Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard 2)

It didn’t help, but I finished it anyway.

I poured myself another drink and wondered what she was doing. Was she home? Had she called the cheating bastard back? After looking at those hundreds of pictures, I could just imagine the history they had. What if he called to apologize? What if she was on a plane, headed back to Chicago right now? Would she even tell me? I checked the time and let myself imagine tracking her down, throwing her over my shoulder and bringing her back here. Fucking her into the mattress until I was the only man she remembered.

Clearly, I needed a distraction, and drinking wasn’t the answer.

It took me less than five minutes to change out of my suit and into a pair of shorts and trainers. I took the elevator to the gym on the twentieth floor and took to the running track. As usual this time of day, it was blissfully empty.

I ran until my lungs were on fire and my legs numb. I ran until practically every thought had been wiped from my mind, except one: it would break me if she went back to him.

I went to the locker room, stripped off my sweaty clothes, and then collapsed on the bench, dropping my head into my hands. The silence was broken by the sound of my mobile ringing inside my locker. My head snapped up; I was surprised that anyone would be calling at this hour. I crossed the room and froze when I saw Sara’s picture—a photo I’d snapped of her hand at her throat, the brush of caramel hair against creamy skin—light up the screen.

“Sara?”

“Hey.”

“You all right?” I asked.

A horn honked somewhere in the background and she cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m good. Look, are you busy? I could—”

“No, no. Was just finishing a run. Where are you?”

“Actually,” she said, laughing softly, “I’m outside your building.”

I blinked. “You’re what?”

“Yeah. Could I come up?”

“Of course. Give me a few minutes and I’ll meet you—”

“No. Can I just meet you up there? I just . . . I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve if I wait.”

Well, that was cryptic. My stomach dropped. “Yeah, of course, Petal. Let me ring the front desk.”

A few minutes later, Sara was walking through the door of the locker room to find me wearing nothing but a towel around my waist.

She looked tired, with red-rimmed eyes and her bottom lip chapped and swollen. It was a softer, younger-looking version of Sara, one I had only seen today in photos. She smiled weakly, giving a small wave as the door closed behind her.

“Hey,” I said, crossing the room. I bent at the knees to bring my eyes level with hers. “You okay? What happened?”

She sighed, shook her head, and something snapped back in place in her expression. “I wanted to see you.”

I knew she was avoiding my question but felt the smile pull at the corners of my mouth before I could stop it. I couldn’t keep my hands to myself and I placed them on either side of her face, brushing my thumbs along her cheeks. “Well, that definitely warrants a trip to the men’s locker room.”

“We’re alone, right?”

“Completely.”

“We didn’t get to finish earlier,” she said, pushing me back toward the showers.

I felt my heart speed up at the feel of her in my arms again, the buzz of static in my ears. She stood on her toes to kiss me, her hands moving to the towel at my hips.

“Hmm,” I said, humming against her mouth. I felt her reach behind me and heard the water start, felt it run warm down my back. “You want to do this here?”

She answered wordlessly, pulling her shirt over her head and shimmying out of her jeans.

I guess that’s a yes, then.

“My apartment is just downstairs . . . ,” I said, trying to slow her down. I could already imagine what it would be like to f**k her right here, to hear her screams as they echoed off the tile, but for once I wanted nothing but her naked body on my bed, top sheet and blankets in a pile on the floor. Maybe her hands tied over her head and strapped to the rails of my headboard.

She ignored me, wrapping her fingers around my c**k and leaning in to bite my shoulder. I tried to clear my head, remembering her expression as she’d walked through the door. It wasn’t unlike her to avoid answering my questions, but tonight she didn’t look hard and feisty; she looked wild for the wrong reasons. Her eyes were too bare, her face drawn. She’d only come for distraction.

My throat was suddenly dry and I ran my tongue over my lips, tasting the cherry lip gloss she wore.

I was a bit surprised by the Sara catalog I’d managed to compile without even realizing it. I knew what her face looked like when she came, the way her ni**les hardened, and how her eyelids fluttered closed only at the very last second, like she wanted to watch every moment until it was suddenly too much.

I knew what her hand felt like curved around my waist, her nails digging into my back and scratching up and down my sides.

I knew the sounds she made and the way her breath caught when I moved my fingers just the way she liked.

And there were things that were new, things I found myself noticing and wanting to see again and again. The little smile she made when she knew she had just said something funny and was waiting for me to catch up. It was the subtlest thing, just a slight tilt to the edges of her lips and eyes. A challenge.

The way she gently pinched her lower lip when she was reading.

There was the way she kissed me that day on the roof, slow and lazy and like there was nowhere else, nowhere at all to be.

But I didn’t know this Sara. I’d always suspected that the feistiness I enjoyed so much about her was a form of self-preservation. But I never anticipated the way it would feel to see it gone like this; it was like a punch in the gut that took the breath straight from my lungs.

I gathered her hands in mine and took a step back. “What’s going on?” I asked, gauging her expression. “Talk to me.”

She leaned into me again. “Don’t want to talk.”

“Sara, I don’t mind being your distraction but at least be honest with me about it. Something’s wrong.”

“I’m fine.” But she wasn’t fine. She wouldn’t have come here if she were.

“Bullshit. You’re breaking your own rules by even being here. This is better—this is real—but it’s also different and I want to know why.”

She pulled back, looking up at me. “Andy called.”

“I know,” I said, my jaw clenched tight.