A Stranger’s Touch (4 page)

His cock twitched in his hand. He was close now. So close. Sliding his palm across the tip of his shaft, he gathered some pre-cum and used it to smooth his glides. From beyond the stall came the satisfied howl of a wolf in the midst of orgasm. The second man followed shortly, and Donovan’s nostrils filled with the scent of spilled cum.

Donovan fucked his hand, driving himself harder into his closed fist. His cock swelled and the muscles of his stomach tightened as he bent over at the waist.

And as the first strands of jizz splattered against the white porcelain bowl, Donovan closed his eyes. Roxi’s image burst to life before him. In his fantasy, it was her perfect body he painted with his cum.

* * * * *

Morning sunlight streamed through the window of the Mocha Time coffee shop, splashing its cheery yellow glow onto Roxi’s newspaper. On the other side of the glass pane, bitter, icy cold attacked New Yorkers without remorse. People walked even faster than usual, rushing as much to escape the winter chill as to get where they were going.

But in the coffee shop, hot air blasted from the heater above Roxi’s head. Glancing outside, she could almost ignore the snow on the sidewalk and pretend, just for a moment, that it was as warm here as it would be in Greece.

“Your father sends his love,” Roxi’s mother said, her soft voice carrying through the phone line and closing the distance between them.

Roxi smiled. “Tell him I love him too.” She replied in fluent Greek, since neither of her parents spoke English.

“He misses you.”

“I know.” Guilt burrowed into Roxi’s stomach. Too much time had passed since she’d seen her parents.

“Have you given any more thought to returning home?”

She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, not wanting to rehash an argument she couldn’t possibly win. She’d come to New York to study psychology at Columbia University, but that had mostly been an excuse to get away from home. When she’d dropped out a few weeks into her second semester, she knew her parents had expected her to come running back to Chora.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss the tiny village situated at the edge of a cliff, or the brilliant ocean that spilled out below. But she’d dreamed of coming to America since she was a little girl, and she’d fallen in love with New York the moment her plane touched down at LaGuardia.

She wasn’t ready to leave. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But convincing her mother she intended to make New York her permanent home would take more than a brief phone conversation. Gryta Leventis took worrying about her daughter to a whole new level. When she wasn’t busy calling Roxi to reassure herself she was okay, Gryta scoured online newspapers for articles about the horrible things that happened to single women in New York. Then she emailed those links to Roxi, so she could be fully aware of the robberies, rapes and murders that awaited her on foreign soil.

“It’s only a matter of time until you get into trouble,” Gryta said.

Roxi grimaced. She dreaded opening her email when she got home, fearing what new horror she’d find inside the latest message from her mother. Why couldn’t Gryta send chain letters or recipes like every other mother who’d just discovered email?

“I’m fine, Mom. Really. Nothing bad is going to happen to me, all right?”

“If you insist on staying where you are, at least tell me you have found yourself a man.”

Roxi pursed her lips. She thought of Donovan’s stern demeanor, of the way he’d touched her. “No, there’s no one.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m looking out for you, since you won’t do it yourself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You remember my friend Aminta Michailidis, from Kozani?”

“Barely. Is she the woman with seven husbands?”

“Eight, and she wasn’t married to all of them at once.”

Like that made much of a difference. Roxi rolled her eyes. “What about her?”

“She has a son.”

“Good for her.”

“He’s in New York.”

Uh oh. Not so good for Roxi. “Mom… What have you done?”

“I solved your problem, that’s what I’ve done. And I’d expect you to be a little more grateful. Anyway, I told Aminta to tell Kastor all about you.”

She jerked back in her chair. “How much does he know?”

“Everything, of course. Aminta said he’s very interested.”

“Everything?” she mumbled into the phone, trying to keep her voice down and not bother the other patrons sitting nearby. “Like what, my vital stats and phone number?”

“Among other things. Oh Roxi, be reasonable. If you could reel in a man on your own, I wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

Oh, for the love of… Her mother actually expected her to be grateful. “I’m perfectly capable of finding my own dates, thanks.”

“I don’t want you to find a
date
.” Gryta spat out the word as though it tasted bitter on her tongue. “You’re twenty-three years old, no longer a teenage schoolgirl. I want you to find a suitable husband. Someone who will take care of you, protect you.”

Roxi flashed back to Donovan again. She already had a damn good protector. Too bad she couldn’t tell her mother that without needing to go into more detail than she ever wanted to give either of her parents about what she did for a living.

She felt her scowl tighten her forehead and forced herself to relax her features. “Promise me you won’t do anything like that ever again.”

“Come home and I won’t.”

For a moment, Roxi nearly believed her. And then she remembered that Gryta had been trying to set Roxi up with various “suitable” men since she turned eighteen. “I don’t believe you.”

“Fine then. Come home and I won’t do it as often.”

Fat chance of that. But Gryta had a much harder time finding a man for Roxi in New York. In the year Roxi had been here, this was the first time her mother had managed a potential love connection. No wonder she sounded so damn cheerful this morning.

“Give him a chance, Roxana. He may be just what you need.”

Roxi sank her teeth into her lower lip and murmured something noncommittal.

After they said their goodbyes, she stirred her cold coffee and stared out at the city she loved. She already knew what she needed, but it was more than Donovan was willing to give.

Chapter Three

Roxi tossed her purse onto the table beside the front door of the apartment she shared with her two roommates. Their voices reached her from the kitchen, where Gabriella Fraser was busy explaining the finer points of primal male behavior to Leann Rose.

“It’s up to us to provide a calming effect on male aggression. I mean, think about it. When you get a bunch of men in a group, they inevitably start competing with one another. That competitiveness is inherent in them. It’s a drive, an urge, like… Having sex.”

Leann scoffed. “You’re saying men can’t be civilized if there are no women around?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. They’re beasts, through and through. Millions of years of evolution have ingrained that behavior into their genetic makeup.” As a graduate student currently earning her PhD in biological and physical anthropology at Columbia, Gabbi’s favorite topic was the Neanderthal man and his similarities to modern-day New Yorkers.

Roxi grinned. Gabbi would have an absolute field day with Donovan.

Her mirth vanished as soon as thoughts of Donovan returned. Damn the man anyway. Having his hands on her body, his tongue on her pussy, his finger in her channel, had felt much too good. And she hadn’t wanted him to stop. Not really. She’d just wanted…so much more.

“Uh oh. I know that look.”

Still lost in her memories, Roxi glanced up to find Gabbi standing only a few steps away. A cloth headband printed with brightly colored flowers tamed her wild mane of auburn curls.

She fixed Roxi with a narrow glare. Dark lashes cast long shadows on her pale cheeks, and her green eyes sparkled with interest behind her thick glasses. She gestured toward Roxi with a wooden spoon that looked to be coated in tomato sauce. “Girl, you’ve got it bad.”

“You are being silly.” Roxi pushed away from the door and pulled off her gloves. “I am cold and tired, no more. Are you cooking lunch?” Since they all had busy schedules and often missed each other coming and going at all hours, their Sunday afternoon lunches had become somewhat of a tradition over the past few months.

“Pasta from a box, sauce from a can. And don’t change the subject.”

Leann came up behind Gabbi. At only five foot two, she was nearly a foot shorter than Gabbi and had to peer around her roommate to see Roxi. Her eyebrows lifted and she pushed a wisp of blonde hair out of her eyes. “You’re blushing.”

“I am cold,” Roxi repeated, slowly this time, as though speaking to two-year-olds. “My nose is running. Will you read something into that too?”

“Have you been crying?” Gabbi frowned. “Because if a boy made you cry, I’m going to kick his ass.”

At the mental image of Gabbi bearing down on Donovan with a wooden spoon, Roxi burst out laughing. She stepped forward and enveloped both her roommates in a hug. Though she sometimes resented having zero privacy when these two were around, she wouldn’t have traded her best friends or their tiny apartment for all the privacy in the world.

“How was work last night?” Leann propped herself up on a leather barstool in front of the counter-style slab of wood that passed for their dining table.

“Fine.” At Gabbi’s raised eyebrow, Roxi rambled on, “The usual. Clients came, clients went. Boss was happy. Boring day, really.”

She tried to talk about work as little as possible, mostly because she hadn’t yet told her roommates exactly what she did at Moderne. They knew she worked at an exclusive art gallery, but they had no idea she
was
the art. Gabbi had assumed Roxi was an exhibition assistant, answering questions about individual pieces and bringing serious offers to her boss. Roxi had gone along with the charade, figuring she’d come up with a way to make her job seem…well, not quite so seedy. That hadn’t happened, and now she had no idea how to spill the truth after all this time.

Seriously, what could she say?
Well, you see, I am not really an exhibition assistant…I mean, exhibition assistants wear clothes, no?
Yeah, that would so not go over well.

“Is that so?” Gabbi drained the pasta in a colander balanced over the sink. A cloud of steam wafted up and coated her glasses. She took them off to wipe the lenses on her shirt. “What’s all this about a boy then?”

The idea of anyone referring to Donovan as a “boy” was so ludicrous, it made Roxi grin.

Leann caught the smile, and pumped her fist in the air victoriously. “Aha! So there
is
a boy.”

“Well, there is a man…” Roxi sank her teeth into her lower lip. The sudden sting reminded her she did that much too often, and she made a mental note to stop before she drew blood. Again.

“Uh huh…” Gabbi waved two fingers in the air, gesturing for Roxi to continue. “And?”

“And nothing.” Roxi lowered her gaze and found herself suddenly occupied with tracing a small groove in the surface of the scarred table. “We work together.”

Leann placed a hand over Roxi’s and squeezed. “Did something happen last night?”

Roxi swallowed hard. How could she describe what went on between her and Donovan without worrying her friends? “Something did,” she admitted at last. “But I doubt it will happen again.”

“Oh honey… Did you sleep with him?” Gabbi set a plate of pasta in front of her. The look of disapproval she tossed over her shoulder wasn’t lost on Roxi.

She knew all about Gabbi’s theory that if a woman slept with a man before they started dating, any chance for a real, meaningful relationship was over. Though she didn’t necessarily subscribe to that theory, she had to admit there was probably something to it.

“Not exactly.” She busied herself with chewing a mouthful of spaghetti.

“But you wanted to,” Leann said.

Oh God, how she’d wanted to. “But I did not.” She smiled up at Gabbi. “See? You taught me well.”

Gabbi brought her own plate over to the table and beamed at Roxi. “Good. You seem to really like this guy, and I don’t want to see you waste an opportunity for something more than a wild fuck.”

The blunt words coming out of Gabbi’s mouth stunned both Leann and Roxi into speechlessness.

Leann recovered first. “Even if it’s a really
good
fuck?”

“Especially if it’s a really good fuck.” Gabbi gestured with her fork. “I mean, you’d like to have it again, right? And again and again? And you want to be the only one he’s giving it to… So yeah, especially then.”

Roxi couldn’t argue with that logic. Nor could she deny that the idea of having Donovan all to herself, night after night after night, sounded insanely appealing. She cleared her throat and chased down a bite of pasta with a gulp of water. “I think you may be getting ahead of reality. I barely know this man.”

Realizing just how little she’d learned about Donovan in the couple of weeks they’d worked together depressed her. He’d told her he had some deep, dark, dangerous secret. That was reason enough to be concerned. And then, for all she knew, he could have a girlfriend. He could be married. Or gay.

She scoffed inwardly at that. Okay, definitely
not
gay.

But a partner still wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Roxi had to face facts. She didn’t know anything more about him than she did about every other stranger who played with her body. Except that none of the others had ever touched her quite so intimately. Oh sure, they stuck their fingers and toys in her pussy, but none of them had ever cared about her pleasure. None of them had touched her like…

Like she mattered.

For all of her experience at dealing with people’s hands on her body, she hadn’t been prepared for Donovan’s touch. He’d been tender and focused on her pleasure, and yet she’d sensed possessiveness and a raw intensity in his caress as well. As if he’d been holding himself back. She shivered, wondering what it would be like to experience the full force of his unleashed passion.

A knock on the door startled Roxi out of her thoughts. Gabbi and Leann glanced at each other, then at her.

Gabbi paused with a fork of spaghetti lifted halfway to her mouth. “Expecting someone?”

“Not me,” Roxi said. Their Sunday afternoon lunches were designated bonding time, and none of them would have invited friends over just then.

“It could be the landlord.” Leann wiped her mouth with a napkin then rose. “I’ll get it.” A minute later, she returned to the kitchen, a sly smile tilting the corners of her lips. “There’s a hot guy at the door—and he’s asking for Roxi.”

Roxi’s heart leapt into overdrive. She shot up off the chair and careened around the corner toward the entrance to the apartment, all the while wandering how Donovan knew where she lived and why he’d come.

The front door stood open, but the man waited outside. Roxi had to step around the door to catch sight of him.

And when she did, she came to an abrupt halt.

A stranger stood before her. He was handsome, just like Leann said, but he wasn’t Donovan. This guy sported a nearly shaved head, and his eyes were so dark as to be almost black. His high cheekbones, chiseled jaw and sculpted lips gave him a hard, bad-boy appearance that probably had women melting at his feet. A leather jacket, jeans that cupped his thighs like a second skin and the motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm completed the look.

“You Roxana?” His accent wasn’t as pronounced as hers but she recognized the Greek undertones, and her heart sank.

“You must be Kastor.”

He nodded but made no move to extend a hand. “I am here to take you out. We go now.”

Startled by the bold command, Roxi glanced over her shoulder. “My roommates—”

“Will be fine without you, just this once.” Leann winked from the kitchen doorway and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go. Have a good time.”

“But—”

“It is settled then.” The creases at the corners of Kastor’s eyes tightened. “Come.”

She sighed and reached for the coat she’d draped on a hook by the door then gathered her purse. “Sure,” she murmured. “Why not?”

* * * * *

It didn’t take Roxi long to realize this had been a very, very bad idea.

Kastor took her to a Greek restaurant called Athena, a dark, cave-like place with paintings of Mykonos on the walls and Byzantine music playing at low volume. Everyone seemed to know Kastor, but not in a friendly, neighborhood-bar kind of way. Rather, the waitresses kept their eyes down when they talked to him and the hostess shooed a couple of existing customers to give Kastor his “usual” table.

They’d arrived there on his motorcycle, and Roxi still hadn’t recovered from the bone-chilling cold that had numbed her extremities as Kastor weaved among yellow taxicabs like a speed demon. She hugged her arms around herself while he ordered for her, not surprised he hadn’t bothered to ask what she wanted.

“Your mother tells mine you’re unable to find a husband,” Kastor said in fluent Greek.

Roxi bristled. “My mother needs to learn to stay out of my business.”

He picked up his wineglass and swirled the red contents. “But then, you wouldn’t have met me. That would have been a shame.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Indeed. What brought you to New York, Kastor?”

He ran a hand over his shorn head. “I’m a businessman.”

“Yeah? What kind of business?”

“Exports.”

Well, that was vague enough to cover everything from clothes to cocaine. “You own your own business?”

He dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “It’s not important. I understand you work at an art gallery.” Her frowned again, disapproval clear on his hard features.

And he didn’t even know half the story. “I do.” She picked up her wineglass and toyed with the stem, not wanting to go into detail about what she did for a living. Kastor wouldn’t understand, and God forbid word of her job got back to her mother. Gryta would probably be on the next plane to New York, ready to haul Roxi back home tied up and stuffed in the luggage compartment if necessary.

Kastor peered at her across the table. His frown deepened and grooves formed over the bridge of his nose. “You should take your hair down. It makes your face look too round when you tie it up like that.”

She touched the back of her head, where she’d pinned her long locks in place this morning. She started slipping out one of the pins before she caught herself and straightened her spine. “I like it this way. Less maintenance, and it didn’t fly every which way when we were on your motorcycle.”

He scowled, apparently not used to being disobeyed. “You don’t need to be so plain, Roxana. A new hairstyle, an exercise regime, and you could be worthy of being on my arm.”

The shock careening through her system jerked her to her feet just as the waitress came around the corner carrying a tray with two plates balanced precariously. One of the plates held a souvlaki dinner that could feed a family of four, while the other was about half the size and consisted of a pile of leaves with a sliced tomato on top. She could guess which was hers.

She turned around and stormed to the exit without another word or a glance back. Kastor followed. She knew he would.

Outside, winter submerged the city in a gray fog. The cold slapped Roxi’s cheeks and she burrowed into the collar of her coat as she took off at a light jog down West 44th Street. Tall buildings stretched up far into the sky, and her reflection shimmered back at her from myriad mirrored windows up and down the block.