“As you should.” I nod in agreement, then kick off my sneakers and strip out of my jeans. “Should I leave them on, or lose them?” I question with my thumbs in the waistband of my boxers.
Her tongue wets her bottom lip, causing it to glisten—and my cock to throb.
“Leave them on.”
“All right.” I remove my fingers. “How do you want me?”
At my question, her eyes flare. She quickly schools her features and crosses her arms over her chest.
“On your stomach,” she instructs.
Turning my back to her, I get onto the table and lie down on my stomach, cursing my hard-on when my weight presses it into the unyielding mattress. Resting my face in the cradle at the top of the bed, a million fantasies play out in my mind as I wait for the first touch from her hands.
When I hear her feet pad across the carpet and get closer, my body fills with anticipation. I hear her sharp inhale as her finger touches one of my scars.
“What are these from?”
“Gunshot,” I say quietly, knowing she’s looking at the three small scars on my right shoulder. I was shot during a drug bust gone bad.
“I didn’t notice them before.”
“You were a little preoccupied,” I remind her, trying to lighten the mood.
She doesn’t laugh or reply at all.
Feeling a drop of wet hit my back a moment later, my eyes tighten. Fuck.
I sit up and take her into my arms without thinking. I hold her against me as she cries, overwhelmed that she’s upset over me.
“I’m sorry.” She pulls away before I’m ready to let her go, ducking her head and wiping the wet from her cheeks. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I’m not going to complain that you let me hold you,” I say.
Her eyes meet mine.
“How did it happen?” she asks.
I ignore the question, just like I’ve been ignoring the constant pain in my chest since I moved away from Seattle and to New York City.
“It’s not important. Let’s get started,” I say, trying to keep the bite out of my tone. I know I don’t succeed in that endeavor, because she flinches. “Sorr—”
“You’re right.” She cuts me off and looks away from me, making me want to kick my own ass around the room. “We should get started. My next client will be here soon.”
Without a word, I move back to my stomach and close my eyes. Feeling her oil-covered hands slip across my back makes it almost impossible to relax. I want to apologize for being harsh and for shutting her down when she was obviously only concerned for me, but I can’t get the words out. I’ve never opened up to anyone. I can’t imagine that Mackenzie wants my burdens dragging her down.
“I was arrested once,” she says out of the blue minutes later.
All the muscles that had started to relax tighten again, but she ignores my reaction and continues talking while gliding her hands across my skin.
“It was stupid, really. I skipped school one day and went to the park to hang out with a group of friends. We were all just being kids, not doing anything bad, but we were having fun. So much fun that I thought the moment should be recorded for history’s sake. Like an idiot, I carved my full name and the date plus ‘Peace, love, and happiness’ into the top of one of the wooden tables in the park.”
She laughs softly, and I smile at the sound.
“Two cops showed up at my house a few weeks later, asking where I was on that date. At first, I had no idea what date they were referring to, but that didn’t last long. They had photos of my handiwork. Those made it perfectly clear that they knew where I had been. My dad, as you can imagine, was not impressed that his daughter had skipped school to deface public property. So he told the officers to arrest me.”
“Your dad had you arrested?” I ask, incredulous, through a smile.
She laughs. “Yes, and that day I had the privilege of sitting in a jail cell for a few hours before my mom found out what happened and came to get me out.”
“Was she pissed?”
“Pissed isn’t even close to what she was. The minute I saw how mad she was, I begged one of the officers to keep me locked up. I had never heard her screech so loud in my life. Thankfully, I haven’t heard that god-awful noise since then.”
I can hear the smile in her voice, so I tip my head to the side to get a look at her face. Christ, she’s beautiful. Seeing the smile she’s wearing causes my breath to freeze in my lungs and my chest to ache.
“Needless to say, I never skipped school again—or defaced public property.”
“Was that the only time you’ve been in trouble with the law?”
“No . . . that’s just the only time I was arrested.” She smirks, and my stomach muscles tighten while my cock starts to come back to life.
“Tell me.” I roll to my back so that I can see her face as she talks.
Her hands lift away; then she makes some kind of internal decision and puts them on me again, beginning to massage my pecs and shoulders.
“On my twenty-first birthday, my friends thought it would be smart for me to start drinking at a legal age by ingesting tequila.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up. That night, I ended up shirtless in Times Square, singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot,’” she says.
My hands flex at my sides at the idea of anyone seeing her the way I have. God, what the hell is she doing to me?
“Thankfully, the officer who got the call about a girl singing and running around topless in Times Square took pity on me when I puked all over him. Instead of arresting me like he could have, he made my friends take me home. He followed us all the way there, then gave us a warning that the next time we wouldn’t get off so easy.”
“You got lucky.”
“Believe me, I know. That is also the last time I ever drank tequila. Now if I even get a whiff of the stuff, my stomach turns and I find myself running for the nearest bathroom.”
“I hate hot dogs,” I tell her, wanting to share something about myself. I feel the need to, even if it’s about something stupid.
“You hate hot dogs?”
“I can’t stand them. When I was six, my parents got divorced.”
“I’m sorry.” Her hands go still and her soft eyes meet mine, causing something in my chest to get tight.
“Don’t be. Some people are better apart. Believe me, my parents are those people.”
“Is that why you hate hot dogs?”
“No,” I laugh. “My dad took me for the summer the first year after they divorced, and he had no idea how to cook. So we had hot dogs at every meal. Hot dogs and eggs, hot dogs and mac and cheese, hot dogs in spaghetti. I swear, if someone would have drawn my blood after that summer, my cholesterol at six years old would have been through the roof.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah. Since then, I can’t even look at a hot dog without wanting to get sick.”
“That sucks. There is nothing better than sitting out under the sun at Mets stadium, drinking a beer, and eating a hot dog while watching a game.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that, gorgeous. I might drink a beer, but you will never see me eating a hot dog.”
I notice how her pupils dilate when I say the word gorgeous.
Just when I think I’m getting somewhere, she quickly looks away.
“You should flip back to your stomach so I can finish working on your back.”
“All right.” I roll to my stomach, and for the next half hour we are both completely silent. She works my muscles from my shoulders to my calves. I don’t fall asleep even though my eyes get heavy. I want to stay awake the whole time so I can soak in the feeling of her touch, the way her hands glide over my body. I try to memorize every single second since I’m not sure when her hands will be on me again.
“All done,” she says softly when a chime sounds in the room.
I lean up on an elbow.
“I’ll let
you get dressed. Just come out when you’re ready.”
Even though a part of me knows that the smart thing to do would be to let her walk away and come to me if that’s what she wants, I know I can’t do it. I want her, and I want to figure out why she keeps acting like she doesn’t want me, too. I can see it in her eyes and by the way her body reacts to me. She does.
Taking her hand before she’s out of reach, I sit up on the side of the bed. “Go out with me tonight.” I hate how vulnerable I sound to my own ears.
“Go out with you?” she repeats.
I wonder why the hell she can’t seem to believe that I want to spend time with her.
“Have dinner with me.” I pull her a step closer.
Her bottom lip disappears between her teeth before she releases it and gives me a nod.
“If that’s a yes, I’m going to need to hear you say the word . . .”
“Yes.”
“Good.” I rub my thumb over the pulse at her wrist and feel it beating hard. “I’ll pick you up at your place at six.”
“I’ll meet you at the restaurant.”