The Apartment (Apartment #1) (28 page)

“Yessssss,” she wailed as he pistoned his hips faster, her head thrown back into the sopping wet grass and her eyes squeezed tight.

“Look at me!” he commanded, refusing to let her do anything that would shut him out of her senses. When her fiery gaze shot to his, he somehow felt himself growing impossibly harder inside her.

“What?” Lily spat out, furious at him for barking more orders at her. “I already told you what you wanted to hear! Isn’t that enough?”

“No!” he yelled back. “It will never be enough! I don’t just want you to say it, I want you to mean it. I want you to look me in the eye … I want you to know damn well who’s fucking you right now!” He leaned down and sucked the water from her rigid nipple before swirling his tongue around it, biting it lightly as he ground into her again. “This is not some dipshit little boy trying to play house inside you right now. This is
me
,” Ethan grunted as he thrust even harder. “And you. Are.
Mine
!”

He could actually see her resolve crumbling in front of him. Ethan didn’t know if it was what he was saying to her, or what he was doing to her, but something finally made her snap.

“Yes!” she sobbed, wrapping her arms around him even tighter, her body starting to shake under his. It looked like fresh tears were pooling in her eyes but he couldn’t be sure due to the rain. “I’m yours! I fucking belong to you and I can’t make it stop! I don’t
want
to make it stop!” She began weeping freely into his neck before kissing the skin where she had bitten earlier. “Nothing else … nobody else … none of it means a thing to me when I’m with you! And sometimes I fucking
hate
you for it!”

“Well sometimes I hate you, too!” he gritted through his teeth, his body winding tighter, like a coil about to snap. It was true: there were times when Ethan hated even the thought of her. He hated her every time she left to go back home to
him
. He hated her every time he couldn’t get to sleep without thinking of her. He hated her every time he would wake up in the middle of the night, painfully hard and alone, clutching his pillow because it still smelled like her.

He hated her every time he remembered that she wasn’t his to keep.

“Just make me forget … make it all disappear!” Lily sobbed into his ear before taking it between her teeth and biting down on the lobe. “Be mine tonight, too! Belong to
me
for once!”

Ethan forced her to look at him again, holding her head in place while he wiped the rainy tear mixture out of her eyes.

“I already do,” he said hoarsely. “I always have.” And with that he leaned in and covered her mouth with his own, swallowing her kisses along with her tears.

Both of their bodies began to spiral out of control after that, finally reaching the point of no return together. Ethan sped up his thrusts as Lily bucked her hips wildly, and he was startled to feel her hands slide up and grab him by the back of the head. She yanked on his hair until he was staring down at her again before gasping, “Now
you
say it!”

“I just did,” he grunted, barely holding on as they writhed together on the ground.

“Say it!” she cried, her voice breaking with an involuntary whimper. He could feel her inner muscles clamping down on him as he bucked his hips and had no idea how he was able to form a coherent thought.

“I belong to you,” Ethan moaned. “You own me … body and soul.”

And with that Lily exploded in a fit of screams, shaking and bucking beneath him as he quickly followed, pumping his seed deep inside her.

After a few minutes of frantic panting and attempting to regain composure, Ethan realized just how freezing his girl was: her teeth were starting to chatter and she was beginning to shake violently from the cold. He refastened his now-soaked jeans and scooped her up in his arms, holding her close to him as he carried her back to the car.

Sitting down in the back seat again with Lily on his lap, he reached forward into the front and turned on the engine, blasting the heat on high. After that, he grabbed the fleece blanket he’d packed and wrapped it around her tightly, tucking her against his chest as he rubbed her back, trying to generate more heat. Ethan held her close like that for almost an hour, stroking her hair in silence and watching her as her eyes slowly shut. When he tried to wake her up gently to help her get dressed before heading back into town, she surprised him by whispering against his skin.

“I’m sorry I ruined your plans for tonight.” Her voice sounded tiny and frail, and full of sadness.

“You didn’t ruin anything, beautiful girl,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “I did, with my bullshit temper. I hope you can forgive me. It was uncalled for.”

“Forgive you?” she scoffed. “If that’s what having a fight with you is like, I might have to piss you off more often.”

Ethan could tell that she was putting up a wall between them again, making a joke when he was being serious, but he wasn’t going to push her any more that night. Instead, he just smiled and kissed her gently before taking her back into town, dreading the moment when he would have to watch her leave all over again.

It had been two days since he’d seen her.

Two days, almost three.

After their awkward silence in the car on the way home from their disastrous attempt at an outing, he told himself that it would all be better the next day. Then, the next day came… and no goddess. Ethan reminded himself that it was the weekend and she no doubt had some sort of commitment that didn’t include him, but that didn’t stop the nagging feeling that told him something was wrong.

By Sunday night, he was grateful that he still didn’t know her name, or else he would have driven up and down the streets of Aledo with his iPod dock looking for her, ready to become the world’s most pathetic Lloyd Dobler impersonator. He didn’t know what it was about this woman that made him regress to high school boyfriend mentality. He only knew that he felt horrible about the way things had escalated the other night and that he missed her terribly.

Monday afternoon found him pacing in front of a paint-smeared canvas, his mind too preoccupied to focus on the task at hand. Ethan normally had a routine of zoning out to his music when he painted and letting his emotions take over, leading him to paint from his subconscious until he found something tangible to work with for a subject. But now, every single time he tried to lose himself in his art, he would find another reminder of that night on the canvas when he was done.

First, it was a melted piece of chocolate that had quickly been scraped away with a loud huff. Next, it had been a half-eaten sandwich soaked with tears—that one had made Ethan pull roughly on his hair before squirting the whole thing down with turpentine and wiping it away. When he finally realized that his last one was shaping up to be the foggy view from inside the rain-soaked windows of his car, he cursed loudly and kicked the easel across the room before forcing himself to take a break.

He turned off the loud beats that were flooding the apartment and threw himself face down on the mattress, allowing himself for the first time to focus on the question that was really bothering him.

What if she never came back?

The only thing that scared him more than that idea was the fact that he cared so much.

* * *

Across town, Lily wasn’t faring much better.

She had spent all weekend moping around the house, telling herself that there was always one more chore that had to be done before she could even dream of going anywhere. The house had never been cleaner, George and the cats had never been fed better in their lives, and now Lily was completely out of distractions and excuses.

She’d even gone so far as to call up Scott out of the blue and talk his ear off for the better part of an hour before he finally told her that he was really happy to hear from her, but he had to get back to work. It turned out that Ryan’s buddy in St. Louis also ran his own garage, and they were down a mechanic since their best one skipped town with his seventeen-year-old pregnant mistress the week before. Now that he and Ryan had two cars, Scott offered to stay behind and help them out for a few days until they could find a replacement.

Lily could tell from how happy he sounded on the phone that if it weren’t for his drunk-ass nagging father, and the fact that he had a fiancée back home, he might have decided to stay quite a bit longer than a few days.

Her thoughts were only half-selfish when she found herself wishing that he would.

Once she had absolutely nothing left to feign interest in, she curled up in a ball on her bed for hours and tried desperately to forget how embarrassed she was over her actions Friday night. She kept telling herself over and over again that she never should have taken that phone call. The night would have gone so much smoother. She’d been so thrilled to be able to help her stranger live out a lifelong fantasy—they’d been so damn close—and then she had to fuck it all up by answering a stupid call that she didn’t even want to take. It could have waited, it really could have.

Then she had gone and cried like a big baby when he got angry, and she still felt completely humiliated by the things she’d said and done after that. How could she ever look him in the eye again?

And why would he ever want her to?

That was the thought that dug at her the most. Every time she nearly caved and ran out the door to go to him, she was struck with the fear of what she might be greeted with when she got there. Would it be indifference? Resentment? Or, even worse, pity? Pity for the poor girl who thought she could actually make him hers, even for just one night?

She knew that she could never take back the things she had said, and she was convinced that he had only agreed with her to shut her up. Nevertheless, she missed him so much it hurt. The longer she stayed away, the worse the pain inside her became.

Monday at work was an even bigger disaster than the weekend. She was so sad and distracted that even her patients were asking her what was wrong, and Lily discovered that there was hardly a situation more awkward than someone offering you a hug when you were just about to test them for chlamydia.

By the end of her shift she knew that she couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to see him again, regardless of how he received her.

As she walked up the long, dark stairway to the apartment, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was different. When she clearly heard the key turn in the lock, she realized that it was the total silence that seemed off. Where was his blaring music? Was he not there? It was so quiet in the living room that she could actually hear the melodic strains of a waltz drifting up from the dance class downstairs.

Before she could call out for him he appeared in the bedroom doorway, like some sort of dark angel who knew when he was needed without ever being asked. He stood there for a moment, watching her from across the room, looking her up and down as if he were afraid she was going to disappear. When he seemed satisfied that she was real, he approached her slowly, and Lily was pleased to find no hint of pity or sarcasm on his face—only relief.

When he was no more than five inches away from her he stopped, his head ducked down as if in shame, as if he were afraid to meet her eyes. Lily watched as he carefully reached out and slipped his hands around her waist, and only then did he seem to breathe, a deep, loud sigh. He pulled her to him quickly and buried his face in her neck, not doing anything but holding her tightly and inhaling her scent. It wasn’t until Lily hugged him back that she felt his stiff body start to tremble before finally relaxing around her.

They stood there together like that for almost a minute, simply holding each other and soaking it all in. Lily was busy marveling at how right it felt to be in his arms again, while Ethan couldn’t stop trying to commit every single aspect of her scent to his memory. After nearly three days without her in the apartment all of his reminders of her had just about faded away.

They probably would have been content to stand there like that all night if it hadn’t been for the loud
thump, thump, thump
that echoed up through the floor, followed by a muffled “Again!” as Mrs. Knight scolded the class and started the song over again from the beginning. However, the interruption didn’t force them to move away from each other. Rather, it brought them back to reality just enough to hear the music.

As the violin drifted around them, Lily was surprised to feel her stranger grip her tighter and begin to sway to the beat. When she looked up at him with a puzzled expression, he merely smiled gently and stopped long enough to push her jacket off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor before kicking it away. By the time she had followed its motion across the floor with her eyes, he had taken her right hand in his left and lifted it to their side, his other hand sliding around to grip her hip firmly.

“What are you—?” she gasped as he took two elegant steps toward her, forcing her to move backwards with him.

“Shh.”

“But I have no idea how to—”

“Shh!”

With that, he took her other hand and placed it on his shoulder before grabbing her by the hip again and taking another small step in her direction, guiding her backwards with the pressure of his grip. She watched as he slid sideways after the second step, moving her body with him, and she realized that he was slowly gliding them in a box step, commanding her to follow with only his touch.

Lily shut up and allowed herself to be led, never taking her eyes off his. She was afraid if she tried to look down at her feet she might stumble, so she concentrated on the smoldering jade gaze in front of her. He pulled her with him as he stepped backwards before turning her slowly and repeating the motion all over again. At one point, he shifted and dipped her back deeply. When he lifted her back up she giggled nervously, imagining how foolish they looked doing the waltz in grubby workout sweats and paint-splattered clothes, but when she met his eyes, his heated gaze nearly did her in.

There was nothing foolish about it.