Insecure (26 page)

“Torturing the prisoner,” he said.

She bit his hipbone and this time he flinched. She liked the idea of him as her prisoner. She loved the idea of rendering him incapable of fending her off.

He caught her chin in his hand. “Too early for this.”

Who was he kidding? He was more than ready. She shook her head then licked a line across to his penis and thrilled at how his breath caught.

He stroked her hair and watched her. “I'm still not talking,” but his voice had thickened from edgy rasp to sexy husk. She scooted further down the bed and went to work on him, using her mouth in a way that loosened his tongue, but killed his vocabulary.

Her ears filled with the guttural sounds of his pleasure. But she was only going to get one thing she wanted, to make him lose that stoic cool of his from pure need instead of in anger.

He curled his torso up and gripped her shoulders and she felt him shake all over. His eyes were wide open now, fixed on her. She'd not touched him like this that first weekend; she'd not seen him so open to her, so come undone.

“Fuck, Cinta. That's it.” He dropped back on the bed as she swallowed her first little taste of him, but then he pulled her away, dragged her up his body, his fist in her hair, too tight, making her the prisoner now.

He flipped them. “Coming inside you.” But then he sat back on his heels, with a groan, looking momentarily disoriented.

“I've been with no one else and I'm on birth control.” She could've told him that last night, but everything had been so uncertain.

He lowered himself over her. “Feel like I've been with no one else ever.”

“Oh God.”

He palmed her knee and pushed it towards her chest, his eyes raking her body. “No one before you. No one since. No one after.”

She died. The sensible career woman for whom sex had a place, like food and water, like shelter and warmth, turned to salt, to ash and crumbled away. In its place a creature formed from aching want and stunning need, of physical greed too strong to tame. It knocked the sense out of her.

He braced against her core. He was trembling too. “Keep you safe always.” When he opened her she clamped him tight, her eyes rolling back and closed as he started to move. She took his mouth and clawed at his shoulders wanting him closer, harder, faster, longer and getting all that, and starlight too.

It was well past time to get his own place. It was insanity to ask Cinta to move in with him. So he didn't ask. He dangled it in front of her.

Six weeks they'd been together and Mace had spent every night at her place, sleeping with her curled in his arms. He'd begun to wish the summer wouldn't come because it would get too hot to lie so close to her. Six weeks and he'd stopped obsessing about Ipseity and convinced Dillon he didn't need help with his grief. He felt good. He didn't think about being bipolar. He got a haircut. He was eating better, so long as he did the cooking, and his jeans fit like before.

He had a job too, nothing special, casual hours on a help desk, for a hardware vendor. He could earn enough to cover his expenses, stay out of his savings, and still have time to tinker with Ipseity. So it was the right time, he just didn't know if it would be the right place, right thing.

He packed a picnic dinner. He told her he had something to show her and brought her to the loft. She got suspicious the minute he showed with Dillon's basket, but since it had edible food in it, he was guaranteed she'd play along at least until she got fed.

She didn't say a word on the walk there. She avoided his eyes, but she let him hold her hand. That was so like her. She was both ends of a magnet, pulling him in and pushing him away at the same time. She got anxious if he wanted to make plans more advanced than the next day or two, but she clung to him at night and gave him shelf space in her bathroom.

He'd have been confused but he understood her motive. They were friends who fucked, though more accurately it was the other way around; they fucked, therefore they were friends. It wasn't what he wanted but it was all she could deal with. She wanted them easily breakable, separable. He wanted that damage prevented.

Dillon said he was punching above his weight. That wasn't news. Had Jacinta's life not gone so far off the rails he'd never had had the second chance. She'd have eventually sketched the crap out of the memory of him and moved on. In six weeks she'd not given him any reason to think he'd gotten that wrong, except when they fucked and then it was impossible to believe there wasn't something more permanent between them.

Under the circumstances, Buster would've called what he was doing now scaring the horses. She would've liked Jacinta. She would have loved her because he did.

Straight up, no dodging it. He loved her fighter spirit and her determination, and he loved her sharp mind and the softness in her she tried to deny. She really could not do anything useful with food. She got antsy when he got the job, and not because she was jealous, because that left her with art school and Pilates and time on her hands she didn't know how to use.

She could be moody. She could be a bitch. She would draw but not paint, wouldn't even talk about it. But he could swear his heart, dumb pump that it was, swelled when she smiled at him. He felt her tension in his chest. He tasted her restlessness on his tongue and he could smell her indecision about them from half a room away.

And if Buster was right, if this idea fouled up, he'd have rooms and rooms to wallow in his bad idea by himself.

She didn't speak on the street outside the warehouse, or on the stairs. When he keyed open the door she went inside without a word. He was pretty sure she did that just to annoy him.

He'd taken Buster's furniture out of storage. It'd been big, clunky and old-fashioned but serviceable and he hadn't known what to do with it when the house sold. In this open space it looked retro funky. He'd set the table, and now he lit candles. He unpacked the picnic basket and pulled out a chair for her.

“This is my new place. I want you to move in with me.”

She sat hard on the chair, her eyes on her hands in her lap.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck
. He'd put words together for this, a script to go with the chequered tablecloth and the flowers in the jam jar. And then he spat out the first thing in his head.

He sat opposite her and she looked up. “All right.”

His chair tipped over when he stood, rounded the table and snatched her up. “It's bigger; this room, bedroom, office and a whole room with a deck attached filled with natural light for you to paint in.”

“I see that.” Her words were going in the right direction but she was a tough negotiator. He searched her face for a clue to how she felt.

“Your lease is month to month. This place is cheaper and I can afford it on my own.”

“I'll pay my share.”

“You will?”

She put her hand to his face, rubbed her thumb over his bottom lip. She frowned. “Did you really think I wouldn't love this? I hate that I've done that to you.”

His turn to not get what was going on. “I know you don't want us to be a full-time gig. The lease is in my name. This is not on you. I can't stay at Dillon's forever and I don't want to sleep without you. I thought if you had room maybe—”

She stopped him with her whole hand over his mouth. Just as well, he was rambling.

She took his hand and drew him over to Buster's day bed. It was thick dark cane and the spring base squeaked. It needed new upholstery or maybe it needed to be thrown out. He had no clue what she was going to say when she made him sit and climbed over his lap.

“I made a mistake, Mace.”

Shit, the horses were all over the road, spooked and soon to be hamburger.

“I thought I could keep things casual. I thought that's what I wanted, because what I want more is my career back and it doesn't leave much time for anything else. But I'm not giving you up. I wanted you in the hotel when the city was on fire. I wanted you at my apartment when it was deadlocked with fear. I missed you when I hardly knew you and I can't see a time when I won't want you in my life.”

His hah of disbelief sounded bitter, ungracious. She kissed him, but his doubt hung in the air around them, damp with expectation, and he couldn't fall into it, his lips staying motionless under hers.

“I should have told you.” She cupped his face with both hands and his kneecaps tightened when he clocked her expression, so severe. “I love you and it scares the hell out of me.”

He took a moment to review that. She was on his lap, holding his face. She'd move in, she'd share the rent, she wasn't angry with him. She loved him.

“Say something, Mace.”

Words were overrated. There were occasions that simply called for action. He stood with her, stripped her neatly, quickly, of her simple dress and underwear then ditched his own clothes, never taking his eyes off her.

“Mace?”

He lay her back on the day bed with the intention of touching and kissing every pixel of her skin, until she was crazy for him, clawing and moaning and so wet he could smell sex on her.

“Mace, I love this place.”

He started at her foot, his hand under her instep massaging, his lips on her arch. He moved to her calf and it jumped at his touch, while his mouth sucked the line of her shinbone.

“I love you found it for us.”

He stopped at her knee, moved one hand to her inner thigh and her skin shivered. He grazed his teeth over her kneecap while he smoothed the pulse behind it and she laughed, the sound so free, so right.

“I love you, Mace. I love you and I want you to believe it.”

Maybe he did. He walked fingers up her inner thigh; he strung kisses up her quad. Maybe she was still using him to fill in time. One wild weekend and six weeks together couldn't change a lifetime of career ambition. It hadn't changed his.

She sat up abruptly and he followed her upright. “You don't trust me.” She was flushed and frowning.

Not in this. This was right for now and he'd take it, but he didn't think she'd want him around when her life was back on track.

“This is my life, right now. You loving me like no one ever has. I won't live without that.” She was pleading.

He breathed in her insistence but it was too much like hope. “You can't make that promise. How's it going to be when you're CEO of some mega company and I'm working night shift in some shitty call centre pulling a minimum wage?”

She grabbed his wrists. “That doesn't matter to me.”

It mattered to him. “Maybe not now.”

“Not now. Not later. Mace, please believe me.” She let him go to push her hair out of her face. “I knew I'd blown this days ago. When you got the job and I was so off about it. I was scared you'd move on and not need me anymore.”

“It's a part-time shift I couldn't care less about.”

“But that's the thing. You've put your life back together and I still don't know how to do that. You lost so much more than me. Someone you loved dearly, and your dream. I need to stop waiting and stop running and start living. I'll move in with you. I'll prove I love you.”

He pushed his hands into his hair. These words were getting in the way of the pleasure quest of having her, of the roast chicken and her favourite chocolate tart. He'd planned to eat it off her petal skin for dessert and now there was this need to talk about things.

“Mace, Say something.”

“It'd be good if you could learn how to cook a meal.”

“That's what you've got to say.”

“Just one thing. Eggs or—hey.”

She pushed him, flat hands slapping his chest. He caught them, bound them with his and watched her try not to laugh. “I was fucking gone on you the first time I kissed you. Outside your apartment in the middle of the street. Thought it was the night, the explosion, the fire, and later the hangover, or the blood loss, but I'm still hung up over you.” She looked at him with wild eyes. “You know this because I've told you in all the ways I know how to make it mean something. If you want to do the same, bring it the hell on. But you need words, so listen up. I want you. I need you. I put my life back in order because you were there with me. You'll have to eat cold chicken now and I love you so fucking much I don't care if you get your dream job, or if you never work again. You're it for me. I'm done.”

It probably wasn't the thought of cold chicken that made her cry.

It had nothing going for it. Inert, scantly claiming three dimensions, colourless, bland, but that blank canvas could mock her like no boardroom full of hostiles ever had.

It sat on the easel in the bright summer light and mocked her. If it could sing it'd be Kelly Clarkson's
Since You've Been Gone.

Because Jacinta was having trouble breathing, trouble moving on. She couldn't do this. She couldn't function without a job and she couldn't pick up a paintbrush without feeling panicked.

There was still nothing she could do about a job, unless she wanted to give up on her career aspirations and take any old thing, or start her own business. And she wasn't ready for those options yet. What she should've been ready for was to stand at an easel and create something.

It wasn't that hard. It used to be fun. She was sketching again and getting her skills back, but the blank page was an old friend reacquainted where the canvas was the lover she'd scorned and it was time she was an adult and they were civil to each other.

She went to the kitchen and made coffee in Mace's French press. She was chasing a bonus in avoidance, not that it mattered if she spent the day doing absolutely nothing. No one was better off because she got out of bed this morning.

Christ
. She might as well sit in the bath and slash her wrists now.

She took the coffee back to the room she thought of as the chamber of horrors. Mace called it the studio. Apart from moving her gear in two months ago, she'd avoided it altogether. It was more battlefield than workshop, where the loser was the one who couldn't get comfortable amongst inanimate objects.