She lived half a block from Regan, but she always walked her home and then doubled back to her apartment. Regan was never observant enough to be trusted to stay safe. At the door to Regan’s building she turned and hugged her, “I’m not sure what’s wrong with you, Phee. That guy, Bryant, is hot, and he wants to take you out. Who cares if he’s from downtown? Take the free dinner, it’ll probably be way better than leftover café food.”
“I’m fine, Regan, I promise. I just don’t know why Alex was pissed, do you think he’s mad that I flirted with a customer?” Phee tucked her hands in her coat pockets, preparing to walk home.
“He’s only mad because you weren’t flirting with him. And fuck him anyway, Bryant will probably take you to some five-star place that has twelve courses or something.”
“Alex does not like me, Regan!” Phee growled.
“Whatever makes you sleep better at night. Speaking of that, I’m going to go to bed so I don’t feel like shit in the morning. Night, girl.” Regan kissed her on the cheek and typed in the code to get in her building, and Phee waved as she turned to walk home. Phee hated the nauseous feeling growing in her stomach. If Alex liked her as much as Regan believed, would he fire her for the way she’d behaved with Bryant? It had definitely been inappropriate. Everything about the way she’d acted around him had been inappropriate. If she hadn’t been so busy fantasizing about them clashing like warriors for the elements she likely wouldn’t have even opened her mouth.
There goes your head getting you into trouble again, Phee.
Her grandfather’s voice was in her head more and more often these days. He’d always warned her that if she didn’t get serious about her life, she’d never have a life. Like her mother. When her mother had died, sick and confused in a hospital, that had been hard enough. She’d only been fourteen. Then her grandparents had died from a gas leak in their building just a few months after she’d moved into her own place. Phee had found out about it hours after everyone else. The neighborhood had been a buzz of activity when she and Regan had arrived on the train, and the guilt Phee had felt at being downtown when it happened still ate at her. If she had taken a factory job like her grandparents had urged her to, she would have known immediately. She could have been in the crowd of people who claimed the bodies as they came out. Instead, her grandparents had been labeled unclaimed and left in the hallway of the morgue as low priority.
Alex had given her three days off, paid, and Regan had split her tips with her. Phee had imagined their bodies being burned at the top of a great mountain, atop towering pyres made of sticks. A hundred people crowding around them to sing at the stars and mourn them with her. And the stars had sung back, the sky a kaleidoscope of colors as the heavens wept with her, and meteors crashed to the earth to light up the mountain tops in bursts of multi-colored light.
In reality, they had been cremated in a dismal building near the filthy shore of Nortok Lake, and she had scattered their ashes in the park that she and her mom used to dance in. The same place she’d scattered her mom’s ashes years before.
As Phee entered her building she sighed and headed up the four flights of stairs. Even on the top floor, the fog was an inescapable wall outside her windows. Her apartment was small, and basically two rooms. A living room with a kitchen in one corner, and then a set of French doors leading to the bedroom that had the only bathroom. Phee clicked on the television and went to heat up the leftovers she’d snagged from the café.
Just like she did every night.
A glass of bourbon later and the television had her smiling again at some stupid show. She’d had a long day, a weird day, but she was sure Alex would be fine in the morning and everything would be back to normal. Boring, repetitive, but normal. Her phone buzzed on the couch next to her, and she almost dropped her glass when she recognized the last four numbers from the napkin Bryant had handed her.
No. Way.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Phee?” It was Bryant’s voice. It was actually Bryant’s voice. He’d really called her.
“Uh, yeah. It’s me. So… you called me.” Phee took a breath, mentally steadying her footing on the earth at the edge of the beach. His rumbling laugh over the phone shook the ground beneath her feet.
“So, I did! I guess that means I rose to your challenge, are you going to rise to mine?” His voice was deliciously taunting. She could imagine that smile curving the edges of his mouth, his chestnut hair skirting across his forehead as he pinned her with those turquoise colored eyes.
“And what challenge is that, Bryant?” Phee grinned and leaned back on the couch, taking a drink of the bourbon. One of the few good habits her grandfather had left her with was having a decent taste in what to drink, and she had a bottle for every occasion. One for unwinding in the evening, a slightly better one for a bad day, and a very nice bottle that she only opened on really good days, or really, really bad days. The last time she’d opened that bottle had been the day her grandparents had died. Her grandfather would have approved.
“The one where I asked you to dinner, and you pointedly didn’t give me an answer.” Bryant had a growling, playful edge to his voice that sent a warm shiver through her.
“Ah, that challenge. I guess I haven’t answered you, have I?” Phee laughed to herself when she heard him groan over the line.
“No, you haven’t. Which only makes you more interesting.”
“How’s that?”
“Let’s just say, I’ve never had to plead with someone to go on a date with me before.” Bryant’s voice was getting lower and it made her stomach do funny things. He was hot. That was an undeniable fact. Seeing him for just a moment had made her imagine him naked, walking out of the ocean, glistening and wet. She wasn’t immune to his looks, or his playful charm, but she had been serious. She wasn’t giving an inch in this battle; he was going to have to work for it. Incredible eyes or not.
“You don’t sound like you’re pleading, Bryant.” Phee grinned and Bryant burst into laughter on the other end of the phone.
“Oh, Phee, I don’t plead with anyone, but I’d definitely like to hear what you sound like when you beg.” Bryant’s words had shifted the conversation hard, and Phee’s vision of the ocean and the earth clashing together changed until it was Bryant on top of her. Her back in the wet sand, his hands pinning hers as he kissed her and claimed victory when he thrust inside her.
Heat rushed up her chest that had nothing to do with the second glass of bourbon she was halfway through.
“Phee?” Bryant’s voice was a purr that snapped her out of her fantasy.
“Are you accustomed to women begging you, Bryant?” Phee had meant for her voice to come out strong and steady, but instead it was breathy. Her heart rate needed to slow down, and the tingling feelings in her lower belly needed to chill out.
“Yes.”
Phee’s mouth dropped open and she had the urge to pull the phone away from her head to stare at it incredulously as if the act would somehow translate across the line to him. Talk about arrogant, privileged, power hungry, cocky -
“However, I really want to take you to dinner…” Bryant’s heavy sigh filled the phone, “So, Phee, would you please go to dinner with me? I promise to make it worth your time?”
“Did you just say please, Bryant?” Phee felt like the ground had solidified under her feet a little. Bryant was a dangerous whirlpool, and if she got too close she was going to fall in.
“I did. I am actually very polite when I’m not taken by surprise by waitresses butting into my conversations to tell me who I should date.”
“Are you looking for an apology?”
“Not at all, I’m looking to say thank you with dinner. But you seem to be running scared from the idea.” Bryant’s voice was a playful rumble again and Phee couldn’t stop grinning.
“I never said no.”
“You haven’t said yes, either.” She heard him moving around wherever he was and she wanted to know what he was
doing. She doubted he was sitting on a threadbare couch, holding a glass of everyday bourbon, while wearing shorts and an old school uniform shirt. Phee took another sip and crossed her legs on the sofa, dragging it out. This little power struggle was fun, and in her mind she was straddling him on the beach, his hands on her hips – and it was glorious.
“Then I’ll say it.” Phee paused again just to make him wait, and then she continued, finally answering him slowly, “Yessss.” Bryant laughed, and she did too. He wasn’t what she had expected when she’d seen him so serious at the table. How was someone from downtown so easygoing, so playful? Even with the comments about wanting to hear her beg, which had only turned her on, he seemed so relaxed.
“This is going to be fun. Are you free tomorrow night?” Bryant was still laughing, and Phee couldn’t tell if it was the alcohol going to her head, or if it was just Bryant making her feel so light.
“Yeah, I’m free.”
“Great, what’s your address? I can pick you –”
“Um, that won’t work.” Phee interrupted him.
“What do you mean? You mean, tomorrow won’t work?”
“No, it’s just –” Phee sighed. Maybe he had been confused because she worked downtown, maybe he thought she lived there too. With a roll of her eyes she drank the last of the bourbon in her glass and just spat out the truth, “I live South of downtown. In the fog. You don’t need to –”
“So? I can come by and pick you up. What time are you home?” Bryant didn’t seem fazed at all. It kind of surprised her, especially since there was a bit of a social faux pas with the city’s elite dating people from the fog. Rumors like that appeared in the magazines all the time, it was fodder for the tabloids, but maybe he wasn’t important enough to worry.
“It takes over an hour for me to get home, it would really be easier if we just met at the Elsinore? We close at six thirty, so if you picked me up a little before seven you wouldn’t have to drive all over. I’ll bring a change of clothes if you’ll tell me what the dress code is.” Phee felt like she was negotiating and it was a bit of a thrill when he gave in.
“Alright. It just means more time I can spend with you. I know a great place, not really fancy, just a dress and you’ll fit in. Although I have to say, the jeans you were in today were spectacular when you were walking away.” There was that playful growl again, and she laughed.
“A dress it is. What will you be wearing?”
“Not a dress.” Bryant said it so seriously that it had Phee laughing again and he joined her. “I promise I’ll change from work, no suit, I swear. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good night.”
“You too.” Bryant ended the call and she twisted to lie down on the couch, the stupid grin on her face wouldn’t melt away, and in her mind she was shouting out her victory again. Their banter was addictive, she could already tell. No one kept up with her like he had, giving her wit right back to her. Even Regan got confused half the time, and they’d known each other since they were four.
Her phone buzzed in her hand and she looked down to see a text message from Bryant’s number: Don’t lose my number between tonight and tomorrow, okay?
She laughed and texted him back: Who is this?
Phee’s cheeks hurt from all the grinning and laughing as she waited for him to respond. When her phone finally buzzed she read it quickly: Am I going to have to teach you manners tomorrow?
Something about the way he’d written it made her hear it in the same low growl in which he’d made the comment about hearing her beg. She realized instantly how wet she was, the groan she let go having everything to do with imagining him on top of her on that damned beach again, all her forest defenses collapsing as his waves crashed over her.
And she was happy to be drowning in it. In him.
She was in trouble, but Phee tapped out a response anyway, her words making her smile: Maybe, Bryant, maybe. Night.
Chapter Three
Dinner had been at a casual restaurant with incredible, handmade pastas. The bread had been warm from the oven, and they had bantered back and forth the whole time. Phee had learned that Bryant’s uncle had been the COF man at the table, and that Nate was his bodyguard. Bryant worked on his uncle’s staff, but admitted he was just a glorified errand boy for the people who made the actual decisions in the government. Phee had nodded, keeping her mouth shut on how the COF were viewed by most of the people in the fog. Their symbol of a phoenix rising out of a laurel wreath was often mocked in graffiti. Anonymous protest groups liked to post up a version of a headless chicken, its feet in chains that formed the border where the laurel wreath usually did. The city usually had them painted over within a day, but it didn’t stop the people from putting more up.
Phee had switched the subject to the food, then books and music, and she discovered they had a lot in common. Bryant had even impressed her by emptying out several sugar packets on to a plate and proceeding to make a flock of tiny paper cranes on the table while she chatted. He dropped them all onto the table of a family with two small kids who squealed with delight as they were leaving. The simple kindness had surprised her in the best way. He was nothing like she’d expected.
After dinner he drove them to a standing art piece in the middle of downtown, tall statues that looked like exaggerated silhouettes of people leaping and dancing and reaching up to the stars. They were easily twenty feet tall, and the walking paths that wound around them and through the trees were well lit. It was nothing like her neighborhood, the fog here was thin and just tinted their vision with a slight haze that grew denser the farther off you looked. But the point was, you could see a block or two down.
“I thought you might like this place.” Bryant’s sudden burst of speech surprised her; they had been wandering quietly for a while. The air was still pretty warm, only the barest chill as the fog settled on their skin.
“I do, the statues are impressive. Honestly, I expected you to take me to some ridiculously expensive restaurant, and then -”
“Throw a bunch of money around to try and impress you?” Bryant interrupted her, and finished her sentence. It wasn’t exactly what she was going to say, but the same idea. The casual dinner with friendly conversation and the quiet walk through an art installation were not what she had expected at all.
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Is that what you wanted?” Bryant’s voice was quiet, and she glanced up at him, his turquoise eyes finding hers but not giving anything away.
“That’s not my style.” Phee smiled a bit.
“It’s not mine either.” Bryant relaxed a little and took her hand in his as they turned down a path that would lead them back to his car, “In fact, it’s sort of what you heard me complaining about at the Elsinore. Everyone expects me to play the political game, to wine and dine the influential people in the Cabal of Freedom so that I can follow in my uncle’s footsteps.” It seemed like he was about to say something else but he stopped talking and the way he looked away from her made it seem like he didn’t want to continue.
“Okay, so why did you bring me here?” Phee glanced back over her shoulder to see the huge shadows of the statues cast out into the trees. They looked like giants standing over great forges, blasting their shadows in sharp relief against the bright white of the spotlights.
“It’s my favorite place in the city, and I wanted to see if you liked it.”
“Why?” Phee almost slapped herself, she had to stop asking him that.
“Because no one ever has.” Bryant glanced at her and smiled, “Most of the time if I bring someone here, they ask me what we’re going to do here. They’re not happy just walking around. My mom was the last person who would just walk around this place with me.”
“Where’s your mom?” Phee shut her mouth when she saw the shadow pass over his face. She knew that look. She gave the same look whenever people asked about her family. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
&
nbsp; “Uh, yeah. Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Bryant turned to keep walking towards the car but Phee planted her feet and tugged him back.
“I lost my mom too, it’s fine that you mentioned her. Thanks for telling me about her, and for bringing me here to see it.” Phee kept her voice light, ignoring the heavy weight of talking about death.
Then Bryant kissed her.
His arm wrapped around her waist to pull her up towards his mouth and his warm lips pressed against hers until he nipped her bottom lip and she gasped. He took advantage of her parted lips and deepened the kiss, the soft groan in his chest had her releasing his hand to wrap her arms around his neck. Bryant’s free hand trailed up her spine to cradle the back of her head. He tasted like the wine they’d had with dinner, and when his fingers wound in her hair she moaned against his mouth. As if he could read her mind he tightened his grip and she moaned again as the tingling pleasure rushed over her skin. Her hips were pressing against his, and she could feel his cock growing in his pants. Never shy, Phee shifted her hips until he was moaning in response. When the kiss finally broke they were panting, and his cheeks were flushed.
“I’d pretend I was inviting you back to my place for coffee, but I honestly don’t even want to try for the charade of all that. Please tell me you’re coming to my place and getting in my bed.” His voice was a delicious growl, and his fingers were still wound in her hair. Phee grinned.
“Saying please again?” She said it playfully, and he brought his hand down on her ass in a quick spank. Her mouth opened in surprise, but she was instantly wet. Bryant had leaned back to gauge her reaction, and the way his mouth curved said he was happy with her response.
Twist (A BDSM & Romantic Erotica Boxed Set) Page 43
