The Other Man

  “What I mean is, you make me want peace . . . you bring me peace. Believe it or not, this is a very mellow version of me.

  I eyed him. “Are you serious?” I sincerely did not think he was.

  “Yeah. Scary, huh?”

  To be honest, it was a bit scary, because I’d never seen him approaching anything close to mellow. Never seen him at anything less than intense.

  I’d hate to see him at full speed.

  Yikes.

  And then my mind wandered back to what he’d just said and how it pertained to me.

  Wow. He really had come up with something sweet.

  He with the deeply cold eyes, always so intensely frigid had somehow found the words to warm me, head to toe.

  I thought he might have stayed the night that time when he was finished with me in the wee hours of the morning, but I wasn’t sure, because I was certain that he didn’t sleep in my bed with me. I’d have noticed a thing like that.

  Instead, I suspected he camped out in another room, on my couch maybe. I couldn’t have said why I suspected that, looking at the thing. Not a cushion was out of place, but that was no matter. He was the type to leave things just how he’d found them.

  I’d never seen him relax, not for a second. Even when I was sitting, drinking my wine, he had remained standing, pacing, waiting. Never just holding still, and only lying down for activities that did not involve anything remotely close to sleeping or resting.

  Either way, he was gone in the morning when I woke up.

  It should be noted that casual sex might have suited me just fine. I’ll never know. Heath was simply not the man to try it with. He hit every single one of my hot buttons.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  I shut and locked the door, lingering there for a moment.

  What a strange night that had been. What a strange kiss.

  It was the oddest thing.

  I’d just been on a date with my friend Dair. We’d been flirting for quite some time, but we were both so busy, and hesitant, that it never went anywhere. And then he’d called me out of the blue, wanting to go out on an actual date. I couldn’t think of one good reason to turn him down, and so I went.

  I really liked Dair, knew he was the kind of man I should want, but my heart just wasn’t in it.

  Perhaps I wasn’t ready to move on yet. The divorce had happened over a year ago, but it had been a long, ugly marriage.

  Oh, and there was the small matter of my sometimes lover. But that situation was less about moving on, and more about getting off, or so I told myself.

  “What was that?” a deep, biting voice barked at me from the darkness of my living room.

  Of course I knew who it was instantly, but still, I jumped about a foot.

  Think of the devil.

  “You,” I said, breathless now, heart rate accelerated with more than fear with those three rough words.

  “Me,” he agreed. “Come here.”

  I shouldn’t have listened.

  I should have turned on a light and demanded to know why he’d broken into my home. I should have asked him ‘Was the door unlocked this time?’ Because of course it hadn’t been.

  But all I could remember when I heard that rough, bar brawler voice was pleasure that remained so acute in my mind it made my whole body tingle just with the memory.

  I moved toward the chair he sat in slowly, just making out his shadowy figure by the dim light cast from the street lamps out front.

  I let out an embarrassing yelp when he snatched me by the hips and set me astride him, both of my arms held behind my back by the wrists.

  God, he was fast.

  All my traitorous body could seem to remember about that speed of his was how fast his hips moved as he hammered into me.

  “You’re kissing him now?” he asked me, voice low and mean.

  I swallowed, then licked my lips nervously.

  I was stuck somewhere between fear and desire. I knew he was dangerous, every cell in my body knew it, but it didn’t seem to be any kind of a deterrent to my damned libido.

  “I haven’t heard from you in weeks,” I said steadily, tone matter of fact rather than plaintive. “You come and go as you please, fuck my brains out, and leave while I’m still sleeping it off. Why shouldn’t I be seeing other people?”

  “Don’t go out with him anymore. And if I catch you kissing some guy on your porch again, I’m warning you now, you aren’t going to like his face much when I’m finished with him.”

  “You have no right to tell me what to do,” I told him firmly, even as my body quaked. “I don’t even know you, and I certainly don’t know where you disappear to.”

  “I’ve been out of town,” he said, tone surly. “I’m back. And you know me well enough. Certainly enough to know how this night will end.”

  I struggled against him briefly because he was pissing me off with every word, but that only seemed to add to my problem, as every shift of my body had me rubbing against his obvious hard-on.

  “Missed you, too, sugar,” he rasped, pulling my face closer to his.

  I gritted my teeth, pissed off by his attitude, and more pissed off by my body’s increasing reaction to it. “Really?” I asked archly, a sarcastic bite in my tone.

  “Really. It’s going to be a rough night for you. That little kiss out on your porch has gone and pissed me off, so I’ve got some frustration to fuck out of my system. But first, I need you to wash your mouth out.

  Who did he think he was, telling me what to do? If anything, it should be the reverse.

  I was pretty much old enough to be his mother.

  He set me on my feet, and I backed away on unsteady legs.

  I went to my bathroom, bending over the sink to brush my teeth, but only because I thought it was fair. I’d want him to do the same if he’d just been kissing some other woman.

  My eyes shot up as he gripped my long hair, wrapping it around his wrist once, twice, slamming his hard-on against my ass.

  “You can’t even begin to know how screwed up it was for you to kiss Dair like that.”

  I blinked at his reflection in the mirror, spitting out my toothpaste. A chill ran through me. Fear.

  “How-how do you know his name?” I gasped.

  He gave me one of his cold smiles, his eyes scary, even while he kept rubbing against me from behind.

  “I know a great many things about you and your life, Lourdes. And there’s a thing you should know about me.”

  I didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know. He was really freaking me out now. But it seemed called for. “What?”

  “It’s unwise to rile me.” He reached his free hand around me, cupping my sex crudely. “This is mine. It will go much better for all parties involved if you stop questioning that.”

  My body was throbbing, but it was a distraction I didn’t want right then. I wanted to focus. He didn’t get to say a thing like that and not explain himself.

  “How?” My voice was a hoarse whisper, but I got the word out.

  “How is it unwise?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered, voice gaining strength. “How do you know ‘a great many things about my life’? How’d you know his name?”

  “I told you I work in security.” He paused. His fingers never stopped moving, rubbing, stroking. “It’s part of my job to,” longer pause, “vet anyone I might be,” longest pause of all, “seeing. And also, anyone they might be seeing.”

  I mulled that over, or tried to. He shoved a finger inside of me, but I still managed to tell him, voice as firm as it could be with a quaver in it. “I’m not okay with that. Don’t do it again. It’s an invasion of my privacy.”

  He pulled his finger out, both of his big hands going to my hips.

  He gave me a pretty scary look for that.

  I knew it should have made me more scared. All of this should have.

  So why didn’t it?

  It was becoming clear to me that infatuation could trump caution
. Lust like this overrode my instincts, making them hazy, distant. I couldn’t focus on them, let alone heed them.

  Heath was just too distracting to me. Even now, when I was angry and more than a touch frightened of him, all I could focus on was how he was reacting to me.

  He had all of these little tells I was starting to notice, ones that told just what level of pissed off he was.

  Nostrils flaring. Teeth clenching, followed by his jaw flexing were pretty typical. But tonight, with him more pissed than I’d ever seen, he was doing all of that and added into the mix was him biting his lower lip like he just couldn’t help himself.

  Perverse as it was, and in spite of myself, a part of me kind of loved it. It was hot.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said in a soft growl that somehow almost managed to be a croon. “You heed what I said. You keep away from Dair, and I won’t pry into your business anymore.”

  “Him specifically?” I asked, baffled by it. Did he have a problem with Dair in particular? Or was this jealousy a more generalized thing?

  It would have been much better for my ego if it were the latter.

  “Him specifically. Stay the fuck away from him, okay?”

  Apparently it was not.

  “It was not okay to—were you—were you actually spying on me?” I barely got the question out.

  Barely kept the line of thought in my head. One of his hands had gone to grip into my hair, pulling, while the other snaked back down to my sex. He pushed two big fingers into me, working them in and out at a rough rhythm.

  He was distracting me, deliberately, blatantly.

  And, damn it all, it was working.

  What I’d just learned should have been the brakes.

  I was old enough to know the difference between an intriguing man and one that was fucked in the head.

  “You’re upset,” he noted. The way he said it, something about his tone, told me that he hadn’t expected that, like me being upset about being spied on was totally out of left field.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?” I spat at his reflection.

  He didn’t disagree, instead bent down and put his lips to the nape of my neck. “To say the least,” he murmured into my skin.

  “Listen,” his voice rumbled into me. “I didn’t know what this was when I first came after you. I still don’t know what this is . . . but I care about you. I’m messed up. Majorly. I’ve got some problems, mental problems, serious problems acclimating back into society, and I’m very well aware of it. There are things I do, habitually, that are not socially acceptable. Yes, I stalked you. I know more about you than I should. I had my reasons, but I understand how it looks. It looks bad. And, hell, if I could tell you the full truth, it would probably look even worse than whatever you’re thinking.

  But I want you to know something, and it is the truth. I’d never hurt you. If it was within my power, I’d do anything to prevent you being hurt.”

  “I don’t know what to do with you,” I gasped. In spite of myself, I was losing this battle. It was embarrassing how fast he could get me to come with just his fingers.

  His hand had wandered down my body to grip at one aching breast. He thumbed my nipple, kneading and pinching at the tender flesh around it.

  “I won’t keep you guessing,” his voice rumbled into my skin, right before he bit the flesh between my neck and shoulder.

  My breath punched out of me and back bowing, I came.

  What the hell? I thought to myself, eyes on my hands where they gripped into the edge of the counter.

  I was still catching my breath when he shoved into me. I glanced up at our reflection, watching the top of his bent head as he started to move in short, rough thrusts, inching in deeper with every shove.

  Finally, he slammed home, pulled out, then slammed right back in again.

  He pulled my head back by the hair and started fucking me in earnest.

  And that was when he looked up, met my eyes, and I realized that he was still pissed the hell off.

  Seething as he took me.

  He was growling. Literally. Growling.

  I just about came right then.

  I knew it was perverse, knew it made me fucked in the head right along with him.

  But I loved it. Fucking loved that I did that to him, that he was as out of his mind into this as I was.

  A series of rough thrusts later, and I was losing my mind. I could barely keep my knees from buckling as I came again. Hard.

  It was scary how hard. An utter loss of self, where I forgot what I’d even been upset about. Forgot everything but the man behind me, inside of me, the man owning every inch of my trembling body.

  And his eyes when he came captured mine in the mirror and made it all so much worse.

  Oh no. No way.

  There was no way I was falling for this psycho.

  Was there?

  Or the real question, How had I fallen for him?

  I didn’t even know him. He was a virtual stranger. An unpredictable one. A complete mystery.

  And none of that seemed to matter. I couldn’t lie to myself about this. More than my body was involved here.

  It was the small glimpses I got of his sweet side, I thought. The side of him that looked at me in wonder every time he got off.

  “Mine,” he said gruffly to my reflection just before he bent to kiss the side of my cheek. “You’re fucking mine, you understand?”

  I whimpered. That’s what he did to me. Took my words away and turned me into a quivering mess.

  He took that as a yes, pulling out of me slowly, his mouth moving from my cheek, down across my neck, along my shoulder, caressing down my spine.

  And then I was up in his arms, cradled to his chest as he carried me to bed.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  “Did we just have our first fight?” I asked him, much, much later.

  I was lying in bed, naked, well-rested, and he’d stuck around for the night, for once, though he wasn’t in bed with me.

  He was prowling around my room, fully dressed, like he’d just been waiting for me, instead of sleeping himself.

  “If we did, I think I won.” His tone was sardonic.

  That irked me. Arrogant bastard. But it was true.

  If we were going to fight in the bedroom, I was going to lose.

  “You know, you can be a real pain in the ass?” My tone was not as scathing as it should have been.

  He got a kick out of that. I could tell by the unholy light in his eyes, and the tone of his voice when he said, “I think that’s understating things. Honey, I’m your worst nightmare.”

  Ha. Wasn’t that the truth.

  I got up, got dressed, and cooked us breakfast.

  Heath paced around my dining room while he waited for the food.

  I was trying to think back and recall if I’d ever seen him sit before. Nothing came to mind.

  “Did you sleep last night?” I called out to him.

  He stopped pacing, coming to stand a few feet into the kitchen. “Yes. Everyone needs sleep, Lourdes.”

  I shot him a look. “Well, I slept for eight hours last night. How long did you sleep?” It was a pointed question. I was pretty sure I had a clue about the answer.

  “I didn’t keep track.”

  “Guess,” I prodded.

  “Maybe two hours.”

  I wanted to scold him, but I was well aware that I was not his mother. “That’s not enough sleep for anyone, Heath.”

  “It’s enough for me.”

  I mulled that over. “Where did you sleep?”

  “On your sofa. In the living room.”

  “Why didn’t you just sleep in the bed with me?”

  “I was being considerate. Trust me, I did you a favor.”

  It was pretty obvious that this was a touchy subject for him, so I just said, “Let me know if you ever want to talk about it,” and then dropped it.

  But while he seemed to be in a talkative mood (for him) I
decided to pry further.

  “Tell me about your family,” I tried.

  He started pacing again. “There’s not much to tell. Not many of us left. How about you?”

  I sighed resignedly, though I’d fully expected him to turn the question on me. Just not quite so quickly. “I’m an only child, and my parents divorced when I was in my early twenties. I have a big extended family, but most of them still live in Europe.”

  “Where do your parents live?”

  “My father lives in Lyon, France. He’ll die there, too, I guarantee. He runs a restaurant. He’s a world-renowned chef, actually. If you gave a damn about haute cuisine, you’d be impressed. My mother lives in the states. In Florida. That’s a fairly recent development, though. She grew up in Spain, and they both raised me in France.”

  “How was that?”

  “Growing up in Lyon?”

  He nodded.

  I thought about it. “It was pretty amazing, actually. There’s little I can complain about. And I’m still close with both of them. I take the boys to visit each of them at least twice a year. What about your parents? Where do they live?”

  “They died when I was younger.”

  “Any siblings?”

  He didn’t answer for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to, but then, “One left.”

  That sounded ominous. “Brother or sister? And are you close?”

  He completely ignored the first question. “We have a complex relationship.”

  “Too complex to elaborate on?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  I took the hint, and let yet another subject close.

  I was plating up the eggs, sausage, and bacon before I tried another.

  “Why don’t you ever let me touch you?” I asked him, tone neutral, almost off-hand. I’d wanted to broach this topic with him from the beginning.

  “Do you really want to know? It’s fucked up. It will probably just make you more scared of me.”

  That did the opposite of what he thought it would. Now I was more intrigued, with only the slightest touch of trepidation.

  I put the plates down on the table, then headed back into the kitchen for drinks.