The Offer (15 page)

My eyes widen.
“You? You’re asking for a favor? From me?”

She seems to
shut down before me. I quickly reach out and put my hand on hers,
giving her soft skin a squeeze. She feels absolutely radiant to
touch and I don’t want to let go.

But she’s
staring at my hand like it doesn’t belong there. I remove it but
lean forward to meet her eyes. “Sorry,” I say to her, “I didn’t
mean to tease. What’s the favor? You know I’d do anything for
you.”

Arse. That was
not what was supposed to come out of my mouth. But I just smile at
her, keeping it cool.

“Well,” she
says, looking at the counter, “I was wondering tomorrow, if you’re
not busy, if you wouldn’t mind taking me and Ava to IKEA.” She eyes
me and quickly continues. It looks like just asking is bringing her
pain. “I wouldn’t be long. I just need a new couch and I don’t
think I can take the bus with it. I mean, I can try but—”

“I’d be happy
to,” I tell her emphatically. “It’s not a problem at all. What time
would you like to go?” I don’t bother pointing out that the
Mercedes isn’t exactly big enough for a couch, even if it is
disassembled into small, aggravating boxes but I figure I can
always swap my car for Linden’s Jeep if need be.

Her features
relax and she manages a smile. “You really wouldn’t mind? I don’t
know, whenever works for you. I’m not working so…”

Everyone knows
that Sundays at IKEA are a living nightmare so I suggest we get
there as soon as they open and beat the crowds. She agrees and
there’s a rare tickle in my stomach. I think I want to drown it
with my drink.

I’m still
smiling at her when Linden taps me on the shoulder.

“Bram,” he
says as I turn around. That blonde with the gold top is standing
behind me with him, looking at me expectantly. “This is Paige.”

What the hell
is my brother doing? I’ve never known him to try and set me up
before. He knows I don’t fucking need it.

“Hello,
Paige,” I say to her with a polite bow of my head, because I’m
anything if not fucking polite.

“I was just
talking you up to her,” Linden goes on but I’m looking back at the
bar. My drink is on the counter and Nicola is way down near the
other end, serving other customers. Bollocks. Linden sure fucked up
that one for me. But still. IKEA is on.

I pick up the
drink and take a sip – damn, that’s even hotter than before – and
with an internal sigh, turn around to face them. Well, since the
blonde is in front of me and she looks just as agreeable as she did
earlier, I guess I don’t really have anything to lose.

“You oughta
try this, Paige,” I tell her, offering her the drink. “I dare
you.”

“Okay,” she
says, still smiling but sounding a bit nervous.

“Here, I’ll
drink it first,” I tell her, having another sip and trying to hide
the burn from showing on my face. “Sweetheart, I don’t need to put
roofies in your drink in order to have sex with you.”

“Okaaaay,”
Linden says slowly. “I’m going to go now.”

He heads to
the washroom and I nod at his empty seat.

“Sit down and
drink up,” I tell her. “But if you cough once, you forfeit the
dare.”

“All right,”
Paige says, wanting to be a good sport. She sits down and I slide
the drink her way. She sniffs it before picking it up. Right before
she has a sip her eyes catch mine. “Wait, if I cough, what
happens?”

“We don’t know
yet,” I tell her smoothly, leaning in close so that my knee brushes
against hers. It feels all too easy to do this, to pick up a chick.
It’s just as much fun as a good shag or two. But at the same time,
there’s something prickling the back of my skull, telling me this
probably isn’t a good idea. I think that’s the same part of my
brain that doesn’t like me to have any fun. I call it Logic.

I watch as
Paige has a sip of her drink. To her credit though, she doesn’t
flinch. She gulps it down with a smile. I imagine she’d swallow my
cum in the same way.

Now Logic’s
friend Guilt decides to pop up. I’m not sure why, there’s nothing
wrong nor different about my thoughts. Nicola couldn’t give a rat’s
arse what I do or who I sleep with. I’m just her neighbor, her
landlord, and maybe, just maybe her friend.

For now,
anyway.

And perhaps
that’s what’s stopping me from going home with Paige. The very
minute possibility that one day down the road, I could be with
Nicola. It’s unlikely but I’m suddenly unwilling to put it in
jeopardy, not until I know for sure that the two of us have no
chance together, not even for a hot fuck.

So, though I
spend the rest of the evening talking and flirting with Paige, it’s
all in good fun. I don’t see Nicola again, nor do I see Linden, so
at the end of the night I ask if she wants to split a cab. She
enthusiastically agrees, talking about how I must owe her something
from drinking the drink so well.

But the only
thing I owe Paige is the cab ride home. When we get in the back,
it’s quite apparent from the way she’s rubbing my leg just what she
thought we were doing and where we were going. I mean, I had told
her something about fucking her earlier, hadn’t I?

Tonight, maybe
for one of the first times ever, I end up being a cunt-tease. I get
the cab to take her where she needs to go but when she gets out,
she’s stunned that I’m not following.

“I have to get
an early start tomorrow,” I explain, which is completely true now
that IKEA is in the cards.

She looks
pissed off and I can’t blame her. But still, she thanks me for the
ride and tells me I should call her when I don’t have something –
or anything – to do in the morning. Though she put her number in my
phone earlier, I have no intention of calling her any time
soon.

When I get
home, the events of the day have taken some kind of toll on me. I
feel a million different threads of want and need inside me, but
more than that, this nervous, buzzing energy that has no outlet. I
start thinking that maybe it was a mistake to drop Paige off, that
she could be sucking my cock right now and distracting my mind. But
who am I kidding? I wouldn’t be thinking of her at all and I know
that it would make things worse.

I hear
Nicola’s door open and the small chatter of her and Lisa next door,
muffled through the walls, and I wonder if I should go on over. I
almost do. I get up and go to the door, one hand on the handle. I
want to make sure IKEA is still on. I want to make sure she’s okay.
I want to thank her for the drink. I want to touch her hair, brush
it behind her ears and get lost in her lips. I want to know what
she tastes like – her mouth, her skin, her sweet little cunt. I
want to experience every last drop on my tongue.

I’m lacking
courage tonight. I stay in. Naturally the night turns into epic
wank-fest part two and this time, this time I am loud. I don’t hold
back and I don’t drown it out in music. I hope she can hear me.

I hope she
likes what she hears.

When I came
home last night, I was in a bad mood. I guess it’s not much of a
surprise that I wake in a bad one too. This was one of those cases
that sleep did nothing to erase the worries of the day before. It’s
still all there, simmering, and I don’t even understand why.

Luckily Ava
gets up bright and early so I’m used to getting out of bed around
seven am. I have no idea whether our IKEA excursion is still on for
the day and I’ve regretted asking him since the moment it came out
of my mouth.

I especially
regretted it when Linden introduced some hot blonde to him and she
immediately had his rapt attention. I don’t know why it bothers me
so much. I guess because for a second, I thought maybe there was
something more between us.

And yes, I
know, something more is something bad. Always will be. But when his
fingers brushed against mine, sending warm currents up my limb and
down the middle of my back, when his eyes seemed so focused on me
that I could almost see lightning in those grey clouds, I couldn’t
help but imagine, just for a second, what it would be like if he
were mine. Mine in bed, mine outside of it, it didn’t matter. But
the thoughts – the lust – was there.

Unfortunately
he ruined that pretty fast. I know what Linden was doing too,
wanting Bram to stay the hell away from me. I couldn’t fault him
and maybe I should have appreciated it. But for once, for damn
once, I wanted to make all the big, bad mistakes.

The ugly,
foggy light of a San Francisco morning puts things in a different
perspective though. I try and shove those angry feelings away and
wonder if Bram meant it when he said he would take us to IKEA. I
heard him last night, moaning away. I actually went outside into
the hall for a second, almost hypnotized by his cries, as if I were
going to act out my fantasy for real this time. But I never knocked
on his door, never opened it.

There’s a
knock on my door now, though. I have to blink a few times,
discerning if it was in my head or in real life. Then Ava says to
me, through mouths of scrambled egg, “It’s the door, mommy.” Her
eyes get bright. “Maybe it’s Santa.”

“Oh, I think
you’ve gotten those letters mixed up there,” I say under my breath
and get up to answer it. I give myself the once over in the mirror
and decide, in my sleeping shorts and camisole, my hair greasy and
my face dull, that I can’t possibly look any worse. I sigh before
opening it.

There’s
Satan all right on the other side, dressed in dark jeans, converse
and white dress shirt that’s the kind of thin material you wouldn’t
want to wear in the rain. Well,
I
wouldn’t want to wear it in the rain, he can gladly do
so.

He looks me up
and down but there’s no judgement in his eyes, only this slow burn,
like a subtle version of the look I got last night. “You do
remember we have a date right?”

I give him a
look, back on my defenses. “It’s not a date. It’s a favor.”

“I’ve been on
many dates that were favors and many favors that were dates.” The
corner of his mouth quirks up. “Mind if I come in?”

I gesture to
the apartment. “Come on in. I haven’t gotten around to the coffee
yet.”

“You must be
superhuman,” he says, striding past me as I close the door. He
stops by the table, his palm out for Ava. “High five, little
one.”

She smacks it
and giggles as he goes into the kitchen and starts making coffee
like he lives here. “So, Ava,” he says, his back to us. “How does
that song of yours go?”

“Bram, no,” I
warn. But it’s too late. She’s yelling it again at the top of her
lungs.

“You know,” I
tell him, raising my voice to be heard over her racket, “it’s lucky
that you’re at least one of my neighbors. I have a feeling the old
man to the left of here is going to complain about her singing one
day.”

“He can
complain all he wants, sweetheart, I’m the one in charge here.”

While he
puts water into the reservoir, I can’t help but ask, “So, how did
it all go last night?” I try to sound as breezy as possible but I
feel it’s a mistake saying anything. I don’t want him to think I
care. I don’t care. “I’m just curious,” I add in, as if that will
make a difference. Because I
am
just
curious. Nothing wrong with that.

“At the Lion?”
he asks, flicking the pot on and then leaning back against the sink
to face me. He crosses his arms and I do what I can to not focus on
the taught bulk of them.

“Yeah.”

He tilts his
head, inspecting me. “You were there. You tell me.”

I lick my lips
and then shrug nonchalantly. “You seemed to hit it off with that
girl that Linden introduced you to. I saw you guys leave in a cab
together.”

“Did you now?”
he asks. I love the way he says “now” with his accent, like “no”
but sweeter.

“Mmm hmm,” I
say, wishing I hadn’t said anything.

“And how did
that make you feel?”

What, is he
seriously asking me that? I give him a look. “I felt nothing except
maybe a bit of pity for the girl who will be kicked to the curb in
a few days.”

His forehead
crinkles. “Is that so?”

“Stop
answering me with questions.”

He lets out a
little laugh. “Fair enough. For your information, it went nowhere.
She went straight home from the bar.”

So the noises
I heard last night…I fill in the blanks. They were all him
again.

“And,” he
says, straightening up and sauntering toward me, his massive form
seeming to take all the space in the apartment suddenly, “for your
information, the date with Justine ended the same way.”

“Two nights in
a row and no sex,” I comment.

“That’s
right,” he says calmly. “It happens. Usually when my mind is
preoccupied. Why fuck somebody if you can’t stop thinking about
someone else?”

Oh my shit. Is
he talking about me?

Of course he’s talking about you
, I quickly tell myself. But still, even knowing
that’s probably true, there’s no part of me that’s prepared to
handle any of this. Bram gave up screwing both those hot babes
because he was thinking about me? Miss Single Mom with scars and
stretch marks and who, at the moment, is wearing the ugliest night
garment ever?

He’s joking
though. Beneath that smolder in his gaze, beneath that somewhat
wicked twist to his mouth, it’s all a joke like it always is. Bram
the jokester, Bram forever pulling my leg.

He
has
to be
joking.

“Mommy,” Ava
suddenly says, appearing between the two of us. It takes me a
moment to tear my eyes off of him and look at her.

“Y-yes,
angel?” I ask her, surprised at how my voice is shaking. I’m also
surprised at all the other feelings coursing through me, the
physical ones that make the situation extra inappropriate.