The Other Man

  She was the perfect balance of practical levity that I’d known was needed to improve my mood.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  He showed up at my door about a week later. It was a Tuesday and eleven o’clock at night.

  When the doorbell rang, I didn’t know who it could be, but I still didn’t even suspect that it was him.

  I had the brief urge, after looking through the peephole, not to even answer the door, but other, stronger urges won out.

  At least I kept the chain on, talking through the small opening that left.

  And the first thing I said when I did open it was, “I don’t think I should let you in.”

  His brows shot up like he had no notion where this was coming from. “What?” he clipped out.

  As I gathered my reply, my eyes ran over him. He wore jeans and a tight gray T-shirt. He looked edible, and I still wasn’t accustomed to my reaction to him.

  “You didn’t even bother to say goodbye the last time,” I told him, making my voice as cold as it would go, which was still about ten times warmer than his normal tone. “Hell, I don’t think you even said hello.”

  He just looked at me like he had no clue what I was going on about.

  Infuriating man.

  “No woman has ever made you work for it, huh?” I asked wryly.

  I didn’t even want to think about that. But, of course, I did.

  God, the girls his age. I knew what was up. I had two sons that weren’t much younger than he was. I’d talked to their girlfriends over the years, talked to them, to the parents of other people in their generation. Girls his age were down for just about any damn thing, and guys did not have to work hard to get it.

  Who the hell could compete with that? Who the hell wanted to?

  Me, apparently.

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking,” he said carefully.

  Me neither, though mostly because I already had my answer. This man was not housebroken. Had never even considered the idea. Why would he? If he wanted sex, he clearly did not have a hard time getting it.

  “Look, I don’t think this is working for me.”

  He still looked fantastically confused, like he just had no notion what my problem was. “What isn’t working about it?”

  I stared at him, not sure if he was mocking me.

  “What I mean is, what do I need to change to make this work for you?” he added.

  It was downright polite, for him.

  And just that easy, I was ready to play again.

  Dammit.

  I unchained the door and let him in.

  “Some manners,” I said grudgingly, though not grudgingly enough. “You need to learn some manners. The basics. Hellos, goodbyes, a little bit of small talk. Something that tells me this isn’t just casual sex. This may surprise you, but I don’t do casual very well.”

  “Who said this was casual?”

  Again, I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me. But then, I was getting the distinct impression that he wasn’t much of a jokester.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how he meant it, so I moved on. “More manners,” I stressed again. “That’s what I need. Can you do that for me?”

  My hair was pinned up, the heavy masses secured with several clips I’d thrown in carelessly throughout the day. Heath started taking it down, clip by clip, his clever fingers finding each one unerringly, until the black strands were loose and wavy around my shoulders.

  He gripped both hands into it, his arms bunching distractingly as he pulled my face close to his, bending down to meet me halfway.

  “Manners. Hellos. Goodbyes. Small talk.” He repeated it all back like he really didn’t know what I was talking about, but not in an asshole way. More like he was trying to follow along, whether he understood it or not.

  I thought that, just maybe, I could work with that.

  A big maybe, but not so big that I didn’t let him take me to bed almost immediately.

  He stripped me down, sat me on the edge of the bed, and knelt between my thighs.

  He was leaning down, just a breath away from my sex, and said softly, “Hello.”

  I smiled, then gasped as he promptly and enthusiastically started eating me out.

  He did this for so long (three orgasms and counting) that I finally had to scramble away to get him to stop.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him. He’d shown no sign of letting up, like he was just going to go down on me indefinitely, with no signs of stopping for the foreseeable future.

  He smiled. Yes, it was a cold smile, but I was starting to like that just fine. “Showing manners.”

  Dammit. He was really starting to grow on me.

  I liked him way too much for someone I had no clue if I’d ever see again.

  He climbed onto the bed, pinned me down. He held my wrists with one hand, the other gripping into my hair. He pushed his hips between my thighs and started fucking me.

  He started talking while he did it. A lot. And not just dirty talk. Random talk.

  “What the fuck?” I asked, after he slipped some inane comment about the weather in.

  “Small talk,” he explained.

  Dammit.

  He was a weirdo, for sure, but I definitely liked him.

  He pulled out of me suddenly, cursing.

  I squirmed a bit and tried not to curse myself. Why had he stopped?

  “I forgot to put on a condom,” he growled, going for his pants.

  Shit. We both forgot. How the hell had that happened?

  At least he hadn’t come inside of me bare.

  Still, I couldn’t believe I’d missed that. It was a bit sobering.

  He wrapped up and mounted me again.

  He stayed for hours, but not for the night.

  At least he said goodbye this time, though perversely, I wished he hadn’t.

  Big hands shaking my hip and shoulder woke me up.

  I blinked groggily awake to an intimidating Heath looming over me.

  “I have to go,” he said gruffly.

  I sighed out a breath, shifting restlessly under his hands. “Okay.”

  “You said I should say goodbye when I leave. This is goodbye.”

  I just shut my eyes and nodded. He was apparently a literal guy.

  Still, he didn’t move, just staring down at me for a long time.

  “I wasn’t even supposed to come here,” he finally said, each word sounding like it was fighting to come out of his throat. “I’m in the middle of a job, something . . . something I can’t be distracted from.”

  Whatever the hell that meant.

  “You’re distracting me,” he continued.

  Unaccountably, I liked that. A lot.

  “I’m not leaving because I want to. I need to go. Legitimately. I hate having to explain myself. To anyone. But believe this: If I could stick around longer, I would. Okay?”

  He’d told me almost nothing, given me no answers, not that he owed me any, all things considered, but what little he’d said, I appreciated. Whether it was bullshit or not, I liked how he’d taken the time to reassure me, to let me know that he’d have spent more time with me if he could have.

  “Okay,” I whispered to him in the dark.

  He started to pull away. I stopped him with a hand on his retreating wrist. “Will I see you again?” I asked, the words torn out of me.

  He cursed and bent down, taking my mouth roughly, his hands pulling my soft sheets up, wrapping them around my body. Tucking me in. I wasn’t sure what to make of the tender action, but I liked it. A lot.

  Loved it.

  “You will if I have anything to say about it,” he said cryptically and was gone faster than he’d come.

  God, he was rough around the edges.

  Why the hell did I like him so much?

  He was uncivilized.

  Churlish.

  Uncouth.

  And strangely, kind of sweet.

  CHAPTER

  TEN


  I was soaking in the bath, glass of red wine cupped loosely in my hand and balanced haphazardly on the rim of the tub.

  It was eight p.m., and I’d gotten back from a work trip in L.A. about thirty minutes prior.

  I couldn’t even have said why, but the trip had been stressful to me, and it was sort of a belated shock to realize how relieved I was to be home. I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t accustomed to traveling, and I’d only been gone a few days. I almost always went to L.A. multiple times a month for work. It was typical for me.

  I’d gone for an editorial spread for a fashion magazine that had involved dealing with a temperamental supermodel. Maybe that was where all of my pent up tension was coming from?

  I didn’t think so. I’d dealt with many a prima donna.

  That sort of thing never fazed me.

  What was it then?

  My body was coiled so tight, jaw held hard, lips pursed, shoulders drawn up too stiffly. Before the wine today, I’d looked down at my hands several times, always surprised when I found them made into nervous little fists.

  The fists were gone, and the rest I was working on decompressing the best way I knew how.

  I was reading on my phone, since it was easier to hold in one hand, the perfect arrangement for doing two of my favorite things simultaneously.

  Drinking wine and devouring a book.

  I was an avid, lifelong reader. I didn’t stick to any one genre. In fact, I read everything, though not all mixed together. I went through phases. My last phase, which had lasted maybe four months, had been a True Crime phase. That one had started when I read my friend Dair’s novels and turned into me finding and reading every non-fiction book that covered the crimes his novels were loosely based on.

  That phase had ended a few weeks prior, and I was back to my favorite genre of all. Old faithful, guaranteed to get me out of a funk.

  Romance.

  Who didn’t enjoy a good love story? I’d been devouring them lately, one after another, sleep being sacrificed, work being neglected, but somehow it always felt worth it for a good book.

  I was just getting to a good part, mid-sip of wine, when I heard a noise somewhere in the house, around the kitchen, I thought. Something very commonplace, like a door creaking open.

  My brows drew together. One of my boys, maybe, or ‘Tato being just too big to move around quietly.

  I had a brief regret about leaving both my bedroom and bathroom doors open. I’d done it because otherwise, ‘Tato whined at the closed door, no matter which side I put him on.

  If he was closed in with me, he invariably needed to go out and do his doggy business. If he was locked out, he felt deprived of my company. With the door open, he usually just parked himself somewhere close by, happy as a clam.

  I was pretty sure both my boys knew better than to charge into my bedroom or bathroom unannounced, but I decided that it would be a good idea for me to still make my dripping way across the big bathroom to close the door, just to be safe.

  My tub had a big ledge around it, perfect for candles and decorative items. I had a dry hand towel folded in a corner of it for my phone, and I set it there. My wine glass was going next, but as a big, quiet body filled my bathroom doorway, I miscalculated, and crashed it just perfectly wrong into the edge of the bath.

  It shattered on contact, raining big chunks of glass and a healthy serving of deep red liquid, right onto my chest.

  Even so, I was still more distracted by the familiar figure in the door than I was by the mess I’d just made.

  How the hell had he gotten in?

  “How the hell did you get into my house?” I asked Heath, not sure if I was more alarmed at the sight of him invading my privacy, or relieved that he’d come back, yet again.

  Relieved, I thought, eyes running over his body. He looked amazing, as always, in his usual jeans/T-shirt combo.

  His eyes were on my hand with the now broken glass.

  Dammit, I thought, looking down at myself. I really needed to invest in some of those non-shatter wine glasses I’d heard about. My friend Bev, the one who hosted the girls’ night, had some, and they seemed to do the trick. I’d been meaning to get some myself, but this definitely tipped me over the edge from a side-note into action.

  “I tried ringing the doorbell, but you didn’t answer, so I checked the back door. It was unlocked.”

  That I couldn’t credit. I’d left the back door unlocked? I lived in Vegas. I knew better. What a silly, out of character thing that was for me to do.

  My naive self just believed it because he’d said it.

  “Don’t move,” he added, voice rough, not his normal rough, but like he was pissed.

  His authoritative tone brooked no argument, and so I just sat there and watched him approach, holding perfectly still.

  He crouched by the tub, reaching over me to take the stem, which was still intact, out of my hand. He set it on the ledge next to my phone.

  That same hand moved to my chest where wine and a few large chunks of the jagged glass were clinging to my skin.

  Very gently, he plucked the glass away.

  “Fuck,” he growled.

  I glanced down. It was the tiniest cut, but one of the sharp pieces had drawn blood.

  Without warning, he suddenly grabbed me under the arms, lifting me clean out of the bath.

  My eyes flew to his face as he sat me down on the plush rug just in front of my vanity.

  I was dripping a small flood onto the floor, some of it red wine, and I glanced to where I’d had my towel hung on a rack, reachable from the tub. But it wasn’t reachable now.

  “Could you hand me a towel?” I asked him, pointing.

  It was like he didn’t hear, eyes trained on my chest. It was wet and red, both with wine and a touch of blood.

  He didn’t hand me a towel. Instead, he leaned down and started sucking on a wine covered nipple.

  “Oh,” escaped my lips. It was a high pitched, needy utterance.

  My hands went to his head, fingers running through his hair to grip him to me.

  He didn’t let that go for one second, covering my knuckles with his, pushing my hands away and behind me, turning my wrists until I was holding the counter in my palms.

  He just kept sucking, lapping the wine away, the sound of it driving me wild, the way it told of his hunger for the simple act of licking me clean.

  And he was thorough. Even after no trace of the wine remained, he just kept going, feasting at my breasts like they were the main course, instead of the appetizer.

  His hands stayed on mine while he worked, keeping them were they were. I squirmed, needing more, needing his hands, and my hands, and just more.

  Finally, he let me tug them free, and I used them to cup my breasts together, holding them for him, pushing them into his face.

  He groaned, hands going to my hips, though he held his body away.

  “I think there’s still some wine on my belly,” I told him breathlessly.

  He got down on his knees, eyes aimed up at mine.

  He put his mouth to my navel, lapping there for a time.

  I watched him, still fondling myself. I wanted to throw a leg over his shoulder, but I restrained the urge, barely.

  He lifted his head, looking up at me. “Did I get it?”

  I nodded, but said, “I think it dripped lower.”

  That earned me a wicked smile. His eyes darted to my breasts, which were still held in my kneading hands.

  “Keep your hands there,” he said, and went back to work, licking lower and being thorough about it.

  When he delved between my thighs, he seemed to still be on his mission to ferret out every last drop of spilled wine.

  I was pretty certain he’d gotten it all, but I wasn’t going to hold him back.

  The thought never even crossed my mind.

  His scruff scraped against my inner thighs, his nose pushing insistently against my clit as his tongue curled into my sex, lapping in slow,
deliberate scrapes like he was still on that determined hunt for any errant wine.

  I had to lean back on the counter, than perch there, throwing my hands back to brace as he just kept going.

  He pulled my legs over his shoulders and went to work, my heels digging hard into his back.

  I came twice before he pulled back and looked up at me.

  I bit my lip, trying not to blush at how wet the lower half of his face was.

  “Did I get it all?” he asked.

  I nodded, still catching my breath.

  I only noticed that the tiny cut on my chest was still bleeding when he stood up and started tending to it. It was really quite sweet, the way he took care of that minor cut like it was utterly important, holding a tissue to it until the bleeding stopped.

  “I’m going to clean that glass out of your tub,” he told me. “Why don’t you go fix yourself another helping of wine.”

  On trembling legs, I grabbed my robe and headed for the kitchen. “Would you like a glass?” I asked, an afterthought, glancing back at him.

  “Um, no. Do I look like a man that drinks wine?” he asked.

  I laughed and he smiled.

  I was sitting in my little dining room just off the kitchen when he joined me, though he didn’t sit.

  “Anything I need to do to make this work for you?” he asked suddenly.

  I just stared at him. He was constantly unexpected. Nearly everything that came out of him was a surprise to me.

  “Anything that I’m not doing . . . correctly,” he clarified.

  I smiled at him, my chest warming in a very cozy way, almost like this thing between us was something normal—something romantic, even.

  “Say something sweet to me,” I told him, feeling playful.

  He studied me very seriously, like it hadn’t even occurred to him that I wasn’t being entirely serious just then.

  Flirting was a foreign concept to him.

  “You’re a peaceful woman,” he said, each word uttered very carefully. Like they had some special meaning.

  I blinked, long and slow, lashes peeling apart liked they’d been coated with honey.

  I was trying to decide what to make of that pronouncement.

  Peaceful sounded just a touch too close to boring, I was thinking.