Love Me With Lies 03 Thief (17 page)

The tears are already cutting across her cheeks, dripping off her chin, and I haven’t even gotten to the worst part.

“Yes.”

She looks at the floor and nods. “So what did I see — when I walked in?”

“We were just talking. She told me she had feelings for me. I was trying to reassure her it wasn’t mutual.”

She punches her fists on her hips and cuts a circle around the room. “So, why didn’t you tell me that?”

“You started throwing things at me pretty fast, Duchess. I could barely open my mouth before you’d called me your father, told me you loved me for the first time and stormed out. I went after you — to your apartment first. I waited for a few hours and when you didn’t come back, I figured you must have gone to the hotel. By the time I got there…”

“So, it’s all my fault?”

I grab for her. “No,” I say. “It was my fault. I didn’t fight hard enough. I should have grabbed you, made you listen.”

“You didn’t even kiss her?”

“No, but I was attracted to her. I had thought about it.”

“Oh God, give me a minute…” She begins pacing between her desk and the window. I slide down the wall until I am sitting, one knee propped up.

Finally, she says, “Noah asked me if I still love you.”

I clear my throat. “What did you tell him?”

She sits down, sliding her feet out of the flips-flops and back into her stilettos. I watch as she bends down to tie the clasps on each one, her hair falling over her shoulder and grazing the ground. She’s buying time, trying to look busy while she thinks.

“That we’re dysfunctional and toxic!”

“We
were
dysfunctional and toxic,” I correct her.

She shoots me a dirty look and runs her hands along her thighs. I get the feeling she’s trying to wipe me away.

“You and I are in love, baby.” I take a swig from the tequila bottle and rest my arm on my raised knee. The liquor is beginning to burn my throat.

“No … nope.” She shakes her head. “We’re drunk,” she informs me, “and drunk people have crazy, sporadic thoughts.”

“Very true,” I agree. “Sometimes when I’m drunk, I think that loving you is sane.”

She throws a clump of sticky notes at me. I move my head to the left and they hit the wall. I take another sip of tequila.

She’s working herself into a frenzy. It’s sexy. I wait for her to start swearing and am rewarded a minute later.

“There is nothing fucking solid to fucking prove that we fucking work. We’ve bombed out like-”

I stand up, and her mouth snaps shut.

“Proof … you need proof, Duchess?”

She shakes her head. I drank more than I should have and my emotions are riding a very large tequila wave.

“Because I can show you exactly what you need.” I advance toward her and she backs up.

“Don’t you dare.” She holds up a finger to ward me off. I smack it away and grab her by the waist, yanking her against me. I lower my mouth to her ear.

“Let me do whatever I want to you for one night, and you’ll have all the proof you need.”

Her eyes glaze over and I laugh, bending my head down to touch our lips together. I run my tongue along the inside of her top lip. She shoves at my chest.

“Don’t!” she says, trying to push me away.

“Why not?” I kiss the corner of her mouth and she whimpers. ”Peter Pan,” I whisper into her ear.

“I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” I kiss the opposite corner.

She’s not as stiff as she was a minute ago. I kiss her mouth full on and close my eyes at the feel of her lips.
God, I am so whipped by this woman.

“Of how vulnerable you make me.”

She opens her mouth and lets me kiss her. She doesn’t kiss back.

“I make you vulnerable because you love me. That’s the price you pay for love, baby girl.”

We are kissing softly now, pausing to speak, but never moving more than an inch away from each other.

“You have to have real feelings to make love. We made love in the orange grove.”

I back her up until the backs of her thighs are flush against the desk.

I move my hands to the hem of her dress and begin sliding them up her legs. “How often do you think about the orange grove, Olivia?”

She’s panting.

“Every day.”

I grab the backs of her thighs and lift her onto the desk. I stand between her legs and slide the dress over her head. I kiss one shoulder then the other.

“Me too.”

Unstrapping her bra, I lower my head and take a nipple in my mouth. Her whole body arches backwards and her thighs clench around my waist.

“Everything you do is sexy. Have I ever told you that?” I move to the other side … repeat the motion until she squirms.

She latches her hands in my hair, and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to take her right then.

“Still the silent lover,” I say, moving back to her mouth. Her eyes are closed, but her lips are parted. “But we both know, Duchess, that I have the secret to working your vocal cords.”

Her eyes fly open. I trail a finger down her neck. She’s trying to formulate a snarky comeback, but I have her body in my hands and she can’t seem to make words.

I kiss her neck softly. One of her arms is looped around my neck, and the other is clutching my bicep. Her eyes are smoky blue. She’s listening to me seduce her with an almost eager look on her face. I run my hands down her sides and loop my fingers around the thin straps of her panties. As I pull down, she lifts her hips so I can get them off. Now she’s naked, perched on the edge of her desk in nothing but three-inch black heels.

“We’re going to keep the heels on…” I yank her thighs further apart and trace a hand up the inside of her leg. She watches my hand, riveted. I keep my lips in a straight line, but I want to grin at her obvious hand fetish. She’s had one since we were in college. My breath hitches when I touch her.

She’s very ready. She folds her lips in and her eyes close. I feel like a teenage boy scoring for the first time. How many minutes, hours, days — have I dreamed about touching her like this? I want to savor the feel of her. I play with her, teasing, rubbing, sliding. I never got to do this the last time, so I take my time. I am so fascinated by the feel of her, by the noises she’s making that I could easily do this for an hour. I could do this every day. I
want
to do this every day. Our foreheads are pressed together, our lips touching, but not moving. She has her hand wrapped around the back of my head. I can feel her need in the way her body is tightening. I like that I’m the cause of her untidy breathing and the jerking of her muscles. I like how her body responds to my hands. I still have one finger pressed inside of her when I speak.

“I’m not going to make love to you this time.” My voice is husky. She’s pushing my pants down, her tongue pressed against her top lip. I bite her tongue and move my mouth to her ear.

“I’m going to fuck you.” She stills — or freezes is more like it. I push my own pants down and step out of them. She’s eyeing me with wildly glazed eyes.

She lies back, her hair draping over the side of the desk — so long it’s sweeping the carpet. Her legs are bent at the knees; heels perched on the edge of the desk — looking every bit like she stepped out of an erotic fantasy. And just when I think I have her, that I’ve seduced her into submission, she licks her lips and says:

“Hard and fast, Drake — and make it last longer than last time.”

Afterwards, we lie on the floor of her office. Me on my back, one arm behind my head, the other wrapped around her waist. She’s lying on my chest in the picturesque postcoital position. About halfway through our tangle of hard sex, we started making love. We can’t avoid it. Everything with us eventually becomes emotional — even when we try not to make it that way. I am replaying every warm second of it in my head.

“I think I’m sexually addicted to you.”

“It’s just the newness of it,” she says, “because we never did it before.”

“Why do you always try to downplay my feelings for you?”

“I don’t trust them,” she says after a minute. “You claim that you love me, but you’ve loved other women in between.”

“You pushed me away, Duchess. I’m a human being. I was trying to find someone to replace you.”

“What about Leah? You married her.”

I sigh. “Guilt. I dragged her into something, she fell in love with me, and then I lied to her about the amnesia. I felt like the only way to make up for everything I did was to marry her.”

She’s very still in my arms. I wish I could see her face, but I want to give her privacy to deal with my words.

My heart. If my heart had knees that’s where it would be — doubled over, throbbing from the pain. I pull my arm from behind my head and rub my eyes.

“Olivia…” my voice catches.

I want her to demand the whole story, make me relive the seconds that changed both of our lives, but she pulls her fingers away and darts up to kiss me. Sliding on top of me, she reaches a hand between us, and I forget everything — everything except us.

The door was slightly ajar when I arrived. I was about to knock when it swung open and a man came out carrying a garbage bag. I stepped back, too startled to speak. My thoughts spun in a hundred directions. He wasn’t her type. I was going to kill him. Why was he taking out her trash? Did he sleep here often? I waited for him to look up, thinking every man deserved a chance to explain himself before he got the shit beat out of him.

He was mildly startled to see me standing in front of him. He looked past me to see if I was with someone else, and then said, “Help you?”

He hadn’t pulled the door to Olivia’s apartment closed, and I could see inside.

Empty.

I felt the air leave my lungs. I closed my eyes, tilting my head back. No, no, no.

I walked away, my hands in my hair and circled back to where maintenance was looking at me curiously. My instant jealousy had caused me to miss the uniform and name badge.
Why did I leave her? Why didn’t I just stay?
I knew she did this. She ran when she was afraid. I thought — what had I thought? That I could keep her because we’d made love? That her demons wouldn’t find her in the orange grove where I’d sold my soul to be with her?

I eyed the badge clipped to the front of his shirt.

“Miguel.” My voice sounded raw even to my ears. Miguel raised his eyebrows as he watched me struggle with a sentence. “When did she — how long?”

“This one’s been open for twenty-four hours,” he said, referring to the apartment behind him. “We have a waiting list. Have to make it ready for next tenants.”

Twenty-four hours? Where did she go? Did she leave right away? Did something scare her away?

I ran a hand through my hair. I’d left her just two days earlier to go settle my affairs. I danced with her in the parking lot before I left. She tried to tell me the truth, but I stopped her. When she found out about the amnesia, she’d think of every possible reason to run from me. I’d planned on locking her in the apartment, making love to her again and convincing her that we could make it work. But, first I had loose ends to tie up.

I’d left Olivia and gone straight to Leah’s townhouse. When she opened the door, I could tell she’d been crying. It took me thirty minutes to break her heart. It hurt me to do it. She had done nothing to deserve what I was doing to her. I told her I’d met someone. She didn’t ask who, though I suspected she knew since she’d followed me to Olivia’s apartment a few weeks earlier. Before I left, I kissed her forehead. I didn’t tell her about the amnesia. I didn’t want to hurt her any more than I already had.

I went to my condo next. As I stood under the shower, I thought of our week together. I thought of the orange grove, the way she tasted, the way her skin felt like cold satin beneath my fingers. When my mind went to that first moment of being inside her, the way her eyes had widened and her lips had parted, I had to blast myself with cold water.

She’d given me everything — everything she’d held back before. She was different. She was also the same. Stubborn, defiant … full of lies.

I tried to break her before. Now, I just wanted her as she was. I wanted every last beautiful flaw. I wanted the witty one-liners and the coldness that only I knew how to warm. I wanted the fight and the friction and the make-up sex. I wanted her to wake up in my bed every morning. I wanted her shitty cooking and her beautiful, complex mind.