Hyde, an Urban Fantasy (31 page)

“You want this to be your life? Make everything about
her
? That’s a bad idea. It’ll kill you.” When she didn’t respond, he went back to searching the freezer. “You like pizza?”

“Yeah. How do you do it? Have a day-job, knowing what you are?”

He unwrapped the pizza, threw it in the oven and turned the thing on. Pre-heating was for wusses. Burnt pizza was a delicacy. “First off, I don’t have the four-day cycle, so that makes it easier. But even when I did, I still went to school, did dishes, brushed my teeth, same as everybody else.” He shrugged. “You do what you gotta do.”

“I need to be a bad person. Test your theory. I just haven’t figured out a way to be bad.”

He tried to hide his smile. “Okay, first lesson. Say ‘fuck’.”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“What, you can’t say it? It’s just a word.”

“I know. But I don’t think that’ll make me a bad person.”

“Say it then.”

She gathered herself, sitting up in her chair like she was about to address Congress. “Fuck.”

“Nice. Now mean it.”

She shrugged. “Mean it?”

“Use it in a sentence. Tell me to go fuck myself.”

“Go fuck yourself.” She giggled.

“Oh, Christ. You’re a lost cause.” He held a beer out to her. She declined. “Let’s try something else. Lie to me.”

“About what?”

“Ugh! This is impossible. How am I supposed to help you if you don’t at least try?”

She pinched her lips together in thought. “You’re an amazing man.”

“That’s better. How’d it feel?”

“I wasn’t lying.”

He coughed on his mouthful of beer. “Don’t do that.”

“What? Tell the truth?”

He couldn’t move, his breath caught in his throat. Why was she making it so difficult to push her away? “I’m not—”

“I hate you.”

He blinked, confused.

She grinned. “I was lying. I don’t hate you. I probably should. No, I
definitely
should, but I don’t. Let me try it again.” She squinted her eyes, considering what to lay on him next.

“Lie about someone else. Not me.” He didn’t want to hear any more of her opinions about him. Ever again.

Her eyes dropped to the countertop. “I’m totally okay with what’s happening to me. It’s fine. I barely think about it at all. I’ll have a totally normal life—husband who adores me, two or three babies, a dog, a cute little house, a job I love—the works.” When she looked up at him, his heart broke, a reflection of hers. He knew her pain, though he’d never even let himself consider having those things she’d obviously dreamt of.

“That was good,” he said.

“The pizza’s burning.”

“Okay.” He took a breath, still holding her gaze. Then he smelled it. “Oh, shit. It’s burning!” He threw open the oven door and, barehanded, grabbed the paper tray he should have taken off before cooking the damn thing. The burn hit him a second after. He dropped it, half on and half off the door. He grabbed a towel from the counter and caught about a third of the crust, the rest in a cheesy puddle on the floor. “Shit!”

“That’s okay. I like burnt pizza. It’s a delicacy.” She leaned on the island and peered over.

“The pizza is fine. Kind of. It’s the tray that’s blackened. Do you like burnt paper?”

“It’s my favorite.”

“You’re getting good at this.”

“I know. I like it when my fucking pizza is fucking burnt.” Her smile was like the first ray of sunshine after months of rain.

“Fucking beautiful.” Oh, shit. He’d said that out loud. She was as surprised as he was. “The pizza. I meant the pizza—fucking beautiful.” He hadn’t convinced either one of them. Damn it.

“I can tell when you are lying.”

“What? No you can’t.”

She nodded. “Yes, I can. You have a tell.”

“What’s a ‘tell’?”

“Don’t you play poker? A tell is a gesture or something that people can’t stop themselves from doing. Whenever you lie, you do your tell.”

“No, I don’t.” What had he done? What had she seen as his tell?

She shrugged, walked around the island and started to pick up the pizza that he’d completely forgotten about.

He bent down to help. “I don’t have a tell, and I wasn’t lying.”

“I think you lie so often, you don’t know when you’re doing it anymore.” She ripped off a chunk of the pizza from the oven door and bit into it. “You’re a great cook.”

“Alright. Point taken. Now you can stop.” Scooping the mess of cheese off the floor with a spatula, he dumped it in the garbage.

You gotta work on your poker face, asshole.

§         
§          §

They spent the rest of the evening in front of the television, Mitch trying to hide his frequent glances toward her with awkward shifts of his body and feigned interest in the clock on the wall behind her. Eventually he realized the clock hands weren’t moving and started checking his watch.
Excruciating
.

“Where the hell is your boyfriend?”

“He’ll be here.”

“It’s ten o’clock!”

“Past your bedtime, Mitch?”

Huh, she really did call him Mitch. Why had he never noticed it before? Only two people had ever called him Mitch and gotten away with it—his father, because Mitch had had no choice in the matter and from whom he’d learned to hate the nickname, and Shelly, because she was the only one who said it with love.
Whoa, stop that connection right there.

“Don’t call me Mitch.”

Her eyes flashed at his tone. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was.”

“Call your boyfriend and tell him to get his ass over here,
pronto
.”

“I can’t. I don’t want to bug him. He’s on a date.  He’ll be here before twelve.”

“He’s on a date?” He felt his lip lift in a scowl. “I didn’t know you had that sort of arrangement. Score another point to your inner bad-girl.” Two more hours of waiting.
Shit
.

She straightened. “He’s not my boyfriend anymore. Actually, he was
never
really my boyfriend, so can we drop it?”

“Sure.” It was nice to see some of her fire, her sass. He turned back to the television. “You watching this?”

“No.”

He flicked it off and tossed the remote onto the coffee table.

“I hate waiting.” She leaned back on the other end of the sofa, sinking into the cushions.

“Okay, lesson one and two you have,” he said. “Let’s move on to lesson three.”

“What’s lesson three? Stealing? Coveting thy neighbor’s goods?”

“I suppose adultery is out of the question now that your boyfriend isn’t your boyfriend, huh?”

“Is that lesson three? Sex?” There was an urgency in her voice, an intensity he hadn’t heard before.

“No, that’s lesson five.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, you have another couple of things to learn before you need to start panicking about that one.”

“I’m not panicking about sex,” she said, watching him, her eyes darting to his body. “I just think it needs to be with the right person.”

“Wow, where you gonna find
him
?”

She paused, staring at him, not letting him break eye-contact. “I already—”

He threw out his hands and stood to get away from her. “No, no, no, no, no, little girl. Do not say what I think you were going to.”

“Is it so impossible to imagine?” Her whisper became louder, more confrontational, more entrancing. “I think I’m ready, Mitch. Are you?” She moved closer, advancing on him like a cat—slowly, but with far too much confidence for his liking.

What the hell?
“Eden. Stop right there.” Damn it, why was he always finding himself in this situation with her. Or with Chastity. It was like the body in front of him had its sights set on an invisible target on his chest.

“I want to—” She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath. “I want it to be
you
. I’m ready for lesson five, Mitch.”

He bristled at that name, but not because it was unpleasant. And that scared the shit out of him. He backed away, bumping into furniture but unwilling to take his eyes off her for a second. The rest of his body had a different opinion though. Every bit of him wanted to move forward and wrap itself around her, inside of her.

“This is a bad idea, Eden. A really fucking bad idea.”

She glanced at his crotch and blushed. “But it’s not impossible.”

He rolled his eyes and cursed his body. His ass hit the edge of a table. “Not impossible, but . . . What happens after? If we do this?”

She cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know. I guess we go back to being who we are.”

Who the hell are we?
“Is this about her? About being bad?”

“Should I lie right now?”

He shook his head.

“This is about being honest. With myself. With you. And, yes, part of me is curious beyond what it would be like to really
be
with someone. It would be a huge bonus if she stopped showing up so often.”

For once he was glad for her honesty. It didn’t help him decide if this was a good idea or not though. In fact, it made it a hell of a lot harder. “Just so we understand each other: I’m not the picket-fence kind of guy. If that’s what you’re looking for, you better keep looking.”

“I said I was waiting for the
right
guy, not the perfect one.” She smirked.

His body hummed. Maybe this was right for her, but what about him?
What would I do after only one taste of her?
 He closed his eyes.
Oh, shit. One taste. Shouldn’t have thought of that.
Momentarily freed from his indecision, his thighs tensed and launched him towards her. He swept her up into his arms and slid them both onto the couch.

She grunted as they hit, the full weight of his body on top of her, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Are you okay?” he asked. The couch was soft, she was soft, but he was as hard as a steel post.

She gave him a small, nervous grin and as much of a nod as her position allowed. “Yeah. Just . . . be gentle, okay?”

He took a deep breath of the small amount of air between them, bringing her scent along with it.
Gentle. Okay.
Could he do that? Had he ever done that? “You can still change your mind.” God, he hoped she wouldn’t.

“I want to.” Her face was flushed, her eyes bright and excited. She was so soft and receptive under him. Her body pressed against his, fitting with his like it had spent a lifetime there. “I’m just new at this.”

He smiled at her beauty and lifted himself onto his hands, giving her a moment to breathe, hopefully not to reconsider. “Tell me something I don’t know.” He felt her body tighten, but not in a good way, under his.

Her face changed—brow furrowed, eyes averted. “I—I never chose.”

“Chose what?”

“To do it. It was never a choice.”

Oh, shit.
Now his body tightened, matching hers.

“They never gave me a choice,” she whispered.

He pulled away with his eyes closed. “I didn’t know.”

She brought one of her hands to his shirt, clutching it like she didn’t want him to move away. “How could you? It’s not something I’d tattoo on my forehead.”

Balancing on one arm, he took the other and pried her hand off him. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything.”