“I don’t pity you,” she said. “I don’t want you to pity me. That’s not why I told you about my parents. I like you. I…I’m very attracted to you.”
He stood with his hands clenched tightly, his big body coiled up and ready to spring. Imagining the power behind his restrained passion made her body hum. From him she didn’t want a gentle kiss or a slow caress. She wanted the wildness that blazed behind those metallic eyes. And he was refusing to let it go.
They squared off, at a stalemate. “Xavier,” she whispered. “Kiss me.”
His chin lowered and his stare burned into her from behind
the blond waves of his hair.
“You want me to kiss you?” His voice rumbled. The start of an avalanche, dangerous and uncontainable.
“God, yes. Do you want me to beg? Get on my knees?”
He lunged for her. Shouted.
“You want me to kiss you?”
Here it came. She braced herself for his hands and his mouth, liquid desire surging in to replace every drop of her blood. But he pulled up at the last second and instead loomed over her, his chest pumping so hard she could see it through his coat.
All she said was, “Please.”
He fisted the front of her coat and pushed her back against the brick wall, enough to knock out her breath. She didn’t need oxygen, just him. He brought his mouth down on hers, hard as brick, hot as fire.
Their tongues swept across each other, mixing coffee and lust. Their lips formed an impenetrable seal, but inside it was all soft and burning. A silky, slow, undulating movement that made her shake. A high, trilling moan vibrated her throat. Her arms snaked around his waist, pulling him tight against her. Layers of coats and clothes between them, and she almost cried from the divide.
He released his death grip on her zipper and slid one hand around her neck. He hadn’t put his gloves back on and his hands were cold and dry and desperate, pressing hard into her nape, pulling her so close their teeth scraped.
He kissed as though her mouth meant life or death, and she understood. She understood.
His other hand came up and swept the hat off her head. He drew back, breath stuttering between reddened lips, and did the strangest thing. He gazed at the hat—the cheap, silly thing—like it was a fancy bra and underwear and it was driving him over the edge.
His head was slightly turned, and the skin along his jawline beckoned. She came forward, flicked her tongue across the place that was still smooth from his morning shave. No cologne, just Xavier. He tasted like snow and hundreds of flavors of the kitchen. Like he was made of things he loved.
With a low groan he whipped his head around, taking her mouth. As he shoved her back against the wall again, his long
thigh slid between hers. The pulse between her legs beat a bass drum.
She started to move. Slow circles of her hips that brought out stars behind her eyelids. She’d made him hard and she loved it. Loved that she could rub perfectly against that hardness. If she kept it up, she’d come. Right there on the staircase, fully clothed, thousands of festival goers only a block away.
Keep going. Keep going
.
He kicked her legs apart and pushed his hard-on right to her clit. His turn to move. He skipped over the slow part and went right for the focused grind. She cried out, urging him on. The hottest sex she’d ever had that wasn’t actually sex.
Suddenly he jerked back. At first she thought he’d come, then she saw he was shaking and there was no pleasure on his face. Anguished silver eyes danced in their sockets. When they met hers they were brimming with heartbreaking apology.
“Oh, God, Cat. I can’t.”
“What’s the matter?” Her voice cracked like weak ice. She reached for him but he skittered away, her hat dropping from his fingers to the snow.
“You deserve better.”
“Xavier, no. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.” He wasn’t even looking at her. He glared hard at something over her shoulder, but when she glanced around there was nothing there.
Then he turned on his heel and stalked away, hair flapping around his ears, boots heavy on the road.
Michael lowered himself into the rolling chair behind the desk,
and switched on the webcam with hands that quivered with pure exhilaration. The lunch with Cat and Tom Bridger could not have gone more perfectly.
She’d been gracious and lovely. Engaging. Bridger had taken to her immediately, just as Michael had wanted. The two of them had blabbed on and on about art and film, and even though Michael had been bored to tears, he let them talk. Association was a wonderful, mysterious thing. Bridger had connected with Cat, whom Michael had discovered, sponsored, and befriended, creating good feelings inside Bridger for this Big Hollywood Producer he’d so sorely misjudged.
After Cat had unknowingly primed Bridger, Michael gave his pitch: the big budget historical meant to make audiences weep and Oscar voters cream their pants. After Michael had paid the check and they stood up, Bridger had been the first to extend his hand.
“I told myself I wouldn’t let you convince me,” the indie director had said, “but you have. I’m in.”
“Excellent news.” Michael gripped Bridger’s hand and gave him a hearty slap on the opposite shoulder.
“I hope you forgive me for saying this,” Bridger had begun, and Michael knew instantly what he was about to say, “but since it’s a well-known fact that you and your father were at odds, I’d like to admit that I misjudged you.”
Michael had nodded gravely.
Bridger had laughed uncomfortably. “You’re not at all like I heard your father was. I was afraid you’d be an asshole,
frankly. It’s good to see you didn’t inherit his personality along with his studio.”
He’d glanced at Cat then, who’d been regarding him with a questioning expression. He’d forgotten that she knew little to nothing about him personally, and even though Raymond Ebrecht’s death five years ago had been big news within the industry, for an artist/bartender in the Florida Keys, that didn’t mean anything.
“Tell me the truth.” Bridger had leaned in. “All those celebrity tributes at the funeral, they were all bullshit, right?”
Michael had smiled. A genuine smile. “Completely and totally.”
Now, back at the rental house, his whole body filled to bursting with triumph, he sat down before the laptop. A tiny window in the corner showed his own face how it looked through the webcam. Satisfied. Confident. Fucking powerful.
He thought of Cat. She was starting to fit nicely into his world. A little puzzle piece wedging itself into place, becoming part of his greater whole. He’d chosen so well that day in the art fair. He was already starting to think of her as his possession—perhaps the finest piece in his collection—because he’d been the one to find her, build her up. Create her.
It felt good to think that. It felt right.
Raymond had mentioned once that finding the perfect woman could turn everything in your favor. Hadn’t worked out so well for him, though. Five wives. Five divorces. That wouldn’t happen to Michael. Cat would be forever. He’d show Raymond, once again, how it was done.
Michael took his phone out and made the call. It rang three times. The bitch always let it ring too long. Fiona liked to make him fear she’d left his service, but he wasn’t the slightest bit worried. That would never happen. She was one of Ireland’s most wanted and Lea had their government on speed dial.
“Michael.” Fiona’s lilt had long ago stopped being polite or even pleasant to hear.
“Put him on.”
There was a long, heavy pause, and then he heard Fiona’s shoes on the tile floor of his L.A. house’s hallway. He listened to the familiar sound of the guest bedroom door opening, Fiona entering the room. She put the phone down, there was a brief
rustling, and then the big black window in the center of his laptop screen lit up.
A gaunt, wrinkled face filled the window, pale lamp light illuminating only one side. The slow, steady, forced sounds of the man’s breathing, and the persistent beep of the life-support machines trickled out from the laptop’s little speakers.
Michael hung up the phone and stared into the comatose face of his father. “Hello, Raymond.”
Raymond’s chest pumped mechanically up and down, the hiss of the equipment providing the soundtrack. It gave Michael chills but also filled him with victory. Raymond’s thin lips were dry where they clamped around the big plastic tube snaking down his throat. His eyelids remained permanently closed.
“I have amazing news,” Michael said. “Just landed Tom Bridger for the big historical I told you about last week. That name won’t mean shit to you because he wasn’t around when you were head of the studio, but he’s the next big thing. The next Cameron. The next Spielberg.” He leaned his elbows on the desk edge and got real close to the camera so his face filled the lens. “And he’s fucking mine. We’re sweeping the Oscars in a few years. More than what you ever got in one year, let me tell you, and that’s going to feel so fucking good.”
He leaned back in the chair and started to click the mouse around, opening a movie file he’d taken just that morning. He connected it to the webcam feed and pressed
play
.
“Watch this.”
He’d gone out to the garage that morning. Poked the caged tiger with a stick, so to speak. His little fire prize had performed beautifully. She’d raged. She’d spewed flames from between those perfect lips and thrown great fireballs against the cage. He’d clicked off the camera only when the smoke filled the box again and she disappeared into the billowy black.
The movie ended and Michael toggled his face back into the screen. “Isn’t that incredible? You never found anything like that, did you? All your searching and you never found anyone else like us. You never even found your other son. But I did. You thought you were special just being able to
split
. That’s nothing compared to what else is out there. What else I own.” Michael pounded a fist into his chest for emphasis, echoing the thunder of his blood as his heartbeat kicked up. He
rolled the chair back a bit, took a few deep breaths to try to calm down.
“I’m getting another water elemental, did you know that? Lea texted me on the way up here to tell me she got her. Now I have a man and a woman. Can you imagine what I can do with that? I can’t wait for the day when I hold up a baby and tell you, ‘Just look at what I created.’”
Raymond said nothing, as usual. No flicker of the eyelids as acknowledgement. No life whatsoever. But he heard, Michael knew. He heard. He just didn’t want to wake up because he couldn’t face the fact that the son he’d first ignored and then felt threatened by had become a far, far greater man than he ever was.
“So. Dad.” Michael sniffed, despising the choke in his voice. Repelled by the man his father had created. He stared right into the camera, right into the flaccid face of Raymond Ebrecht. “Am I good enough for you yet? Do you love me now?”
Xavier needed fresh rosemary, but the singular plant in the little
greenhouse he’d attached to his garage had decided not to live through the autumn and he kept forgetting to get a new one. Not even 7:00 a.m., the overnight low temperature laughing at the peek of sun over the eastern mountains, and he was bundled up and trudging to Kensington’s Market. The tents in the square stood quiet and slightly crooked, as though recovering from hangovers. His boots squeaked on the snow.
Inside the warm neighborhood grocery store, he shook off the cold and started to wander. A meandering detour through the aisles, drawing imaginary lines between ingredients, usually cleared his head of trouble and replaced it with culinary possibility. But what had lodged itself in his mind two days ago wasn’t giving up the prime real estate so handily.
Years ago he’d used kissing as a means to an end. Women loved it; he never really understood why. Now he knew.
Sleep had never come easily to him, but these past two nights, since that kiss on the cold stairwell, it had become an impossibility. Every time he closed his eyes he relived the raw desire on Cat’s face. Heard her high, yielding sighs. Felt the firmness of her thighs under his fingers and the heat where she’d ground against his cock.
All that control, gone.
The second he’d taken her mouth, he’d flown high. The sensation of their lips together, the hot glide of their tongues—the instruments they’d used to talk and laugh—leveled him. He’d never known desire that powerful. At first he’d thought it was only because he’d finally given in after three years of
abstinence. But then, as Cat had clung to him and
begged
, he knew it was because of her.
Her passion ignited him. Her confidence floored him. Her responsiveness terrified him.
His mind knew this and welcomed it. But his body…the moment it had thought release was within its grasp, he’d retreated into that slave space. Automatic. Single-minded and selfish. Horrible.
The Burned Man had laughed in one ear and made awful suggestions in the other.
So Xavier had run, because he realized that Cat was worth so much more.
He’d wandered down every aisle in the market and couldn’t remember a single dish he’d come up with along the way. Rosemary, that’s what he’d come for. He should get some yellow pepper, too. He turned out of the condiment aisle, rounded the small display of winter grapefruit, and froze.
There she stood, pondering the plastic display case of pastries and doughnuts. The red pompom stuck out from where she’d stuffed the hat into her coat pocket. She pulled the loose waves of her hair over one shoulder and stretched for a chocolate éclair.
She hadn’t seen him. He could walk out of the store right now and she’d never know he was there…except that in the short time they’d spent together, she’d shown him glimpses of the kind of person he could be, and he wanted to know that man better.
“They don’t actually make those here.” His mouth was dry as flour.
She stiffened. Straightened. Turned toward him. “Xavier.”
He had no idea how to read her face, but hoped what he saw there wasn’t pity. He was embarrassed as all hell, but he wanted to make it right. He didn’t want her to think it had been her fault he’d freaked out. And he needed to prove to himself that it wasn’t just physical with her, that sex wasn’t all he needed. He remembered those moments of peace when they’d just talked, and he used them as a dangling carrot.