Insecure (25 page)

The draught from the stairwell was arctic, but his words were so damn hot. A shudder rippled through her, a fever rising. “Last time you left you didn't storm out in a temper. What makes you think I want you back?”

“You fucking drew me and you gave up doing that shit.”

She'd sketched him because she'd had no choice, but she had one now. If she let him inside, she wanted him to stay. If she let him inside, he had to know what that would mean.

“You're a difficult man.”

“You're not that basic yourself.”

“Basic?”

“You're more brain fuck.”

“What?”

“Your programming, the language you work in. I might never learn you.”

“You might not get the chance. You have to talk to me. You can't do this strong silent type crap, or it won't work.”

He nodded then answered. “Get me comfortable and I won't shut up.”

She doubted that. She'd never seen him chatty, but if he locked her outside his thinking there was no point. “You need to talk about what's bothering you.”

“I will.”

“You need to—”

“Kick me out or let me in and close the door, you're freezing.”

She let the door swing open and he stepped inside. She'd never wanted him to go in the first place, but he'd made her angry, made her think he really didn't want her now she was jobless and slumming it.

She left the door open. There was one last thing to get clear. “I don't have money to lend you.”

His lips twitched, his eyebrows shot down. He made an ominous rumbling, growling sound.

She held up a hand. Ironically, after demanding he speak, wanting him to shut up until she finished. “I have enough to keep myself going, but I gave a big chunk of my savings to a marathon victims' fund.” She dropped her hand, fully prepared to ask him to leave through the open door if this went sideways. “Now you can get all outraged.”

He opened his mouth and laughed. “I banked nearly half a million on the sale of Buster's house. I never wanted your money and I don't need it now.”

Not angry with her. She took a step back in surprise and closed the door. Not using her. It was her turn to laugh. He had more in the bank than she did.

“I do need you, Cinta. Tonight. Tomorrow. As long as you'll have me.”

She folded her arms across her breasts, aware her shirt wasn't hiding much, but his eyes were fixed on hers. “What is this?” Insanely good sex, some kind of connection, still, not something she could define. But she was cold, and he was the promise of such blissful warmth. He took two steps and he was in front of her, touching distance, and she wanted to touch so badly.

“This is two people mucking around together.” He took his jacket off and put it around her shoulders. It was deliciously toasty and it smelled of him.

“Mucking around?” He did mean the sex; well, she could live with that, her very own fuck buddy. She had the time now, and a relationship so casual was a good fit.

“Trying each other out. Seeing if their rough bits don't scratch too sharp. If their worn bits don't embarrass too much. Seeing if they can be better with each other than they are alone.”

Warmth crossed the barrier of her skin, like his words soothed her anxiety. “That sounds like a relationship.”

He gave her a raised eyebrow and then he spoke. “The start of one. Maybe.” He put a hand to his head, pushed it through his hair. “New language for me.”

But not for her. Just not one she was fluent in. It wouldn't be comfortable with him either. It was safer for her heart to stay alone. “We should keep it casual.”

He shook his head. “There isn't anything casual about us. We're already past that.”

He was right, they'd skipped past casual and crashed into the crush zone. Why else had she not been able to shake him from her thoughts? But she didn't want a total takeover, a merger of their lives. “I don't want to be tied down.” She didn't want to be so caught up in him she forgot what she wanted for herself. That was never happening again. “I might have to move interstate or overseas for work.”

He didn't appear to know what to do with his hands, finally folding his arms like she'd done. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“You call the shots. I don't care what rules you make. I want to be with you, I'll suck ‘em up. I don't, l go.”

She stood in the leftover warmth of him and he was close enough to kiss. She wanted to kiss him, but he confused her. Why would he give her control like that? He was a hothead, a rule breaker; she'd seen him in action and he'd admitted he flamed out at work. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I know casual,” he made that rumbling sound in his throat again. “I'm a fucking specialist in casual, and I know alone and I didn't feel that with you.”

“What did you feel?”

“Different.”

She held still while words he didn't say chased across his face. He sighed and his reluctance felt heavy, weighed down by his acceptance that if he wanted her, he needed to give up his password, let her access his thoughts.

“I felt challenged, but secure. I want that again, for however long you want to give it to me.”

She was warmer but she still shivered. Get this man talking and he said things that made you want to fall in love with him. “I don't know what to do with you.”

“Yeah you do.” He unfolded his arms; let them fall easy at his sides. “You always knew what to do with me. You took me to bed and you made me want you more than I've ever wanted anyone.”

She needed him to touch her. “And you let me.”

“Sure I did. Look at you. You're the most amazing thing I've ever seen.”

“Once.” She broke eye contact. “Not so much now.”

He put his hands to her shoulders. “I have money in the bank for the first time in my life, but only because the woman who brought me up is dead. It's more than I'll ever save if I work till I'm dead too. My business dream is over because we don't have finance, there's a competitor and they already have investors and markets. I need a job, but I'm obsessed with rebuilding the Ipseity platform, and I don't sleep anymore or eat properly. I'm a wreck and my prospects are wage slave.” Her eyes snap locked on his. “You're this pure shining star, this perfect sequence of numbers, just waiting for the right moment to explode with brilliance.”

“Oh my God, when you talk.”

“Told you I'd be hard to shut up.”

“I don't want you to ever shut up.”

He frowned. “You know when my tongue really gets untied.” Heat stole its way out of his hands and his jacket and into her face. In bed he had no trouble telling her what he wanted, what he was feeling and what he was going to do.

“I'm working on the idea you're not going to throw me out in the cold, at least not tonight. There's something I want to do.”

Her body swayed towards his. The pull between them stronger now than it was on the street when she'd thought he might be angry, but he'd looked at her with shock and admiration on his face.

“I want to take you back to bed, get skin to skin and with you, hold you in my arms and sleep.”

She laughed, all her tension resolved into an unrequited lust high.

He touched a finger to her bottom lip, traced it. “Eventually.”

She lifted her hands to his face, his cheeks scratchy. His jacket fell off her shoulders when she stood on her toes to kiss him, tentatively, teasingly. There'd be the rules of engagement to work out, or if not a regime as strict as rules, then protocols, ways to recognise each other and yet not forget their need to be separate, independent people.

She needed that.

He took her easy kiss and made it bold, rude, and addictive. An invasion of his tongue, the quick strike of grazing teeth, lips uncompromisingly firm and possessive. His hands stayed by his sides, while hers fumbled with his buttons. When they found his ribs, she felt his heart pounding under his skin. She broke off to look at his face. He was watching her, eyes heavy-lidded, the memo of his desire.

When he'd finally spoken it'd been confidently, but his pulse was racing. He'd been so uncertain about them, but he'd laid his feelings out anyway, courting rejection. She put her face to his chest, the smell of him; the soft fur. She dragged her mouth to his neck and his hands came up, hauling her t-shirt up her back, then over her head when she lifted her arms.

He caught her hands in the shirt above her head and held them there while he looked her over, slowly, with a gaze that made her shiver, raised the fine hairs on her body.

“You're beautiful, but I've told you that before.” He came close, his mouth skimming up her arm, his other hand on her breast. She was small, but he didn't seem to care and for once neither did she.

“You're body does mad things to me. Thinking about you gets me like granite. Being with you is bad for my sense of self-preservation.” She knew exactly what he meant. Her preservation instinct was extinct.

He rolled her nipple between his thumb and the knuckle of his first finger, languid teasing, then pinching. She gasped and arched into him. He laughed and pulled away to look at her again. It didn't matter what rules she made, he could touch her and they'd all crash, crumble, fall apart when they were together like this, because nothing she knew of was as good.

“I couldn't sleep till I'd had my fill of imagining you.” He rocked his hips into her belly and groaned at the contact. “I haven't jerked off so much since I was fifteen.”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah, almost as good as seeing God is watching you take me inside you, hard stone in your soft wet pussy. Fucking nothing like it. And I thought I'd lost you and all I'd have was the twist of you in my head. It was good, but this.” He broke off to drop her hands and palm her naked butt, while kissing her so demandingly she would've thrown the rule book out if he'd had breath to ask it of her.

They made it to the bed and he was rock and steel and all things hard, but he flexed like bamboo, strong yet pliant and wrapped around her like a ribbon around a precious gift so she was cradled in his shape and scent, in his motion and grip, and driven to a release that was both tongue biting hard and eyelash curling sweet.

She slept as heavily, as completely as he did, but woke before him, sun streaming into the apartment. He was curled around her, his hand on her hip, his knee folded into the back of hers, his arm under her pillow. He breathed deeply and he didn't wake when she shifted apart.

She was inordinately pleased about having Mace in her bed still, on a day she had no need to be anywhere else but beside him. The itch to sketch him again was strong enough to have her forgoing a shower for a quick wash and coffee for a pad and pencil. She pulled on her t-shirt and crawled back into the bed, and got lost in the wonder of him. He needed a shave and his face at rest showed his stress, the toll on his health. His body looked harder, his weight loss most evident in his face, at his hips and across his chest.

“What are you doing?”

She'd been studying his arm, the thick bicep tapering to his elbow; the curve where the muscle narrowed was particularly touchable. He looked at her with one eye half open. He took in the pad on her lap.

“Don't you need my permission for that?” His voice was raspy, half awake. He could ask for anything with that sleep sodden crackle and she'd struggle not to give it to him.

She struggled. “Finders keepers.”

He smiled and lifted his arm and he didn't look tired anymore. She dumped the pad and pencil and snuggled into the spoon of his body. He grunted happily, folding further around her, but she wasn't sleepy anymore. “Are you just going to lie there?”

He didn't answer, she half turned to look back at him—he can't have gone to sleep again that quickly. She caught the grin he tried to hide. “We could fool around.” She thought that might wake him sufficiently but she got nothing from him. “Mace?”

“If I kiss you, this fling will be over before I get breakfast out of you.”

She laughed. She liked the word fling. It was a perfect fit. “I think I still have the toothbrush I loaned you last time.” She lay a moment in his stillness. “We could talk?”

He rolled and pinned her beneath him. “Rather risk starvation.” He rubbed his scratchy cheek against hers, making her squirm to get away from him. She pushed against his shoulders and he rolled them again so she was lying over him, their legs tangled.

“Did your foot scar?”

“Yeah.” He pulled the covers back over them, but his hand was under her t-shirt, fingers splayed across her lumbar spine.

“How old are you?”

He squinted. “Twenty-nine.”

She sucked her cheeks in, he was younger. She'd expected to be Wentworth CEO at thirty-five or thirty six, thirty-eight if the board let Malcolm stay past sixty-five.

Mace gave her a shake. “I'm thirty-two. And if you give me that older woman crap I'll hurt you.”

He laughed and made as if he was going to lift her away, but ended up wrapping her closer. “Relationships are a new language.” He brushed hair away from her face. “There've been women in my life, but nothing long-term. I had Buster to look out for. She had Parkinson's for ten years.”

He'd spent his twenties taking care of someone. She'd spend hers selfishly pursuing her career. She propped her chin on his chest to look at him.

He laid his hand over her ear, rubbed the curled edge gently. “I was busy, sex was sport.”

He was a different kind of awesome from the tough guy she'd expected. “You had fantasies about me.”

He grinned and pinched her ear. “Not going there.”

She tickled her fingers up his rib cage. She really wanted him to go there. He responded with, “Give it your best,” but didn't twitch.

She was hungry and she needed coffee and a shower but that was a challenge. She'd get the information out of him before she let him out of her bed. She flattened her hands on his sides and slid down his body, shifting her knees so they were inside his, trailing kisses down his sternum and onto his abdomen, and making space for herself. He caught on fast, grabbing for her hand, lifting his torso from the bed, those abs laddering, to watch her progress.