The Other Man (9 page)

“He didn’t even say goodbye after?
 
Just walked out?” Danika’s voice over the phone was clearly appalled.
 

“Just walked out,” I affirmed.
 

“What an
asshole
,” she muttered.
 
“I’m coming over.
 
Tristan is working, and I’m only a few minutes away from you.
 
Should I bring more wine?”
 

“I’m well stocked,” I said wryly.
 
I liked my wine.
 

She showed up not five minutes later, still dressed for work.
 
I must have caught her just as she got home.
 
I knew she was like me, and changed into something comfortable the second she got into her own home.
 

I poured her a glass, and we went out onto my back porch to sip wine and talk it out.
 

“What an asshole,” she repeated, for maybe the third time.
 

I nodded, taking another drink.
 

“Is he an asshole in bed, too?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that.
 
He was bossy, sure, but he ate pussy like a champ.
 

“No,” I finally settled on.
 
“He’s very aggressive, very forceful, but he’s definitely adamant about getting me off first.”

“Well, that’s something.
 
I’m convinced that men who are assholes in bed are basically hopeless.
 

I laughed because it was true.
   

“Asshole in bed—impossible to rehabilitate.
 
Asshole in general, hell, who knows—there’s probably some hope.”
 

I laughed harder.
 
This is why I’d called her.
 
Girl always told it like it was.
   

Danika was fluent in sarcasm.
 
It was one of my favorite languages.
 
I found I always trusted a person more once I discovered they had the sarcasm gene.

She was the perfect balance of practical levity that I’d known was needed to improve my mood.
   

CHAPTER
 

NINE

He showed up at my door about a week later.
 
It was a Tuesday and eleven o’clock at night.

When the doorbell rang, I didn’t know who it could be, but I still didn’t even suspect that it was
him
.
 

I had the brief urge, after looking through the peephole, not to even answer the door, but other, stronger urges won out.

At least I kept the chain on, talking through the small opening that left.
 

And the first thing I said when I did open it was, “I don’t think I should let you in.”

His brows shot up like he had no notion where this was coming from.
 
“What?” he clipped out.
 

As I gathered my reply, my eyes ran over him.
 
He wore jeans and a tight gray T-shirt.
 
He looked edible, and I still wasn’t accustomed to my reaction to him.

“You didn’t even bother to say goodbye the last time,” I told him, making my voice as cold as it would go, which was still about ten times warmer than his normal tone.
 
“Hell, I don’t think you even said hello.”
 

He just looked at me like he had no clue what I was going on about.
 

Infuriating man.
 

“No woman has ever made you work for it, huh?” I asked wryly.
 

I didn’t even want to think about that.
 
But, of course, I did.
 

God, the girls his age.
 
I knew what was up.
 
I had two sons that weren’t much younger than he was.
 
I’d talked to their girlfriends over the years, talked to them, to the parents of other people in their generation.
 
Girls his age were down for just about any damn thing, and guys did not have to work hard to get it.

Who the hell could compete with that?
 
Who the hell wanted to?

Me, apparently.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking,” he said carefully.
   

Me neither, though mostly because I already had my answer.
 
This man was not housebroken.
 
Had never even considered the idea.
 
Why would he?
 
If he wanted sex, he clearly did not have a hard time getting it.
 

“Look, I don’t think this is working for me.”
 

He still looked fantastically confused, like he just had no notion what my problem was.
 
“What isn’t working about it?”
 

I stared at him, not sure if he was mocking me.
 

“What I mean is, what do I need to change to make this work for you?” he added.
 

It was downright polite, for him.
   

And just that easy, I was ready to play again.
 

Dammit
.
 

I unchained the door and let him in.
 

“Some manners,” I said grudgingly, though not grudgingly enough.
 
“You need to learn some manners.
 
The basics.
 
Hellos, goodbyes, a little bit of small talk.
 
Something that tells me this isn’t
just
casual sex.
 
This may surprise you, but I don’t do casual very well.”

“Who said this was casual?”

Again, I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me.
 
But then, I was getting the distinct impression that he wasn’t much of a jokester.
 

I didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how he meant it, so I moved on.
 
“More
manners
,” I stressed again.
 
“That’s what I need.
 
Can you do that for me?”

My hair was pinned up, the heavy masses secured with several clips I’d thrown in carelessly throughout the day.
 
Heath started taking it down, clip by clip, his clever fingers finding each one unerringly, until the black strands were loose and wavy around my shoulders.
 

He gripped both hands into it, his arms bunching distractingly as he pulled my face close to his, bending down to meet me halfway.
 

“Manners.
 
Hellos.
 
Goodbyes.
 
Small talk.” He repeated it all back like he really didn’t know what I was talking about, but not in an asshole way.
 
More like he was trying to follow along, whether he understood it or not.
   

I thought that, just maybe, I could work with that.
   

A big maybe, but not so big that I didn’t let him take me to bed almost immediately.
 

He stripped me down, sat me on the edge of the bed, and knelt between my thighs.

He was leaning down, just a breath away from my sex, and said softly, “Hello.”

I smiled, then gasped as he promptly and enthusiastically started eating me out.
 

He did this for so long (three orgasms and counting) that I finally had to scramble away to get him to stop.
 

“What are you doing?” I asked him.
 
He’d shown no sign of letting up, like he was just going to go down on me indefinitely, with no signs of stopping for the foreseeable future.

He smiled.
 
Yes, it was a cold smile, but I was starting to like that just fine.
 
“Showing manners.”
 

Dammit
.
 
He was really starting to grow on me.
 

I liked him way too much for someone I had no clue if I’d ever see again.
 

He climbed onto the bed, pinned me down.
 
He held my wrists with one hand, the other gripping into my hair.
 
He pushed his hips between my thighs and started fucking me.
 

He started talking while he did it.
 
A lot.
 
And not just dirty talk.
 
Random talk.
 

“What the fuck?” I asked, after he slipped some inane comment about the weather in.
 

“Small talk,” he explained.
 

Dammit
.
 

He was a weirdo, for sure, but I
definitely
liked him.
 

He pulled out of me suddenly, cursing.
 

I squirmed a bit and tried not to curse myself.
 
Why had he stopped?
 

“I forgot to put on a condom,” he growled, going for his pants.
 

Shit.
 
We both forgot.
 
How the hell had that happened?
 

At least he hadn’t come inside of me bare.
 

Still, I couldn’t believe I’d missed that.
 
It was a bit sobering.
 

He wrapped up and mounted me again.

He stayed for hours, but not for the night.
   

At least he said goodbye this time, though perversely, I wished he hadn’t.
 

Big hands shaking my hip and shoulder woke me up.
 

I blinked groggily awake to an intimidating Heath looming over me.
 

“I have to go,” he said gruffly.
 

I sighed out a breath, shifting restlessly under his hands.
 
“Okay.”
 

“You said I should say goodbye when I leave.
 
This is goodbye.”
 

I just shut my eyes and nodded.
 
He was apparently a literal guy.

Still, he didn’t move, just staring down at me for a long time.
 

“I wasn’t even supposed to come here,” he finally said, each word sounding like it was fighting to come out of his throat.
 
“I’m in the middle of a job, something . . . something I can’t be distracted from.”

Whatever the hell that meant.

“You’re distracting me,” he continued.
 

Unaccountably, I liked that.
 
A lot.
 

“I’m not leaving because I want to.
 
I need to go.
 
Legitimately.
 
I hate having to explain myself.
 
To anyone.
 
But believe this: If I could stick around longer, I would.
 
Okay?”
 

He’d told me almost nothing, given me no answers, not that he owed me any, all things considered, but what little he’d said, I appreciated.
 
Whether it was bullshit or not, I liked how he’d taken the time to reassure me, to let me know that he’d have spent more time with me if he could have.
 

“Okay,” I whispered to him in the dark.
 

He started to pull away.
 
I stopped him with a hand on his retreating wrist.
 
“Will I see you again?” I asked, the words torn out of me.
 

He cursed and bent down, taking my mouth roughly, his hands pulling my soft sheets up, wrapping them around my body.
 
Tucking me in.
 
I wasn’t sure what to make of the tender action, but I liked it.
 
A lot.
 

Loved it.
 

“You will if I have anything to say about it,” he said cryptically and was gone faster than he’d come.
 

God, he was rough around the edges.
 

Why the hell did I like him so much?

He was uncivilized.
 

Churlish.
 

Uncouth.
 

And strangely, kind of sweet.
 

CHAPTER
 

TEN

I was soaking in the bath, glass of red wine cupped loosely in my hand and balanced haphazardly on the rim of the tub.
 

It was eight p.m., and I’d gotten back from a work trip in L.A. about thirty minutes prior.
 

I couldn’t even have said why, but the trip had been stressful to me, and it was sort of a belated shock to realize how relieved I was to be home.
 
I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t accustomed to traveling, and I’d only been gone a few days.
 
I almost
always
went to L.A. multiple times a month for work.
 
It was typical for me.
 

I’d gone for an editorial spread for a fashion magazine that had involved dealing with a temperamental supermodel.
 
Maybe that was where all of my pent up tension was coming from?
 

I didn’t think so.
 
I’d dealt with many a prima donna.
 

That sort of thing never fazed me.
 

What was it then?
 

My body was coiled so tight, jaw held hard, lips pursed, shoulders drawn up too stiffly.
 
Before the wine today, I’d looked down at my hands several times, always surprised when I found them made into nervous little fists.
 

The fists were gone, and the rest I was working on decompressing the best way I knew how.
 

I was reading on my phone, since it was easier to hold in one hand, the perfect arrangement for doing two of my favorite things simultaneously.
 

Drinking wine and devouring a book.
 

I was an avid, lifelong reader.
 
I didn’t stick to any one genre.
 
In fact, I read everything, though not all mixed together.
 
I went through phases.
 
My last phase, which had lasted maybe four months, had been a True Crime phase.
 
That one had started when I read my friend Dair’s novels and turned into me finding and reading every non-fiction book that covered the crimes his novels were loosely based on.