Something in Nora’s voice sobered him up momentarily. He opened his eyes and Nora now sat even closer to him. She had something behind her back.
Zach reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. He raised his hand to her hair, pulled the ink pens out and watched the dark curls fall around her face.
“How long has it been?” Nora asked, her voice soft and insinuating.
“Thirteen months.” He didn’t have to ask what Nora meant by her question. He didn’t have to think before he answered it.
“How long’s it been for Grace?”
Zach took a hard breath.
“Less than thirteen months. Friday…she emailed me. Bill questions, addresses, all sorts of marital flotsam. She casually mentioned some bloke named Ian.”
Nora winced.
“How casually?”
“Not casually enough for me to not picture them in bed together. It’s my own fault. When we decided there was a chance our marriage was going to work—we made each other promise no secrets and no lies. I told her I could get over anything, even straying, as long as she didn’t lie to me about it. I hate lying more than anything.” Zach shook his head. “Here we are eight months separated and she still can’t lie to me about anything, damn that girl.”
Zach looked at Nora and saw something flash across her eyes, some secret worry of her own.
“I’m sorry,” Nora said and Zach could tell she meant it. Zach ran a single finger over Nora’s forehead and down her face. With his thumb he caressed her full bottom lip.
“Thank you. So what’s the new game? This one’s about to drive me to quit drinking.”
“Perish the thought. Ever played ‘I’ve never’?”
“I’ve never played I’ve never.” Zach knew he was as drunk now as he’d been in a long time.
“Fun game. Very easy. I say something I’ve never done, and if you’ve actually done it then you take a shot.”
“What haven’t you done?”
“A few things. For example, I’ve never…” She leaned in toward him. She moved close enough he could smell her perfume and even taste it on his burning tongue, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. “I’ve never let an erotica writer handcuff me to her desk and go down on me.”
Something caught in Zach’s throat. He looked into Nora’s eyes and felt the foundations of his resolve shudder. He’d never let a woman handcuff him and do anything to him. But tonight…he looked down at his shot glass.
“Never done that. Never will.”
“You sure about that?” Nora stared him down. He reached out to touch her knee, and she slapped the handcuffs on his right wrist. “Look familiar? I thought we should put your prankster’s gift to good use at least once.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“And you’re so turned on right now you can hardly breathe. Your pupils are dilated, your skin is flushed, and it’s not from the whiskey and we both know it.”
Zach met her eyes and said nothing.
“Thirteen months, Zach. You don’t need to be afraid of me anymore.”
He had a vague memory of standing on Nora’s porch thinking that if he crossed her threshold tonight for any reason other than her book everything would change between them. Zach took the shot glass in his hand. He looked down at the amber liquid and then back into Nora’s eyes. Raising the glass to his lips, he downed his shot. He watched a grin spread ear to ear across Nora’s face. For a single moment she was all smiles.
“Good boy.”
For someone he thought was as drunk as he, Nora moved with a swiftness and precision that almost terrified him. She pushed him on his back, yanked his arms over his head and cuffed his wrists around the leg of her desk. Straddling him at the stomach, Nora unbuttoned her black silk pajama top and let it slide off her arms. He felt the wisp of silk brush his face before she threw it aside and on top of his coat. Under her shirt she wore a black bra that revealed far more than it concealed. He couldn’t take his eyes off her curves, off her pale skin and shoulders.
Nora slid her hands under his T-shirt. Her hands on his bare skin sent every nerve firing. She bent over and kissed the center of his stomach. Unzipping his jeans, she worked them down low enough to expose the top of his hips. Zach inhaled sharply when she bit his hip bone.
“Nora—”
Nora rose up and covered his lips with one finger.
“Søren used to call me his Siren,” she whispered, bending over him until she hovered an inch away from his face. “He said the things I did with my mouth could blow any man off course. Don’t you want to know what he meant by that?”
Zach didn’t answer but Nora didn’t seem to care. She started at his neck and kissed her way down his body. A soft sigh escaped his lips as she took him in her mouth. Not even all that alcohol could blunt the pleasure of what her tongue, her lips did to him. Her hair covered her face like a veil. The tendrils of her curls tickled his stomach.
So long…it had been so long since he’d felt something so intense, so sharp that he could almost mistake the pleasure for pain. Zach ached to touch Nora but when he tried he remembered the handcuffs.
“Relax, Zach. Just enjoy.” Nora paused to kiss his stomach again. “Your only job right now is to surrender.”
Surrender? He’d forgotten how. He took a deep breath and laid his head back as she kept working on him. Pressure built deep in his hips.
“Nora,” he gasped a warning that she didn’t heed. He flinched hard and came with a ragged breath. Through the haze of alcohol and orgasm he saw Nora sit up on his thighs. She picked up the whiskey, poured it and downed him and the shot in one swallow.
She looked down at him.
“I love a whiskey chaser.”
* * *
Zach opened his eyes and immediately regretted the decision. He closed them again when he realized he wasn’t in his flat. He was still at Nora’s.
With grave reservations, Zach dragged himself to a sitting position. The movement jarred his already ringing skull and had the unfortunate side effect of jarring his memory into recalling last night’s events. Nora and he had… No, almost. Zach leaned back and rested his aching eyes. Shame flooded his system when he remembered how he’d succumbed to her and let her… God, he let his writer go down on him.
Zach opened his eyes again and looked around. He sat fully dressed and on Nora’s living-room sofa, not in her bedroom. Where she was he had no idea. He stood and wandered to her office but she was nowhere to be seen. He picked up her phone and called for a taxi to take him to the train station. He hung up and found the downstairs bathroom. On the mirror Nora had taped a note—“Morning, Sunshine,” it read. “Catholics-1, Scousers-0.” Zach ripped the note off the mirror and tossed it in the wastebasket. He noticed she’d left a toothbrush out for him and a bottle of aspirin. He made quick use of both. When he opened the medicine cabinet door to return the aspirin to the shelf, his eyes caught Nora’s name on a pill bottle. He knew he was being shamefully nosy but he couldn’t stop himself from squinting his aching eyes to read the label. Why on earth, Zach wondered, would Nora take a beta-blocker, the same drug his father had to take for his heart trouble? Zach couldn’t believe someone who seemed as alive and vibrant as Nora could have such a serious health problem. With a shaking hand, Zach returned the bottle to the cabinet and shut the door.
Stumbling from the bathroom, Zach heard a noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. Every part of him wanted to grab his coat and leave before anyone noticed he’d awoken. But he knew he’d have to face the morning-after awkwardness sooner or later. And after finding that terrifying pill bottle, he had to see Nora and make sure she was well.
He found Nora and Wesley bustling about the kitchen attempting to cook breakfast in a manner that appeared more combative than collaborative.
“Jesus H. Christ, Wesley,” Nora said with feigned anger. “Cheese omelets have to have cheese or they’re just flat scrambled eggs.”
“Woman, Wisconsin is out of cheese now because of your omelet.” Wesley smacked her hand as she tried to put more cheese on the eggs. “Set the table and stop being a backseat chef.”
Nora took plates out of the cabinet and Zach winced at the clattering sound of the ceramic dishes knocking against each other.
“Could we possibly use paper plates?” he asked as he stepped into the kitchen. “They’re quieter.”
Nora turned and smiled at him. He saw nothing in the smile but friendliness and concern. Had he imagined what happened between them last night?
“Morning, Zach. How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Coffee,” he said. “Please.”
“Coffee. I know that feeling well.” Nora poured him a cup of black coffee, which he took with gratitude. “We’re having breakfast for lunch. You should join us.”
“You okay, Zach?” Wesley asked. He stood with his back to the stove with a frying pan and a spatula in his hand. “You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet.”
Nora snorted a laugh.
“What?” Wesley asked.
“It’s a horse thing.”
“Of course it is.” She flashed a wicked grin at Zach as soon as Wesley turned his back. Dammit, he hadn’t imagined last night at all.
“I’m fine,” Zach said, answering Wesley’s question. “Hungover and disgusted Nora isn’t.”
“She was puking her guts out when I got home at eight this morning,” Wesley said, and Nora threw a napkin at him. Wesley batted it away with his spatula. “I think you both need a sermon on the wages of sin.”
“No sermons, please. Just greasy food,” Nora begged.
“Can you stomach an omelet, Zach?” Wesley asked.
Zach forced his eyes to focus on Wesley. He had a dish towel thrown over his shoulder as he stirred his eggs with expertise.
“I’m not sure I can eat anything…for the next week. The coffee is fine, thank you.”
“What were you two doing last night? Trying to be Hemingway or Faulkner?” Wesley asked.
“I was going more for Oscar Wilde,” Nora said. Zach looked up at her and she winked. “He was…Irish.”
Wesley didn’t seem to pick up her double meaning. He merely slid the omelet onto Nora’s plate and sat down to his own.
“Whatever we were doing was clearly a bad idea and will not happen again,” Zach said.
The smile fell out of Nora’s eyes. She started toying with her omelet.
Wesley took a healthy bite of his breakfast.
“I can make toast or—”
A blaring ring that seemed to originate from the top of the refrigerator interrupted Wesley’s question.
“Good God, what is that?” The sound bored a hole into Zach’s head.
Nora and Wesley exchanged a look. Nora stood and grabbed a red cell phone off the top of her refrigerator and silenced the ringer. Before she answered she checked the number.
“Shit. It’s not King.” She looked at Wesley with something like fear in her face, more fear than she’d shown yesterday at the book-signing. Zach saw the same fear mirrored in Wesley’s eyes.
“Is it—” Wesley asked, and Nora nodded.
She took a quick, deep breath.
“Yes, sir?” she said, finally answering the phone.
Wesley stood up slowly and started to walk to the door.
“Wes?” Nora said and Zach heard a quaver in her voice.
“What?” Wesley turned around to face her.
“It’s Søren.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Nora looked ghost-pale.
“I mean, it’s Søren for you. He wants to talk to you.”
Wesley’s eyes widened in shock. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Just talk to him, please.”
Wesley took the phone from her with obvious reluctance.
“Hello,” Wesley said and Zach winced with sympathy at the pain in the boy’s voice.
Nora stood with her arms crossed and leaned back against the counter. Wesley listened a moment and walked out of the kitchen, out of earshot.
“What on earth is that about?” Zach asked.
“I don’t know.” Nora seemed genuinely concerned.
“Søren and Wesley chat often?”
“No, they’ve never met, never spoken. Wes hates Søren.” Nora sat down at the table again. After what seemed like an eternity but what was probably only a minute or two, Wesley returned to the kitchen. He handed the red phone back to Nora.
“What did he want, Wes?” Nora asked.
Zach studied Wesley’s face. The boy looked flushed and fearful.
“He thanked me.”
“Thanked you for what?” she asked.
“For pulling that guy off you yesterday. He said that as he was no longer in a position to protect you, he was grateful you had someone who was seeing to your safety.”
Nora laughed a little.
“That sounds like him. What did you say?”
“I said ‘you’re welcome.’ I didn’t know what else to say. Nora, how did he even know about what happened?”
“If it involves me, he knows.”
“Why did he call me?”
“Because he’s Søren,” she said. “And he was grateful to you. That simple.”
“I didn’t pull that guy away from you for him, Nora. I did it for you.”
“I know you did. But Søren—”
“He still thinks he owns you, doesn’t he?”
“He still loves me.”
Wesley turned away from Nora. He picked up his plate and dumped his uneaten omelet in the trash bin. He looked back at Nora on his way out of the kitchen.
“I thought he was in your past,” Wesley said, and Zach saw the twin demons of sorrow and jealously in Wesley’s expression.
“I can’t help it if he doesn’t want to stay there,” Nora said.
Wesley left, and Nora started playing with her food again. She didn’t take a single bite.
“Nora, are you all right?”
Nora stood up and let her breakfast join Wesley’s in the trash.
“Come on, Zach. I’ll take you home.” Nora held out her hand.
Zach looked at her hand but didn’t take it.
“I’ve called a cab.”
14
W
illiam pushed her onto her back and forced her arms over her head. He’d done this so many times he didn’t even have to think about how much strength to exert to keep her down with one arm while his free hand bound her wrists to the bedpost. He pulled the knot taut but not tight enough that it would cut off the circulation to her hands. He would hurt her and hurt her but he would cut off his own arm before he harmed her. Looking down, he saw her face turn to the window. Sunlight poured in and turned her eyes and her pale hair white as the feathers of a dove. A soft gasp across her lips as he pushed slowly into her. Her head tilted back and a sob escaped her throat.