Cat Haus - The Complete Story (26 page)

That something was seeing me with Ty. Jealousy was a powerful emotion. If John didn't care about me, he wouldn't be jealous. I had to believe that. He hadn't had issues with me being with other guys for work before, but things with Ty had seemed different to him. Crazed jealousy wasn't exactly a confession of love, but good enough to make me give him another chance, I guess.

"Cate." I turned at the sound of his voice. John continued, "You're back."

"I am." I forgave his observation of the obvious.

"Can we talk?"

"Yeah, I think we should." I gave Sahara a parting glance and took a step toward John.

"Is upstairs all right?" He'd never asked me that before. Things were not back to the way they had been, and maybe that was for the better.

"Yes. Upstairs is fine."

Walking up the staircase to his apartment, I tried my best not to envision Sahara up there. Instead, I stepped through the doorway and I turned to the bar.

"Drink?" I asked.

"No."

"Mind if I have one?"

"Go ahead."

I poured myself a glass of honey bourbon and remembered the last time I'd drank it—downstairs in Henry's apartment the first time John had returned to the Cat Haus as new owner. It felt a world away from now.

John waited for me to turn back to him before he asked, "Are you back to work?"

"Yes." If Henry would still have me after my abrupt departure.

"And me? Did you come back to me too?" John asked the question sounding unsure of my answer. Hell, I was pretty unsure of it myself.

"Is that an option? You and me, the way things used to be?" I asked.

"Yes." He stood motionless, as if braced for whatever I might say.

"And what about the other girls? Will you be with them as well as me?" I was proud of myself. My voice didn't shake when I'd asked it.

"I don't want any of the other girls. I don't want anyone but you."

Not exactly a confession of love, that, but it still made my heart clench hearing it. I bought myself some time by swallowing another sip of the bourbon. It seared a path down my throat, all the way to my stomach, and for the first time since seeing Sahara climb these stairs, I didn't feel cold to the core. Yet I still felt sick to my stomach remembering she had been in this room.

Crazy bitch that I am, I delved where I knew I shouldn’t go. "Did you kiss her?"

"No." His answer was quick and firm and, call me stupid, I believed him.

"Did you make her come?" I remembered how his hands and his mouth had brought me so much pleasure in the past. I needed to know if that was still just mine or if Sahara had those memories now too.

"No." Again, he didn't hesitate, but something had happened. I could see it in his expression, a dread that I'd ask something he couldn’t deny doing.

No more guessing. The two things I couldn't live with knowing he'd done with her were off the table now. I cut directly to the core of the matter. "What did you do with her?"

He drew in a breath and let it out. When he looked away to stare at the corner of the ceiling rather than at me, I knew it was going to be bad. "I unzipped my pants—"

"Where were you at the time?" I hoped with all I had in me that it wasn't in the bed.

"I was standing about where you are now."

I considered moving but forced myself to stay there. "What next?"

He swallowed before saying, "She came over and . . . took me in her mouth."

Previously, separately, they'd both told me nothing had happened. A blowjob was not
nothing
in my opinion. "Did you come?"

"No. Cate, it lasted maybe a minute. Probably less. I wasn't even . . . " He shook his head and let the sentence trail off.

That sounded more like the story Sahara had told me. I crossed my arms. "And if you had gotten hard? Then what would you have done with her?"

"I still would have asked her to leave."

"Why?"

"Because she's not you." It was a good answer, delivered with an intensity that convinced me it was true.

"All right." I could live with that. The irony of this situation was that John lived with knowing much worse about what I did with other men. But it was different. That was work. He and I weren't. I wondered how much longer that excuse was going to fly. "You'd be okay with me still working?"

He looked resigned. "I'm willing to try. If that's what you want, what you need to do, we'll make it work."

Until I figured out how to do anything else, be someone else—be that a writer or whatever—I suppose it was what I needed. But I still wasn't clear on where I stood with John. "And what exactly would we be making work?"

"Us."

"Us? What are we? What am I to you?"

"I'd like you to be my girlfriend."

His girlfriend. That was a word I hadn't been expecting and it threw me a little bit.

Once I got past the shock, I remembered what he'd said before about my working and the whole thing got even more surreal. "So you're saying I'd be your girlfriend, but then I'd still go downstairs and be with other men for work?"

"Yes." He looked pained to say it.

"So you must mean I'd be your girlfriend while you're here at the Cat Haus. And only for the days you're in Nevada."

"No, Cate. I mean you'd be my girlfriend all the time, whether I'm in the state or not."

"You mean I could go with you to wherever it is you go when you're not here?"

"Where I go is northern California. That's where I live and where the company's based. And of course you could come with me if you wanted to. I'd like nothing more than to have you with me."

Again, I was thrown off balance by his answer. He was willing to open the other part of his world to me. The world my vivid imagination had populated with a non-existent wife and kids, and maybe even a few mistresses strewn across the country.

"But I would still work here?"

"If that's what you really want to do. Yes." He closed his eyes, and then opened them again to catch my gaze. "This isn't a normal situation, Cate.
You
aren't the norm for me. None of this follows the rules. All I know is I don't want to be without you, so maybe we need to write new rules. I can't make you give up your life for me."

"And it wouldn't bother you? Me being with other men?"

He let out a laugh. "I never said that. It would bother me every damn second of every day."

"So to try and make me happy, you'd be willing to make yourself miserable?"

"I guess I would." He shrugged.

Huh. I'd never had a man be willingly miserable for me before. I wasn't quite sure how to take that.

He still had yet to say those three little words, but didn't they say actions speak louder than words? In this case, John's visible pain, his sacrifice of what I knew he needed for himself in favor of what he thought I wanted, spoke volumes.

"John, how can I be happy if you're not?" I put down my drink and took a step forward. "I couldn't do that to you."

"What are you saying, Cate?"

I could see in his eyes he feared I was going to end it between us. Choose the Cat Haus over him. A dumb girl might have done that. A scared girl might too. I hoped I was for once behaving like a smart person, a strong one, when I said, "I think maybe I don't want to work here anymore."

"You won't even work for me anymore? You'd walk away from here and do what? Go somewhere else to work for one of the other houses?"

He'd jumped to the conclusion I was cutting all ties, with him and with the Cat Haus because he owned it. Even with as messed up as I was, it seemed John was just as bad. Hell of a pair we made.

"No, John. I want to quit the life. I think I might try being a writer . . ." Saying that out loud had me feeling amazed, practically giddy—and I didn't usually do giddy.

His eyes widened. "Really?"

I smiled at his surprise. "Yeah."
 

"And us?" There was hope showing clearly on the face of the man who had the best poker face I knew. That he couldn't hide that light shining through gave me hope as well.
 

"I like the sound of an
us,
full time."

The breath he drew in shook as he closed the distance between us and pulled me toward him. He held me tight and I swear I felt him tremble. The strongest man I knew and the thought of being with me had him shaking in his high-dollar dress shoes. I'd have to think on that later.

"John, it's not going to be easy. You'll have to come up with some kind of story to explain to people who I am. How we met. Even after that, people might dig and find out—"

"I don't give a damn what anyone finds out."

"Well, you should. If not for my sake, then definitely for your own. You have family, and friends, and coworkers. They're going to ask questions about me and you have your reputation to protect."

"They'll be so relieved I finally found someone after all this time, they won't question too deeply." He pulled back to catch my gaze even as I wondered at the strange comment he'd just made. "There are things you don't know about me."

Obviously.
I kept that observation to myself. The question remained, what were those things because all these cryptic hints of John's were starting to make me paranoid. I felt like I knew even less about him now. The wall I'd seen John erect around himself to hide his emotions so many times before, rose one more time even as he clung to me as tightly as a drowning man held on to a life preserver.

"We really should talk." A pained expression clouded his face and my dread increased.

"You're right." My stomach clenched.

In this game of chess called life, it was as if I'd finally gained the advantage, finally had said
Check,
and Fate had immediately countered with
Check Mate
. Now that I might find the answers to all the remaining questions I had about John, I was afraid of what I might hear. Apparently, I wasn't meant to have an easy life. At least, it seemed as if Fate didn't want me to.

John grabbed me and pressed me close to his chest, but not before I saw that look in his eye. The one that told me he wanted me. I wanted him just as much.

"Can we talk after?" The request rumbled from his chest and through me.

"Yeah, I think that's a good idea." Sex was a wonderful way to avoid having this conversation. More than that, I needed to feel him to believe we were okay.

He backed me to the bed and we tumbled to the mattress, him kissing me the whole way down. Between kisses, he tugged at the material between us. My suit was soon off and on the floor. His followed until there was nothing but his skin against mine.

"Need you, Cate."

"I know. I need you too."

He plunged inside me and I felt the shudder run through him. "Don't leave me again."

I felt his vulnerability. This from a man who never let any weakness show—but he was showing it to me. "I won't."

"I love you." John's words, spoken on a gasp against my ear as he pushed inside me, stole my breath.

It took me a moment to absorb he'd actually said it. Even without air in my lungs I managed to say, "I love you."

That broke any control he had. He slid his hands beneath my knees and lifted my legs. With his head down and his face hidden, John plunged inside me, fast and hard, over and over until he came inside me with a hard shudder.

He stayed on top of me for a while before he pulled back, his eyes narrow. "You're really all mine."

It hadn't been a question, but I nodded. "Yes."

"No more clients." Again, it sounded like a declaration, like he needed to hear it to make it real.

"No more clients," I repeated, happy to say it for his benefit. He'd said he loved me and now I was ready to do or say anything this man wanted. My feminist declaration to myself that I needed to stand on my own two feet without a man flew right out the window. "So, what are you going to do with me now that I'm all yours?"

He propped on one elbow and trailed a finger down my belly. "Well, I do owe you an orgasm since I screwed you out of one this time. No pun intended."

I smiled at his little joke. "And then?"

"Then I'm going to book you a ticket on my return flight. I want you to come home with me. I don't want to wait any longer to have you with me."

My heart seemed to swell, filling my chest. "I'd like that."

"I'm glad." His finger slid lower, running over my most sensitive spot, through the moisture between my legs, and all the way back to a place John didn't usually venture. "And while I get online to book your ticket, you're going to go downstairs and get whatever supplies you need because I intend to have you every way a man can have a woman. Even if it takes all night. Is that all right?"

It seemed now that I was actually John's girlfriend, the girlfriend sex was over. He obviously needed to claim me, and I was more than ready to be claimed by him. "Yeah. It's all right."

"Good." A smile bowed his lips, before his expression turned serious. He moved his hand to rest on my belly and raised his eyes to mine. "So about what just happened . . . I hadn't planned on saying that while we were—"