by M. O'Keefe
“Your birthday.”
He grabbed the hem of my shirt and lifted it up over my head. This was another strange minute when I kind of missed my long hair. It would feel good falling down over my bare shoulders. It would probably look good, reflected back in all these mirrors. And I sort of…I sort of wanted him to see it. To see part of the old me and find it desirable. The parts of me that no one found desirable. I wondered what he would think—of my red hair. My Del Monte cap. My cowboy boots.
The steam was filling the room now, and when he reached around me to pull at my pants, I braced my arms behind me and lifted my hips.
He smiled down at the red hair between my legs, his thumb stroked through it, and I looked down to the see the red curls there around his thumb.
Other women shaved. I didn’t. I’d never been waxed. I trimmed the hair because it was hot and I felt cleaner when I did it.
“Why’d you dye your hair?” he asked.
Because I’m running from my husband who tried to kill me.
Reality was intrusive. A bully pounding on the door, and I ignored it as best I could.
Twenty-four hours and then I’d go back to reality.
“I just wanted a change,” I lied.
His thumb slid deeper and I spread my legs wider, lifting my hips higher, jerking when he hit my clit and then lingered there, rolling it against his thumb.
“Dylan…” I breathed, leaning back against the mirror behind me.
He growled but then he stepped back, took a deep breath. “Get in the shower,” he said.
“Now?” I blinked.
“Preparations,” he said. He pressed a quick, hard kiss to my shoulder and then was gone.
The difference between every other shower I’ve ever had and Dylan’s shower was the difference between what happened between Dylan and me on the couch and what happened alone on my bed.
The shower was huge, the hot water endless. And it came out of that showerhead like a spring rain.
I was considering moving into that shower. Maybe I could sublet it.
There was a razor in the shower and masculine-smelling soap and shampoo. I used it all, until I smelled like Dylan. I shaved my armpits and my legs and then, staring down at my pubic hair¸ I decided why not.
Using plenty of shaving cream and sitting on the bench on the far end of the shower where the water didn’t hit me, I shaved my pubic hair. Not all of it.
Still Annie McKay after all.
But some. The edges. The top and then down between my legs. I rinsed off the shaving cream and felt…bare. Deliciously bare. Like a harem girl in the historical romance I’d read.
The hot water turned tepid and I cranked it off, opening the glass door to a room full of steam. When it cleared, I found a towel and a black robe on the marble counter where I’d been sitting.
He’d snuck in while I’d been shaving. I wondered what he’d seen. I wondered if he’d watched. Between my legs I felt puffy. Totally different.
The robe was silk and way too big and even though I rolled up the sleeves and looped the belt around my waist twice, I was still swimming in it.
But it was silky and perfect against my skin and Dylan had laid it out for me, so why would I change? The bedroom when I came out of the bathroom was dark. A king-size bed covered in a dark duvet monopolized the room. There was a dresser on a far wall. A closet in the corner, with the door left partially open. Inside I could see suits. Three or four suits. A tuxedo. I stepped forward and reached into the closet, touching the black sleeve of the tuxedo jacket. There was no label inside, which I gathered to mean he’d had it made custom. And the fabric was the softest, finest thing I’d ever touched.
One day, I thought, looking at that jacket, pushing aside the anxiety it gave me. I have one day in this magical house. Try not to ruin it. The door to the rest of the house was open and I could hear music from the kitchen. And I could smell food. Good food.
My stomach got excited. It had been many hours since the cornbread I’d eaten with peanut butter (a terrible combination) for dinner.
I got even more excited when I stepped into that kitchen and found Dylan drinking beer and putting food out on that barn table. He was listening to music I didn’t recognize. But I never recognized music.
“Wow, these are some serious preparations,” I said, trying to be light to hide all my misgivings. My nerves. The nonstop pounding of reality.
“Hey!” He looked up, his eyes taking in the dark robe and my damp hair. “That looks real good on you.” I did a little preen, pretending to poof up my hair or something. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.
“You have anything in a bucket?” He shot me a quizzical look and I waved it off. “I’ll have whatever is easy.” My pat answer.
“Well…” He turned and opened up the silver fridge. “Margaret took this shit pretty seriously, so I have a fully stocked fridge right now. But I think we’ll start with…” He pulled out a big bottle. “This.”
“Champagne?”
“Only the best.”
I almost told him I’d never had champagne before, but I thought maybe there’d been enough revealing how little I knew of the world.
I sat down at the table while he opened the champagne.
“What is all this?” I asked, looking at the food he’d set out.
“That,” he pointed with the champagne bottle toward a plate, “is some kind of cheese that you are supposed to eat with those kinds of crackers. I don’t really know, to tell you the truth. Margaret did this.”
There was a bowl of olives on the table and I ate one. There was a pit in it. The pit must make it fancy. As discreetly as I could I took it out of my mouth and placed it in a little bowl that must be there for just that reason.
“Margaret came back while I was in the shower?”
“No, I imagine she came back hours ago. She lives in another house on the property. I called her when you were in the shower.”
“This is quite a compound you’ve got here,” I said, eating the cheese with the appropriate cracker. It tasted expensive. I was used to Velveeta and stale Ritz.
The champagne cork popped and he handed me a flute. And I sat in a mountain home in a silk robe, drinking champagne, and truthfully, I didn’t know how I got there.
Do not, I thought again, ruin this.
Dylan had put on a shirt while I was in the shower. A dark plaid button-up shirt, with most of the buttons undone. The sleeves were rolled up revealing his forearms, and somehow that was even sexier than his bare chest.
I put the cracker and cheese down on a plate and took a sip of my champagne. The champagne was amazing. Like sweet-and-sour sunlight. I took another sip.
“You don’t like it?” he asked, glancing down at the cheese.
“It’s good,” I lied.
He half-smiled, half-frowned at me. “You can say you don’t like it,” he said. “You can actually say, ‘Dylan, this cheese sucks.’ ”
I would never. Not ever.
“It’s good,” I said with a laugh. “Strong.”
He tipped his head toward me. “You can change your mind, you know.”
“About what?”
“About staying.”
“Why…why would you say that? I don’t want to change my mind.” I knocked back half the champagne in one long gulp. Did he want me to change my mind? The thought made me feel incredibly naked under the robe and I pulled the fabric up into my lap.
“You seem wound up.”
Wound up. Right. For some reason the voice in my head, the voice that kept wanting to remind me that I was married, would not shut up.
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“I don’t turn out birthday girls on their birthdays.”
I thought of the brunette I saw in those pictures, that beautiful girl who clung to his side, the two of them looking like they were in the pages of a catalog. A catalog where you could buy a richer, more exciting life.
I handed him my now empty champagne flute.
“More?”
“Please.”
He filled my glass back up and handed it over to me, and then pulled a tray out of the oven. He tipped the tray onto a plate, and little pastries rolled off onto the plate. Two landed on the floor and he grabbed them with his bare hand, shoving one in his mouth.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “That’s hot.”
He put the plate down by my hip and ate the other pastry. Watching him do all these small domestic things on my behalf, seeing the trouble and expense he’d gone to for me and my birthday, made me feel worse.
“Is this where you talked to me?” I asked, twirling the champagne glass in my hands. “At this house?”
“Yeah. I mean, usually. I have another building here. A bigger garage with an office. I talked to you a few times there.”
“This house, another garage, and Margaret’s house? All here?”
“I own the mountain, Annie.”
I glanced away, my breath skittering around my lungs. He owns the damn mountain.
“Truthfully,” he said, “I rarely leave this mountain.”
“You go to parties in tuxedos.”
“Yeah, I think that will be the last one I’m invited to. I pissed off one too many people.”
“Were you always like this?” I asked.
“A hermit?” He laughed.
“No.”
“Rich? No. Not at all,” he said.
“Alone.” He seemed intrinsically alone. Self-contained and solitary. Even surrounded by people, he would seem alone.
“I’m hardly alone,” he said. “I’ve got a crew of guys here every day. My business partner. Margaret’s here constantly.”
I wondered if he believed the lie, but I did not. I knew alone. I’d been painfully alone and I only realized it now, after a month at the Flowered Manor. It only took a few friendships of exceedingly shallow depths to show me how alone I’d been. And not by choice.
“Why me?” I asked. The question surprised us both.
“Why you, what?”
“Why’d you do all this with me?” His face was blank, like he didn’t understand what I was asking. “Was it a power thing? Was it like a…I don’t know…a test? A joke—”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Annie? A joke?” He sounded offended.
“I mean look at you, Dylan. Look at all that you have. You could get down off this mountain and have any woman you wanted and instead…you were having phone sex with some stranger who could barely make rent on her shitty trailer in a shitty trailer park. And my guess is you knew that. You knew I was living in that trailer from the very beginning, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I knew, but—”
“So was it some kind of game to play around with the poor girl?” What did he call it that night, virgin kink? Was this poverty kink?
“You think any of that matters to me? What I have and what you don’t?”
“I have no idea what matters to you,” I said, and he blinked.
“Well, that shit doesn’t.”
“So…why me?”
He finished what was left in his champagne glass and then filled it up. He gestured to me to finish my glass.
“A little liquid courage for the birthday girl,” he said, sounding…dark. Angry. As if my questions had wounded him. I drained my champagne and held my glass out for more. “That first phone call, I knew you were lying about living in that trailer. You are a shitty liar.”
Oh, I thought, you are so wrong. So impossibly wrong. You have no idea the lies I’m telling.
“You kept doing this thing, every time we talked. You’d get scared and be about to hang up, but then…it was like you forced yourself not to be scared anymore. To keep talking to me. And every conversation I’d push a little harder, ask you to do more, and you’d…keep coming back for more. Over and over again and…Fuck, Annie. Watching that, being a part of that kind of bravery. It was exciting. Addictive.”
“You didn’t laugh?” I asked. “You didn’t hang up and laugh at me.”
“Never.” It was a solemn vow from him and my nipples got hard. My body wet. “Every time you called me I felt so damn lucky.”
He finished his glass of champagne and stepped over toward me. His hands on his hips. “Now, why me?”
I stared at him blankly. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. Why’d you do that with me?”
I took a sip of champagne and it fizzed through me, so I took another. And then one more. “I like your voice. And…” I held out my glass. “I like your champagne.”
Silent, he poured more champagne into my glass.
“Tell me, Annie. The truth.”
Oh, the truth. Wouldn’t that be something? What would happen if I just opened my mouth and told him the truth?
“You asked me if I was okay. Every time,” I said, watching the bubbles explode in my glass instead of watching him. “And you apologized. And you seemed to…care about me and I was a total stranger to you. I felt safe,” I said.
“You are safe.”
I gave him an arch look. That was not the song he was singing earlier, urging me to leave the trailer park.
“With me,” he clarified. “You are safe. I won’t hurt you, Annie.”
I think I’m already hurt, I thought. I think I’m bleeding and I don’t even know it.
This was, without a doubt, the nicest thing any man had ever done for me. Ever. The champagne, the disgusting cheese. It was all so kind. It was the most trouble. The most care.
And I didn’t deserve it.
I was lying.
I was married.
I knew I should just leave. Hadn’t I gotten what I wanted? That something amazing I knew he’d be able to give me—I’d gotten it. He’d touched me. Kissed me the way that a woman should be kissed. With passion and care. Some of the ugliness of my life before was wiped away by the last few hours.
But to accept more…it was too greedy.
Wanting more only got me punished. Wanting more got me hurt. I had to carefully calibrate what I wanted to what I deserved.
A penny more, an inch more, and it would rain something awful down on my head.
I’d let myself have this terrible, terrible thing. And I should end it. Now. Before it got worse. Before I wanted even more. Before…before I ruined everything and told him.
“I have a question for you,” he said. He came over to my chair, and with one hand, he picked me up and set me down on the table and then he pushed in between my legs, bracing his hands on the table beside me.
He was crowding me and I wanted to push him away and pull him closer. All at the same time. I pulled in a deep breath and my breasts touched his chest. The robe had split over my legs and I could feel the denim of his jeans on the insides of my thighs.
He tilted my face up so my eyes met his.
“What are you scared of?” he asked.
DYLAN
Dylan knew fear. He knew how it smelled. What it tasted like—the bitter, coppery taste of blood and adrenaline in the back of the throat. And he knew what it looked like when someone was trying not to be scared.
After he turned sixteen he’d had four long years learning every inch, every side of fear.
“I’m not scared,” Annie whispered.
“And now you’re lying.”
She shook her head and he eased his grip up under her chin.
“Are you scared of me?”
She shook her head, that white-blond hair falling over her eyes. Dylan reached up and brushed it away, taking in all her softness. Her skin. Her hair. All of it. Her entire body communicated her fear. The white-knuckled grip on the champagne glass, the way her eyes wouldn’t stay locked on his. Her shoulders were up at her ears.
“Then who are you scared of?”
“No one,” she breathed. “I’m fine. Just…maybe nervous.”
Why the fuck was she lying? He’d kicked women o
ut of his life for far less than lying to his face. If Dylan was thinking at all, he’d pack this girl up and send her on her way.
But he wasn’t thinking. And that always meant trouble.
“No one’s ever gone to all this trouble for me,” she said, putting her hand out toward that gross cheese Margaret insisted was the best and the olives.
“It’s not that much trouble,” Dylan muttered. Truthfully, he would break every rule he had, every promise he’d ever made, and go to all the trouble in the world for this girl and she had no idea. None.
He’d made a joke earlier about her living in a box before. And he knew he wasn’t wrong. She’d talked about her mom, and Dylan had the sense that she wasn’t the only one that had kept Annie small and pushed down.
“I don’t need champagne,” she said, setting down her glass. She was doing it again, that thing that made him nuts. Pushing past her fear to be brave, to reach out, however scared, for what she wanted. “I don’t need fancy cheese and all this…stuff.”
“It’s a seduction, Annie. It’s about want. Not need.”
“You’ve already seduced me,” she whispered. “All I want is you.”
She reached up and pulled the lapels of the robe off her shoulders, revealing herself to him. That creamy skin. The small, round, tight breasts with the pink nipples. She pulled open the belt and the rest of the robe fell away and she sat there surrounded in black satin, like a present just for Dylan.
And Jesus…she’d shaved.
That tender sweet spot between her legs was nearly bare.
“Oh baby, look at you…”
“Finish this,” she said. There were two terrible, trembling inches between them. She couldn’t hide how much she wanted him. But she also couldn’t hide how much she didn’t want to want him. “Just…let’s finish this.”
“You think if we fuck each other hard enough it will go away?” he asked her. He was already hard as steel behind his zipper. “We’ll get it out of our systems?”
“That has to work,” she said. “It has to.”
Dylan pushed back her hair, holding her face in his hard hands. He was worlds too rough. Worlds too wrong. But he was going to take what she was offering. “You really are innocent, aren’t you?”
