The Difference Between Us

  He jerked his chin, interrupting me. “It’s a certain kind of person. They don’t have to be female. My dad was the same way. They’re users. They see something they want and they do whatever they have to, become whatever they need to in order to get it.”

  “How long did you know your dad?”

  “Two years. By the time he found me, his disease was very advanced. I’d thought… I’d been young enough to believe he’d gone out of his way, used his resources, etcetera, because of me, because he’d found out he had a son and wanted to do right by him. I was wrong. He didn’t want a son, he wanted an heir. He wanted someone to pass his legacy to, someone that would keep it in his name. He wanted a caretaker.” He swallowed. His Adam’s apple moved up and down with the effort. “I got his estate and he died knowing we were even.” His voice dropped again. “I did get Dillon, though. Maybe I won after all.”

  Only he and his father weren’t even. I tried to picture Ezra as a child, as an orphan. I tried to picture him happy with the mother he loved so much, or happy that he was found again by a father he hadn’t known to hope for. I tried to picture him giving Jo hell or meeting Dillon for the first time.

  Until this moment, it would have been impossible. He had always been so confident, so utterly without fault. He had been this intimidating, larger than life, fictional creature that I had been terrified of. But now… Now, he was worse.

  He was human. He was real—vulnerable in a way that was surprising but also bewitching. My insides felt fizzy, and electrified, and unsure all at once. I couldn’t catch a breath at the same time I felt like I’d just taken the first big breath of my entire life. I couldn’t make sense of my muddled thoughts, and at the same time my mind had never been clearer.

  But most of all, I couldn’t stand the distance between us, the look on his face… the grief strangling the oxygen in the room.

  Tossing my palette and paintbrush on the sheet-covered table next to me, I walked over to him.

  My movement captured his attention again, and with his full focus on me I questioned every step I took. My heart divided in two, half convinced I should run away and half desperate to run to him.

  He had more baggage than I knew what to do with. He had been hurt and betrayed, and still he’d always risen above it, always marched forward with his head held high and his dignity intact.

  I wanted to cry for him, but at the same time I wouldn’t do him the dishonor. He was… everything a man should be.

  Everything a person should be.

  And I couldn’t believe I’d tried to stay away from him.

  He watched me move toward him with a look on his face I couldn’t define. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew how it made me feel.

  Fluttery and trembling and… beautiful.

  “You’re the most amazing man I’ve ever met,” I told him. “Those people… your dad, Elena, the rest of the three witches… they did not deserve you. They didn’t even deserve pieces of you.”

  He didn’t respond verbally, but his entire body responded, changing his expression and infusing the atmosphere with gratitude, and pride. and something deeper, something lasting.

  Meeting me in the middle of the dining room, his lips met mine before my arms could wrap fully around his neck. We were fireworks exploding, and cars crashing, and worlds colliding.

  The kiss was hungry at the same time it was healing. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t sweet. This kiss was no longer exploratory.

  With the restaurant completely to ourselves, we finished saying with our bodies everything we couldn’t verbalize.

  He kissed my mouth and moved to my jaw, down the line of my throat, the tops of my breasts walking me backward the entire time. I smoothed my hands over his crisp shirt making it wrinkly and disheveled, putting my mark on him.

  My back hit the wall, crashing into the dried section of my mural. I grasped at the freshly painted surface, desperate for balance as his teeth nipped at my throat. I made a sound I had never made before, gasping for breath and begging him to touch me.

  He took my mouth again, deepening an already soul-altering kiss. His hand moved over my hips, trailing a hot path over my ribs and then finally to the crest of my breast. His thumb rubbed over my nipple and I made another one of those mewls that would have embarrassed me with any other man. But I was so past that with Ezra. I was done overthinking, analyzing and finding fault. I was done pushing him away because I was afraid of getting hurt, or being rejected, or feeling unwanted.

  He pinched my nipple between his skilled fingers and I decided that the clothes we were wearing were frustratingly in the way. I pulled back, but barely as he already had me pressed against the wall, his long leg cleverly positioned between mine. Tugging at the hem of my shirt, he saw what I wanted and didn’t hesitate to deliver.

  My shirt disappeared, and then my bra followed quickly after. Before I could take a full second to feel self-conscious, his mouth descended on my nipple, making my skin tingle and my entire body flush with desire.

  “Fucking beautiful,” he murmured against my skin as he tasted and nibbled and drove me out of my mind.

  I struggled to get his buttons undone while he made me wild with seductive kisses and talented hands. He finally gave me mercy, reaching back to rip his shirt over his head before I’d fully unbuttoned it. There was a funny moment where his sleeves got caught on his wrists, but with some necessary teamwork, we finally got the damn shirt off. His undershirt went into the pile of our clothes with little fanfare.

  His lips found mine again, his heated, muscular chest pressed against my softer, fuller, female one.

  He was much taller than me, but it was like we had been designed for each other. His body towered over mine, conforming all of my curves to his. He felt like heaven pressing in on all of my sensitive spots, driving my body wild with sensation and seduction and his wonderfully sinful mouth.

  “More,” I pleaded. “Ezra.”

  His kisses slowed, not lessening, but somehow becoming more… hotter… needier. His hand moved over my hip, finding the front of my jeans until his fingers disappeared inside. I gasped again, nearly exploding the second he touched me.

  It had been so long since I’d been intimate with someone and I had never felt the way I did about Ezra. Which was what? I couldn’t even put words to it. Something that burrowed into my soul and became a permanent, treasured thing. Something that would never let me walk away from this man again.

  I wouldn’t be his father that used him for needs Ezra shouldn’t have had to meet. I wouldn’t be Elena that didn’t understand his drive to be successful, or the relentless push inside him to carve out an empire. I wouldn’t be Lilou, or Sarita. Or Bianca, or any other girl that only wanted to use him for what he had to offer: his money, his connections, his… business know-how.

  I would be me—a broken, lost, terrified woman that didn’t know if she could tolerate her job for a second longer, or if she would ever be able to check her oil or change a tire, or cook. I would be honest with him and let him decide.

  It was the only thing I knew how to do.

  His fingers moved inside me and mine curled into his shoulders, desperately holding on for strength, needing him to anchor me to this place. To him. To us.

  His free arm braced his body over my head as our mouths pushed and pulled in a kiss that was achingly tender. His fingers moved in, out, deeper, slower until I was gasping for breath, hovering at the brink of internal combustion.

  My leg wrapped around his hip, giving him better access to the hidden, secret parts of me. He pulled his head back and gazed down at me, studying, watching… worshiping.

  “Do you know how beautiful you are, Molly? God, I could watch you all night.”

  I was too close to the edge to respond coherently, my eyes shut as I chased that delicious surrender. My head dropped, my forehead landing on his chin. So close…

  “You’re unexpected and lovely, and something that very much feels like salvation,” he mu
rmured against my hairline, his scruff-shadowed jaw scratching my overly sensitive skin.

  His last, whispered words were my ruin. I fell apart in his arms, his capable fingers doing something magical inside me. I dropped my defenses and let go with a man I realized I completely trusted, respected. With his hard, beautiful body pressed against mine in a restaurant he had named after a woman that had hurt him, I came undone.

  And I knew, I just knew, it was because I felt something for this man that I had never felt in my life.

  He kissed me again, slowly and tenderly… reverently. “Don’t stop,” I pleaded. “I don’t want you to stop.”

  A wolfish grin flashed, greedy with the promise of more. Tugging me off the wall, he laid me down on the sheets covering his floor and hovered over me. My heart kicked in my chest. His skin was perfect, muscular, smooth and so enticing. I wanted to taste every inch of him and return his most recent favor.

  But I knew I wasn’t alone with those feelings as his dark, rich chocolate eyes moved over my own topless body, drinking in the sight of me. I was drowsy with desire, my body limp with experienced pleasure and pooling heat. But fear curled too, whispering truth and realization and the very real possibility that this man could destroy my heart.

  I was too far gone for him.

  “Please don’t name a restaurant after me,” I whispered as his hot skin touched mine.

  He must have seen the terror in my eyes, because his gaze softened and he bent down to nip at the swell of my breast. Lifting his head for only a second, just long enough for me to catch the raw plea, he countered. “If you left Molly, one restaurant would never be enough. They would all be you.”

  It shouldn’t have been a compliment. I shouldn’t have felt cherished at that moment, adored. But I did.

  And because of that, my fears disintegrated and I found him again hovering above me. He had been waiting patiently for me to give into it, to him. He had been watching as I decided that I wouldn’t hurt him, that I couldn’t walk away.

  Whatever had started between us as a seedling of angst, had blossomed into a tree with roots and stretching branches. I wouldn’t leave him.

  I couldn’t.

  This was what my mom had meant all those times she’d told me not to quit. It wasn’t the job that was the most important thing in my life, or the life I’d imagined myself. It was this. Ezra.

  It was the thing building between us that I wasn’t quite ready to name.

  Which was amazing when you considered how different we were, how unalike. He was successful and confident and maybe a little tragic. I was floundering and boring. Not to mention insecure. He had a complicated past with women landmarking the way. I hadn’t been in a serious relationship since college, and my only booty call option was spin class. He had known he was interested in me the second he saw me and I’d waited this long to realize I should not let him go.

  I should hold on to him for the rest of my forever and trust that he would do the same to me.

  So that’s what I did. Or at least for tonight. I clung to him as we explored each other’s bodies. We kissed and touched, finding creative ways to lose ourselves in each other. Beneath my mural, on his restaurant floor, we found new, exciting ways to push and pull. And when at last we collapsed next to each other satisfied and yet savoring every second of it, I knew I had lost myself completely in Ezra Baptiste.

  And I wasn’t scared of that at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I closed another email from Henry and resisted the urge to scream at my computer. The important thing was that I was able to keep all of my rage and fury and bitterness bottled up. Everybody knew keeping the angry feelings inside was the best way to handle tough situations.

  Although, apparently I needed to practice because Emily immediately lifted her head and gave me a funny look. “You okay, Slugger?”

  Stacking loose papers with the grace of a charging hippopotamus, I glared at her. “You are so lucky you didn’t call me something gross. Like doll face or hot stuff. I might have reflexively punched you in the junk on accident.”

  She pursed her lips like a fish. “You could have tried.” Then more seriously, with her nose wrinkled she asked, “What does the little Tucker want now?”

  I rolled my eyes. “For me to work late tonight. Because even though Black Soul has rejected all of my interesting ideas to ensure they become the most boring record label on the planet, Henry wants to go over my graphics. Again. He wants me to plan on a late night.”

  “Weren’t you in there yesterday doing the same thing?”

  I nodded. “And every day this week. He has a serious control freak problem. Also, a massive touching problem.”

  Her eyebrows shot up to her hair line. “Is he still being inappropriate?”

  My head dropped back and I stared at the ceiling. “He’s awful. I hate him.”

  “Molly, what are you going to do?”

  Her voice was a concerned whisper. She wanted me to go to HR again. But I’d already been twice and both times Doris had shrugged me off. I didn’t think a third time would matter. I didn’t think three thousand times would matter.

  Doris was protecting her job and by proxy Henry. As long as he didn’t cross the line to full on sexual assault, she was going to let all the small things slide.

  Only they didn’t feel like small things to me. They didn’t feel petty or forgetful or insignificant. They felt horrible.

  I hated being the object of Henry’s unwanted attention. I loathed the way he would casually bump into me, pressing his body against mine for way longer than was appropriate. I hated that his eyes were always on my boobs, talking to them, staring at them, following them around wherever they went. I wanted to scream every time he made an inappropriate joke or called me a gross pet name.

  He was out of line, and he behaved as though he was exempt from real world consequences. Maybe Doris wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I wasn’t going to take it either.

  Fine, it had taken me this long to find the courage to truly stand up to him, but I had finally arrived. Watch out world.

  I blamed Ezra. Ever since our conversation and intimate night at Bianca a little over a week ago, I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that I was finally comfortable in my adult life, in my own skin. There was something suddenly so right about my apartment, my car, and my boyfriend, that I could almost overlook just how not right my job was.

  Okay, the job was a big part of being a grown-up. But it was also something I’d let go of too. It didn’t need to be the absolute defining feature in my life. I’d released some of my mother’s voice and the expectations she’d placed on me to always be successful—at the cost of every other happiness.

  She meant well, but that didn’t make her right. Ezra had helped me see that. Maybe I couldn’t totally believe it just yet. There was still lingering doubt, and years and years of performing and pleasing and pacifying. It would take a lot of work to get me in a healthier head space about who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I’d decided to borrow Ezra’s confidence and freedom until they felt like mine.

  He said he’d learned that from his dad and their relationship. His dad had been very successful in business, but lonely in life. He hadn’t even known Ezra’s mom had gotten pregnant. She was a fling that Ezra’s dad, Immanuel, had met through mutual friends. It wasn’t until those friends revealed her secret years later, that Immanuel had started the tedious, frustrating process of finding Ezra. And when he found him it had been too late to rescue him from some of the hardest challenges any child should face.

  His dad had brought Ezra to his house and given him a job, sent him to college and introduced him to his soon-to-be-beloved, little sister. And then he’d died, leaving Ezra almost everything. For as heartless as his dad seemed, he had a true knack for business.

  Which Ezra obviously inherited.

  We’d spent the last week sharing more and more about our lives, gett
ing to know each other, learning the ins and outs of each other’s past, present and imagined future. And we’d been spending a fair amount of time kissing.

  There had been a lot of kissing. And to be honest, a whole lot more than just kissing. The man drove me crazy. He was stubborn and impossible and so irresistible I wanted to scream.

  Or maybe, I did scream. But like in a hotter, more consensual context.

  “Hey, if you see Ethan can you send him to the office?” I asked Emily as I got ready to head to Henry’s lair.

  She frowned, glancing around. “I think he’s out today. One of his kids is sick or something.”

  “Argh,” I growled. “Kids are so annoying.” At her giggle, I added. “Just kidding. Only Ethan’s kids are annoying.” That garnered me a few dirty looks from surrounding coworkers. But I didn’t see any of them spending a whole lot of time with Henry alone in his office, so they could just save their judgment for someone else. “Are you heading out soon?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “I am. I have a hair appointment tonight.”

  “That’s exciting,” I told her, jealous that she got to go do something fun and relaxing while I had to sit with Henry Tucker all evening and dissect all the work I’d done that he wanted to take credit for. “Are you going lavender again?”

  She pulled her hair over her shoulder, examining the faded ends of it. “Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I think you should go full mermaid. You would look amazing. And I would have epic hair envy.”

  Her grin turned into a laugh. “Well, then it’s worth it.”

  “Glad you see things my way.” I stood up, clutching my various necessities to my chest. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Hey, Molly.” Her serious tone made me pause. “Be careful, okay?”

  “You mean with Henry?”

  She nodded once. “Yeah. It worries me that he hasn’t gotten the hint to back off yet. Make sure you’re… I don’t know… on your guard.”

  My mouth dried out at her concern. It was one thing to tell myself these things, but hearing them from a trusted friend escalated all of my wariness. “Thanks, Em. I appreciate you looking out for me.”