Dangerous Lovers (134 page)

The fire was almost out so I added some more wood to it and then went to boil the water for the noodles. Frankie appeared when I was pulling a jar of sauce out of the cupboard. She grabbed some ice out of the freezer and hobbled over to the table and sat down, propping up her foot.

“I don’t think it’s that bad. Barely hurts anymore.”

I made a sound and added the noodles to the boiling water.

We made small talk. Mostly she asked me about Scotland and I answered. The conversation stayed the same while we ate and the storm still raged outside. Underneath the light conversation, a tension was building. I didn’t know if she felt it too or if it was purely my own frustrations starting to come to a head, but it made me feel restless and moody.

There was so much between us that wasn’t said, and the hurt I was responsible for would flash in her eyes every so often, there only long enough for me to recognize it before it was gone again. It was a relief when she went to bed, saying the events of the day had made her tired.

I thought once she was gone and I was alone, the tension coiled inside me would lessen, that it would go away. It didn’t. It got worse. It was like being away from her made my body want to search for her.

Maybe I should just admit it.

I wanted her.

I had feelings for her.

Frankie made me
feel
.

I growled in frustration. But even still, what I said earlier held true. There was no future for us; there couldn’t be.

The next thing I knew I was standing in her doorway, peering into her dark room at the bed, wondering if she was asleep yet. She wasn’t in the bed. She was standing at the window, looking out at the moon. She was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top, an outfit that left little to the imagination.

Lust slammed into me so quickly that I almost stumbled. The need to touch her, to claim her, almost had me across the room and pushing her onto the bed.

But I held back, needing to tell her.

“I’ve thought about it too.”

She jumped, my voice startling her, and she turned, glancing at me over her shoulder through the dark.

“Since the other night on the beach, I’ve thought of little else.” The more I did this talking thing, the easier it became. And when she looked at me like that, with her blue eyes wide like I was doing something extraordinary by just telling her what I was thinking, it made me want to make things up to say just so she would keep on looking at me.

“Charming, I—”

I held up my hand and she stopped. “I just wanted you to know that. I didn’t want you to think that I hadn’t thought of you at all. Because I have. You make me…
feel.
I thought I had bypassed that a long time ago. And that’s why we—why
I
can’t be with you. I can’t even think about being with you. Because it’s selfish. Because if I let you close to me, I would do what I do best. I would kill you.”

“Charming, you would never kill me.”

“Yes, I would. Just not the kind of killing I usually do. This kind would be slow. It would start with you pretending you were okay with who I am. I would take away pieces of you one by one until you were just like me: dead.”

“Charming,” she whispered, taking a step toward me.

“For the first time since becoming an Escort, I care if someone lives or dies,” I whispered. “I won’t kill you. I won’t take the only life I value on this earth away.”

“If you had wanted to push me away, you should have told me I was fat, thrown me out of the house, or left me out there today in that storm. But what you just said… those words… all they did was pull me closer to you.”

See, this is what happens when a guy tries to talk.

It backfires.

“I should have known you were crazy enough to twist what I said into something romantic.”

“Ahh, now you try the insults,” she said, a smile creeping into her voice.

“If I was insulting you, you would feel insulted,” I muttered.

“Hmmm,” she said, taking a step toward me.

“I’m not trying to pull you closer.”

She took another step and another. “What if I want to be closer?”

“Didn’t you hear anything I just said?”

“I heard.” She stopped directly in front of me, tipped her chin back, and looked up. “So you do this noble thing, you stay away from me, and you ‘save my life’ by not being with me.”

She hooked her fingers in the belt loops on the front of my jeans and tugged, bringing me that much closer. “But what about you?”

“Me?” How was I supposed to think with her hands in such close proximity to the fly of my jeans?

She made a sound of agreement and released my belt loops, but instead of pulling back, she ran her hands along my sides and across my lower back.

It was the first time she ever touched me… well, touched me first. Usually she didn’t touch me until my lips were devouring hers. Most of the blood flow left my brain and all rushed downward… into my jeans. I knew once the brain downstairs took over, I wouldn’t be leaving this room. It took everything in me to reach around and pull her hands away, to gently return them to her sides.

I didn’t look back as I left the room because if I had, I wouldn’t have left it at all.

It occurred me then the reason I spent so much time doing the wrong thing was because doing the right thing was too damn hard.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“
Butterfly - any of various insects of the order Lepidoptera, characteristically having slender bodies, knobbed antennae, and four broad, usually colorful wings.”

Frankie

I couldn’t sleep. I felt restless and hot, like someone left the oven door open in the house on a hot day. I gave up on the bed and left my room, wandering down the hall and stopping at Charming’s door. It was open and a small lamp beside the bed showed me he wasn’t in bed either.

The past two days had been like a rollercoaster ride. And the things he said, the words he whispered… it was official. He was it for me. That was the only thing I knew for sure right now. Well, that and I wanted him. Badly.

I wandered through the house, not finding him in the places I thought he would be. So I went down the stairs toward a part of the house I hadn’t seen yet. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I knew he was down there. The sound of his heavy breathing and swift movements beckoned me onward until I was standing in the open door of the most impressive home gym I’d ever seen.

It was huge. But it would have to be because sitting in the center of the all-white room was a full-sized boxing ring.

Charming was in the center of the ring, going through movements that up until now I had only watched on TV.

I stood in the doorway a long time. Watching him move was mesmerizing. His body was so fluid, so strong. It’s like he was exactly sure about every punch and jab he made. His skin glistened with the sheen of sweat and his usually perfect hair was ruffled and damp around his ears and forehead. The gloves on his hands were big. They looked heavy, but somehow strapped onto the ends of his arms, they seemed small.

He was in his element; that much was clear. The breath that whooshed and wheezed out of him as he practically danced around the ring created an odd sort of cadence that was like music as I stared.

I felt like a voyeur, like someone seeing something they weren’t meant to see… Yet the idea of turning away, of leaving him to his privacy, was more than I could bear.

I needed to see him like this. I wanted to.

The changes in him, the changes that started in L.A. and followed us here… I finally knew what exactly I was feeling. He was becoming human. Where he once seemed cold and shutdown, he now looked more alive than half the people I knew.

Butterflies with razorblade wings.

That’s how he made me feel. It was the feeling that plagued me since we had met, the feeling that took me so long to acknowledge and even longer to identify. It’s exactly what he did to me.

Because the way I felt about him…

It hurt, but like a butterfly, it was beautiful. He made me feel like I was walking on the edge of a cliff. Like at any moment the bottom could fall out of my stomach. At any moment, the cliff’s edge could tumble away and I would be left falling… plunging toward the unknown.

The fluttering in my belly was never gentle. It was as if a million wings were in there beating, making me breathless, but then the wings would come into contact with me and slice me open. Being with him hurt. Being without him… I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might be worse.

I noticed he was no longer moving. He was standing in the center of the ring, watching me.

I pushed out of the doorframe, the heavy door swinging shut behind me and banging with an ominous finality.

When I got closer, he grabbed the ropes around the ring and created an opening, holding them while I ducked inside, straightening to face him.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said, staring at his chest, following a rivulet of sweat that made a path all the way down his six-pack and disappeared beneath the thick waistband of the silver gym shorts hanging low on his hips.

“Me either.”

It wasn’t lost on me that the only thing separating me from him was the very flimsy fabric that made up those shorts.

“I didn’t know you had a boxing ring,” I said, my voice going hoarse.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

I was beginning to understand that. There were so many layers to him. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever uncover them all.

One of those butterfly wings nipped at my belly, causing a stinging sensation inside me.

I wanted to uncover every single part of him.

My eyes locked on his. Without looking away, I grabbed his arm, pulling the glove up between us. My fingers tugged on the string that kept the laces tight. It unraveled, loosening the hold the glove had on his hand. I brought my other hand up and gently, slowly yanked the glove off and dropped it onto the mat.

He watched me, his eyes heavy, as a thick cloud of desire grew between us.

I repeated the same process with his other hand until both of his hands were free. He reached for me, but I shook my head and laced my fingers through his. We stood there for a long time, hands clasped, staring at each other without saying a single word.

Maybe I was waiting for my conscience. Maybe I was waiting for him to turn me away. Maybe I was drawing out the anticipation until everything inside me was pulled so taut that I was sure I would snap apart.

None of that mattered anymore. All that mattered was the here, the now.

I released his hands and reached out, laying my palm against his stomach. His muscles rippled beneath my touch and my skin instantly became slick with his perspiration.

I stepped forward, done with waiting, and slid both my hands into the waistband of his shorts.

“Frankie,” he rasped, his voice stilling my movements.

Another one of those razorblades nicked me. If he turned me away right now, I would likely bleed to death. I raised my eyes, waiting for his decision.

“My name…” he began. “My real name is Oliver.”

Everything beneath my skin vibrated. I felt like I couldn’t stand still a second longer because all of the energy—all the emotion that was building inside me—was dying for release.

“Olly,” I said, trying the name out on my tongue. I liked it.

He must have liked it too because he made a sound in the back of his throat and nodded.

The damn broke. Whatever thin barrier had lain between us until this point was now completely broken. I pulled my hands up and leapt at him, jumping up and wrapping my legs around his waist.

He caught me, stumbled back a bit, but the ropes were there to steady us as our lips finally met.

I’d been kissed by many men in my life before I met him, but I couldn’t recall one of them now. It was like he was my first, my only.

“Say it again,” he said as he trailed kisses down my neck.

“Olly,” I purred and he sank to his knees.

He pulled back, robbing me of his lips, robbing me of the sensation of them upon me. His green eyes were practically electrified; they were so intense.

“Don’t ever stop calling me that. No one has called me that—” His words dropped away and he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Just don’t stop.”

I don’t know why, but tears filled my eyes. I whispered his name again and he lowered me backward so I was sprawled out in the ring and he was on his knees between my thighs, staring down at me with lust in his eyes.

He reached out, grasping the hem of my boxers, and yanked them down. I lifted my foot as he slid them off one leg and then I kicked them away, over beside his discarded gloves. I was still wearing a pair of white lace panties and a white tank top, but by the look on his face you would think I was completely exposed.