Lies That Sinners Tell (The Klutch Duet 1)

He pushed off the bed, naked, moving to where his clothes were, pulling on his pants, commando. My mouth watered.

“Where are you going?” I demanded, sure I was supposed to be angry about a man body shaming me, but I was more worried about him leaving me. I was raw. Exhausted. Stressed. As much as I should’ve been able to shoulder all of this like a capable woman of the twenty first century, I needed Jay.

“I’m going to cook you dinner,” Jay replied. “Then, once I’m satisfied you’ve eaten enough, you’re going to tell me the real reason behind this.” His gaze flickered over my body, making me want to hide underneath the blankets.

He didn’t wait for any kind of response, he just left the room.

I snatched up my robe and made chase. The house was big, and Jay was fast which meant I didn’t catch up to him until the kitchen. The one I always marveled at. The island counter I’d been fucked on. The fridge I’d gotten water from in the middle of the night, but a place that was otherwise still alien to me.

Jay and I ate meals here, when it was time for that. Shit, most of the meals I’d eaten lately had been on weekends, prepared by the still mysterious Felicity. Sometimes ordered in. But Jay definitely didn’t cook me dinner.

That wasn’t how this worked.

But he was opening the fridge, getting out cooking implements.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” I said, standing there awkwardly, watching him. The tile was warm against my bare feet, and I wondered whether he had some kind of special heating system. Of course he did. He was richer than rich. I thought of winter—granted, not that it ever got too cold in L.A.—when the crappy heater in my apartment barely took the edge off, and I wore three pairs of socks to bed because the tile of my bathroom resembled the arctic circle.

“I can cook,” Jay agreed. “It’s more efficient for me to combine meals with meetings at restaurants, which is why I eat out the majority of the time. But I can cook.”

“And you’re cooking for me,” I clarified.

“Yes,” Jay confirmed.

I bit my lip. I knew I shouldn’t ask questions, I should purely be happy about this turn of events and what it might mean for the two of is. But I just couldn’t help myself. “Why?”

Jay looked at me. “Because you need to eat. Because I don’t fuck skeletons, and I plan on fucking you for a good while longer.” He looked back toward the chopping board he’d taken out. “No more questions. There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge. Open it. Get yourself a glass, then go and read your book on the bar stool.”

Instead of arguing with all of this, I got myself a glass of wine, got my book and sat on the barstool.

“Schizophrenia is genetic,” Jay announced as I closed the cupboard where I’d put away the last clean dish.

My body froze, and I stared at the cabinet. “It is,” I agreed.

“Turn around.”

Since we’d started this arrangement, I’d mostly yielded to every single one of his commands. Even ones that I’d questioned later on. Something inside me was happy to obey, to submit to him, even when it came to things that weren’t sexual.

But I paused this time. Because this subject was too close to my most exposed nerve. Too close to a conversation I’d never had with any living soul, my father included.

“Don’t make me ask again.”

There was warning in his voice. A warning that made my stomach flip and desire to gather between my thighs even in the midst of this situation.

So I turned.

He was closer than I’d thought, only a couple of steps away, leaning on the kitchen island with a wine glass in his hand. When I’d started the dishes, he’d been on his laptop, not looking at or acknowledging me. It was jarring, to have him act so contradictory, to know the heat inside of him but also know what it was like to feel frozen in his presence.

I’d spent the entire time doing the dishes trying to unpack this behavior. Jay was intense, even though that word seemed severely lacking when trying to describe this man. There was a weight to his stare, his presence. It all but crushed you when you had his full attention. And you always had his full attention. When he was doing something, engaging with someone, there was nothing else that had his attention. So when he spoke to me, that was all he did. Now he was working, and all of his focus was on that.

I admired it. Him. Even though the sensitive part of me felt hurt by his ability to ignore my presence and existence when he needed to. More importantly, it scared me. This arrangement had an end date. Sure, he hadn’t specified it when we’d begun, but he’d made it clear that this was not a long-term thing. That this was never going to be anything more than what he’d laid out at the beginning.