She loved it. Loved getting kissed like this. Even if it was by a complete stranger. Who she couldn’t see.
She didn’t have to see him to know him, she soon realized. This guy wasn’t desperate for a woman’s touch, as she’d previously suspected. Judging from the way his lips not only ravaged hers, but easily found all the hotspots on her ears, neck, and even right beneath her jaw line, he knew what to do when it came to women.
If anything, she was the awkward one. His kisses once again sent her mind reeling into a total tailspin. And again, she couldn’t hang on to any of her cool.
“Yes,” she found herself mindlessly gasping. “Kiss me. Just like that. Yes! Thank you.”
Her hands ran over him as he kissed her, fascinated by all they encountered. What felt like a full head of soft, slightly long hair, telling her he probably wasn’t black. Muscles rippling down his back, explaining why he felt so heavy on top of her. It was like touching a bronze sculpture with perfectly defined abs and a hard, compact torso. His body was so dense with muscle, she had to take a couple of decades off her estimate of his age. Yes, this guy was rich, but judging from his body, he wasn’t nearly as old as most of the people who could afford high-rise apartments that overlooked South Beach.
He had muscle everywhere her hands touched. On his back. In his tight arms, which were hilled with biceps and triceps. Her hands moved between their bodies and found two hard marble slabs where his pecs should be. No surprise there, considering the rest of his body, but when her hands moved down his chest one of them came upon something unexpected.
A long, thin scar on his otherwise perfectly smooth chest—
The hand that had found the scar was suddenly captured in her benefactor’s crushing grip.
“Sorry!” She quickly realized she’d done something wrong by touching him there.
But the realization came too late. He lifted up and cool air hit the top of her body where his used to be. She sat up on the bed, his abrupt withdrawal making her feel empty. Like she’d lost something.
“Sorry,” she said again, her voice on the edge of beseeching. “I didn’t mean to touch you there or make you uncomfortable.”
No answer. Just a few rustling sounds, followed by the curt end of the sexy Latin music. She wanted to take off the blindfold. Wanted to look at him so bad. Try to make him understand how sorry she was for doing something that had obviously upset him.
But she remembered his instruction about not taking the blindfold off. And her curiosity wasn’t worth the price of breaking the deal.
So she had to sit there. Helpless as a ragdoll as she listened to him move across the room, probably back to the closet. A few moments later, there came the clicks of the bedroom door opening and closing.
Then complete silence. Even deeper than before because she was straining to hear what was going on outside the room. Was he still there? In the hallway, maybe? She got her answer from the unmistakable sound of a door banging open and closed—the one next door. The one that had been locked.
He’d obviously retired to the guest bedroom in a huff. But why? Because she’d touched his scar? Found something on him that wasn’t perfect? Or maybe the scar was just one of many? She remembered the way his whiskered jaw had scraped her thighs as he kissed her down there. Could it be covering up some worse deformity on his face? That would certainly explain the blindfold and the hasty exit.
The sound of crickets interrupted her thoughts, and it took her a few seconds to realize this was the timer. The one that meant she was free to take off the blindfold.
She tore it off, only to end up blinking against a surprising amount of light. The lights had been turned down to half-mast before she’d gotten into the bed, but now they were turned all the way up, along with three different lamps.
Like her benefactor had wanted as much light as possible. Like he’d…
Her heart stopped when she noticed the standing mirror. It was no longer against the far wall, as it had been before, but now it leaned up against the wall right across from the bed…like he’d wanted to watch while he took her.
She looked around the room some more, only to cringe at what she found on the bed itself. Spots of blood on the previously pristine surface of the quilted white coverlet. And her phone, blaring the sound of crickets.
He’d used her phone to set the timer, she realized as she picked it up. What the…?
But another thought was blaring too hard in her head to ignore. She touched the screen to turn off the crickets—then immediately opened a new text message box.
10
“Are you okay?”
The message buzzed onto the screen of his secret phone before Gus was
finished taking off his clothes for the second time that night. Quickly followed by: “
I’m really sorry.”
Feeling like he’d just fallen over the edge of some abyss and only narrowly made it out, he typed back:
“
I touch you. You don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me like that again.”
Dot-dot-dot. It was clear she was trying to process what he’d just written. Gus watched the screen, feeling like a complete psycho. Meaning what he’d written and wanting to take it back at the same time.
“Okay, I won’t. I didn’t mean to upset you. Are you okay?”
Are you okay?
He’d been the one who’d made her put on a blindfold. Who’d given her a totally fucked up story to go along with her first time. Who’d run out of the room like a
chico loco
when she’d found his scar.
Fuck, how many ways did this woman have to prove she was too good for him before he left her alone?
No, he wasn’t okay.
“I’m fine,”
he typed.
“Should I leave? I understand if you want me to leave.”
“No.”
It was all he could do not to type those two letters in all caps. Then he typed with a lot more calm than he felt:
“
I won’t be around for a while. I’ve got some business to take care of.”
This was the plan, he reminded himself. Had been the plan from the start. To begin this on the first day of the month, knowing he’d have to go back to New Orleans on the second. A fail-safe measure for his own obsessive stupidity. He’d hoped that after getting a taste of her, he’d come back to his senses. Maybe even call the deal off before returning to Miami. Heaven knew she wouldn’t be the first girl he’d sent marching orders while out of town. With the more aggressive ones, sometimes that was the only way to get them out of your space without an in-person confrontation.
But it hadn’t worked out that way. The fact that he was standing in his guest bedroom, willing himself not to go back into her room to claim her sweet body all over again proved that.
“I want you here when I get back,”
he typed, letting her know leaving wasn’t an option.
Another long session of gray dots before her next message appeared.
“I’m sorry, but I have to ask, is your business
something bad
?
I can’t do this if it’s something bad.”
Of course she couldn’t. Not after what her father had done.
“No,” he
answered. “
What I do is completely legitimate…and time-consuming.”
“Good.
Sorry, I just had to ask.”
“You apologize a lot. Too much.”
“You might be right. I’m resisting the urge to type I’m sorry for saying sorry too much now.”
Gus found himself chuckling at the screen.
Then another message appeared
: “I would really like to know your name now. But you’re not going to tell me what it is, are you?”
“No,”
he typed back, a little sad about it.
No, he definitely wouldn’t be sending her any bouncing orders while he was in New Orleans. She was already getting way inside his head.
“Fine,”
she typed back. “
I’ll just call you Benny, then. Short for mysterious benefactor.”
The message was followed by a bunch of emoticons, including a smiling face, a thumbs up, and a sun.
But no hearts.
Fuck, he was in trouble, he thought, as he typed one last message to her:
“Deposit the August check. See you soon.”
11
See you soon.
That was what he’d typed. Cera wasn’t sure exactly what “soon” meant in Benny’s universe. But it obviously didn’t mean the same thing as it did in hers.
Over two weeks after their first encounter, she found herself asking the six-digit number: “
I didn’t just imagine you, right?”
Almost immediately a message came back.
“Why are you asking me this?”
She shouldn’t have been surprised he answered so quickly. Over the past sixteen days, every time she’d texted him on a whim, his answer had come back, swift as if he’d been waiting by his six-digit texting device to give out answers to such scintillating questions as:
“How’s your day going?”
and
“Is there anywhere to get a decent Cuban sandwich around here?”
and
“Where do you keep the extra toilet paper? I don’t want to bother Hank…”
Now she found herself out on the balcony, the only space in the entire apartment that didn’t make her feel like a kept bird, typing,
“I’m a little afraid I misunderstood the assignment. Like maybe you just hired me to housesit?”
A few dots, then…
“You miss me.”
Not a question, but a sentence with a dot. Like he already knew it as a statement of fact.
“I miss having company,”
she typed back, feeling peevish. It was a particularly sweltering day, and even the South Beach breeze wasn’t doing much to lift the oppressive squeeze of the humidity.
“Where’s Hank?”
“Making lunch. That’s all he ever wants to do. Shop and cook.”
“He has other talents, too. Believe me, baby.”
“I knew it! His boyfriend, Leo, told me he’s a trained chef, but I’m thinking before that he was a Marine, right?”
“Special Forces.”
“Wow…okay, why does a legitimate businessman need a housekeeper with a Special Forces background?”
Dot-dot-dot, then:
“You don’t like shopping?”
She sighed at the obvious evasion, but answered nonetheless.
“I don’t really see the point in it. You’ve already given me so many nice clothes. And it’s hard for me to spend money. I’m always like, the money I’m spending on this dress could buy three books for my sister next year. Or maybe I could use it to hire a detective to figure out who you are. My internet searches of rich guys named Benny with South Beach apartments hasn’t turned up anything.”
Dot-dot-dot.
“You know Benny isn’t my real name.”
“I do know that, and that’s why I need you to tell me I’m not going crazy up in here, eating all these five-star meals Hank’s been making me, alone.”
“So you want to share a meal with me.”
Actually, Cera had only been making a joke, but as soon as she saw his text, she felt totally exposed, because yes, that was one thing she’d actually like to do with him. One of many things.
“Do you really care about what I want?”
she asked.
A very long pause. Then a simple message appeared on her screen.
“Yes.”
“SO IS THIS HOW MOST OF YOUR DINNER DATES GO?”
she texted with one hand that night, as she ate with the other. About twenty minutes ago, Hank had come out to the balcony, where she’d been reading a book and told her she’d be eating in her room tonight.
Having learned better by now than to ask him questions, she’d simply followed him through her bedroom door… and found the white bedroom transformed. The lights had been dimmed to romantic restaurant levels, and a small table with a long white cloth covering it had been set up in the middle of the room.
Hank had nodded toward a red dress, hanging on the closet door. “He’d like you to wear that tonight. I’ll start serving dinner in about fifteen minutes.”
She’d only need ten to change out of her shorts and t-shirt into the red lace midi dress, which had looked demure enough on the hanger but turned out to hug all her curves before pluming down over her knees.
However, she still didn’t beat Hank. He was already lighting a single candle in the middle of the table when she came back out of the closet. But he stopped what he was doing to give her a wolf whistle.
“You look almost as good as the main course!” he said nodding toward a large bowl. “Chicken and gumbo. Hope you like it.”
So that was what smelled so good. She should have known, but it had been so long since she’d encountered the used-to-be familiar smell, that she’d almost forgotten it.
“Seriously, you made gumbo?” she asked, grinning at Hank. “I’m originally from New Orleans you know.”
Hank just smiled and pulled a chair out for her.
She couldn’t help but notice it was the one facing the camera.
She tucked into the bowl of chicken and shrimp gumbo on top of a bed of rice as soon as Hank cleared the door. Then picked up the phone to ask Benny if all his dinner dates went like this.
Again, his answer came immediately:
“No.”
“So you’re usually in the same room?”
“This is the best I can do, baby.”
“Sorry, I know,”
she answered.
“Stop apologizing.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful. I know you’re busy and there’s probably a million other things you could be doing now, but you’re texting with me instead.”
“I’m eating, too.”
“Really? Hank made me gumbo. It’s pretty good considering we’re not in New Orleans. What are you having?”
“The same thing.”
“Seriously!? Where are you?”