by Reiss, CD
Fantasy Dante slapped my ass, and as the real world of shadows and the imaginary world of animal-fucking collided, I came so hard I dropped to my knees. I wasn’t unconscious, but I wasn’t conscious either. I was as blank as a sheet of paper, writing my moans with fingers soaked in arousal, all pumping hips and tightening muscles.
Then it was over, and I was looking at the ceiling with no idea how to feel about what had just happened. Discount Mandy might have been ashamed, but I wasn’t.
Sitting straight, I looked out the window. He’d either shut his light off or closed the blinds. A soft knock at the bathroom door followed.
“Amanda?”
Fuck. Was I going to have to face him? Were we going to have to discuss this? I could barely get my own head around what I’d just done.
“Don’t call me that,” I barked, snapping the curtains shut.
“We’re not going to make this a thing,” he said through the door.
“A th—” Wait a second. Was he making sure I didn’t want a commitment or a repeat? Did he really think that was necessary?
He did. He really did, and that assumption was going to end immediately.
“This is not going to be a thing.” I pointed at the door as if it was his face. “I just wanted to get off, and I did, and I didn’t need you to do it. So, if you got your rocks off in the meantime, that’s great, but I wouldn’t have a thing with you if you got on your knees and begged me.”
He paused so long I wondered if he’d left the bathroom. I put my ear to the door. When he finally spoke, I was so shocked I had to pull away.
“I’m getting washed up,” he said. “Then it’s all yours.”
“Fine.”
If I were polite, I would have backed away when he peed, but all I could think about was the size of the dick that had just exploded for me. Not because I wanted to know… of course. But because I could, and I was a free person, and a fantasy didn’t mean I expected a thing.
He rapped on the door so gently I felt it on my skin. “You’re good to go.”
The door on his side closed.
I got my stuff and went into the empty bathroom. As I ran my electric brush over my teeth, I realized I hadn’t thought about Renaldo in hours. I hadn’t been anxious or sad about him or wondered if he missed me. I didn’t make up a story about what he was doing without me.
Getting over him wasn’t as impossible as I’d thought.
Tomorrow, I’d be forced back home to hell, but at least I was leaving Cambria on my own terms.
Chapter 7
DANTE
She’d surprised me.
When I first saw her shadow moving on the other side of the window, it had sparked a flare I’d intended to ignore. Control was my watchword, and I’d spent years refining my body’s ability to ignore its immediate desires in favor of longer-term pleasures.
But then she’d stripped, defiant and confident, and there didn’t seem to be any point in discouraging her. I wasn’t ashamed of what I wanted, and there was no reason to turn down the offer of a freely given fantasy.
It was almost too easy to tune into the half-remembered feeling of her body against mine in that hoodat closet all those years ago—her mouth wrapping hungrily around my fingers, the muscles in her throat moving under the pressure of my hand. In some ways, she’d been my first, and as disinterested as my mind was, my body had never forgotten what it had felt like when she’d asked me for more and I had had the power to refuse, to send her away wet and wanting.
Which I would tomorrow. This had been a one-off thing, a way for her to blow off post-breakup steam and rebound without consequence. She’d wake in the morning, remember who she was, and get the hell out of town.
Amanda Bettencourt might have been branded a slut in public, but I knew her, and she would never again let her desires run wild the way she had tonight. She fucked men because she needed them to tell her who she was, and I would never do that for her. Inevitably, she’d run to someone who would, and that wasn’t my problem.
My problems weren’t romantic. They were strictly professional and needed attending.
After Amanda holed herself up in her room, I’d gone to the back of the truck to move the cardboard banker’s box to the closet. Once her lights were out, I placed it on the desk and checked the crusted, peeling label for the hundredth time.
Thoze & Jensen
THG
Q2/2005 - D
Thoze & Jensen was a legal firm.
THG was The Hawkins Group, a media conglomerate. News. TV. Cable. Internet.
The D after the quarter and year defined what type of records were inside the box we’d found in the storage unit of a recently passed—and apparently sloppy—lawyer.
I’d opened the box when Cooper Santon delivered it to me that morning. Folders and files with boilerplate contracts, nondisclosure agreements, and meeting notes that weren’t relevant to me.
What was relevant was the folder with two tiny cassette tapes.
W/C H
Quadrant Hold.
5/12/07
If this tape contained what I thought it did, I’d be released from a tense status quo without publicity or fuss. The other, labeled the same day, was probably meaningless.
Hawkins Trust
5/12/07
The second one might be amusing, but it wouldn’t get William and Caleb Hawkins out of my life. One dictation tape in an obsolete media box stood between freedom and me.
Before calling Logan, I emptied the rest of the box and found nothing but more irrelevant files.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked without preamble in a voice as awake as any insomniac’s.
“I spent the evening dealing with your houseguest.”
“How is she?” he asked more quietly.
How was she? Petulant. Entitled. Sexier than expected.
Logan didn’t need to know that. I’d kept my promise to not touch his friend, but when I’d ejaculated into my hand watching her finger herself, I hadn’t exactly honored the spirit of the agreement.
“She’s leaving in the morning,” I said.
“I’ll tell Ella to meet her at her house.”
“You don’t have to baby her. She’s a grown woman.”
“Did you call to give me advice?”
“No.” I sat in the chair and put my feet on the desk. “I went through the box your people acquired for me.”
“And? What do you have?”
“Contracts, garbage, the tapes. I’ll go through it tonight and let you know if it’s relevant.”
I didn’t have to let him know anything. This was my problem to solve, but my father would expect to be kept in the loop.
“And the tapes? Do you need someone to come up and do the transcription?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll send someone up now.”
“No!” The refusal burst out of me before I knew why it was so important or how to cover for it.
“Why not? It’ll take Ernie a couple of hours.”
I tried to smooth over my outburst. “The house isn’t ready. The cells are low, and there’s too much cloud cover to recharge. We’re not going to have enough power for three people. It’ll clear up this weekend.”
“He’ll wear a sweater.”
But I needed to make sure Amanda was well and truly gone before Ernie showed up and ruined everything.
No. That wasn’t it. Not one hundred percent.
I wanted to know what she’d say in the morning. Would she be ashamed? Would she beg me to keep quiet about it to Logan and Ella?
Would she want a second round?
“Tell you what,” I said. “If I find mom’s Dictaphone, I’ll listen in the morning. If the tapes are worthwhile, I’ll call you.”
“Call me even if they’re not.”
“Fine.”
“I want to help you get away from them as much as Dad,” he said.
My life wasn’t supposed to be a family affair—ever. I’d kept
myself and my business separate, but the wall I’d built between us was iron, and the Crowne family was a magnet.
“Goodbye, Logan.”
We hung up.
It was late, and I wasn’t tired, so I took out a folder and started reading. I should have been alone with my problems, but for the night, I was stuck with Amanda Bettencourt, a woman I’d agreed not to touch and barely liked.
Deep into the early morning hours, with a head full of legalese, I still felt the gut punch of my earlier orgasm, the satisfied thrum of my desire, and the keen knowledge that Amanda was next door.
The contracts in the folder were irrelevant to me, so I finished and slid out the next one.
I’d watched her shadow shudder and shake.
I’d watched her give herself everything she wanted.
The experience had opened a door in my mind, and I couldn’t shut it. Desire poured through it, flooding me with an obsessive need.
Seeing her silhouette come wasn’t enough. I needed to smell her orgasm. Taste her cunt. Hear her moans when I allowed them. I’d play her like an instrument.
We could deny it later, or brush it off, or laugh about it in front of Logan if he ever found out.
The information in the box had lain dormant for over a decade. What was another few days?
Just one fuck, slipped under the door like a dirty note.
Just one time, I needed to own her body completely.
The obsession was physical and powerful.
The need to not fuck her, one time or ever, came from my brother and her neediness, which would hamstring me longer than I was willing to commit to her… and it was just as strong.
They pulled against each other all night, each tugging the rope holding them together.
Tomorrow, I’d cut it.
Or not.
Chapter 8
MANDY
In the morning, the first thing that came to my mind was the shadow sex with Dante Crowne.
I waited to regret it.
I told myself I should.
But I didn’t. Not at all.
I felt good about it, and for once, I didn’t feel good because I thought he wanted me. I wasn’t validated by the experience. I’d just enjoyed the give-and-take in the shadows, and that was that. I could do it again, or not. It didn’t matter.
Dante wanted me to take a shower instead of a bath, which was my habit anyway. Baths are for relaxing before bed, not waking up. The only reason for a bath that glorious morning would have been to spite him, and I had no desire to send a message about my free agency or personal power. Sometimes a shower is just a shower.
Except for my thoughts, which wandered to last night and Dante’s silhouette and the way it filled in information about the shape of him under his clothes. While I shampooed and conditioned, I imagined he was watching me, the click of the glass door opening as he slipped in to join me, thanking me with his fingers for being such a good girl as I used my own fingers.
I came with the shower sprayer standing in for his tongue flicking my clit. Satisfied, I put it back with a smile and a sigh.
See? I was fine. I didn’t need a man to get off, just an imagination. I didn’t have to care what the actual Dante thought of me at all.
After I was clean and dry, I packed my suitcase for the second time in as many days. When I zipped the bag, I held the pull for a moment too long. The horniness was gone, replaced by the throb of my heartache and the fear of what would happen once I was back home.
Somehow, I’d let my moment of control slip away.
I stood in the doorway, bag in one hand as I scanned the room for the last time, trying to make sure I hadn’t left anything. Dante would love that—another piece of evidence that I was exactly the airhead he thought I was.
I wasn’t supposed to care what he thought of me, but Discount Mandy wasn’t going to be conquered so easily. She slipped back into my heart as if every barrier I’d put between what I wanted and how I’d lived my adult life was no stronger than a sheet of wet paper.
The huge hulk of the typewriter sat on the little desk, as pretentious and unavoidable as Dante Crowne himself. Stronger than my resistance. More powerful than my promises to myself.
I found a clean ream of paper in the drawer, and after pulling out last night’s page with its wobbly W, inserted a fresh sheet, rolling it up so that I could pick out a sentence with one furious finger, barely looking at the page as I typed.
I’ve seen rivers, and you ain’t one baby.
My compulsion to respond to him needled my every weakness, but as immature responses went, typing a childish note was less harmful than acting as if he owed me something.
I’d bolster my resistance with music and positive thinking on the road home.
Dante was in the kitchen. His hair was still slightly damp from the shower, but I didn’t remember hearing him in there. He must have gotten up before I was conscious. Even on a day off in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, he wore designer jeans and a fine-gauge merino sweater over a collared shirt. Good. His formality would keep me from being flung back into the intensity of last night—the shape of his shadow and the knowledge that he’d wanted me when he thrust his hips into his hand and thought of me when he came.
The memory was almost as seductive as the smell of coffee.
“Good morning,” he said, businesslike as ever. He tapped a coffee press. The handle was up, and the container was full of deep, black liquid gold. “I have another cup going.”
“Thanks.” I put my bag down hard, as if reassuring him that I was really on my way out.
“There’s bread out for toast.”
He was being awfully nice, putting a mug on the counter for me. I pushed down on the press, feeling the satisfying resistance of the grind.
“No, thanks.” I’d never been much of a breakfast person—but if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t love the idea of lingering with him for longer than I had to.
“All I have is heavy cream,” he said, indicating the metal pitcher.
I’d been on an almond milk kick back home, but I deserved a little indulgence before what would definitely be a shitshow of a day. The white stream billowed in the brew.
“Clouds in my coffee,” I said.
He tipped his cup to me. “To vanity, then.”
We drank. The coffee was still hot, and it tasted a little chocolatey. I closed my eyes as I swallowed. When I opened them again, Dante was watching me.
Wait. He was being nice, and now he was staring at me.
No, no. I wouldn’t let him confuse this issue when I was doing so well.
“If you want to talk about last night—” Everything’s chill, I prepped myself to say. We’re cool. It’s not a big deal.
But he wouldn’t even let me get the sentence out. “There’s nothing to talk about because nothing happened.”
It wasn’t defensive—it was a statement of fact, as cold and calculated as his assessment of my life last night, as if what we’d done had barely even registered for him and it shouldn’t register for me either. It was just fun. Thank you and goodbye.
I nodded my agreement, then took another sip of coffee.
Not caring was supposed to make me feel powerful, as Ella had said—I was using men, not the other way around—but it wasn’t working. I needed him to care, or expect me to, so that my indifference would take him by surprise. The idea that we’d both left each other cold made me feel kind of depressed. It was the emotional version of slipping into last night’s panties before heading home after a one-night stand.
I was so tired of feeling uncertain and unworthy. Cambria was supposed to be my retreat, but somehow, getting out of LA hadn’t made my life any better or put me more in control.
“Amanda,” he said in a tone I couldn’t, wouldn’t, try to parse.
“My name’s Mandy,” I replied, trying to keep my voice inflection free the way he did.
I took my bag and left the kitchen, but my feelings flowed like
an unraveling skein of scratchy black wool to the living room and out the front door.
Even though I was curious, I didn’t look back to see what he’d made of our last exchange because it wouldn’t matter. Couture Mandy barely existed, but at least I could pretend I was her.
The rain was coming down harder now, fat drops pelting the ground outside the range of the patio roof. Getting back to LA was going to be miserable—any amount of precipitation meant snarled traffic and an uptick in accidents. I checked my phone with the intention of checking traffic, but before I could stop myself, Discount Mandy impulsively opened my texts, hoping to see Renaldo’s apology—as if that would make it all okay. I would have taken a sweet text from Ella too. Anything to make coming home seem less like surrender.
NO SERVICE.
“Good,” I said to myself, putting the phone away. If I couldn’t handle having a phone up here, maybe I should just throw the damn thing out when I got home.
I tucked my chin to my chest, said a prayer for the state of my hair, and took two steps before colliding with something large and warm and—Dante.
He was in the same gray raincoat he’d worn the previous night and was holding a huge black umbrella.
“You scared me,” I said.
“I’m walking you down to the car. It’s slippery.”
I scanned him for signs that a walk to the car was more than a walk to the car, but he looked no more or less than sincere, and I didn’t want to get any wetter than I had to.
When I stepped under the umbrella, the scent of him surrounded me. Ground coffee, delicious and luxurious. The rain on the fabric made a gentler sound than it did on the cement, but it still felt loud in my ears—a percussive drum, pop, pop-POP, pop.
“Thank you,” I said.
He didn’t say anything but reached for my suitcase. Our hands touched, sparking a core reaction in the basest parts of my brain, so I let him take it before I did or said something monumentally stupid. If he wanted to wear himself out being a gentleman in our last five minutes together, I wouldn’t stop him. Nothing I was wearing could have been called practical rainwear, and the absolute last thing I needed was to catch a cold or bust my ankle in front of him.
