by Helena Maeve
“Just goes to show,” Dylan said sagely.
“What?”
“Never trust a financial analyst.” He raised his glass in mock toast and took another pouting sip.
“Huh. I had you pegged for a banker—or a Silicon Valley lawyer.” Firms had sprung up like mushrooms after rain since formerly hip companies started hopping onto the stock market train.
“Oh, that explains why you always look so pleased to see me!” Dylan laughed.
“Maybe I just don’t like your face.”
“Bullshit. I’ve got a very pretty face. I’m like a Chinese George Clooney.” He smiled at Hazel over the coffee table. He’d claimed the armchair while she took the futon, an equitable division of furniture that kept Hazel from feeling too boxed in. “Is that the reason?”
If they weren’t going to talk about his mysterious roommate, maybe it was only normal that they’d talk about her not so mysterious friend.
Hazel rolled her shoulders against the backrest. “To be honest, I wasn’t super excited to see the guy who sleeps with one woman and gives his number to another…” It didn’t explain why she’d agreed to have dinner with him instead of refusing—noisily and on the spot. There were limits to good manners.
Dylan scowled. The way he did it, though, was less menacing and more a means of spelling out his bewilderment. Hazel wondered if he practiced in the mirror. She couldn’t be the only one calibrating her smiles so they didn’t seem too inviting, too open or keeping her scowls from offending people who could hurt her.
“I…didn’t give you my number because I was trying to pick you up. It was meant for Sadie. In case…” Dylan waved the hand that held his glass in a wide arc. “I don’t know. She swore she was fine, but I still spent that night thinking that I should have insisted she stay over—to make sure.”
“Aftercare.” Hazel didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until she saw Dylan nod.
“Precisely.”
The revelation should have made her feel relieved that Dylan put so much thought into what he did. Her memory snagged on another detail. “That’s why you wanted me to come in?”
“Ninety percent of the why.”
Their eyes met and locked fast. Hazel felt a surge of heat eddying up from her core all the way to the tips of her fingers. If it stained her cheeks pink along the way, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Do you do that—what you did with Sadie… Do you do it with many women?”
“Are you asking if I’m a man whore?” Dylan sucked his lips into his mouth as though he was struggling not to smile.
“Hey, if the safe word fits…”
He chuckled. “I don’t. I have a few female friends who share my interests and we see each other from time to time. Sadie was a rare exception.” Dylan peered into his glass and compressed his lips into a rueful smile. “I probably shouldn’t ask, but…”
“No,” Hazel interjected. “She didn’t say why she didn’t call.” More and more, Dylan seemed like he should have been her type—wealthy, educated, very handsome. And he was into the same kinks as Sadie.
The aunties would be bowled over if they heard he was actively trying to renew his ties to the old country.
Hazel could have left it at that. She could have extricated herself from the topic without giving Dylan extra ammunition. But a part of her was beginning to feel like this wasn’t war and she didn’t have to worry about buttressing her defenses. She knew what it was like on Dylan’s side of the equation far more than she understood Sadie’s. She empathized.
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s less to do with you than her,” Hazel opined evenly. “Sadie’s looking for the one.” The air-quotes were an imperative.
“And I wasn’t it.”
Hazel hid her headshake behind her glass. The iced tea and gin cocktail was absolutely foul, but if it chased away the panicky tremors, then it was good enough.
“Well,” Dylan said, “here’s hoping it was nothing more serious.”
“Like what?” Hazel tasted rubber in the back of her mouth. A white flash ignited before her eyes, setting off brightly colored fireworks. Somewhere, a man patted her hip and told her she was beautiful.
Dylan’s voice pulled her back into the present. “I don’t want to shock you.”
How sweet. “Go ahead, if you want. Sadie keeps me informed.” Mostly because they swam in the same murky waters—Sadie merely chased her cravings with abandon, while Hazel embraced celibacy. Neither of them needed Dylan protecting their virgin ears.
To his credit, he didn’t waste time hemming and hawing. “To put it delicately, I’m always wary of taking a new partner. I’m never entirely sure they know what they’re getting into. Your friend wouldn’t be the first submissive I’ve had who panicked after a session.”
And, just like that, Hazel’s ears were ringing, submissive ricocheting like a stray bullet in the hollow recesses of her skull. “What about during?”
“That, too.” Dylan tipped forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry. If this is making you uncomfortable—”
“It’s not,” Hazel lied, as abrupt as a bee sting.
“You look like you’re about to break that glass.”
Hazel glanced down at her hands. Her knuckles had indeed gone white with tension. She hadn’t even noticed.
She hurried to release it, gin and iced tea sloshing against the sides of the glass as Hazel set it on the coffee table. “I should check on dinner.”
Providentially, Dylan didn’t give chase. He was still seated, still staring contemplatively into his glass when Hazel returned with two plated slices of gooey cheese casserole.
“Oh, that smells good,” he purred.
“Careful, it’s hot.”
“Words to live by,” Dylan quipped. They didn’t stop him trying a forkful of still steaming casserole, then dousing his scalded tongue in spiked iced tea.
Hazel couldn’t help a chuckle. “I did warn you…”
“Yeah, but the forbidden is always more attractive. It’s Biblical.”
“Not sure that was the point of that particular story, but I won’t debate you. My Sunday school days are long behind me.”
“That’s still more than I know.” Dylan grinned and tapped his chest. “Jewish, I’m afraid.”
Sadie’s aunts wouldn’t have thought much of that. By that same token, neither would Hazel’s mother.
“I’m guessing not Orthodox…”
“What gave it away? The eyes or—”
“The string of ex-girlfriends you like to tie up and torture with a feather,” Hazel deadpanned, before blowing lightly on a forkful of casserole.
Dylan gaped. “Now that’s just deliberately misrepresenting reality.”
“No feathers?”
“No ex-girlfriends.”
“Why?” It wasn’t an absurd question. As far as Hazel could tell, Dylan was funny and charming, he drove a nice car and he had a well-paying job. The roommate thing was obviously a sticking point, but women would put up with a lot more for a boyfriend who treated them well.
Hazel wasn’t sure if she counted herself among them, ancient history notwithstanding.
She watched Dylan’s expression shift as though he was picking his way through several possible answers. In the end, he settled on a shrug. “I’m not really looking for a partner.”
“But you’ll toss and turn all night long for a stranger you happen to sleep with?”
She couldn’t say why she felt compelled to needle him. She just did.
“That’s half of the reason why I usually don’t sleep with strangers,” Dylan retorted.
“What’s the other half?”
It was Dylan’s turn to deadpan. “I’m sleeping with my roommate.”
Hazel opened her mouth, realized she had nothing to say and closed it again. Her gin-soaked brain took a moment to process his reply. Dylan’s ‘it’s complicated’ romantic entanglements were shaping up to sound like somethi
ng out of Days of Our Lives.
“So you’re…”
“Bisexual,” Dylan finished for her. “And sort of involved with someone, yes… If you want me to leave, I can show myself out.”
The offer carried some weight, if only because some people had hidden depths and others had goddamn Mariana trenches. Hazel mulled it over.
She shook her head.
Chapter Four
After dinner, Dylan insisted on doing the dishes. “It’s only fair,” he said, once again rolling up his sleeves. “You cooked. I’m in charge of clean-up.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” Hazel wanted to know.
He shrugged. “The possibilities are endless.” He wouldn’t be put off his stride, so Hazel threw up her hands in resignation and allowed him to get on with it.
The kitchen was too small to fit a dishwasher, so Dylan had to scrub the plates by hand. He ran the water hot enough that eddies of steam rose up from the sink and clung to the windowpane like tears. After a beat, they dribbled down—also very much like tears.
Hazel hopped up onto the counter, a fresh glass of ice tea and gin in hand. The cocktail improved on acquaintance. She spared a thought for the rotting pulped wood beneath her, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t give out under her sizable thighs. Her landlord would be furious, for one thing, and she didn’t want to become Dylan’s ‘fat girl anecdote,’ for another.
She drowned the notion in gin.
She couldn’t say when she had started caring what exactly she might be to Dylan, but it was a recent development. Not being revolted by his mere existence had snuck up on her. It was a short journey from there to admiring the slope of Dylan’s shoulders or the hum of his voice as he sponged off the remaining flakes of dried cheese still stubbornly glued to their plates.
“Does Sadie know?”
“That my true calling is washing dishes?” Dylan retorted, flashing her a shit-eating grin.
“No… That you’re not completely single.” The nuance seemed to matter to Dylan. Hazel thought he was lying to himself. Either he was in a relationship or he wasn’t. Either he was cheating on his partner—his male partner—or he wasn’t.
Dylan embraced the silence for a long beat. Only the clink of knives and forks in the drying rack disturbed the quiet. He shut off the tap. “We didn’t discuss that, no. I was under the impression that my situation was irrelevant to Sadie.”
When he felt cornered, Dylan’s voice seemed to drop an octave. His speech patterns went all Ivy League. He also pulled back his shoulders, like he was facing down a fashion runway—or a challenger in the boxing ring. Hazel tried not to examine his tell too closely. Reading people was a double-edged sword. Sometimes they wound up returning the favor.
“What about your other lady-friends?” she pressed. “Do they know?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t care?”
Dylan turned to face her, dishcloth hanging from his hands like a slightly soiled white flag. “Why should they? I’ve never offered to be anyone’s boyfriend. Some of them are married. It’s just that their needs and mine occasionally dovetail, so we meet up.”
“And your…partner doesn’t feel cheated?”
“No.” Dylan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. He helped himself to what was left of his third glass, downing the contents in one gulp. “You must think we’re perverts. First the S&M, now this…”
“Does it matter what I think?” Hazel asked, because the former had long ago stopped making her uneasy. As far as she could tell, Dylan had a working arrangement with his partner—she kept wanting to call him boyfriend—and he got his rocks off consensually with like-minded women.
The opinion of a diner waitress who barely made minimum wage wasn’t worth much.
“I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have told you about my situation if I didn’t care.”
Dylan’s reply curbed the joke that perched on Hazel’s lips, shooting it down before it could be uttered. He sounded so genuine. And Hazel—well, maybe she wanted to believe. She set the dregs of her cocktail aside and hooked a hand in his shirtfront.
“I don’t know how I feel about all this.”
“I can understand that,” Dylan hastened to say. “Don’t feel there’s any pressure to go along with something you don’t want or—”
His objections floundered when Hazel pressed her lips to his. Dylan slotted neatly into the V of Hazel’s splayed legs, brushing his hands up her thighs as if to confirm that she was, in fact, real.
Hazel nipped idly at his lips, grinning despite herself.
“What’s funny?” Dylan asked, his breath gusting against her mouth.
“This is not how I thought tonight would go.”
“Oh?”
“I was going to stand you up,” Hazel confessed. “Then was I going to be a terrible date so you would stay away from the diner… Where did I go wrong?”
Dylan kissed the lament from her lips, silencing all others before they could bubble out. He was a ridiculously good kisser. He didn’t have to grope at Hazel’s breasts or try to lift up her shirt to elicit a moan. If anything, she found herself wishing he would up the stakes. But just as she started to wrench his shirt-tails out of his pants, Dylan pulled back.
“What?” Hazel breathed. Her throat was dry with want. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Not in the least. But we’ve been drinking and—”
Hazel dropped her hands to the counter with a dull thump. “You’ve got something against a little liquid courage?”
“I prefer my partners sober,” Dylan replied. The deepening furrow between his eyebrows told her he wasn’t screwing around.
“Great.”
“I had a wonderful time…”
Hazel rolled her eyes and hopped off the counter. She didn’t need to nudge Dylan out of the way. He moved willingly. Only the sound of her name on his—talented, wicked—tongue stopped her from walking out of the kitchen and possibly opening the door so he could take off.
“Did you expect me to put out because you treated me to dinner?” The snappish edge in his voice cast some doubt on whether or not he was kidding.
“No,” Hazel lied, folding her arms across her small breasts. She hated the way her nipples poked into her shirt. She hated that Dylan could crank her engine with a simple kiss. “And I’m sure you wanted to go out with me because we have such stimulating conversation… Look, it’s fine. I just need a little space.”
“You and me both,” Dylan agreed, leaning against the counter. His gaze was mild, the threadbare hint of a smile flickering into being on his lips. “How are you still single?”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
“It’s meant to be.” Dylan raked a hand through his hair. “You’re smart. You’re witty… You’re very beautiful.”
“Easy, Romeo. If you’re not going to sleep with me, you don’t need to seduce me.” Which wasn’t to say she didn’t enjoy the laundry list of unearned flattery. The kitchen was too narrow for this kind of talk. Hazel picked a breadcrumb off the counter and hurled it into the sink bowl. “I guess I’m not really in the market for a relationship. I’ll leave the hunt for true love to Sadie.”
“That’s good to know.”
Hazel hauled a glance his way, grinning when she noticed him doing the same. “Okay, we need to find something else to do before I renege on my promise and jump you where you stand.”
“I’m an excellent Monopoly player.”
Laughter simmered in Hazel’s throat, rising like soap bubbles.
“I’m serious.”
Hazel bit her lower lip, but the knot of tension in her belly had come undone and she couldn’t seem to will away the inexplicable sense of euphoria. Must be the booze. “You know, this is the weirdest date I’ve ever been on…”
“It’s a little strange for me, too,” Dylan admitted.
“I don’t have a Monopoly board.”
“Chess?”
Hazel shook her head.
“Poker?”
“Strip poker,” she countered and that was the liquor talking, but Dylan didn’t back down from the bid.
It was how they found themselves crammed together on her narrow futon, trading grins over the upper edge of their cards. Dylan insisted on Texas Hold’em and Hazel, having no particular preference, went along with it.
She lost the first hand, and consequently her tights. Gin kept her from feeling more than a flicker of mortification for baring chipped, sparkly blue nail polish to Dylan’s gaze.
“My turn to deal,” she said, wriggling her fingers toward the deck.
“You’re not implying I cheat…”
“No, I’m sure you’d never.”
Dylan smirked as he parted with the deck, their hands brushing in the exchange. “Good job pretending you’re not judging me.”
“I’m not.” Her heated cheeks told a different story.
“Not even a little bit?” Dylan leaned his head against the backrest of the couch, eyes so dark they were nearly all pupil. They told Hazel this was no longer about poker. “It’s okay. I’d probably judge me, too.”
Self-deprecation always rubbed her the wrong way, but Dylan made it sound genuine. Hazel pursed her lips. “You’re a grown man. The way you live your life is none of my business.” Not least because this wasn’t a date, it was a hook-up, albeit without any hooking up being done because according to Dylan they were both too drunk to consent. Hazel dealt another hand. “Our current pastime aside, I’m sure you’re mature enough to know what you’re doing.”
“I object. Poker is very mature.”
“Really?” Hazel poked her tongue into her cheek. “Because this brings back memories of college.”
Dylan’s eyes gleamed when he smiled. “Is that a bad thing? I liked college. Would that I could go back!”
“Easy there, granddad.”
“I feel old,” he confessed with a counterfeit sigh. “Thirty-three is the new forty, right? I’m sure I read that somewhere.”
Hazel scoffed. “Not when you’re making six figures a year.” Bitter about the cards she’d been dealt? Never.
“Five,” Dylan corrected, in a small voice.
