“We’ve been trying to bully you for years!” Nancy said, aggrieved.
Nell scribbled the number twice on a cocktail napkin and ripped it into two pieces, handing one to each sister. Hugs and giggles, jokes and teasing admonitions followed among the three sisters, while Duncan and Liam eyed each other. Liam’s face was grim.
“Stay sharp,” he said. “Those fuckers are motivated.”
Duncan nodded. “I’m on it.”
“Good.” Liam looked cautiously relieved. “Let us know what your friend in Oregon says. When Vivi’s on the road, we don’t sleep nights.”
“I hear you.” They shook hands and made their way out.
Duncan and Nell were silent on the way home. He was so heavy into his Italian-vacation-with-Nell fantasy, it took him by surprise him when she spoke.
“They liked you,” she said.
That gave him a rush of pleasure. “How do you figure?”
“They said so,” she said. “But even if they hadn’t, I could tell, the way they talked about our private problems. Like it was a given that you were part of it. They would never have done that if they didn’t like you.”
“So I don’t have to worry about being disemboweled?”
Nell stifled a giggle. “Not for the moment,” she said. “You sure did throw your weight around, though. Your bank account, too.”
He glanced at her profile. “I’m sorry if that was offensive to you.”
“It seemed like you were trying to communicate to them that you’ve got money. I think they got the message loud and clear.”
He took a few seconds to breathe down the surge of anger and frustration. “You’re hung up on the money thing, Nell,” he said. “I was communicating to them that I’m willing and able to protect you. Money is protection, too, whether you like it or not. And they know it. In fact, I didn’t hear anyone objecting to it but you.”
She was silent for a moment. “Sorry if I’m oversensitive,” she said finally, her voice subdued. “And thanks for making that offer to Vivi, about your friend in Oregon. I hope that works out. She needs a break.”
“I got that sense, too,” he said. “I’ll get right on it.”
The silence that followed was an invisible wall between them. She was lost in her thoughts behind it, hidden from him. It made him anxious and lonely. He wanted to break through, get inside.
He needed more info. More intel. She was so complex, so goddamn much going on in her head. He wanted her exact specs, a manual of her operating systems. He wanted to study her, absorb her. Master her, as if she were a math problem, an insanely complicated puzzle. And she’d have his ass barbecued if he ever said anything like that to her. He had to watch his metaphors with this woman.
“Talk to me,” he blurted.
She looked at him, startled out of her reverie. “About what?”
“About yourself. I want to know more. You’re incredible. Unique.”
She harrumphed. “Yeah. I’m so unique, I’m practically extinct.”
He ignored that. “Tell me about your childhood, your mother, your sisters,” he urged. “Tell me anything. I don’t care what.”
Her big eyes were wary of the need she felt emanating from him, a vibration he could do nothing to hide. “Duncan…”
“You make me feel so alive. Just…please, Nell. Just tell me how it is to be the way you are.”
His appeal touched her, and she gave him a tremulous smile. Something relaxed inside him. Excellent. By sheer chance he’d hit upon the exact trick to calm her down. Some judicious pity mongering, a small, tasteful glimpse of desperation, and she’d melted. He hadn’t calculated that strategy, either. It had simply come to him. Instinct.
Maybe this convoluted emotional shit could be learned, after all.
T
he look on his face, that note in his voice, it released the floodgates. Nell talked so much, she embarrassed herself. She told him things she hadn’t let herself think about in years, things she’d pretended to forget. The lonely boarding schools, the bad foster homes. Her mother’s death. And that solitary afternoon in the funeral home, alone with her mother’s coffin.
The endless, terrible afternoon that still haunted her.
She had no idea there was so much to say about her childhood, but it tumbled out, charged with raw emotion. She told him about Lucia finding her. About Nancy and Vivi, and discovering that she could have a family after all. She talked about stories, poetry. Her magical refuge.
Duncan had listened intently. His rapt attention was flattering, but the car clock said it was after three a.m., and she looked up at the street numbers and realized that he’d been driving in big, aimless circles around his neighborhood for the better part of an hour.
“Why aren’t you going home?” she asked.
“I wanted to hear you talk.”
“We could talk at your apartment,” she pointed out.
“What I want when we get home doesn’t involve much talking.”
She crossed her legs with a shiver at the sensual promise in his voice. “Well. Be that as it may. I’m about talked out for now.”
He turned the car at the next block and started back toward his condo. “This morning you told me that you’ve got plans for your life,” he said. “Ambitions. Do those include a man? Or any room for one?”
She hesitated. There was a peculiar tone in his voice when he asked the loaded question. Something that made her vaguely nervous.
“You know, Duncan, I’ve babbled for over an hour, but you haven’t volunteered one single thing about your own life,” she said.
“You’re evading my question.”
“Why, what a coincidence. You’re evading mine, too.”
“I asked first,” he said stubbornly. “And? So?”
She twisted her hands together. “Well, my plan is to finish my thesis, get my doctorate, and find a teaching job. At which point, I guess I will attempt to have a normal life. The Fiend permitting, and all that.”
“Let me rephrase,” he said softly. “By normal life, do you mean marriage, kids?”
Nell stared at him. Her heart had started to thud quickly, and her palms felt damp.
He simply waited.
Nell stared at the streetlights swooping by. “Of course I dream about love,” she said quietly. “After all those novels and all that poetry, how could I not? But I know better than to take anything for granted. There are no guarantees. I’ll do the best I can. Try to get over my baggage. Hope that I get lucky.”
With you
was the real ending of that phrase, but her lips and throat trembled too much to say it.
He was quiet as he pulled into his parking garage and drove down two ramps to his own slot. He parked, killed the engine, and stared at the concrete wall in front of them.
“You’re special, Nell,” he said. “You should ask for more.”
Warmth softened her chest. She touched his face with the palm of her hand, and stroked his cheek gently. “So should you, Duncan,” she whispered. “So should you.”
This was the moment. It could make or break them, if he said the right thing. He looked like he was poised to say it. He covered her hand with his own. She was poised to hear it. She couldn’t move, or breathe.
Seconds ticked by, stretched to a minute. More. He didn’t say it.
She turned her gaze away, blushing madly, feeling like an idiot. Here she went again, projecting her silly romantic fantasies onto the unsuspecting man. And him, just bumbling along. No freaking clue.
She tried to cover her embarrassment. “So? I answered your question. It’s your turn to bare your soul. Let’s hear it.”
He looked alarmed. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“You just saw me do it,” she said. “Watch and learn, Duncan.”
“That’s different.” His voice was defensive. “You’re…you’re you.”
“Right, and you’re Duncan, and that’s what I’m interested in. Why don’t you start with parents? They’re usually at the bottom of things.”
He let out an impatient sigh, as if humoring a child. “My mom’s great. She taught elementary school for thirty-five years before she retired. She raised us on her own. She’s a general. Tries to run our lives, and mostly fails, but she’s a pretty good sport about it. Usually.”
“How did she feel about you being a spy?”
He grunted. “Hated it. She nagged and schemed.”
“Is that why you quit?”
His grin flashed. “No. I know how to block and fake. I suit myself.”
“I’ve noticed,” she murmured. “And your father?”
His face changed, like a door slamming shut in her face. “I have nothing to say about him.”
She flinched, took a deep breath, and tried again. “So tell me what there isn’t, instead of what there is,” she suggested.
He looked baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Silence is as revealing as words,” she said softly. “But you already know that. I can see it in your photos.”
“Don’t go all poetic on me, Nell,” he warned. “Or I’ll devolve on you. Start to grunt and snort, and scratch my tufts.”
“Stop being ridiculous, and just tell me about him,” she snapped. “It can’t be worse than my father story. At least you know his name.”
He looked hunted, scowling down at the steering column. Finally started to speak, but his voice was very flat.
“He fell in love with a woman who worked for him,” he said. “His accounts manager. Sylvia. She was younger than him and my mother. I was thirteen. Bruce was nine, and Ellie was a newborn. Ellie was Mom’s last-ditch effort to tie Dad to her. Bad idea. Didn’t work.” He shook the memory away with a sharp wave of his hand.
“I’m sorry, Duncan,” she whispered.
“He tried to explain it to me before he left. How love was this great force he couldn’t resist. It was just his dick that he couldn’t resist. But his family paid the price.” Duncan shook his head. “He divorced Sylvia seven years later. Traded her in for a younger model. There you go. There’s the power of love for you.”
The bitter contempt in his voice chilled her. “That’s not love,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not love.”
He made a low, harsh sound of negation. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It depresses me. Let’s go upstairs.”
He got out of the car. She flung the door open before he could come around and do it for her. She followed him into his building, miserably aware of having maneuvered him out of that wonderful, close place that they’d been before. She’d made him tense and defensive. Clumsy of her.
Well, hell. There were ways and ways to sweeten his mood. And she was not without her resources.
Duncan stood aside to let her in first, and flipped on a small row of track lights near the entry space, leaving the rest of the apartment in shadow but for the glittering cityscape outside. The delicious imminence of sex trapped her air in her lungs. She drifted over to the couches. They were big, oversized. Gray, velvety, plush. An odd choice, for him. She would have expected gleaming black leather, stainless steel, and glass. She sank into one with a sigh and stared at his perfectly proportioned black silhouette standing there. A hot sexual energy pulsed out of him, all the more potent for his silence, for how fiercely it was controlled.
It made her hot, shaky. Unstable inside. She could hardly wait.
“All evening, I’ve been thinking about your bare ass under that skirt,” he said.
She grabbed handfuls of the knit fabric, and screwed up her courage. “Do you, um, want to see it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Show me.”
She took her time pulling her skirt up. She drew it out, gathering up folds of fabric inch by inch, until she had an armful of knitted jersey pressed against her belly, and the tops of her stockings showed. And a strip of pale thigh above them. A tuft of her dark, curly pubic hair.
But her legs were still clamped together.
Duncan sank to his knees in front of her. His hot hands settled on her knees, pushing them wide. She closed her eyes, her face hot.
He sighed. “Ah, God. I love the stockings,” he muttered. “You are so fucking beautiful, Nell.”
She felt more naked like this than she had when she hadn’t worn a stitch with him. He grabbed her hand and pulled it down, arranging her fingers so that her clit was gently clasped in the V between her index and middle finger. “Touch yourself,” he said. “I want to see how you do it. You know. Watch and learn.”
She laughed silently, parting herself for him. Aroused by his intense attention. The feeling of exposure was transforming into something pleasurable. She slowly relaxed into it, like a cat sprawled in a patch of sunlight. “That’s one area where you don’t need any lessons.”
“I’m gratified to know that I’ve got at least one piece of the puzzle in the bag,” he muttered.
She ignored his sarcasm, and stroked the jut of his cheekbone with her finger. His skin was so hot and supple. “I fantasized about you, ever since you started eating lunch at the Grill,” she confessed.
He pressed a hot, lingering kiss to the top of her thigh. “Is that a fact? What did I do to you in those fantasies?”
“Lovely things,” she admitted.
He grinned, caressed the crease of her groin. “Such as?”
He waited, but she couldn’t speak. Her lips were trembling too much. “My mouth is watering,” he said, parting her labia tenderly, and slowly penetrating her. “Did I lick you in those fantasies?”
“Oh…yes,” she said, jerkily.
“Was it good? Did I treat you right?”
“It was amazing. It was…it was superdeluxe.”
He bent lower, and lapped the length of her labia voluptuously with his tongue. “And how do I measure up to myself?”
“You surpass yourself,” she admitted. “There’s more of you in real life. More of everything. More feelings, more orgasms. More problems.”
He chuckled, silently, his lips tenderly holding her clit, his tongue fluttering expertly, swirl, flutter, swirl. “Never mind the problems,” he suggested. “Let’s just stop at the orgasms. And linger there.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“Forever,” he whispered.
It was the word that set her off.
Forever.
It made her pleasure rise to a crest and break in great, pulsing ripples of milky foam through the endless ocean of sensation. That sweet, hot swell of…hope.
After that, they went wild. A frenzied, feverish blur. No control, no need for it. His clothes came off, her blouse was ripped open, her bra unhooked. He produced a condom out of thin air, and he was inside her, pressing her down onto the couch. Folding her legs high. Hard, driving. Demanding and wonderful. They struggled, twining and writhing and pumping toward a violent, explosive shared orgasm.
His vital energy poured into her. She clung to him and felt its wonderful heat, transforming her, and a single, piercing thought formed in her mind. He lifted his face, and it popped out. “I love you,” she said.
His eyelids went tight. His face, blank.
Fear stabbed through her like a blade of ice. She’d ruined it. Now he would take back his intense, passionate attention—never mind that it wasn’t love—and she would proceed to shrivel up and die.
Then came anger. How humiliating, to be terrified just because she told a man she loved him. She had nothing to be ashamed of. He should be grateful. She should not have to beg for any man’s love.
“Nell,” he said, sounding pained.
“No. Forget I said it.” Nell tried to wrench herself free, but his full weight was pinning her down into the squishy couch cushions.
He rolled off the couch, onto the floor. “Nell, I’m sorry if I—
“Shut up, Duncan. The worst thing you could do would be to apologize. It’s the one thing I could never forgive you for.”
“So what can I say?”
“Nothing,” Nell whispered. There was a burning tightness in her chest. It felt like her heart was imploding. She collected her clothes and marched into the bedroom. He followed her in on bare, silent feet. Disappeared into the bathroom for a moment, to deal with the condom, and then appeared in the doorway again.
“Nell, don’t,” he said, his voice rough. “Don’t do this to me.”
Nell fought the tears. “Please, Duncan. Just give me some space. I’m too embarrassed to talk to you right now.”
“Don’t be. Please.” He slipped his arms around her from behind, and squeezed. “Thank you for saying it. Thank you for giving yourself to me like you do. You’re beautiful and special, and you make me feel awake and alive like nothing else. Please. Don’t be embarrassed.”
Nell covered her face. “You drive me crazy when you talk like that,” she whispered. “You’re schizo, Duncan. Don’t confuse me.”
“I’m just telling you how I feel. And being honest. Isn’t that what women say they want from men?”
“What I want and what women in general want are two separate things,” she said haughtily. “Do not generalize me.”
“Never,” he said, smoothly, fervently kissing her neck.
Nell sighed. “It’s strange. All those things you say, about how you feel about me? That’s exactly the same way I feel about you. I just interpret those feelings to mean that I’m in love with you.”
Duncan’s arms tightened. He buried his face in her hair.
“But we define those feelings in such different terms,” she finished. “And that shouldn’t be so important. But…but it is.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears overflowed. She let them slide down her cheeks.
He jerked as a tear splashed his forearm.
Nell stroked his arm, brushing the moisture away. “It’s okay, Duncan. I appreciate you telling the truth. Honesty is better than lies. I guess.”
“I’m giving you everything I have to give.”
Nell turned in his arms until she faced him, and rested her face against his chest. “Yes. And you give a lot,” she admitted. “I just asked for the wrong thing, that’s all. I love our time together. Don’t worry.”
It was confusing, maddening, but maybe she should just relax, and try not to put this experience in a marked box. After all, the feelings he described for her were more than most lovers had to brag about.