth found her breast. He pulled it into the cavern of his mouth, wetting soft white cotton and her bra with his tongue. Her nipple was already a hard bead, standing up for his attention and he worried it with his teeth. Fingernails bit into his scalp.
He grunted and moved to the other breast, sucking, biting, making the fabric transparent so that when he lifted his head he could see the jut of the pink tip. “Shit,” he murmured, a tremor working down his spine. His balls were already drawing up, that tingle building at the base of spine, by just looking at her upstanding nipples and the flushed, desperate expression on her face.
Why wasn’t she afraid of him? Why wouldn’t she at least protest? He was fifteen seconds from screwing her against the wall in her family’s bridal shop. That’s the kind of man he was.
He had to make her see. He had to make her know.
Though he could make her come, it didn’t make him good for her.
“Terry Grant,” he said, his voice raspy.
Her eyes had drifted closed and now they half-opened. “Who?”
He shoved one finger into the tight clutch of her body, watched her twitch, heard her moan. Good. He wanted her to see him as that guy, the one who’d talk about one woman while he was taking liberties with the body of another.
“Yeah, I dated her.”
She blinked.
“Fucked her too.” He mimicked the word with his finger.
Alexa’s mouth slackened, then she tried to wiggle away from his finger, his knee. He pressed his other hand against her shoulder, pinning her in place. “Thought she knew it was going nowhere. She said she did.”
He pressed his forehead to Alexa’s. “I didn’t set out to hurt her, but that’s just the way it is. Just the way I am.”
Her skin felt fevered against his. “Bing—”
“After a while, I ended things. It had run its course.” He shrugged. “Maybe I was sensing she was getting too serious.”
Alexa’s tongue touched her bottom lip. “You didn’t want to tell me.”
“Now I do.” He glanced away, glanced back, breathing in her scent: that fruity shampoo and the juicy sweetness of her sex. “A few months went by. Then one night I woke to find her in bed with me.”
“She had a key?”
“She had a key. I would have asked for it back if I knew.” He drew his finger from Alexa’s pussy and swirled the wet pad around her clit. Yes, that’s how bad he was. But he figured it was fit punishment that her little shudder felt like a fingernail scraping the skin of his shaft.
Painfully good.
“So I screwed her,” he told Alexa. “Didn’t hesitate. In the morning…” His hand withdrew from her hot flesh, from her panties, and he wiped the moisture left on it against her thigh. Then he moved his hand to grasp her waist, still keeping her in place.
“In the morning…” she whispered.
“In the morning she told me she was married. The month before, she’d gotten hitched in Vegas. Terry Grant was Terry Something Else and I’d just fucked some other man’s wife.”
Her big brown eyes flared wide. “Why? Why would she do that?”
“Revenge.” Bing searched Alexa’s face and he saw it there as he knew he would: disgust, disillusionment, the dirt that was his past sticking to her. “To make me worse than I already was. Am.”
He stepped away from her now and saw her sag against the wall. Her mouth was swollen, there were two wet spots on her blouse over her nipples, the hem of her skirt was rucked up.
“Bing…”
“Be careful about what you want to know about me.”
A line dug itself between her dark brows. “I’m not—”
“But be sure to know this. That’s the last woman I went to bed with more than once,” he said, then stalked out of the shop.
Chapter Eight
It was past dark, and Bing hadn’t returned home. Alexa knew this, because she’d been looking through her windows. Weird, after so many months of working to avoid him, of not allowing her gaze to stray out the glass on that side of the house, that she was now keeping watch.
She had to speak with him.
An hour later, she gave in to frustration and went to Brody. In his kitchen, he poured her a glass of iced tea and then faced her across the small table. His head tilted. “You look…messy. You never look messy.”
Self-conscious, she glanced down at the jeans she wore with a white T-shirt and a pair of old flip flops. The clothes she’d had on at the shop, the ones that she’d never look upon again without remembering Bing’s mouth, his hands…she’d thrown them off as soon as she’d made it home. But she hadn’t brushed her hair, she realized, combing her fingers through it now. And her lips…she knew they were puffy. Still reddened from Bing’s kisses.
“I’m looking for your brother,” she said, her gaze dropping to the tabletop.
Brody didn’t say anything right away. They’d run a few times since Bing had agreed to be her wedding events-escort, and she suspected he knew about the arrangement. But she hadn’t brought it up and, as she’d discovered, one of the best things about a male BFF was that he didn’t want to talk everything to death. So when she’d said nothing on the subject, he hadn’t injected his opinion.
She’d been wrong, early on, when she thought he’d try to talk her out of it.
“Lex…”
She glanced up. At the concerned expression on his face, she suspected he was going to attempt to change her mind now.
Her shoulders drooped. “Don’t say it, Brody.”
Sighing, he ran his hand up his face and over his hair. He looked tired, she thought, narrowing her gaze. His eyes were shadowed and there was more stubble on his face than she was accustomed to seeing, as if shaving was taking too much energy these days. He’d been gone for three days last week and Bing had made some extremely vague noises about where he’d been and why he’d left.
She leaned forward and caught his hand. “What’s the matter? You’re making me worry.”
His fingers squeezed hers. “Don’t try stealing my phrase, Alexa.”
Waving away his words, she sat back. “No need to worry about me. I only need you to help me find Bing.”
Brody sighed again. “I shouldn’t do anything but help you stay away from him. He’s not good for you, Lex.”
She hadn’t been good to him. The situation with Terry Grant had been almost opposite of what she’d imagined, what she’d practically accused him of. She shouldn’t have even listened to the woman let alone spoken with Bing about it. But after he’d left the salon she’d seen Terry’s ravaged face and heard her bitter condemnation of the man and been determined to find out every detail of the story.
Because Alexa had been afraid she’d become as angry and hostile as Terry if she let herself care for Bing and he didn’t care for her bac
k. The facts, she’d thought, would kill her interest in him.
Instead, she’d wounded him.
Why the fuck would you assume I’m in the wrong?
“It’s important I talk to him, Brody.”
He scrubbed his face again and again she noted how tired he seemed. Alone. Of course, he had a twin brother whom he worked with, lived close to, but a twin was…was another half, not another person. They were so lonely, Brody and Bing, with an absent father, no mother, and two handfuls of near relatives—the other Velvet Lemon kids—whom they’d been apart from for too long and were just now getting to know.
It only made her need to see Bing more fierce. She couldn’t bear to think of him by himself somewhere, brooding because she’d believed the worst of him. She’d thought he’d deliberately hurt the other woman when it was the other way around.
To make me worse than I already was. Am.
She slapped the table with her palm and pinned Brody with her gaze. “Tell me where he is.”
“I don’t kn—”
“Tell me where you think he is.”
Brody sighed. “I can only guess. It’s a place he goes sometimes to escape the noise in his head.”
It wasn’t until she was waiting for the gates at the Velvet Lemons compound to open—Brody had given her the password—that she realized she should have asked if Bing would bring a woman with him when he tried to escape the noise in his head.
Refusing to let that thought deter her, she parked in front of the castle-like structure the Maddox kids had called home. Fairy lights were strung in the trees surrounding it and other, larger lights were on, some upwashing the rock walls, and another, encased in a massive iron fixture, illuminating the front door.
But she followed Brody’s instructions and walked around to the back, where she found the unlocked door she’d been told about and took the steps down into the basement—er, dungeon. Because that’s what it was like, dark, poorly lit, and, she discovered as she continued down a corridor, filled with overwhelming sound.
Someone was drumming.
She came to the open door of a half-dark room. An extensive drum kit was sitting on an Oriental rug, its pattern as intricate as the rhythm that Bing was playing over the many pieces: snares, cymbals, bells, she didn’t know the names of all of them. The beats were heavy, furious, and his feet almost ran on pedals that caused the kick drum to reverberate. He was faced away from her and his shirt was off and sweat sheened his back, his shoulders, his powerful arms.
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