Unbind (20 page)

He drove the car away from the curb and I couldn’t help but notice he was driving angrily. In fact everything in his stance and expression was angry. It made me feel really uncomfortable and I didn’t like it.

“Why are you being an arsehole?” I mumbled with my hand over my mouth, looking out the window at all the sights meant to be thrilling me. You know, foreign stuff that’s ace just because it’s foreign. I couldn’t care less about where I was truthfully, I just needed to draw a line under what this man did to me… get answers on why he was behaving this way.

He gunned the car harder and I asked, “How far to this bloody coffee place?”
How much more terror can I take?
He was seriously driving recklessly, taking corners too hard, punching the brakes with his foot, fists grinding against the wheel.

He didn’t relent and that’s when I snapped. “Stop!”

He didn’t react.

“Fucking stop or I’ll…”

He pulled into the sidewalk sharply and glared, “You’ll what?”

My hands were up against the roof of the car, bracing myself—but for what? Anxiety must have taken over. “I grew up surrounded by violence and I will not tolerate your caveman behaviour. If you’re gonna be a cock, then be a cock on your own time. Otherwise just tell me why you’re acting weird.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah, weird. Why are you so angry?” I glanced at him, realising I could take my hands down. I folded my arms and took a deep breath, levelling my eyes to his. “Is that why you box? It’s like… the way you look, right now… it’s scaring me. You’re a coiled spring, desperate to release. Admit it.”

He bent over the steering wheel and nodded, taking some deep breaths of his own. He chuckled hysterically and brought his eyes back, apology now in them. “I’m sorry, I’m an ass. I don’t know why I’m being like this. Forgive me?”

“Okay,” I blushed. He reached across and nudged his nose against mine, and I held his cheeks in my hands, staring at his shut eyes. He took some more deep breaths.

“Forgive me?” His warm breath heated my veins.

“I do,” I said, my heartbeat probably as loud as my words. I wanted to tell him so many things in that moment. You know—that I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted any man, that he could trust me if he needed to, that I would be there for him. It just wasn’t the right time to, though, I knew it. “Shall we get that coffee? Jetlag is starting to kick my arse.”

He winked, “Sure.”

We rode to some American-style diner and ordered two coffees. It was a regular place with waitresses in those button-down uniforms you thought only existed in movies. Normally I liked Leona Lewis but she was doing nothing for me right then as she sang some love song in the background. My depressive state plummeted when an Eighties ballad was cranked up right after that, seemingly pleasing all the other people in the damn place. When the drinks were placed down, the waitress gave me a brief, understanding look. Like she knew how much of an arse this man was, too. Cai didn’t touch his coffee but I began guzzling mine like it was from the holy fount.

He was going chicken on me, all over again.

Who would go first? I suspected it was me. He was unresponsive unless I provoked him.

“I really missed you,” I said, looking at the table. A bit of honesty cut at my throat, making me want to weep. Why had he taken off like that? “You left without a word… all I’ve been able to do is stare at photos of you and Jennifer, snapped here, there and everywhere. At Wimbledon, well… weren’t you a sorry sight? My friend Jas had to slit someone’s throat to get nose-bleed section tickets for us but there you were in the Royal Box… miserable to be there. I hear right now she’s tearing holes in people, preparing for New York fashion week.”

I baited him because I knew it was Jennifer that had some part in the strange way he behaved. The two of them had sat watching the tennis, few words between them, just their sunglasses and a few grim expressions now and again.

“You maybe shouldn’t have come,” he said, persevering with the whole, ‘I’m a cold bastard and you don’t want me,’ approach. I didn’t believe it; there were depths in his eyes and they were only for me.

“Well, I came. Maybe I’ll conquer nothing, but I’m here. For a week.”

No response. He just sat looking elsewhere and not at me.

“I went to your gallery,” I slammed a hand on the table, “thinking maybe I’d get answers about you. I didn’t ask you to come and scoop me up in your pussy wagon, then drive me round these streets like a fucking lunatic.”

Other patrons looked at me, then at Cai, then got on with their meals. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for people to be getting irate over two coffees: one drank, one full.

He sniffed, a smirk on his face.

“You drive me fucking crazy when you get mad,” he muttered, eyeing me only briefly, though I didn’t miss the lust behind them. A thousand bolts of lightning combined with a tornado were whipping up a storm in his heart.

Don’t lie to me
, I mentally implored him.

“I could take you, Cai. I could take you, you know? I was destined for championships… possibly Olympics, you know? I loved to fight, I loved it!” Then I lowered my voice and I stared him straight in the eye. “You try fighting me, we’ll see where it gets you, yeah? We’ll see… you don’t know what that means for me to say that. I haven’t fought for anything in 11 years, not since this—”

I turned in my seat, lifted my hair, and in the middle of all those people showed him my sodding scar.

“Someone stabbed me in the fucking back, Cai. I lost my love of fighting because of it.”

His face paled and he gulped, his hands suddenly covering his mouth.

“Whatever you see, here,” I gestured at the image of myself with grand, sweeping hand gestures, “you’re not seeing the whole package. I read about your childhood, I read about your mother’s illness and her art. You know, you and I are not so different. I’ve come all this fucking way—”

It was then I broke, it was then I just didn’t have a thing left to give. I covered my face with my hands, holding back the tears.

“Don’t cry, fuck, don’t cry.”

I blew out a deep breath. “What else do you want me to do, Cai? Hmm. Beg? Are you seriously telling me you don’t feel this, too?”

He cursed under his breath again, rubbing at his neck. “I just don’t know what you want from me… whatever it is, I’m terrified I can’t give it to you. I’m more frightened than I’ve felt my whole life, being with you, not knowing if I—”

“If, what?” I waited pensively, as though my whole existence might be weighted by this moment.

He sighed. “If I could make you happy enough.”

I shook my head, frustrated beyond belief. “You’re bullshitting me. I know it.”

He grimaced, biting his thumb, his frown threatening permanency if it got any deeper. “What do you want, Chloe? Whatever it is, I most probably can’t give it to you. I’m sorry. I’m not capable.”

I looked down at the table and thought hard about choosing the right words. I needed to venture to my better boxes, lifting the hopeful pieces from them. The rarer archives.

“This is something I never thought I would say…” I looked into his eyes, biting my trembling lip, “…I just want… to be loved.”

His expression darkened just as I took my gaze back to the safety of the white table between us. I waited for another rejection and felt sure it was coming. I envisioned myself getting back to the hotel and telling Trevor I just needed to go home, coming to New York had been a big mistake.

“My place is not far,” he said in a hoarse voice.

Emotion flooded me so fully and while he threw a couple of bills on the table, I got up and walked to the door numbly. I heard him behind me, his hand at the small of my back. He guided me back to the car and realised I was in no fit state, so he belted me in and then rounded to the driver’s side.

HE DROVE CAREFULLY to his place which wasn’t really around the corner. Well, compared to the previous distance between us, I guess it was. He actually lived quite far from his gallery, in Brooklyn Heights, a tower block on Pierrepont Street. Of course his condo was a loft.

We got inside and I glanced around, briefly taking in the cool, urban chic thing he had going on. I might have fallen to my knees with despair, having opened myself to him so embarrassingly in that diner. Now it was all sinking in… I wondered what the hell had possessed me. He caught me in his arms after dumping his keys on the hallway sideboard, embracing me from my head to my coccyx. I didn’t see my surroundings, I only saw him.

“I’m sorry, Chloe,” he murmured in my hair. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know you are.” I palmed the skin under his shirt, kissed his neck and pressed my nose into his skin to cement him within me.

“If I kiss you now, I won’t stop,” he warned shakily, “maybe not ever.”

“I know,” I groaned, my desire urgent now we were finally here.

He reached under my hair and stroked the physical remainder of a terrible time. Reaching the emotional impact wouldn’t be so easy.

I had to steady my hands on his shoulders when he kissed my collarbone, his breath and lips warming my skin. I shut my eyes on impulse and drifted into his hold, his arms around my body holding me up. He pulled intently on the fabric covering my shoulder, exposing more skin to his mouth. I briefly opened my eyes to see his shut, his chest heaving, his breathing laboured.

His lips crossed my chest and he kissed my other shoulder, then moved up my throat until he was biting my earlobe and stroking his lips across my cheeks.

“I need to be inside you,” he declared at my ear.

A cry escaped me. I could hardly stand, I certainly couldn’t speak any words or find any sense in my brain. I was overwhelmed that a dream was becoming reality. He heaved me into his arms, his big hands clutching my buttocks as he began to walk up the suspended staircase that stood in the middle of his open-plan apartment. He pushed his nose into my breasts and I tightened my thighs around his waist, my arms around his neck. When he bit my bottom lip ferociously, the almighty crash between my legs was blistering, overwhelming need.

In his bedroom which opened out right from the top of the stairs, he kicked off his shoes at the side of the bed and threw mine off my feet. He laid me amongst his unmade sheets and stared into my eyes.

“Mine,” he said, hovering above me.

He kissed me possessively, so that I couldn’t remember my own name. It wasn’t a considerate kiss, except that in his expert, rough manner, he was thoroughly preparing me for the large cock throbbing through his jeans against my hip.

It was a kiss to obliterate all other kisses. I held his firm buttock and his beautiful face, absorbing the urgency of his tongue and the weight of his groin pushing against mine. I wrapped my legs tight around his thighs, gasping as he bit my tongue between his teeth, pulled on my lips and dazzled me with more full, open-mouthed contact. The taste of just his tongue made me so hungry to hold his cock in my mouth.

One large, male hand held my nape and the other worked under my knickers, scouring the flesh of my rear. He tore himself from my mouth to drive kisses to my cleavage, sliding his fingers beneath my bra to expose a nipple to his tongue, laving and then baring his teeth to my rigid flesh.

“You’re beautiful, Chloe.”

“Cai!” I brought him back to my mouth, stealing more wild kisses from his lips. He breathed gruffly, his frame so large from my aspect. His hand on my arse, he squeezed my flesh brutally, claiming me.

Greedy, he freed my other breast. Squeezed them together. Suckled my nipples until I cried, “I’m going to come. Don’t stop. Cai…”

He took both tight in his big hands and sucked my breasts deep into his mouth, giving each as much attention as the other. His grip around my flesh and his way of using as much tenderness as violence had me entirely at his mercy.

“Oh my god, Cai!” He rocked his groin against mine and I squeezed my thighs around him. Searing heat drew my muscles in so tight, it took my breath away. I rose up off the bed and rocked my clothed pussy against the bulge in his jeans, his mouth still not ready to leave my flesh. I came with one hand of his like a vice around my left breast, his mouth lapping in an animalistic fashion at my right.

“Ah, ah, ah!” I cried, my head whipping from side to side.

“Hmm,” he groaned hungrily, “my sweetheart. I need to taste what I just did to you.”

He lifted up off me and undid the ties at my waist. I watched, almost paralysed, my body now his. I couldn’t say no or move or fight against anything he wanted to do to me. I was so his.

I lifted so he could pull my dress from under me, along with my bra.

“Baby, you’re a fantasy,” he grinned, looking down on me, his hand absently rubbing the ridge tenting his baggy jeans.

“Wanna know my fantasy?”

“Depends.” He stroked my cheek with one finger and moistened his lips.

I raised my shaky body onto its knees and he met me front to front, his hand on my cheek. I said, “This.”

I put my hands on either sides of the buttons of his shirt and ripped the whole thing open. Buttons popped and spun in all directions, reverberating across wood flooring, hitting metal shelf units and exposed brickwork.