by Amy Daws
My thoughts are quickly distracted by the sight of Hayden standing before me now in just a pair of pure white boxer briefs. The material hugs his muscular thighs and my eyes greedily rake up his body, taking in every trim line of his abs. He’s not overly muscled…but he’s lean and toned in all the right places.
“Not an innocent bunny at all,” he purrs, crawling into the bed beside me. “Your bedroom eyes are making it really fucking hard to be good right now.”
I smile in contentment as he tucks his arm beneath me. Snuggling in, I lay my head on that perfect place on a man’s chest. The place that dips in just above their peck and below their neck, which allows you to hear their heart thundering beneath the surface.
“What’s this?” I ask, touching the black ink on the side of his ribcage that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s a small tattoo with the digital time display of 11:11 in thick gothic font numbers. It’s resting on top of a flat line that shoots up in several peaks that look like waveforms on a monitor…like a heartbeat.
He stiffens slightly. “Just something I got after rehab.”
“What does it mean?”
“Just a little superstition. It’s nothing.”
My brows lift curiously, but I don’t press it any further. We still have a lot to learn about each other, but I want him to tell me everything on his own time. I nuzzle into him and pull the blanket up a bit.
“Vi?” he asks quietly into the night.
“Yes?”
“Thank you.” He drops a soft kiss on my head and lets out a large sigh, like he was holding his breath.
Rather than ruin the moment with a self-deprecating comment, I remain silent and close my eyes, allowing myself to drift away in the arms of this mysterious man.
NOT THE ONE
A soft giggling followed by cursing causes me to stir. My eyes crack open and I find myself alone in an enormous bed with bright daylight pouring in on me. This is definitely a first. My past experiences with women have included me ducking out before they woke up to avoid any awkward encounters.
Everything is different with Vi.
I chuckle, feeling amused at how I must look wrapped in her duvet. Honestly, who has crushed velvet anymore? I throw my legs over the edge of the bed and stretch while ruffling my hair. Fuck, I slept well. That’s quite different for me as well. I grab my jeans up off the floor and slide them on as I pad barefoot into the attached bathroom that I never even got around to seeing last night.
I’m stunned by a huge soaker tub resting smack dab in front of yet another floor-to-ceiling window. It faces north over the city, and a surge of possessiveness rushes over me as I envision Vi’s naked body covered in bubbles, bathing out in the open for all of London Bloody England to see. Surely she doesn’t use this bathroom. How the fuck does she think this is a good idea? I make a mental note to have a proper talk with her about window fixtures.
Fuck Hayden. You need to put a pin in your brooding caveman.
A large, glass, walk-in shower with two stainless steel waterfall showerheads sits on the opposite wall. Straight ahead is a modern black and white double vanity sink.
“Bloody hell,” I say, marveling a bit over all things Vi. Her style and her personality are all over this flat. Minimalist and strikingly beautiful, with an edge of surprise around every corner.
I relieve myself and head over to the sink to wash my hands. She obviously is not hard up. Truthfully, as far as money goes, we are similar. My father’s furniture distribution centre made us very comfortable growing up. My mother was able to stay home with us when we were kids, so we had a traditional English upbringing.
But Vi being raised solely by a former professional footballer turned manager had to be different. I know from news articles that her brother Gareth makes over two hundred million pounds a year. It’s not even the money that impresses me…or the fame. It’s the lifestyle. I wonder what Vi does for fun outside of her brothers’ very public lifestyles?
Now it appears she’s trying to gain some independence from her family, whereas I’m relying on mine more than ever. Last night with her was definitely…unexpected. I was trying to convince myself I had to leave her be and avoid her at all costs. But seeing her at the club with Ethan pushed me over the edge. I realised in that moment that if it isn’t Ethan, it will be somebody else. That’s when I knew just how tightly Vi has me in her grips. Possessiveness isn’t a trait I’m familiar with, but fuck I feel it when it comes to her.
Vi is just…refreshing. She’s beautiful and warm, a bit quirky, and a mess in some of the most adorable ways. But she’s so fucking charming that I can hardly stand being away from her even right now. I pop a new tip on her electric toothbrush, brush my teeth, wash my face, and then quickly head out to find her. My body actually aches to touch her again. Sleeping with her all night was oddly…calming.
I used to sleep with Reyna occasionally during our dark and twisted time together. She’d have these horrid reoccurring dreams and I was her anchor to help bring her back down to reality. I would rarely even fall asleep at her flat, because all I could do was stew about the fact that I was falling for her and could never bring myself to tell her.
And now, after only one week with Vi, I’m laying everything out on the table. Fucking therapy has ruined my alpha bloke status.
The large glass patio door in the living room is wide open and I see Vi outside, walking carefully with a large dog bowl of water. Suddenly, Bruce comes bounding toward her from the other side of the deck. She cries out for him to stop, but it’s too late. His momentum is out of control. He clobbers into her and the bowl goes flying along with Vi into a slopping heap on the ground.
“Bugger…Fuck a duck, Bruce!” she cries as he pounces on top of her until she’s forced back on her arms. He laps happily at her face, shoving his nose into her neck. “You vile monster. I’m getting you in classes. I mean it. You’ve pushed me for the last time!”
I chuckle quietly, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorway to watch her. She’s dressed in a tiny pair of black spandex shorts and a loose white tank. My dick stirs when she stands up and turns and I get a full frontal glimpse of her. A crystal clear outline of a pair of pert pink nipples shows through the wet front of her tank. She starts giggling as Bruce begins licking water off her leg. “Stop buttering me up, beast. It won’t work.”
My eyes twinkle at her with an affection I feel everywhere in my body. “You know you’re not fooling anyone,” I say from the doorway and she jumps, her blue eyes flying up to me in surprise.
“What do you mean?” She awkwardly tugs her wet top away from her breasts. Her blonde locks are hastily scraped up into a high ponytail in that “I just rolled out of bed” way.
“You can call him all the ghastly names in the book, but it doesn’t take a mind reader to know how much that beast means to you.”
“Well, don’t tell him.” She leans over and covers his ears and whispers, “If he thinks I like him, he’ll be even more of an arse.”
I chuckle and stride out onto the patio, flopping down on one of the white lounger chairs, absently realising this is the most comfortable I’ve ever felt around a woman the morning after sleeping together. Or not sleeping together I guess you’d say.
“Where did you get Bruce?” I ask, propping my hands behind my head and squinting up at her. “I’d envision you as more of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel type of bird…or maybe a pug.”
Vi’s eyes trail from my face, to my bare chest, to my unbuttoned trousers where my white Calvin Klein boxer briefs are revealed. Finally, she looks up at me, shaking her head and answers, “Sort of a favour to an old neighbour. She passed away last year and the family couldn’t take care of him, so I offered. She was a huge Batman fanatic, so technically his full name is Bruce Wayne.”
I half smile. “What a great name for a dog. Does he have super powers? Aside from the ferocious tackling and licking?”
“If by super powers you’re referring to giant-sized cr
aps, then yes, he is powerful,” she huffs a laugh and drops down on the seat next to me, mindlessly pulling her shirt away from her to dry.
I scrunch my nose up. “Oh Bunny, you always manage to surprise me.”
“What on earth is with the bunny nickname?” She pauses her action to place her hands on her hips. “Is it a term of endearment? Or shall I start calling you the schoolyard bully?”
“It’s a compliment,” I chuckle. “You like to stamp your foot when you’re frustrated…like a bunny…and I find it sexy as fuck.”
She raises her eyebrows with excitement. “I can’t decide if I find that creepy or charming.”
I chuckle good-naturedly. “I do my best to walk the line in all things creepy and charming. Like right now, I’m not even staring at your sexy nipples that are showing off clear as day through your tank top. Never mind, I lied. Now I am.”
Her eyes turn to saucers and she crosses her arms over her chest. “Shit, I had forgotten.”
“No need to be shy now. I became well acquainted with your nipples last night if you recall.” I waggle my eyebrows at her suggestively.
Her eyes narrow. “Are you this cheeky to all your girls?”
I cock my head at her in surprise. “Are you my girl?” I’m not asking because I’m shocked. I’m asking out of genuine curiosity. I want her to be my girl with every fibre in my body. But there’s a layer of me that wants to repel away from her and everything she represents to me.
She swallows hard. “I didn’t mean…‘Course I wasn’t inferring…We’ve just started—”
“Look, Vi. I’ll stop you right there,” I start, twisting so my feet are back on the ground and we’re facing knee to knee. “I need to talk to you before we go any further with whatever this is. I’d rather just be open and honest about my past, which, surprisingly, comes rather natural for me when I’m talking to you.”
“Surprisingly?” she asks just as Bruce trots over to her for a fondle. She mindlessly pets him while looking intently at me.
“I don’t know if it’s therapy that’s changed me or you specifically, but I never liked sharing things about myself. I never did it, as a matter of fact…ever. I just kept things bottled up. Even with Reyna, whom I considered my best friend back then. She knew relatively nothing about me.”
“What is the story with you and her? What kind of friends were you if you didn’t share things with one another?” she asks, her eyes tightening around the edges.
“The physical kind,” I reply honestly, watching her reaction carefully and feeling slightly annoyed that I don’t see the green-eyed jealousy I was hoping for. “Rey and I always had this way of just mucking through life together. Like a soldier on the battlefield…It’s all a lot less scary when you have someone standing right beside you on the front lines. But all of a sudden, or at least it felt that way to me, Rey wanted out of the dark place we’d found each other in. She started pulling away from me.”
“Reyna fell in love with Liam.”
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head at the fact that Vi is completely oblivious to the pain those two names together caused me while I was in rehab. “Yes. That’s exactly what happened. I wasn’t even aware that Rey and Liam had a history of some sort. Did you know Liam used to date my sister, Marisa, back at Oxford?”
“I had no idea.”
“Well he did. I don’t know the details…It’s probably a story that could fill an entire book. Regardless, it is funny we’re talking about Rey right now, considering she’s a large part of day one on my countdown.”
Vi’s eyes widen. “Your final countdown day? How so?”
I sigh heavily, feeling that familiar aching in my chest that I feel every time I transport myself back to that night.
This is it, Hayden. This is the final day of your countdown challenge from Doc. You’re strong enough for this. Don’t hold back now.
“The night of the gala, I was completely trashed. As you know from the other days I described, things had been going from bad to worse for me. I’d been drinking most of the day because I had it in my head that I was going to do it that night. I was going to kill myself.” I pause, swallowing hard. Damn, those last two words are still hard to say. “But I started having second thoughts. Namely because of Reyna and how awful we’d last left things. So I thought maybe if I saw her just one last time, something would click. Something would make sense again. She’d see me differently, or I’d see myself differently, and I could get out of that place in my mind.”
“But it didn’t work,” Vi says softly. Her eyes are trained on my cuff-covered wrists.
“No. Our conversation was painful, horrid, awful…crap.” I shrug helplessly. “I fell in love with her. It’s that simple. And she was in love with Liam. And Theo was in love with Leslie, and it just seemed like everybody around me was getting on with their lives except me.”
Vi nods thoughtfully. “How are you with Rey now?” Her blue eyes watch me with a deep sympathy that I feel in my heart.
“Doc labels Rey as a trigger for me. He says it’s best not to engage with her any more than casual acquaintances.” I pause for a moment before I admit, “I have actually revealed more personal information to you in one week than I ever did in three years of friendship with Rey.”
Vi inhales sharply. “How is that possible, Hayden?”
I shake my head. “Rey was a huge part of my life for so many years. But it was mostly our grief that maintained our friendship. Not our true selves.”
“I’m so sorry, Hayden.”
“That’s why I have to protect myself, Vi. From alcohol, from pills, from depression…”
“From me?” she finishes my sentence.
I shake my head earnestly as I reach out and take her hand in mine, twining our fingers together. I note the difference in skin tones, from her creamy complexion to my olive tone, and silently marvel at this simple gesture. Feeling her soft hand in mine is a sense of life I might never have experienced. “I don’t want to protect myself from you,” I whisper in answer to her question. “But caring for someone more than myself terrifies me. I can’t slip back into the darkness, Vi. There are too many people here that I want to live for. Marisa, my family…you.”
She looks up through her low, dark lashes. “But we’ve just met.”
“I know, but I feel something in my body when I’m around you that I have never felt in all my life, Vi. I want to dive in with you and figure it out. I want us to be something. But I don’t want to fall into another Reyna situation where I use you as a crutch. You’ve heard my countdown. I’ve completed my challenge. I don’t want to be seen as damaged anymore.”
“I don’t see you that way!” she exclaims and stands up. She moves over to me and pushes me back in my chair, straddling me so I can look straight into her ocean blue eyes. “I don’t think you’re damaged. I think you’re beautiful.”
I smile—genuinely smile—for what feels like the first time in years. “I think that’s my new favourite thing about you. Mostly because it’s all about me.”
She laughs and swats me across the chest while mumbling something about me being a narcissist.
I grab her hand before she can move off of me and stare deeply into her eyes. “My list of favourite things about you grows every time I’m with you.”
Her head tilts to the side and she looks at me thoughtfully. “But what about your plant? And your dog?” Anxiety fleets over her face.
“Maybe I can just help you with yours.”
She smiles at that. A soft, sexy, secretive smile. The kind of smile where she’s not celebrating a win, but encouraging the removal of a loss. Her cheeks flush a rose hue that makes her look like she’s just returned from a jog. I can’t contain myself another second. I pull her lips to mine and push all of my feeling into this one simple act. All the feelings I’ve been hiding from the world. All the secrets. All the pain. All the loss…and I let it go.
And I realise with delirious happiness, that kissing Vi is
different…Every. Single. Time.
FIRST DATE
Time ceases to exist with Hayden Clarke. I look at the calendar and can see that two weeks have passed since that day on the balcony when we agreed to be…well, something, as opposed to nothing. But each moment with him feels like nothing and everything at the same time. When Hayden left my flat that Sunday, there was a small part of me that feared, as soon as he walked out of my door, he’d change his mind about wanting to give us a try. It seemed like it was hard for him to leave, though. We ended up talking by my lift door for nearly an hour, like horny teenagers who couldn’t decide which one would say goodbye first on the phone.
“Are you close to your brothers?” he asked, his eyes scanning my neck as he dropped soft kisses on my shoulders in a way that made it difficult for me to form a coherent thought.
“You’re going to make me late for Sunday dinner at my dad’s with them if you don’t leave soon,” I chastised, grinning playfully while he held me in the foyer.
“I want to know. I have to know…before I go.” The lift door closed for the third time due to inactivity, and I sank into his embrace in silent surrender.
“Yes. Annoyingly so.”
“Still? Even after you’ve moved out?” His grey eyes watched me curiously.
I nodded, “Yes, well, like I said, I still see them every Sunday. Not to mention they like to pop over here whenever they feel like being little sods.”
He chuckled softly. “Do you have a favourite?”
I squinted as I considered his question. “Not really a favourite. Rather I appreciate them all for different reasons. I like Booker when I need someone to confide in. I like Cam and Tanner when I’m looking for a fun laugh, and I like Gareth when I need help.”
