Waking Kiss

by Annabel Joseph

  But after the performances, I had to go home. Bang, bang, bang, bang.

  I didn’t know if it was the bed that kept Liam Wilder on my mind or if I was just cursed to never forget him. I stopped mid-bang, running my fingers over the gathers of satin under the toe. My memories of him were so vivid, I could practically smell the scent of his cologne.

  I lifted the shoe to bang it again but then I sensed someone behind me. I whipped around, preparing to scream. A hand clamped over my mouth as I stared into wide amber eyes.

  I’m not proud of it, but I clocked him on the side of the head with the shoe. Hard. He let go of my mouth to rub the spot.

  “Jesus, Ash. Hello to you too.”

  He was dressed for the theater in a tailored charcoal coat and navy blue tie, his hair cinched back in a loose ponytail. He looked amazing.

  “You gave me a heart attack,” I said, trying to hide my physical reaction to his hotness. “Why are you here?”

  “I heard banging. I thought someone was being beaten to death.”

  I twisted the satin ribbons around my fingers. He was smiling, teasing. Beautiful. All I could think of was the way we’d left things, my abrupt meltdown and the fact that I hadn’t called him in all this time. “I’m working on my shoes,” I said. “Did you come to see Rubio dance?”

  “Not Rubio. This pretty ballerina I know.” He advanced a step for every step I retreated. “How have you been, Ashleigh?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest as he stalked me into the corner by the costume racks. “I’ve been really busy. I’m— I— I have classes, and sews to shoe—I mean, shoes to sew— and…spring rehearsals, and…a lot of dance stuff.”

  “A lot of dance stuff, huh?”

  I considered running away from him, but what was he doing to me? Just talking in a soft, friendly voice. Handsoming me to death. A lock of hair had escaped his ponytail and curled over the shoulders of his expertly fitted suit. The quality of the garment reminded me of the sheets he’d bought, the sheets I’d slept on for weeks now.

  “Uh, thanks,” I said, flushing. “Thank you for the bed.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call and thank you before now. I lost your number.” I took another step back, squelching the urge to hide behind a row of tulle skirts hanging to the right of me. “The bed’s so beautiful, but…you know…you didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry I broke into your place to deliver it. I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You definitely surprised me.” Yes, and broke the goddamn law. I looked up at him from under my lashes. “If you did it because you felt guilty about that night—”

  “It was a gift. It had nothing to do with anything except me wanting to give you a bed without any devils under it.”

  His words were easy and affectionate, but the memories were killing me. “I can’t sleep with you,” I blurted out. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to sleep with me.”

  “But the bed—”

  “Was a gift.”

  “If you want to take it back, that’s okay. I’ll understand. You should give it to someone else. A woman…who’s…you know, really sexy and deserving and—”

  “Tell me about your life in Cowskull.”

  His words hit me like a backhand slap. I decided to pretend I hadn’t heard them. “Well, I’m pretty busy,” I said, looking past him. “I should get back to my shoes.”

  “Your shoes can wait a minute.” He leaned down until I met his concerned gaze. “I have to assume something really bad happened to you.”

  I stared at him. “How do you know about Cowskull?”

  “It took about thirty seconds to do an Internet search for East Wyoming, cattle ranches, and Keaton. Your father’s a piece of work, by the way. Monopolizing land, forcing bankruptcies—”

  “I don’t give a fuck about my father.” I shot a wild look at the door as he boxed me further into the corner. “Why are you spying on me? You don’t have anything better to do?”

  “I have lots of better things to do, but I worried after I left your apartment. I’ve been worrying for a while now.”

  “Why is it any of your business?”

  “Because I think someone hurt you,” he said, reaching out to steady me. “I think it was your father. I don’t want to upset you, but—”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, any of that stuff. I’ve moved past it, way past it, and I hate that you—” I caught my breath and pushed away from him. “I hate that you’re throwing all this in my face.”

  He followed me to the other side of the room, cutting me off at the door. “I’m not throwing anything in your face. I’m angry for you. I want to help you, if there’s anything I can do.”

  I backed away from him, throwing up my hands. “Help me? How could you possibly help me?”

  “I could arrange for your father to die in an ‘accident.’” He emphasized the air quotes. “I’m thinking a bull stampede would be sufficiently gory and painful.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was serious. Part of me wanted him to be serious but another part of me couldn’t believe he’d pried into my private history. I felt exposed, and I hated feeling exposed.

  “None of this is your fucking business.” My voice wavered so I didn’t sound as assertive as I’d hoped. “I don’t want your help. I don’t want your concern. I didn’t even want your goddamn bed and now I’m stuck with it.”

  “Ashleigh—”

  I brushed off his hand and slipped past him to get my bag. “Just, please…leave me alone. That’s the best way to help me.” The more he stared at me with his pitying, sensitive look the more livid I felt. Before I could duck out the door, he stepped in front of me, blocking my way.

  “Have you thought about bringing charges against him? Or, I don’t know? Confronting him and—”

  “What? Doing whatever it takes to get past it so we can eventually have sex? So you can get what you want? It’s not happening.”

  “This isn’t about what I want. It’s about this pain you’re living with.”

  He was so beautiful. So disgustingly beautiful. I stood there, frozen, rigid, unable to reach out to him even though I wanted to.

  “It’s not fair for you to carry all this around,” he said quietly. “It’s not.”

  “I don’t carry anything around. I’ve done counseling and all that shit. I’m fine this way. I avoid sex by choice.”

  “Choice? Is that what it was when you ran to the bathroom to throw up? Are you really happy?”

  Was I really happy? What a nasty fucking question to ask someone like me. I shoved against the hard planes of his stomach. “Leave me alone. Stay out of my life and stop spying on me and looking at me like that. I won’t fuck you, ever.” I punctuated each word with another shove against the wall of his chest. When I tried to cut around him to make my escape, my feet got tangled in his. We fell to the floor and he landed so hard on top of me that I lost my breath.

  No, not this again. Not Cowskull and struggling and sickening force and fear twisting in my stomach. I kicked at him and beat on his shoulders. He was talking, trying to calm me, but I didn’t hear anything. I needed him off me. “I hate you. I hate you,” I shrieked, finally managing to squirm from under him.

  I shot to my feet, shouldered my bag and raced out the dressing room door. I ran down the hall and he trailed after me, step for step. I wasn’t running from him, not really. I was running from myself, from daddy and all the scary things he did to me. The backstage was empty, the studios dark, and I felt like a little girl again, one step ahead of the devil.

  “Leave me alone!” I screamed over my shoulder.

  “Ashleigh, stop.”

  “Go away! Go!” I was rapidly falling apart. He reached for my arm.

  “Please—I’m worried about you. You’re distraught.”

  “Because of you. You brought everything back,” I yelled, t
urning to glare at him. “With your rose and your kisses, and your spying and your questions.” I swung my bag at him. “I don’t want you around me. I want you to leave me alone!”

  He ducked back, holding out his hands. “I’ll leave you alone, I swear. I’m only worried now about how you’re getting home.”

  “I’ll take her home.”

  We both turned at the sound of the deep, accent-tinged voice. Rubio stood in the hallway behind us, a towel slung over his shoulder. “You go,” he said to Liam. He looked at me, his expression strangely cloaked. “You, wait in the studio.”

  Rubio frightened me almost as much as Liam, standing there in the hallway in ragged sweats, a mere human rather than a god. They both terrified me, but at the moment Rubio seemed the lesser risk. I turned and took off, hugging my bag against me. I could hear them talking in low, sharp voices as I hurried toward the lighted room at the end of the corridor.

  I stopped inside the door of the studio, trying to calm my thoughts as well as my racing heart. I felt attacked, ambushed. Liam knew too much about me, too many shameful secrets. He said he wanted to help me, but didn’t he realize he was ripping open old scars?

  After a few minutes I heard the door to the street slam, heard Rubio’s steps echoing down the hall as he returned. We hadn’t been face-to-face since our dance debacle and the party afterward. I waited for a sneer, for derision, but none came. He held out a hand that didn’t quite touch me, and studied me with his dark eyes.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded, flushing under his gaze. In the dim light he looked uncharacteristically somber. He stared at me a moment longer, then crossed the room to pick up his bag.

  “Where you live at?” he asked.

  He really intended to take me home? I gawked as he slung his bag over his shoulder and returned to me. “Hey, girl. You know how to talk?” He snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Where you live? It’s late.”

  “I—I can get home myself,” I finally managed. “I’m only four blocks from here. Is he gone?”

  Rubio made a face. “He’s gone for now. Come. We walk and talk.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I said come!” He gestured imperiously toward the door.

  From his belligerent stance, he wasn’t taking no for an answer. We made our way down the corridor toward the stage door and out onto the pavement. It was late, almost midnight, and not many people were around. How bizarre, to walk down a quiet London street shoulder to shoulder with my idol. Well, former idol. He’d said we would walk and talk, so I assumed contractual silence wasn’t required.

  “Uh, thank you,” I said. “Thanks for breaking things up back there.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he snapped in reply. “How you get mixed up with him? He is not a good person.”

  “I thought he was your friend.”

  “He is.” Rubio guided me out of the way of a passing group as we stopped to wait for a light. “That doesn’t mean he’s a good guy for someone like you. You like hard sex? Without love? That’s all he can offer.”

  I dug in my bag for my jacket, feeling lost and a bit annoyed. Fernando Rubio hadn’t bothered to look down his nose at me in weeks, and now he was lecturing me for seeing his friend?

  “I don’t want him to offer me anything,” I said.

  The light changed and Rubio stalked into the street, pulling me with him. “You aren’t even in the lifestyle,” he said. “Liam does sex and BDSM, and that’s all. He is not, how do you say…relationship material. He only plays with certain kind of women.”

  “What kind of women?” I asked, even though I knew.

  “Slutty women,” Rubio said. “Masochist women. Usually crazy women.” He made the universal cuckoo sign, pointing to his temple. “He gives them so much good sex, it messes with their minds. He is an expert at this. He upset you tonight and I think he probably enjoyed this. You sleeping with him?”

  “No!”

  “Then why is he always at the theater looking for you?” He gave me a dire look. “You know how many women he had sex with last week? At least five. Every night, new woman. He wants to have sex with you and when he does, you won’t know what hit you. He will sex you into oblivion and then he’ll leave you when he gets bored.”

  “Isn’t that what all guys do?” I asked a little testily. “Isn’t that what you do at those parties? Have sex with whoever you want, all the time?”

  “Yes, with girls who are into that. Slutty girls. Sometimes we share women. Sometimes we have sex with three or four women together, orgies. We play and go home, happy girls, happy partners. Just fun and sex.”

  I blushed, remembering Rubio naked, wielding a whip. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  “Because you are not a slut. You are not an orgy girl.”

  “How do you know?”

  He gave an exaggerated snort. “I think by this point in my life I can recognize who is down with things. Listen, girl. You seem nice. Normal. Liam Wilder is not normal. He is…how do you say? Playboy. Player. He is rough and does a lot of sex. Many partners.”

  I could imagine Liam being like that, as much as it repulsed me. I’d sensed his dangerous, sexy edge from the start. Hell, I’d personally experienced it. He’d held me down in my apartment…controlled me…excited me, at least until I bailed out of the whole thing.

  “And listen,” Rubio added. “He does not have girlfriends. In five years I’ve known him, not one girlfriend.”

  “I never said I wanted to be his girlfriend. I was trying to get away from him. I’ve been avoiding him ever since that…that party you took me to.”

  He turned his collar up against a cold gust of wind. “That stupid party. I don’t know why you went when you are not even kinky.”

  My irritation bloomed into outright anger. “I went because you dragged me there. You dragged me into the limo by my arm.”

  He wasn’t even listening to me. He shook his head, his face taut with disapproval. “So many sexier girls already in BDSM lifestyle. I don’t know why he chose you to mess around with.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said with a frown. “I can handle myself.”

  “Yes, you handled yourself great tonight. So much shrieking. I try to rehearse, but—” He launched into a mocking imitation of my meltdown.

  “What were you rehearsing?” I asked, interrupting him. “So late at night, all alone?”

  “Nothing.” He waved a hand. “I choreograph something for the summer tour. But…” He shrugged. “I don’t know if it will come together.”

  “I didn’t know you did choreography.”

  “I don’t. Forget it. Where is your place? You said four blocks.”

  “It’s right up there.” I pointed at the door of my building. “I can walk from here.”

  We both stopped on the corner. The Great Rubio scuffed at the pavement and looked awkward. “Don’t tell anyone about the choreography.”

  Hmm. A weapon to use against him, if I wanted to. “I won’t tell,” I said, “as long as you promise to never call anyone else a whale.”

  His eyes went wide. “I didn’t call you a whale. I only thought it to myself.”

  “No, you said it. I heard you.”

  He pouted, glaring at me. “Well, you felt like a whale. Heavier than a whale. Like lifting two whales, one in each hand.”

  “Okay. I’m telling everyone tomorrow morning about your choreography.”

  We faced one another with arms crossed over our chests, then his arch look relaxed into a smile. He laughed—not the maniacal laughter from the party, but light, bemused laughter that almost sounded friendly. “You keep your mouth shut, girl, whoever you are.”

  “Ashleigh.”

  “Ash-lee. Okay.” We stared at each other a long moment before he turned his shoulder away. “Okay. Go home and sleep. Ash-lee, yes? I try to remember this time, your name. I’m not making any promises.”

  I nodded, understanding him completely. The contract
still applied, but this once, he’d let things slide. He’d saved me and warned me, educated me about Liam Wilder, but from now on, I was on my own. If Liam was bad enough for someone like Rubio to warn me against…

  I let myself into my building, wondering how Liam had ferreted out the truth about my dad. A wild guess? An assumption? Or more in-depth investigative work? I want to help you, if there’s anything I can do. Could he help me? The main thing Rubio had stressed to me was something I already knew. Liam was powerfully talented in the arena of sex.

  Maybe he could help me.

  No. No, that was ridiculous. There was absolutely no way I was spending any more time around Liam Wilder. I wasn’t that desperate. Not yet anyway.

  Or maybe I was.

  Chapter Six: Crazy

  He gives them so much good sex, it messes with their minds. He is an expert at this.

  I couldn’t stop thinking of Rubio’s words, couldn’t stop thinking crazy, unreasonable thoughts about me and Liam, and how he might…help me.

  For me, emotion and sex had been tangled up in negativity for so long that I put all of it away. I did without it, but I wasn’t really happy like that. I didn’t want to be asexual and frigid. I wanted to have a healthy sex life and a close relationship with someone of the opposite sex. All my life I’d told myself that one day I would take some action to fix my issues, but every time I got close to a guy everything went haywire and I ran away.

  But what if…what if I went to work on my sex issues independently of a relationship? With someone, perhaps, who wasn’t into relationships in the first place, and who happened to be really, really good at sex?

  What if Liam could use his BDSM skills and sexual prowess to turn my issues around?

  It was a warped idea, but if I got what I wanted out of it, what did it matter? God, I wanted sex. I wanted to be able to make out with a guy without sweating and waiting for the inevitable panic attack. I was tired of being lonely and afraid of my own body, and tired of maintaining control. After so many years of anxiety, this felt like now-or-never time. I was ready to submit to a power greater than myself.