Caught Up in Us (9 page)

“Your tee-shirt
is stained too.”

He glanced at the front of his
shirt. “Let’s call this a major win for you for making me laugh so
hard.”

I mimed making a check mark on a
scorecard, feeling pretty good about the way power was flowing
these days. I was the one steering the ship. Then, I sucked in a
breath as he removed his tee-shirt. All my anger slinked away, all
my hurt crept out quietly. I was left only with the one thing that
had never been far away for the last five years – desire for
him.

I stared and I didn’t try to play
it cool. He was hot, and I wanted to enjoy the view. His chest was
broad and firm, his arms strong, and his stomach as flat as the
earth was rumored to be before Columbus discovered the truth. There
was the slightest trace of hair running from his belly button to
the waistband of his jeans, disappearing beneath his clothes
suggestively. He reached for a fresh tee-shirt in the closet, and a
crisp, clean button-down too.

Fuck it.

Fuck the act. Fuck the cool girl
routine.

So much for my plan to be tough,
to be civil, to be immune to his charms. I threw that playbook out
the window and started writing a new one – one that was filled with
payoff. This was the real starting over, because he’d called me
pretty, he’d remembered my coffee drink, he’d told me he was glad
to see me. This wasn’t one-sided and I was going to take what I
wanted most right now. To be touched. To be kissed.

I removed my bulletproof vest, and
spoke my mind. “Come here.”

He walked to the back of the couch
and leaned down, his face inches from me.

“Hi,” he said softly.

“Hi.”

“Can I?” he
asked, and then reached a hand into my hair, letting my dark brown
strands fall through his fingers. I leaned into his hand, like a
cat, as my answer. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had started
purring.

“Kat
,” he said in a hungry
voice.

I looked into his eyes, those
crisp green eyes that drew me in. “I need you to kiss me now,” I
said, as if it were a command.

“Consider it done.”

I closed my eyes as his lips
brushed mine with a softness, tenderness and eagerness all wrapped
up in one. I felt as if the whole office, the factory, the city was
gone. There was nothing else but this kiss and I melted into him,
as I had with all our kisses five years ago. But then, there was
something new, something less innocent, as the kiss shifted into
another gear. The way his lips suddenly crushed mine was feverish.
It was frenzied, and it was electric, and full of need. I needed to
feel him. I needed to touch him. I explored his arms, traversing
the shape and size of his forearms and the strength in them, and
then outlining the sharp contours of his flexed biceps, until I
returned to his chest, then down to his belly, so trim and tight
that I longed to touch and trace and hold onto his perfectly cut
waist all through the day and the night.

He stopped, moving to the door,
locking it this time, then returning to the couch with
me.

“We can’t go all the way. Not even
close,” I said, holding up my hand as a stop sign to
sex.

“I’m good with that. But we don’t
have much time for anything.”

“Do you want to stop
then?”

He shook his head, and nodded to
the bulge in his jeans. “Hell no.”

He wanted me as much as I wanted
him. But did he like me too? Or was I just the girl who was hot for
him and so, why not? A part of me knew better. A part of me knew I
should pull back the reins. But there was a bigger part of me in
that moment that didn’t care. Because my body had no questions and
no qualms. Inside all I felt was the weight of five pent-up years
of missing him. My mind was a jumble, a mixed-up mess of hurt and
want, but I didn’t know how to sort out the crazy rush of thoughts,
and frankly, I didn’t want to. I was burning for him, so I let my
body lead me on.

I touched his soft, thick hair
that I’d missed running my hands through, then traced the back of
his neck in a way that made him groan. Bryan’s hands drifted lower,
down to my waist, and I didn’t stop him. I wanted his hands
everywhere. All over me. He shifted me over, pulling me on top of
him so I could feel how hard he was through his jeans. I straddled
him on the couch, my knees on either side of his hips, our clothes
still all the way on, my flowy skirt spread across his
thighs.

I began to move my hips barely,
subtly, with my bikini underwear and his jeans forming a layered
barricade between our bodies. I closed my eyes again, kissing him,
grinding against him, feeling like I was in high school again,
where having clothes on doesn’t stop you from getting off. His
hands slipped underneath my top and made their way to my breasts,
and the way he touched me with such tenderness and such desire made
me gasp.

My lips fell away from him and I
buried my face in the crook of his neck. The temperature in me
soared as I pulled his taut chest to me, thrilling at the feel of
his body rubbing against mine. His hands dipped under my skirt,
touching the back of my thighs in a way that made me race even
more. He hadn’t even gotten into my panties and I was already so
close.

“It’s not going to take me long,”
I told him.

“Nothing would make me happier
than to make you come,” he said, and then managed to slide a hand
between my legs. The slightest touch was all I needed. I moved my
hips as his fingers hit just the right spot. I pressed myself
against his hand, moving up and down, as I moaned in the lowest
voice possible in his ear. “Bryan, it feels so good.”

“Kat, you have
no idea…”

He layered kisses on my neck as I
kept up the rhythm I needed. He gripped my waist firmly, keeping my
body close, making sure I would make it all the way. Then I bit my
lip as the intensity tore through me. There was no just about, no
almost, no close but no cigar. I pressed my mouth to his shoulder
to muffle my sounds, then collapsed onto his chest. We remained
quiet for a moment, only the sounds of machines far away flickering
in the background.

“That was so unbelievably sexy,”
he said.

“Really?”

“If I kept a diary, which I don’t
I assure you, this would go down as one of the hottest moments
ever.”

“I can still feel it. Like in my
whole body. I can feel it all over. How good it was with you.” I
was vulnerable and I didn’t care. I was in the afterglow and the
flush made me say things to him that I would have kept secret if I
hadn’t just come in his office. I trailed my hand across his chest
and looked in his eyes. “Let me touch you.”

Before he could answer, Delaney’s
voice boomed through the buzzer. “Hi, Bryan. Just a reminder you
have your board call in ten minutes to go over the final Wilco
papers. The notes are in your email.”

Bryan cursed under his breath.
“Thanks, Delaney,” he said in a perfectly professional voice. He
could easily switch gears. When she hung up, he looked at me, and
the longing had been stripped from his eyes. He was a man ready to
conduct business. “I have to do this.”

I heard the echo
of
I have to go
and I felt myself hardening. I put my shell back on as I
adjusted my skirt and smoothed away the just-been-screwed look in
my hair, thinking the saying was appropos for many reasons. I was
nothing more than a quickie in the office to him. That was it. That
was all. I took some small solace in the fact that we hadn’t gone
that far. Fine, he’d seen me as turned on as I’d ever been my whole
life over, but at least we’d done nothing more than kids in high
school do. That’s all we’d ever be. Teenagers bumbling through
adulthood, not knowing what to do or say. But what he didn’t say
spoke volumes. He didn’t say he liked me. He didn’t say he was
sorry for breaking my heart. He didn’t ask me to have dinner. He
simply said, “I need to focus on this call.”

“Of course.” I downshifted to my
crisp and business-like tone. I could toe to toe with him in this
department. He pulled on his tee-shirt, then his dress
shirt.

“But let’s take the train back to
New York. The four o’clock, okay?”

“Sure.” I
gathered my bag and my books. “I’ll just be —” I said and waved in
the general direction outside his office.

He settled into his desk chair,
but his eyes were already on the computer screen and the email with
the Wilco notes. He sighed heavily and dropped his forehead into
his hand. “Fuck,” he said in a low voice, and I suspected he wasn’t
going to have a very good phone call with the board.

Served him right with the way he
was blowing me off. At least I’d had an orgasm, and he hadn’t.
Small victory, but I’d take it.

I grabbed my iced tea, left his
office, and said goodbye to Delaney. Then I called a cab as soon as
I left the factory. There was a two-thirty train back to New York
that had my name written all over it.

Chapter Ten

The music
drowned out my day and my night. Jill and her castmates had grabbed
guitars and jumped on stage at the bar post-show to jam out an
impromptu version of
Les Mis’
popular song
One Day
More
. The show itself was amazing; the
producers wanted to mix things up so they fast-forwarded the story
to modern-day France and added guitars and drums to the orchestra
of the off-Broadway production.

Now, we were at
a nearby club in Soho, celebrating opening night of the month-long
run. Imagine
One Day More
performed as a power ballad. Because, yes, Jill
could handle a guitar too. She jammed hard on her Stratocaster and
the amps howled out chords. The guy who played Marius, a young
actor named Reeve, whipped the audience into a frenzy as he led the
song. When he reached the chorus, he thrust the mic towards the
crowd and they responded with the words they’d either known for
years or learned when the Hugh Jackman movie became a
hit.

My brother Nate was with me, but
he was at the bar refilling our drinks. I raised an arm and sang
along, the music smashing through my body, and echoing across the
whole lot of us jammed together in front of the tiny stage. Reeve
was a certified babe. He was tall and lanky, wore hipster jeans,
and a tee-shirt with a vest. He had the requisite long hair that
fell in his eyes while he sang. I’d met him once during rehearsals,
and had asked Jill if she’d be into him because he seemed her type.
He was straight, quite rare for a musical theater man. But Jill had
reminded me of the old adage about not getting involved with people
you work with. Good advice, indeed.

Maybe I should go for Reeve. Maybe
Reeve was exactly what I’d need to get Bryan Leighton and his
too-business-like approach out of my system. Maybe it was time to
return to actors and other artists. Bryan had called me a few times
after I took off from his factory that afternoon, but I didn’t pick
up. He emailed too. He wanted to know where I was. If I was okay.
If something was wrong.

My reply was
simple:
I forgot I had an appointment in
the city. The factory is amazing, and I am learning so
much.

I didn’t say
anything more, and certainly not anything personal, and definitely
not a
thanks for the O!
He didn’t reply, and his radio silence the rest
of the evening affirmed that I’d made the right choice to
bail.

Reeve belted out the final verse
to the song, then mimed strumming a guitar solo alongside Jill as
the song faded to its end. “Thank you so much for coming to the
show, and to hang out with us all afterwards. You are a kickass
audience, and you rock my red and black world,” Reeve said, and
several women shrieked and held their arms out towards
him.

As the singing actors put away
their instruments, I found my brother at the bar. He handed me a
vodka tonic. I’d probably only have a sip. I’d never been much of a
drinker. “You sure you’re old enough to drink?” he
asked.

“Oh, ha ha. You know I have been
for two years now.”

He shook his head playfully. “You
still seem like the baby sister to me.”

“Well, duh. I
always will be.”

Maybe I didn’t need Reeve or
another man to take my mind off Bryan. Maybe hanging out with my
brother would be enough. I hadn’t seen him in several weeks. He was
on the road a lot since he worked in business development for an
advertising technology startup. He was a manager and hoped to be
promoted to director soon. Until then, he had to put in a ton of
hours visiting clients in the less-glamorous cities around the
country. Nate clinked my vodka tonic with his beer, and said, “To
good music, and to my little sister.”

If you looked closely, you could
tell we were brother and sister. We had the same cheekbones, high
and sharp. But where I had brown eyes and even darker hair, Nate
was a sandy blond with all-American blue eyes.