Ten Thousand Words (16 page)

“I might have to have words with this feline then. I’m the only one allowed to be the cute manly man in your life.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

Xanthe’s expression turned from teasing into stunned. “Are you suggesting we’re in a relationship?”

My smile felt cheeky. “Caught on, have you?”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“What about the three or four women you have waiting for you back home?”

“They’re not waiting for anything. It was never more than what it was.”

“Was?” she asked.

“
Was
. I promised Ronen I wouldn’t fuck with you.”

“Bloody hell.”

“He even went so far as to say, he’d have Ricki turn me into a woman if I did. I like my man parts attached to me. And I like that shade of red you’ve got going on, too.”

She raised the menu up to hide her face, muttering, “I’m going to kill him.”

“He also told me…”

“What?”
she asked, snapping the menu down on the tabletop.

“He told me about George.”

“That motherfucker!” burst out of her mouth a little too loudly.

A few diners close to us gave us the evil eye.

“Shit,” she hissed. “Sorry.”

“Hey,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “You would’ve told me eventually, right? So what if Ronen mentioned it? Well, threatened me with it really. But—”

“I’m going to kill him,” she repeated.

“He’s just watching out for you, Xanthe. I understood that. He was only trying to explain why you haven’t really gone out much over the last few years, and he wanted to make sure you weren’t getting involved with an prick.”

“But that’s
my
business! The whole damn situation was humiliating—”

“Humiliating?”
I was getting angry. “You were beaten by a piece-of-shit thief!”

“I really don’t want to discuss this right now. Can we change the subject?”

Now, I felt bad. This wasn’t a great way to spend our date.

“Of course,” I replied. “Tell me about your roommate. Rex? What’s he like?”

She shrugged, “Rex is Rex.”

“How long have you known him?” I asked.

The thing was, deep down, I didn’t like the fact that she lived with a man. It made me jealous, and I wanted to know as much as I could about him.

Looking through the menu again, she replied, “I met him when we moved to England, and we were best friends. Then, we thought we had…other feelings…for each other. We were together from when we were fourteen until sixteen. We were each other’s firsts—”

“You live with a man you’ve had sex with?” I wasn’t taking that information well.

“I do. But it’s not like that. The older we got, the more we both realized that, as much as we loved each other, something was missing.”

“And what was that?” My insides were seething, like they had been when I caught her hugging Ronen.

“I didn’t have a cock. He was more torn up over it than I was though. He swears, I was the only woman he’d ever been in love with, but I don’t think—”

“You live with a man whom you’ve had sex with, who says you’re the only woman he’s ever loved—”

“Yes. Hush now. It’s not like that. Rex loves me as I love him. We’re best friends, and he only has sex with men now.”

“He’s gay?”

“Yes.”

“Are
you
in love with him?” I demanded, sounding as furious as I felt.

“No. I just love him. I always will. You love Trey, don’t you?”

“I’ve never had sex with him!”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

Now, I felt like an ass. She had been giving me insight into her life, finding a connection we shared with our homosexual best friends, and I had reacted poorly.

Reaching across the table, I took her hand in mine and brought it to my lips. “No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t cool of me. I overreacted.”

She looked surprised. “No worries.”

“I…I’m finding myself to be very jealous where you’re concerned. I don’t know why that bothered me. Normally, I wouldn’t care…” I couldn’t finish because it was so strange, feeling this way about anything.

She didn’t ask me to elaborate. I didn’t think I could have if she had.

Our server came over, and we placed our order.

Afterward, Xanthe leaned back against the booth and clasped her hands before her on the tabletop. For a few moments, she stared at them but then raised her eyes to mine. “Oliver…” she said.

Warmth spread through me.

“I’d love to have a relationship with you, but there are things you should know about me first…things that might make you change your mind.”

My heart tripped. “Like what?”

“Like the fact that I’ve seen a therapist since I was twelve. You’ve made some comments about people having sick minds and the like. What you’ve said about Elaine, wondering about the sanity of the mind that came up with those stories—the ‘torture, rape, and dismemberment’—it’s
my
mind. Those are
my
stories. I think up and imagine the nightmares people read about. I
love horror movies, blood, guts, and gore.”

That’s it?
“So…what are you saying?”

“I’m saying, you should know that you want to be in a relationship with someone whom you’ve considered to be a mental case—which I can assure you, I’m not. I’ve intensely studied psychology, my own mind being the reason behind why the subject fascinates me. My therapist assures me of the same thing. I’m not a head case. And I’m not the only one who thinks like I do. Anne Rice, Stephen King—”

“Xanthe, I’ve never thought you were mental. If anything, I find your way of thinking enlightening.”

“You’ve made me feel self-conscious with some of your offhanded comments,” she admitted, making me feel like a prick all over again. “When I lost my mom and grandma, I saw some things that made it possible for me to really explore horror. My imaginings became very dark and what many people considered disturbed. I was fascinated with death and destruction, even the afterlife. And it shows in my writing; it’s what I feel makes my stories convincing.”

My chest ached as I realized that I had made her feel like she had to defend herself against me. “Xanthe…I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I guess I never stopped to think about how it would make you feel. I promise, I don’t think you’re sick. You’re superbly different. These last few days I’ve spent with you have been some of the most exciting in my entire life.”

“And here I thought you lived the life of a playboy.” She snorted with laughter. “If you think this is exciting—”

Taking her hands in mine, a smile on my face, I told her, “It’s you who excites me, woman. I like the person I am when I’m with you.”

“I was afraid…” she said softly.

“Afraid of what?”

“That you’d be angry because I hadn’t been up front about it. I didn’t say anything before because…I really thought you’d be upset.”

“Please, Xanthe. Just because I read more mystery than paranormal—”

“Hey!” she huffed. “Don’t forget I write some pretty awesome sex, too!”

I burst out laughing. “I won’t.” Then, the shower scene from chapter twenty-three of
Haunted Bonds
bloomed bright in my mind’s eye.
If her sex scenes are anything like that, I’ve hit the damn jackpot with this woman.

“And it doesn’t bother you that I still speak with a therapist?” she asked, uncharacteristically timid for the Xanthe I’d come to know.

“No. Why would it?”

“That’s just what I’m trying to figure out. I…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it, but I guess I should. After the attack, I closed myself off. I started with therapy sessions again. My doctor is in Oxford. Dr. McKenna is awesome. We do sessions over the phone. But George Kastor really did a number on me. I didn’t want to meet new people, my readers, go to signings—none of it.

“When I had come home that night and he had been there, I was afraid, yes, but…I was
furious
. He was delusional. He’d made up this entire life with me in his head. That was the scariest thing to me—that his mind was so far gone that he actually believed I was his girlfriend. He said the stories he’d had published of mine were just so wonderful because they were about us, about what we had done together, and he’d just wanted the world to know.

“It’s a rare thing for me to be terrified, and right then, I’d never been so scared for my own safety in my life. When I’d denied there was something between us and called him out on his foul shit”—she swallowed thickly—“things got ugly real fast.”

“Xanthe…” I whispered, my heart thundering, blood pounding loudly in my ears. I almost didn’t want to know, scared of how much she had endured.

“He tried to rape me,” she said.

I saw red upon hearing those words.

“This man had already raped my soul by stealing my manuscripts and publishing them, and he was trying to do the same to my body. I fought hard, but he overpowered me…”

She stared at our clasped hands, and I realized how tightly I had been gripping hers. Easing up on my hold, I took a deep breath.

Her eyes met mine once more. “He knocked me unconscious at some point, but right before that happened, I remember thinking…” She laughed bitterly. “I remember thinking that Dr. McKenna would be earning a small fortune off me if I survived.”

“How…” I couldn’t finish. A fury so profound that I shook slightly seared its way through me.

“He must have gotten a good kick to my chest, too, because I had a cracked rib,” she continued. “I was lucky. George never got around to raping me.”

“
Lucky
?” I gasped, astounded.

Surprised, her eyes, which had dropped back to our hands, looked up into mine once more. “Yes. I was lucky. What I went through is nothing compared to what other women have suffered at the hands of men. As scared as I was, as much pain as I went through, during and after with the healing, I consider myself
extremely
lucky. Not everyone comes out of something like that with only a concussion and a cracked rib. My body mended, and even though it took some extra time and effort, so did my mind.

“After I regained consciousness, Ronen, Ricki, and Rex went out and found George. They didn’t just beat him. They annihilated him. He was in the hospital for weeks. He didn’t even remember how he’d ended up the way he had or who had done it.”

“Oh my God,” I croaked.

“But getting his arse beat hadn’t been enough for me. What had been unforgivable was the fact that he’d stolen my stories, my words. He’d taken what I had created and perverted it, putting
his
name on my labor of love. I’d gotten justice though. He’s in the psych ward of a prison.”

Xanthe pulled out of my grasp and leaned back into the booth once more.

“I’m sorry,” I softly told her. “I’m sorry that you have to live with this.”

She shook her head. “Not all memories are good ones, Oliver. It’s a part of me, a part of my life. I wouldn’t change it,” she said defiantly.

Something blazed behind her eyes and warmed me from the inside out.

“You are amazing, Xanthe Love.”

It was half past seven when we made it back to The Plaza. Xanthe had been subdued in the cab. Perhaps she wasn’t so much subdued as…nervous.

Shit.
I’d been so wrapped up in her past that I had forgotten…and, now,
I
was nervous.

As we made our way toward the elevator, she took my hand. Inside the lift, our mutual silence shivered with apprehension.

Ding!
Tenth floor.

The elevator doors opened, and Xanthe tugged on my hand, leading the way to her room. A thrill zinged through me and zipped straight into the head of my cock.

None of my sexual experience had prepared me for this. I wasn’t sure why that was. It was as though I had no clue as to what I was doing. Hell, I was
letting her
lead me into temptation.

I had the feeling that, after this, I would no longer be the same.

A soft
snick
after she’d swiped the key, she released my hand to push down the handle and thrust open the door.

My heart thundered madly in my chest while my groin pooled with blood. She walked ahead of me, dropping her purse onto the cluttered desk.

Her arse in that skirt…

Nervousness disappeared with the promise of seeing that rear end bare.

Xanthe turned and sank gracefully on the mattress, unzipping her boots.

“Stop,” I said.

Startled, she glanced up at me. Crossing the distance, I dropped to my knees before her and took over the task. I wanted the honor of stripping away her layers, of revealing her, and then…
making love
to her. That was why I was nervous. It was something I couldn’t ever remember doing before.

I wasn’t too sure I’d be able to pull it off either.

Divested of her boots and thigh-highs, Xanthe placed a hand on my shoulder. “I just need to use the bathroom,” she softly told me.

“Okay.”

Once she was inside the bathroom, I busied myself by grabbing the condoms from my bag, taking them out of the box, and slipping a strip of them under a pillow. Then, I removed my boots and socks—
she’s taking her time in there
—and my shirt, leaving my suspenders hanging. I debated on removing my undershirt just as she opened the door.