The Space Between (22 page)

“What work? You can’t do anything on Wellesley until we get out there, and that’s your only pending project.”

Andy stared at the sidewalk and fought to restrain a smile. That got my attention. “I can’t tell you.”

“Yeah…that’s the perfect thing to say if you want me to ask a million questions and not give up until you answer. What are you working on?”

“This must be what multiple personalities feel like.” Rubbing her forehead, Andy released a rueful laugh before meeting my gaze. “My boss—I might have told you about him before—he always makes up these pop quizzes for me. Every morning, he picks the most unworkable problems from the projects we have—sometimes, when he’s annoyed with the world, projects that other people have—and he tells me to figure it out.”

Okay. We’d deal with me being a giant prick some other time. If this was what she needed, this was a game I could play. “Sounds like an insufferable bastard.”

Andy laughed, nodding. “That’s one way to put it. So he gives me these problems in the morning, and I have to figure them out like…on the spot. And if I get them wrong, he won’t eat lunch with me.”

When she described it that way, I was the odds-on favorite for Boston’s Top Douche.

“I really like eating lunch with him. He finds the best places, and he’s funny and radiates megawatts of knowledge. I’ve told you my goal in life is to learn everything I can from him. So…I started reviewing all the plans the night before, and trying to figure out what he’d ask, and doing a lot of research to be prepared with the right answer. That’s what I have to do tonight.”

I laughed, thrilled to discover I was blocking my own cock.

“I seriously doubt that your boss radiates anything, but I’m guessing he’s giving you problems he hasn’t figured out, and then taking you to lunch because he likes the way your brain works. He’s also trying to get into your pants.” Andy licked her lips and gifted me with a quick smile from under her thick lashes. “Maybe if you told him you like having lunch with him, you could take a night off.”

“Trust me—he radiates. I spent years waiting to work with him. You’re going to think I’m a major geek, but…his thesis was kind of like my bedtime story all through college.”

Holy fuck. My grasp on her hand tightened. “You read my—wait. What?”

I remembered Andy insisting the only apprenticeship she wanted was the one we were offering, but I filed it away as standard interview-speak.

She lifted a shoulder. “Yeah. At the end of my second year. I read it and…it spoke to me. Whenever I was uninspired or unmotivated or confused, I’d read it and remember why I wanted to do this. It always brought me back to what I loved about preservation.”

Apparently, I wasn’t the only creeper. It shouldn’t have been sexy to imagine Andy reading the least interesting thing I wrote in college, but images of her poring over my thesis in nothing more than funky knee socks inundated me.

Clearing my throat to suppress a growl, I squeezed Andy’s hand. “I have it on good authority that your boss wants to take you to lunch tomorrow, and you should come home with me tonight. I might have an inside track on those pop quiz questions.”

“Say no more,” she laughed, a bright, uninhibited smile breaking across her face.

*

I was blaming
it on being past my friends-with-benefits phase. There was also the whole issue of her showing up all sweet, babbling, and sloppy drunk on Saturday. And she read my thesis. Repeatedly and for comfort, though it certainly called her idea of comfort into question.

I wanted her body, but I also wanted her conversation, her bent eyebrows worth a million words, her sharp, dry humor. It was gradually ripping me apart, and it was all foreign to me.

Somewhere between the creepy staring and finally tying her to my bed, I developed an affection for Andy that made every minute she wasn’t in my arms feel wasted. Saturday night wasn’t ‘just sex’ with every word of her inner monologue on display and quiet mentions of wanting to see me, or waiting for me to invite her over, or me being made for her. It was no more ‘just sex’ than her uncharacteristically shy description of her boss, and how much she liked lunch with him. Or with me. Or whatever.

I was done with ‘just sex.’ It was never just anything. I knew that when I agreed to it, and I knew it when Andy thought I was breaking our treaty by touching her in the office. I wanted to respect her parameters, but I also wanted so much more of Andy.

My fingers skimmed over the curved characters of the tattoo clinging to her ribs. The sight of Andy’s exposed skin lit only by moonlight while she was tucked against my chest was staggering, and part of me recognized that she would always affect me this way.

“Andy,” I murmured. She hummed in response, and pulled my arm under her breasts. The simple gesture was a giant billboard reminding me I passed the exit for ‘just sex’ many miles back. “Tell me something about you. Something I don’t know.”

Her nails scratched up and down my forearm for a few minutes, and I figured she was tuning out my request until she replied, “My father died when I was seven.”

I tightened the arm around her torso while I kissed her shoulder and rummaged around my memory for mention of Andy’s family. I only knew she was from a town far up north Maine’s coast.

The cold, heavy ache of understanding landed in my gut, and I pulled the blankets up. My mother’s death ended childhood for me and my siblings. When it broke us, it wasn’t the kind of break that healed neatly. It was the quiet shattering of a frozen-over pond protesting too much weight, all tiny fissures racing out from the impact site until the ice dropped out and chilled emptiness rushed in.

Some of the broken places made us stronger, and some healed over time, but not all.

Andy glanced over her shoulder. “You’re not going to ask what happened?”

“No.” My mouth continued mapping the sharp jut of her collarbone. “My mother died when I was ten and I hate when people ask. If you want me to know, you’ll tell me.”

Minutes slipped by, and the rasp of her fingers against my arm combined with city noises to occupy the quiet.

“He was shot, in South Africa. Some militant group wanted him dead. His family was exiled during the Iranian Revolution, and he ended up in Egypt, and then London. That’s where my mom met him. I was born in Istanbul, and we lived between there and London until he died.” She released a long sigh. “I never talk about that. Ever. People know he died, but they don’t know why, or that I didn’t always live in Maine, or that I’m even Persian. They just think I tan easily.”

Holding her closely, I searched for the right words but I knew all too well nothing eased the loss. It shrouded even the best memories in sorrow. “After my sister Erin was born—you haven’t met her—my mother was pregnant again, and there was a complication and she bled to death. She and the baby died in that big room on the second floor at Wellesley, with the six of us there. We never really talk about it, and like you said, people know, but they have no idea.”

The blueprint of that bedroom appeared in my mind, and within white space bound by thin black lines, I saw my mother crumpled on the hardwood floor, and the puddle of blood around her. I saw the paramedics working on her while Sam refused to let go of her hand. I saw the ambulance spitting gravel as it skidded down the driveway, leaving us and our blood-stained hands behind.

Andy rolled over, her brown eyes boring into mine before she wrapped an arm around my neck and pulled me in for a kiss. Her lips soothed, and communicated that she understood, and knew the limitations of words. She pressed her forehead against mine with a smile.

“Tell me something. Something else. Something that’s really off-limits.”

“‘Really off-limits?’ I don’t even know what that includes. Hell, Andy, I’ve never seen what’s hiding under your socks.”

“Not hiding anything. My toes just get really cold.” She laughed, though her expression rapidly sobered. “Something that scares the shit out of you to say.”

Unless I was completely misreading her signals and she was expecting me to ask for a threesome, she wanted me talking about this. It wouldn’t be the first time I completely misread Andy, but something she let slip on Saturday night told me to push forward.

“I have a crazy idea.” I gazed into her eyes, and she nodded in encouragement. Her eyes dropped to my chest and she studied my freckles, her teeth clamping the edge of her lip. “I want…I want to stop pretending this is ‘just sex.’ This isn’t ‘just sex’ for me, Andy, and I don’t think it is for you either.”

After a long, painful pause during which I invented at least nine ways to play off my comment if her response wasn’t the one I needed, she shook her head. It was always her little gestures. The eyebrows, the tiny smiles, the ‘hm,’ and now her slight head shake.

“I like you,” I confessed. “A lot. As in, miss you when I don’t see you, need to talk about your Facebook privacy settings, want to find out how you found my thesis, rearrange my schedule to eat lunch with you, ready to see what’s under your knee socks, like you.”

“Hm.” Andy nestled her head against my chest, and I inhaled the rich lavender scent of her hair. “I like you, too. Even if you’re a growly, bitey stalker, and always rolling up your sleeves and stretching so I have to—” Her nails scraped low over my stomach and I was ready for her again. My hand rubbing deep circles on her hip, I urged her body closer to mine. “—look at this.”

I used to think hearts only skipped beats in near-death experiences, but often enough, Andy’s words had that effect on me. “Sounds like we have a lot to talk about.”

Andy’s leg hooked over my hip, and our bodies were flush together with her breasts pressed against my chest, my erection digging into her stomach, and our hands gliding over warm skin. “Maybe I should stay over.”

“I like that plan.” Armed with the best possible outcome from my crazy idea, I plowed into the most dangerous territory without a shield. “I get that your boss is Captain Douchebag, but would it be so bad if he knew about this?”

“No.” She laughed and glanced up at me with a wince. “But it would be bad if his partners knew.”

“Why?” I cupped her breast, the flesh heavy and heated under my fingers, and my thumb brought her nipple to attention.

Her forehead pinched into fine wrinkles while her finger traced paths between the freckles on my chest. “Hooking up with the boss isn’t usually a good idea, and you’re in each other’s lives so much…”

Rolling Andy to her back, I bracketed her hips with my legs and balanced my hands on either side of her head. “I don’t give a fuck what they think,” I said, and sucked a nipple into my mouth.

“Easy for you to say,” she ground out, her body quivering beneath me. “You run the place. You’re forgetting that I’m just an apprentice. I can’t be that cavalier, Patrick.”

Her nipple shone with moisture when I released it from between my teeth, and I promptly shifted to the other. I needed the distraction of her skin in my mouth. I was too close to giving her the keys to the firm, or offering to fire any number of my siblings if they gave her so much as a side-eye. None of that would help, either; she’d gut me for suggesting it.

In many ways, Andy was nothing like the other women I’d known intimately, and above all else, it was obvious that she didn’t need me. I admired her strength and independence. Guiding her career was part of my responsibility as her mentor, but I knew she wasn’t about to let me stand in her way or set her course. Part of me loved that she wouldn’t be calling me to unclog a drain anytime soon, yet another part of me wanted to be much more than a dirty little secret.

My teeth grazed over her nipple, and I moved my way down her breast before biting at the underside while her nails dug into my scalp. The time I could reasonably allot to this discussion without coming all over her belly was nearly up.

“Fine. Here are your options. One—we don’t tell them until June when you’ve passed your boards. I hate that option, by the way.” Andy started to comment, and I pressed my thumb over her lips to keep her quiet. I didn’t count on her sucking me into her mouth. I felt the wet suction all the way in the base of my cock. I needed to talk faster.

“Two—you work with Sam or Matt, but I’m telling you right now you’ll hate that option and be on your knees begging me to take you back before lunch. I mean, that doesn’t actually sound terrible,” I murmured, and she bit down on the pad of my thumb. “Ow. Behave.”

The wicked gleam in her eyes nearly pushed me right over the edge. Grinding against her center, I felt her heat coating my cock, and I snatched another condom from the table.

“Three—decide you don’t give a fuck because it’s never been ‘just sex’ and aside from the fact I spend most of the day wondering whether you’ll let me fuck you in the printer room, we’ve managed to make it work.” Reluctantly removing my thumb from her mouth, I gestured for her to respond.

“Is that what we’ve been doing? Making it work?”

I groaned and my head fell back against my shoulders. She wanted the secrets. “Kitten, let’s just make it work right now and hammer out the details later. My brain might explode if I don’t get inside you in the next four seconds.”