Flawed

  But he doesn’t do that. Instead he slicks his hands up with soap and slides them all over my body. Half washing me, half teasing me, he skims over every part of me and it feels good. Better than good. It feels right.

  Any other time, that realization would scare the crap out of me. But right now, with his body pressed against mine and his hands working their magic on every square inch of my skin, it’s hard to care. Even harder to worry.

  Especially when he rinses his hands off and then drops to his knees in front of me.

  Now I’m pressed up against the shower wall as he gently moves my thighs apart.

  As he slides two fingers over my slit before gently thrusting them inside me.

  As he leans forward and strokes his tongue right over my clit.

  “Oh my God.” My hands come up to clutch at his shoulder, his head—as much for support as to keep him in place as he goes down on me.

  It feels good, so good that the last of my resistance melts even before he lifts up one of my legs and drapes it over his shoulder.

  Even before he buries his face in my sex and makes me see stars with every stroke of his tongue.

  Even before he makes me come harder, longer, than I ever have before in my life.

  And when it’s over, when he pushes back to his feet and does nothing more than finish washing both of us, I figure out that I’m in a lot deeper trouble than I thought.

  The fact that I suddenly can’t bring myself to care only makes the knowledge more exciting. And more terrifying.

  Chapter 16

  Miles

  “This is really good.”

  Tori glances up from her plate, eyes amused and mouth twisted. “Why do you keep sounding surprised when you say that? This is the second meal I’ve made for you—not to mention the smoothie yesterday afternoon—and you’ve said the same thing, in the same tone, every single time.”

  “Because it’s good every single time. I’m impressed.”

  “Again, no need to sound so surprised when you say it.” She forks up another piece of banana-stuffed French toast from the platter in the middle of the table and then pours syrup all over it. “I really do know how to cook. I’ve taken cooking lessons and everything, FYI. When I cook dinner for you later, you’re probably going to think that’s good, too.”

  “Of course I am. But you really don’t have to cook for me, you know.”

  “You’re letting me stay here free of charge. It’s the least I can do, to earn my keep.”

  “You don’t have to earn anything. I want you here.” I reach for her hand, thread my fingers through hers, before lifting it to my mouth and kissing first one fingertip and then a second and a third.

  She watches me, eyes wide and unblinking and maybe even a little bemused, and I can’t help wondering what the deal is. Can’t help wondering what kind of guys she’s been with in the past. I may be surprised at how good a cook she is, but she’s downright shocked whenever I treat her with any kind of tenderness.

  Whether it’s washing her hair in the shower or wrapping my arms around her waist while she cooks or now, dropping light kisses on her hand, it’s obvious she has no idea how to respond. When I touch her in bed, she’s more responsive than I could ever hope for. But outside it? She doesn’t have a clue how to deal. It’s obviously new—and uncomfortable—ground for her.

  Which doesn’t make sense. I know Parsons is a total dickhead, know that Chloe hasn’t approved of any of the guys Tori has dated since I’ve been in San Diego, but surely she’s had a decent guy at some time in her life, right? Someone who was actually interested in her and not just her party-girl image? Someone who cared about making her feel good not just in bed, but out of it, too?

  Maybe it’s just me who makes her uncomfortable. Me whom she doesn’t know how to respond to. I think about that idea, turn it over and over in my head as we finish breakfast. It’s a valid theory, after all, especially if I consider how Tori hightailed it out of bed this morning. Oh, she swore there was nothing wrong, that she just had a lot to do today, but I wasn’t sure I bought it then and I’m really not sure I buy it now.

  I want to dig for the truth, want to nudge her a little and see what comes out, but she’s got a hell of a poker face when she wants to. Experience—and a healthy dose of instinct—tells me I won’t get anything from her that she doesn’t want to share. At least not by asking…

  So instead of prodding to find out what’s wrong, I sit at the kitchen table looking out at the never-ending blue of the ocean and help Tori pretend that everything is okay. It’s shitty and unhealthy and not the way I like to do things. But for now this is Tori’s party and the last thing I want to do is make things even more uncomfortable for her.

  “Are you done?” I ask a couple of minutes later as I stand up to start clearing the table.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she says, springing to her feet and reaching for the big platter in the middle of the table. “I’ve got it—”

  “You cooked, I clean.” I push her gently back down in her seat. “It’s a pretty simple equation.”

  “Not if you consider you’re letting me stay here, rent-free—”

  “You keep bringing that up. Why is it bothering you so much? I may be paying rent, but this is Chloe’s house. You let Chloe live with you rent-free when she did her internship at Frost Industries last summer and it worked fine for both of you. So why is this such a thing with you all of a sudden? Why won’t you let her do this for you?” I set the dishes in the sink and begin rinsing them off, but I keep an eye trained on Tori’s face. She’s so hard to figure out, so hard to understand that I feel like any expression I pick up from her can only help.

  “Because it doesn’t feel like her place right now. It feels like yours. It’s bad enough that I have to mooch off Chloe, but you too…It’s not okay.”

  “What’s not okay? The fact that we’re trying to help you?” I stack the dishes in the dishwasher. “I don’t get it.”

  “Of course you don’t get it!” she tells me as she throws her hands up in obvious exasperation. “You’re not the one who doesn’t even have a pair of shoes to her name! Staying here for convenience is one thing. Staying here because I have nowhere else to go is something else entirely. And now that I’m sleeping with you—”

  She breaks off as the intercom connected with the front gate buzzes. A glance at the clock tells me it’s probably the delivery I’ve been waiting for. But since reporters are still hanging out at the end of the driveway hoping to get a glimpse of Tori, I head into the security alcove to check the video feed instead of just using the security intercom in the kitchen to open the gate.

  Sure enough, a large delivery van waits at the gate and—after a brief exchange—I let him in. Then I watch the screen carefully, checking to make sure that none of the paps out there decide to try sneaking on the property through the open gate. None of them do, probably because Ethan had three paps arrested and prosecuted last year for both trespassing and criminal harassment after everything about Brandon and Chloe came out.

  I’ll never be happy with anything about that situation—anything that happened to my sister as she was victimized yet again by the press—but Ethan’s precautions with her do make it easier for me to protect Tori, and for that I am grateful.

  I watch as the van clears the gates, making sure that they swing closed smoothly behind it, before I head back over to the table—and Tori. “Come on,” I say once I get there, holding a hand out to her.

  “Where are we going?” she asks. “Who was at the gate?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “A surprise?” She looks doubtful. “I’ll be honest, Miles, I’m not sure I can take any more surprises right now. Between the video and my father, I’m pretty much done.”

  “It’s a good surprise this time,” I tell her. “I promise.”

  She still looks less than impressed, but she takes my hand. Lets me pull her out of her chair and guide her toward the foyer.
r />   We get there just as the delivery guy rings the bell. “Delivery for Miles Girard,” he says, holding his electronic clipboard out to me. I sign in the box, then wait with Tori as he carries several large parcels into the house.

  Once he’s finished, I give him a twenty-dollar tip then close and lock the door behind him.

  “What is all this?” Tori asks, though I can tell from the look on her face that she has a pretty good idea. Each of the bags is marked by the name of the store it came from, after all.

  “Why don’t you find out?” I tell her, nodding to the large gray bags from Nordstrom. “I want to go check the security cameras and make sure he gets off the property all right. I’ll be back in a second.”

  It only takes a minute or two for me to watch the delivery van head back down the driveway and out the gate. From the way he turns out, it’s pretty obvious he’s nearly as annoyed with the paps as I am. Considering he almost nicks one with the bumper of his van, I’m a little sad I didn’t tip him more generously.

  After making sure the gate is securely closed—and all the vultures are on the other side of it—I head back toward the foyer. But I’ve only taken a few steps out of the kitchen when I run into a pale and furious Tori.

  “I certainly hope you wear a size two in women’s clothes,” she hisses as she pokes me in the chest. “Because if you bought all that for me, then we have a serious problem.”

  Okay, so this is definitely not going the way I expected it to. I stare at her nonplussed for a few seconds as I try to figure out what to say. Nothing particularly impressive comes to me, so in the end I just blurt out, “I thought you liked presents.”

  “Oh no,” she snaps, her finger jabbing at me. “Don’t act like what you did was as simple as buying me a present.”

  “I bought you several presents.” I wrap her hand in mine, pull it away from my chest before she ends up tunneling through skin and bone straight to my heart. “Didn’t I?”

  “No,” she says as she wrests her hand from mine. “Those aren’t presents. Those are charity.”

  “Charity?” My eyebrows hit my hairline. “How the fuck do you figure that?”

  “How the fuck would I not figure that?”

  “So I bought you a few things. So what? I’ve seen you buy Chloe and Violet stuff, just for the hell of it. How is this any different?”

  “Seriously? You’re going to use the same argument you used about me staying here on this too?” she screeches. “Don’t be obtuse, Miles. You’re one of the most brilliant men I know. You can’t tell me you don’t know the difference between me shopping for Chloe and the baby and what you just did.”

  “Actually, I can tell you that. What the hell did I do wrong this time?”

  She looks totally disgusted. “You’re a lot stupider than people give you credit for.”

  “Seriously?” I shove my hands deep into my pockets because there’s a part of me that wants to reach out and shake some sense into her. But I’ve never touched a woman in anger and I’m sure as hell not going to start now. “We’re going to fling insults at each other now? You’re the who has gone completely off the rails, who isn’t making any sense, and you’re going to call me stupid?”

  “I’m making perfect sense, thank you very much!”

  “Maybe to an insane person. But to anyone with a couple of rational, functioning brain cells, you sound like a complete lunatic.”

  Her eyes narrow to slits. “My brain cells are functioning just fine. You’re the one who can’t put two and two together and come up with anything that even begins to resemble four.”

  I’ve been trying to stay calm, but it’s getting harder and harder the more frustrating she gets. “What the fuck is the big deal? You need clothes, I bought you some clothes. You need shoes, I bought you a couple of pairs of shoes. It’s not like I went out and bought you the Hope Diamond or something.”

  “So that makes it okay? The fact that you didn’t try to pay me off with a big, flashy diamond?”

  “Pay you off?” I gape at her, not quite sure I heard right. But the mutinous look on her face tells me my hearing is just fine. “What the hell are you even talking about?”

  “Do you want to tell me you bought me all this stuff because you wanted to?”

  “Why else would I buy it? You needed clothes. I could provide them. What the fuck is the big deal?”

  “The big deal is you didn’t buy them because you wanted to buy me a present. You bought them because you felt obligated to buy them for me.”

  “Obligated?”

  “Because we slept together.” She points at the foyer. “What’s out there isn’t a present. What’s out there is payment for services rendered.”

  The top of my head is going to blow off. It’s actually going to blow off and my brain is actually going to explode. There’s no other explanation for what’s going on inside me right now. Services rendered? Services rendered? Services fucking rendered? Has she lost her fucking mind?

  “Have you lost your fucking mind?” It may not be the most diplomatic question in the world, but it is the most diplomatic one I can actually get my mouth to spew right now.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.” Her voice breaks a little on the last word, but that just makes her glare harder and lift her chin higher.

  Which is fine with me, because I’m pretty sure my glare is on point right now, too. I can’t even think of the last time I’ve been this damn insulted. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure you’re the only one in this room who just called yourself a whore. And me a john.”

  “I’m not a whore, that’s the whole point. But you’re sure as hell treating me like one. So yes, I guess that makes you a john.”

  Anger blasts through me in a way that doesn’t happen very often. Hot and seething and explosive, it fucking owns me. Owns every part of me. Makes it nearly impossible for me to talk, to think, to speak. At least not without spewing a bunch of shit I don’t mean and will regret later. Or spontaneously combusting right here in the middle of the kitchen.

  After several seconds where I take a bunch of deep breaths and go over a bunch of elements of the periodic table in my head, I finally manage to ask, “Are you fucking serious right now? You showed up here with nothing but a backpack over your shoulder. No phone, no computer, no makeup, almost no clothes. Jesus Christ, you have a cut that practically runs the length of your foot because you don’t even own a pair of shoes right now. And because I feel bad for you, because I want to do something nice for you—to help you because your situation fucking sucks right now—I’m suddenly accused of treating you like a hooker? Of trying to buy your fucking services? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “You want to help. You feel bad for me.” She crosses her arms over her chest in the classic defensive posture. “Did it ever occur to you to ask me what I want before you decided to shower me with all this stuff barely an hour after I climbed out of your bed?”

  “Fine.” I grit my teeth. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I know I don’t want your sympathy. And I sure as hell don’t want that mountain of stuff in there that you bought for me.”

  “Well, tough shit, baby, because you’ve got both.”

  “No, I don’t. Call the delivery guy back. Have him return everything. I don’t want it.”

  “At this point, I don’t actually give a shit what you want.” She’s impossible, absolutely fucking impossible, and for a second I’m torn between the desire to toss her over my knee and the desire to fuck her up against the closest wall. The only thing that keeps me where I am is the knowledge that doing either right now would ruin what I’m trying so hard to build.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m about to roll over for her. Not even close.

  I move nearer to her, crowd her up against the wall I’m even now thinking about fucking her against, then bend down enough that I can get in her face. “You need shoes, Tori. You need toiletries and underwear and something to wear on
a job interview besides yoga pants. That’s what I got you.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Believe me, I know what I need better than you.”

  “Do you? Really? Because it sure as hell seems to me that you’re too irrational to know what you need right now, sweetheart. And until you can figure it out—”

  “Until I can figure it out, you’re going to do it for me.”

  “Damn straight. You’re in a shitty position and you need someone to take care of you—”

  “Because I can’t take care of myself.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. And that’s not fair.” Her hands come up to my chest and she shoves at me. I don’t budge.

  “Who said anything about fair? Nothing about this situation is fair, Tori. If it was, that dipshit wouldn’t have leaked a sex tape he made without your knowledge. The press wouldn’t be vilifying you like you’re some kind of man-eater. And your father sure as shit wouldn’t have kicked you out and left you to fend for yourself in the middle of a pack of crazed paparazzi. But that’s exactly what’s going on and it’s not fair. I’m just trying to…”

  “To what?” I’m a foot taller than her and somehow she still manages to look down her nose at me. “You think you’re going to save me?”

  “I’m going to help you, whether you like it or not.”

  “For the record, I don’t like it.”

  “For the record, that’s just too goddamn bad.”

  She gives a strangled little scream. “You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

  “For trying to help you?” I demand, on the verge of tearing my fucking hair out. “I’m a bastard for trying to help you?”

  “No! You’re a bastard for thinking I can’t help myself. And for trying to buy what I would have given you for free.”

  “Goddamnit!” I roar, finally pushed past my breaking point. “Are we seriously back to that again!”