At one point in the game, I stand up to get some air because I feel like I’m doing something I really shouldn’t be doing. It takes every single ounce of self-control I have to edge away from Malcolm’s huge chest and go to the kitchen. It’s like leaving bed on a Sunday morning, Malcolm being my own personal king-size mattress. The moment I leave I miss his warmth, his arms, the sound of his voice next to my ear when he talks. I remember I could even feel his abs move under my head. His stomach is rock hard. I shudder and focus on getting my cool back.
When I come back, I sit down with ten inches of couch between us again, hoping that I’m sending him a message. He doesn’t even think about it this time, just looks at me like I’m doing something funny, and snakes his arm around my hips again to drag me back to my place. Which, in his opinion, is under his arm and against his chest. And so we stay like that for the remainder of the game. Tahoe actually stands up at one point and gives my leg a little nudge because apparently I’m falling asleep.
They joke that it’s time for my afternoon nap, and Malcolm just tells them to shut the fuck up and watch the game. The fact is, I was actually falling asleep. He has a very comfortable chest—the asshole. I hate that he’s making me feel these things. I hate how I feel naked if I’m not next to him. I hate how I feel like a part of me has been ripped off if I’m not lying on his chest or his arms aren’t around me. And I hate how the guilt creeps up and starts to corrode me.
“Do your parents know you’re here? Bartender, you might want to check this girl’s ID again,” Tahoe says.
I glare. “Why do you insist on joking about my age?”
“T.”
Tahoe grins. “Yeah, Saint?”
“Leave her alone.”
I twist my hair up in a bun, suddenly feeling very female under Saint’s protectiveness. The sexual chemistry leaping between us is undeniable. The more I try to suppress it, the more I’m aware it’s there.
Tahoe laughs and reaches out to tap my shoulder, presumably wanting to tell me something.
“Don’t touch her, Roth,” Saint says.
Tahoe leans back. “Dude, do you have to have them all?”
“You can have your pick of anyone.”
“Well then—”
“Except her,” he says, not even looking at me to see if I agree. “I won’t say it again.”
He stands to go get more wine and Tahoe grins, while Callan leans across the coffee table. “He’s in a piss mood.”
“Why?”
“Old man is having a commemorative event for his mother. If Saint has a button, that’s it.”
“His mother? Or the dad?”
“The combination,” Callan says.
I can’t ask him anything else because Saint comes back and glances at me with all the concentration of a torpedo. He takes his seat and puts his arm around me and runs his thumb over the side of my neck, and I blush beet red, my body hot. “I like your hair up,” he tells me.
“Thank you.”
He smiles and runs his finger down my jaw like he does.
I exhale through my lips; I can’t believe how easily he arouses me. All of me. All my senses; hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch.
“Stop sweet-talking her, Saint, her ear is going to fall off,” Tahoe ribs him.
I study Malcolm’s somber, brooding expression as he sits quietly beside me. “Right? His talk is cheap but very, very sexy,” I tell Tahoe, trying to make Saint come out of his man cave. “He doesn’t have to worry. I’m so emotionally unavailable right now, he has no clue,” I say dramatically.
“Trust the man! He knows all the locks and bolts to go through to get a girl like you to open up.”
“I’m not a regular vault.”
Malcolm says nothing. I look at him, then lean in and whisper, as I trail my fingers up his chest, “I want to cheer you up, Malcolm.”
All that does is get him to shoot a frown my way. “Who said I needed cheering up?”
“Don’t sound mad. I can tell the difference between you being simply quiet and relaxed and quiet and mad.”
He takes my chin in his hand. “I’m not mad at you.”
Yeah, I guess. Still, I want to see that smile reach his eyes, I want to kiss his wounds better, but I know there are those that no Band-Aid can touch. What kind of wounds made such a hard, unemotional man?
I’m quietly pondering that when he drives me home that night. “I have something tomorrow. I’ll see you another day?” he tells me as he walks me quietly to my apartment door.
I really ache a little. I want him to share, but he’s a man, and we’re having a . . . what? A prolonged one-night stand?
“Sure, good night,” I whisper.
But before I go in, I lean back against the door, wanting him to kiss me.
So when he curls his hand around the back of my neck, I instantly go on tiptoe, wrap my arms around his shoulders, and meet him halfway. His kisses are my number-one addiction. One minute becomes two, then three, until he pulls away and looks at me. “I’ve got to go.” He runs his hand restlessly through the sexy disorder of his hair and heads off.
I want to call him back. He seems on edge and as if he doesn’t trust himself to be with me and in control like he’s used to. “Saint,” I call to him as he gets into the car. I consider asking him to spend the night, but he doesn’t hear me.
I scowl and go inside, then rub my hand over my chest. Did you want him to spend the night, Livingston? No man has spent the night here, and Gina would flip. It was better that he leave, right?
So what are the pouty feelings for? Did you actually expect him to invite you tomorrow, Rachel? Really? To his mother’s commemorative event?
Well, maybe I did. And I hate that the next day, I feel like a voyeur looking in on his pain as pictures flash on the internet. Saint, his father, their faces, the tension. The event is held in memory of his mother, who died of leukemia; his father hosts the yearly gala to raise money for a foundation in her name.
“Noel and Malcolm Saint, as we can see, are still not talking to each other. . . .”
I slam my laptop shut and go do something productive instead. I start scanning all of Gina’s fashion magazines. “Don’t unfold the folded corners,” she warns from where she’s on her laptop, listening to music on the living room couch. I untuck a folded corner and wonder why she marked the page. Maybe the cute boho bag? Or the yellow shoes the model is wearing? I’m mindlessly flipping, then I see his text message.
You busy?
My heart leaps so hard in my chest I forget the cardinal rules of not texting back too fast. I instantly text him back, No
I wait, my pulse fast in my body as the image of him standing tensely by his asshole father comes to mind.
Pick you up?
Where are we going?
Anywhere
Give me 5 mins
I leap to my feet and hurry to change. “Oh no,” Gina groans from the living room.
I slip into a pair of sexier underwear—white lace. White lace for Malcolm. Then I select a cute little skirt and top. I know Saint is closed off. There’s no real hint of his inner psyche, aside from his rebellious nature, in anything online that I’ve read. The fact that he texted me when I know he’s had a difficult evening makes me feel somehow protective of him in a way I’ve never been protective of anyone except my mother, Gina, and Wynn. I can barely stay inside my skin when I spot the Rolls out the window.
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” I tell Gina.
“Rachel!” she calls worriedly after me, but I’m trying not to hear that right now. I can’t. There’s no place in all of Chicago I’d rather be than at his side, and that’s all there is to it.
I climb in the car, my eyes hurting from my glimpse of him across from the bench I sit on. He’s cloaked in shadows, but some of the lights outside the window fall on his neck, his square jaw. His lips. As I grow accustomed to the dark, I slowly study the clear-cut lines of his features. He’s so handsome, with those emer
ald-green eyes and a secret expression, and suddenly the cool ice in his eyes warms when they fall on me. “You look edible.”
His voice ripples down my body. Quiet, but not cool as usual—warm. Quite unexpectedly warm, as if I’ve just heated up his whole existence.
“Yeah? I’ve got news for you,” I say with a sultry little smile. I value words, but Saint is a man who values action and I want to take some action tonight. I lift my fingers up, tug my sleeve a little to the side to reveal a creamy expanse of shoulder. “I am edible.”
“And I want a bite.”
Seized by my own desperate, growing, clawing hunger, I pull it downward, Saint’s face absolutely livid with lust.
“Where? Here?” I ask in a sensual whisper as I brush my fingers over my shoulder. I can’t even find words to describe how much I like when his voice goes rough like tree bark.
“Right there. I’m running my mouth up your neck, down your shoulders, your arm.”
My breath’s gone.
Like a living, breathing thing ready to devour the both of us, desire leaps between us, arcing from him to me, from me to him. “What else will you do?” There’s need in my voice: arousal. I can’t hide it, not from him.
“I’m going to make love to you hard, and then I’ll take you softly. Show me your other shoulder, Rachel.”
I do.
The car is rolling down the street now, but if you ask me, the entire universe is in this car, looking at me.
My veins sing happily over his stare as I drop my top sleeve as far as it will go, baring the most of my shoulder possible. Every day my desire for him deepens and intensifies, magnifying my attraction to him to a level I could have never imagined. I know him by heart now, the different angles his mouth twists to create each of his smiles . . .
“I’m going to run my tongue over its curve, dip it right where your pulse beats fast,” the Universe says. “Show me more,” he coaxes.
“Mmmm. You’re so greedy. Will anything in your life ever be enough, Malcolm Saint?”
He shakes his head very slowly, as if in warning, a tinge of amusement in his voice. “Nothing’s ever enough and it’s especially true when it comes to you. Show me more, little one.”
I tug my top down an inch, enough that he can see the top swell of my breast beneath my lace bra. He growls in his throat, and I blush and go warm as I straighten myself. “I was happy to hear from you, big one.”
He chuckles. Then, more tree bark, rasping over my skin. “I was happy you could see me tonight. . . .”
I angle my head a little and study him, the roiling energy circling around him. His thirst, his desire, his frustration evident in the fists at his sides.
My heart tumbles over itself to get to him.
“Rough evening?” I ask softly.
“It’s looking up.”
The ice that’s usually in his irises is completely subdued as he reaches out for my hand, pulls me across the car, sits me as close as possible to his side, and starts kissing my mouth, running a path to the shoulder I bared, running his fingers over the curve. Heat, moisture, the softness of his lips with the strong movements of his mouth. “Definitely looking up,” he rasps. “And you?” He nibbles a path up to my mouth. “What were you doing before I came calling?”
“Hmm. Let me think,” I say, pretending to think hard about it. “The real answer? Or the one you’ll like most?”
Shifting so I can watch my fingers slide up his throat, I run them to his square jaw, a jaw that is so stubborn—as stubborn as him—and I like that he lets me touch him like this very much.
“Both.” While he caresses my shoulders with his hands, his thumbs dip into my top, slowly tracing my collarbone.
“I was working.” My own thumbs run over the stubble of his jaw now. “But while I was doing that, I was anxiously waiting for you to text me and invite me somewhere.”
“Anywhere,” he corrects, husky.
“Exactly.” I press my mouth to the corner of his mouth, not even thinking of what I’m doing, acting by pure instinct now. “Are we there yet so I can gorge on you too?”
His arms tighten around me, and one of his hands slips under my shirt to explore the hollow of my back. “Rachel . . . I didn’t want you to see me when I’m not at my best.”
“On the contrary, I want to see you like this. I desire you, I crave you, and I want to comfort you and give you whatever you want.”
Hot lips nibble on my shoulder. “Then I want you.”
“Anywhere” turns out to be The Toy. Away from prying eyes and from the public—to my complete relief and delight—it feels like we’re in another world. The yacht is docked and the crew is not aboard, so it’s just Malcolm and I sitting in silence up on the top deck, both of us still a little sweaty from the hard, and then the slow, fuck he just gave me.
He’s wearing his black slacks but nothing covering his chest, while I’m wearing the shirt he was wearing not long ago. He’s brooding and silent, and I’ve never felt so protective toward something so large and strong before.
“M4,” I whisper, my cheek resting on his chest while the rest of my body conforms to his hard lines. “You do things by four so many times, I’ve noticed. Why four?”
We’re almost to our fourth time together. Are we over then too?
He exhales and sips the last of his wine, sets the empty cup aside, and we stare at the Chicago skyline. “I have a temper.” He stares into the distance, his profile thoughtful.
I reach for his hand on his knee and link my fingers through his.
He looks out, his voice coming lower, husky, almost regretful. “It was worse when I was young. Control is something that’s always taken me some effort. The staff kept quitting because nobody could keep me under control; the more they tried, the angrier I became. But my mother was the embodiment of patience. I guess this is why she could tolerate my father. She was patient, far more understanding than anyone should probably be. When I lost it, my mother said to count to three, and I’d argue that I had. That I’d counted to three—it didn’t work. So one day she pulled me aside, worried because my father has a temper too—she could predict the worst for me and the ways I seemed to push his buttons. And she told me I’d need to count to four. And that’s what I’d do. More than anything else, that’s what came with being a Saint. If you were asked for three minutes, you gave four. If you had to count to three, you counted to four. I do things in fours.”
“You even like foursomes.”
He lifts his brows. “Not with you. I enjoy taking my time with you.” He runs his hand up my spine, under his shirt. I shiver.
Shiver and want and melt.
And most of all, I’m crumbling to pieces inside and eaten alive with guilt over knowing such an intimate detail about him.
Heavy with feelings I can’t even process, I roll to my back to put a little distance between us. He props himself up on one elbow and flicks open the button of my top, and oh, god help me but there’s definitely more melting, melting, melting. I don’t protest, don’t move, only helplessly watch him pop a second button. Then three. Four. While the body beneath the shirt he’s parting open starts trembling in every centimeter.
I want to tease him, to lighten the intensity of the wild ache building in me. I whisper, barely managing to get it out, on a breath, “Take your time with me. It doesn’t bore me one bit.”
Four buttons. Five. And six. Until he spreads my top open and leans forward to kiss the center of my throat. The centers of my breasts. The center of my abdomen. And the center of my sex. Four kisses, then he nuzzles me between my legs. “I’m not one bit bored with you either, Rachel.”
I remember being so shy before. This time, when he flicks his tongue across my clit, I moan and spread my thighs wide open, rocking my hips up wantonly as I whisper, “Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm . . .”
“Hmm,” I whisper an hour later as he nibbles my ear, waking me from a little doze I was taking in the cabin.
“Your ea
r,” he rasps against the object of his delicious attentions. “I’m partial to it, and it matches your other one.”
I stretch with a smile, and he eases back to look down and watch me.
“I love it here on your yacht, it’s so peaceful,” I say, walking my fingers up his tanned chest.
“I’m never here alone. Too peaceful. I can hear my thoughts too well.” He frowns as he gets up from the bed and heads for his clothes. Dreamily, I roll to my side and stare at his absolutely mesmerizing physique as he jumps into his slacks. “Are you happy at Edge?”
I shake off the sleep fog, then sit up, one sheet clutched to my chest as I feel around in the bed for my underwear. “Why do you ask?”
“Rumors are it’s coming down.” He rams his arms into his shirtsleeves, measuring my reaction as he slowly starts to button up.
“I hope not. I like Edge very much.” Somehow I manage to find my panties and bra, and have to drop the sheet to get them on. “Why? Are you venturing into publishing . . . ? ” I ask, afraid.
He’s quiet as he tucks his shirt in, adds his belt—becomes Malcolm Saint right before my eyes.
“No, I’m not buying the magazine—that’s not where I see the money going. Businesses require time and vision. Reviving businesses is not where my passion is.” He looks at me for a moment. “Is owning your own business a dream of yours?”
“No, I want to write. I want to earn a good living so I can write more. More than more.”
He smiles. “You’re so little. I get a kick imagining those little hands typing up your big ideas.”
The fact that he thinks about me at all makes me butter.
He watches me dress. “So you see your future at that magazine even if you had a broader range of options?” he asks.
I’m taken aback. A grain of concern suddenly drops, like a tiny, uncomfortable little pin, in my belly. I think over my answer carefully.