Deliciously Obedient (24 page)

As
if the rhythm would somehow get him closer to her if he could just
get everything lined up.

Just
so.

Too
late! The damn elevator doors clicked shut with a half-inch to spare
before he heard the
ding!
of the bell. Stairs.

Winding
his way down, holding back from an ankle-snapping as he rushed to the
ground floor, he was transported back in time to two other sets of
stairs he’d fled down—the fire alarm, and the night they’d been
caught on camera.

That
night, that night, that night.
T
he
words chanted in his head as if planted there by someone else, the
exertion from pumping his legs down and using fine muscles to
coordinate surely enough to drive out his racing thoughts.

No
such luck.

This
was not how his first meeting with Lydia was supposed to work.
Finding her in bed, naked, with his best friend wasn’t in his top
ten scenarios under which they would have their reunion.

Not
even in the top thousand.

And
yet that fine body, so sumptuous in repose, spread across his bed
sheets as if she owned the core of his personal space. Her tightly
controlled reaction, which was too perfect. Too sarcastic.

Too
much.

He’d
hurt her so deeply, he knew. She’d frozen him out and he’d sought
refuge in the one place that was supposed to be her sanctuary. More
secrets. Too many lies.

He
needed to come clean.

Now.

Right
now.

Goddamn
it. God. Damn. It. Whatever holiness he cherished in the world
resided in that woman who, now, descended his building with Jeremy,
the man he’d sent after her to protect, to listen, to—

And
yes, to obey his directive.

“
I
want you to go to Iceland. I want you to find out how she’s doing.
And I want you to discover why I don’t think I can live without
her.”
He had said those words
a month ago.

Jeremy
had obeyed, all right.

A
little too well.

The
thought slammed into his throat, driving the wind out of him, forcing
him to grab on to the metal handrails and pause for a second, the
room spinning with dizziness and kinetic motion, his eyeballs
swimming. Why the rush? A phone call, a text, an appearance later,
when Madge wasn’t in such precarious shape, was what Lydia wanted.

What
she
said
she wanted.

Darting
forward, he hit the ground floor and slammed the door open with such
force it ricocheted off the outer wall and almost knocked him on his
ass, but his arms countered with enough power to give him time to
pivot through. The twin
ding!
of the elevator doors was music
to his thumping ears as Lydia and Jeremy appeared before him, inch by
agonizing inch as the doors opened and both took steps forward, deep
in conversation, only noticing him when he rushed forward and swept
Lydia into his arms, planting an overly athletic kiss on her cheek.

And
then her mouth took his.

I
hate you
. The fire in her belly shot to three-foot flames of
desire and relief, fury and need, as Mike’s buss on the cheek just
wasn’t enough, her mouth seeking his to be claimed. How did this
happen? She hated him. Despised him. He’d ruined her life and lied
to her, made her a fool and deceived her in matters of the flesh, her
career, her entire identity…

And
yet the need was so palpable she had to touch him.
Had
to.

There
was no choice.

The
touch of him, his hands roaming her back, hungry and wanting only
her, his lips pressing against hers with a taste so achingly
familiar, and his scent, spicy with a citrusy musk. A keening inside
her that had let loose when she’d left for Iceland started to mend,
the tiniest outreach of healing beginning deep inside her where
healing had no right to be.

He’d
betrayed her so deeply.

But
worse, she’d betrayed herself.

Or,
at least, the self she thought she’d been.

Why
was this so right? How could his commanding hands and insistent
tongue be tracing her teeth and triggering a wellspring of passion
and unrequited emotion? The man she’d wanted didn’t exist. The
man she’d needed was someone entirely different. The man touching
and teasing and caressing her was the one she craved.

And
yet none of those men was the one who had made her start to feel
whole again.

“
Ahem,”
said a voice, that kind of fake throat-clearing that people do when
they’re too socially awkward to tell you you’re being an asshole.
Or too polite.

Jeremy.

Oh,
God—
Jeremy
! Wedging her hands between her own breasts and
Mike’s sculpted chest, his skin so hot underneath the cotton of his
shirts, her wrists burned as she pushed as hard as she could, their
lips tearing apart, his footing strong even as she shoved with all
her might, and her own back swayed with the torque of her push.

“
No!”
she gasped, catching herself, seeing Jeremy standing there, arms
crossed over his chest, face a mask of barely suppressed rage.

“
That’s
not what your mouth just said, Lydia,” Mike said, completely
ignoring Jeremy, who put a palm over his mouth and moved his fingers
over the scruff of his unshaven face, tongue firmly inserted between
his cheek and gum.

“
But
that’s what
she
just said,” Jeremy added forcefully,
taking an aggressive step forward. He looked like he did the night he
had punched Siggi: on alert, uncertain, but ready to act.

“
I
meant—it’s fine.” She sighed, taking the lead by inserting
herself between them. “It’s not…I don’t know what this all
is. The two of you confuse me deeply.”

“
We
have that effect on women sometimes,” Jeremy said, sharing a look
with Mike.

“
What
the fuck does that mean?” she asked.

Bzzz
.

Of
all the times. Really? Snatching her phone from her front pocket, she
checked the screen. Mom.

Get
over here. She’s improving dramatically.

And
that was it. Sandy’s terseness had an unspoken message: Stop
fucking around. Literally.

Oh,
Mom. If only you knew.

Jeremy
held his hands up in a gentlemanly gesture toward Mike, as if
deferring. “Why don’t you explain, Mike, given your need to
converse with Lydia. Just use your tongue to
talk
this time.”

“
Can
we do this on the way to the car?” Impatience settled in where
arousal had just fled. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Lydia had to
push aside everything—her wonder at seeing Mike, how good he
looked, how different he looked, the fact that he’d interrupted her
and Jeremy after having sex, the fact that her mom now knew she and
Jeremy had slipped off for sex—sex, sex, sex.

When
had she become
this
Lydia?

And
which Lydia was she, really?

Two
sets of eyes looked expectantly at her, the pressure of being the
decision maker the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“
I
do not have time for this. My grandmother is in the hospital, my
mother’s texting me, you walked in on us having sex,” she said,
preternatural calm taking over, her body infused with a surreal
numbness as she looked at Mike, her eyes telescoping with focus, his
features so sharp he might as well have been pixelated by a computer
animator. “And having you waltz back into my life after so many
layers of dysfunction and shock is so arrogant, so breathtakingly
pretentious that I don’t even know where to start.”

“
I’d
say the arrogance and pretension started when you decided to turn my
personal bedroom into a no-tell motel,” Mike snapped back.

“
I
had no idea this was your apartment.” Anger she could handle.
Keep
it up, Mike.

They
simmered in silence, the squeal of a car’s tires on the parking
garage’s concrete cutting through the moment as they stood in front
of her little red car, the same car she’d been in the day they’d
first met in the parking lot at her old job.

His
old company.

Their
old life.

Breathing
hard, all she could do was pause. Not think, not plan, not
strategize—just pause. The rush of a breeze through the stale air,
the scent of oil and gas fumes, the muss of her own appearance and
the lingering sensation of fullness and sexual satiety mingled with a
new arousal because—after all—this was Mike.

The
Michael Bournham.

And
damn if she didn’t still want him.

I
hate you.

He
reached out to touch her shoulder with an assertiveness that bordered
on possession. No fleeting graze, his palm rested firmly on her neck,
fingers brushing against her collarbone, making her imagine his lips
there, kissing a trail down to her breast…

How
could one touch trigger so much? What kind of woman stood between two
men like this and wanted both?

Without
a word, Jeremy climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car,
jolting Lydia from her trance. “I said we’d talk,” she said,
clearing her throat, willing away the roar of heat in her body.

“
Tonight?
Tomorrow?” It wasn’t really a question.

“
Let
me see how my grandmother is doing, but if she’s fine, then yes.”
Her hand on the door handle, she paused. “The sooner we get this
over with, the better.”

Climbing
in, she took a deep breath, closing her eyes so that as Jeremy pulled
the car out of its spot and drove slowly down the ramp, she wouldn’t
have to see Mike fade away.

The
problem with having his best friend find him naked with Lydia wasn’t
that Mike had discovered them
in flagrante delicto
, nor was
the problem that Lydia had kissed Mike with all the passion of a
woman who finds herself about to touch a lover she’d thought long
lost to her.

That
was enough to make his dick detach and run off to throw itself into a
boiling volcano.

No—the
problem was, he thought as he guided the car slowly out of the
parking garage and down the streets of Boston to the hospital, that
none of the three of them were actually communicating.

How
can you when someone’s tongue is shoved down your throat?