Manwhore +1 (13 page)

“I have friends everywhere, Rachel.”

I turn back to him. “I only looked at a few ads and called to inquire.”

He’s so close his scent surrounds me like a cloak, heady like a shot of morphine in my veins. Hazy and nervous, I glance at the street behind him, and I shrug. Then admit, blushing, “I know your father’s interested.”

“And?” he presses, his green eyes capturing me.

“And I won’t work for anyone who’s against
you
. I’m Team Malcolm,” I whisper, flushing horribly.

“If you’re Team Malcolm, why don’t you come work for me?” he presses.

“Because . . .” I lower my voice. “Even if I’m Team Malcolm, I don’t want to be something to you that a thousand others already are.”

His eyes shine as he cocks his head. “Really. What is it that you want then?”

“You know what I want,” I whisper, lowering my face.

“I want to hear it,” he murmurs intensely under his breath.

Say it,
I think.

Don’t be scared.

You cannot fuck things worse than you already have.

“I want you,” I whisper, unable to look up at him.

I hear the sound of his low exhale, and when I peer into the shadows, his face is all I see.

“I’m so mad at you,” he murmurs to me, growling a little as he drags a hand over his face.

I’m breathing hard, as if I just threw myself off a cliff, and maybe I did. I can feel the yearning inside me trying to claw itself out of my eyes and toward him.

“Saint,” I breathe helplessly.

“So . . . fucking . . . mad . . .” His eyes are heavy-lidded, incredibly so, his jaw jutting out. “So mad I can’t see straight.” He stares at me as if there are a thousand fires of hell burning inside him. “I close my eyes and see you. Rachel. Your eyes. Your hair. Your blushing face.”

“Malcolm . . .” My eyes blur, and I add, pleading, “I’d do anything to prove that I’m loyal and truthful to you.”

His jaw clenches just a bit tighter.

“You hurt me,” he growls out as he looks at me. “I’m angry at you.” His jaw squarer than ever, his eyes brilliant as ever. “But I can’t give you up. I can’t give you up even when I want to. I don’t want to back off. I don’t want to give you up,” he says.

“Saint, I don’t want you to exorcise me, because nothing can exorcise me of
you
,” I say.

He looks at me. We’re at a stalemate. He flexes his fingers on my arm.

“You said you could make what I did go away. Make it go away, give me a clean slate,” I plead.

I reach out and touch his face. His gaze flashes. Eyes burning with desire and possessiveness.

“I want a chance.” I open my mouth to beg; instead I lift his hand from the steering wheel and press a kiss to the back of his hand, his knuckles. I nuzzle it and close my eyes, afraid to see him look at me in disgust when his hand smells so clean and good. “Saint, please.”

I lift my head and my lungs seize when I see his expression. He looks almighty, and all hungry, like a man returning home after being shackled away from it for decades. My pussy is damp and swollen.

He couldn’t look more dominant and possessive. But he hasn’t stopped me. So I kiss the center of his palm next.

His gaze is blazing like there’s a fire inside him, like he’s in the fires of hell and I’m the one who put him there. He takes my face and kisses the edge of my mouth. He draws me over the separation between our seats.

He takes the other edge of my mouth and lowers me to his lap.

Am I feeling a huge erection against my abdomen?

Yes, yes I am.

He wants me.

He wants me so much I shiver with the knowledge. He pulls me close as he drags his mouth up my jawline and toward my ear, taking his time, typical Saint.
You smell good
, he whispers in my ear, his fingers running up my belly, causing shivers all over me. He wants me, lust humming between us.

“I want to forget you, Rachel, but I know you’re right, you weren’t lying. At least not to me. You were lying to yourself. You told yourself you’d get to the truth of me and all that time, you wouldn’t admit that you were falling in love with me.”

I hold his gaze, my lungs leaden in my chest. “And if that’s true?”

“It’s true, Rachel.” His eyes gleam with tender possessiveness.

I blush and lower my face, and when he reaches to slip his hand under my shirt and his fingers skim up my abdomen, I whimper and halt him by the wrist. “No, Malcolm, no. You’re going to take me to the edge, and then I’ll be there alone.”

He groans. “If I go to the edge with you, I’ll never come back.”

“What happened to my risk taker?”

“It’s not just myself I’m worried about. It’s my cautious girl who, like my fine wine, comes tightly wrapped and packaged.”

I lift my fingers, touch the hard square of his jaw, abrading my fingertips with his five-o’clock shadow. “Break me. As long as you’re touching me. Shatter me. Use me. Just want me.”

Malcolm. Powerful and in control. I touch his lips with my fingertips, he’s tense and still. I shudder inwardly touching him, but he doesn’t move.

I lower my hand, burning red that he doesn’t move his hand on my bare skin.

He rasps out, watching me through narrow eyes, “You still respond to me like before.”

“I’m the same. I never lied to you.” My heart pumps in fear of his rejection, but I can’t stop myself from needing his forgiveness. “I wanted to be with you and to see you. I didn’t want to stop,” I admit, easing my hand up his silk tie. I feel his abs bunch under my fingers.

I let my fingers wander, never once taking my eyes off his stormy green ones.

He lifts his hand to tug on my ear. I squeeze my eyes shut when he speaks, surprising me with his thick voice. “I remember this ear . . .” He tugs it a little.

I open my eyes to find him staring at me.

I melt.

“When you tease me, it hurts.”

“No, this hurts.” He curls his hand around my arm and I respond a little, moaning in my throat. “If I put my hand on you, you arch to my touch. You push closer so every inch of my hand is on you. You look at me like I’m a bastard, like I gave you your every dream and then took them all away. But you still want my hands on you?”

“Yes. But I want you to trust me.”

“Trust you? Rachel, I don’t trust
myself
with you.”

I wipe a stray tear. “I want dibs on you,” I whisper, broken.

Our eyes meet for the slightest second and the moonlight hits his face so that he’s so beautiful it’s otherworldly. He grabs my face and inches his head closer, tilting his mouth to my ear.

“I miss you,” I blurt out, reddening when I hear myself say that.

“Do you? Miss me?”

“I miss you so much. I can’t forget you, and I don’t want you to forget me either.” I swallow.

He grabs my face and inches his head closer, and when I open my mouth to say more, he says, “Shh.” Careful like I’m fragile, he draws my face to his.

I shudder as his lips ghost over the corner of my mouth.

His voice is so textured, it’s hardly understandable. Warmth from his big hand seeps into my cheeks as he edges back and strokes his thumb over my lips. “We’re going to start back up slow and easy.” The forests in his eyes are deep with intensity. “And when I’m ready, I’m going to ask you to be my girlfriend, and it’s going to be the last time I ask, Rachel. If you say no, that’ll be the last no you say to me about anything.”

God, I want him to ask me now. I turn my face and press a kiss on his thumb and he uses my action to rub his thumb along my lips a little, like he did when he fed me wine.

Longing unfurls inside me like a ribbon, soft and warm. I can’t even describe the way I want him to kiss me again.

“Don’t tease me,” I whisper.

“I’m not teasing you.”

My eyes well up. “I want you to be greedy, to want all of me, like before, Saint.”

He grabs my face firmly in both hands. “Go out Friday with me.”

“Yes,” I gasp, “I’d love to.”

“It’s black tie. Do you have something to wear?”

I look at the violent tenderness on his expression, my lungs like rocks in my chest as I keep on nodding and nodding. “I . . . I’m sure I have something here to wear.”

“Go buy a dress, it’s on me.”

“No!” I laugh. “Sin.”

“Yes,” he insists. “There’s no more saying no, remember.”

My breathless voice is barely audible. “At what time should I be ready on Friday?” I ask.

“Quarter to nine? Starts earlier but I’ve got a long week ahead too.”

I know why, Saint. I know it’s because you need more and more and always more and I want you to want me like that, all of me.

And I know why you want me at M4, Saint.

Even when you were mad at me, you were trying to protect me. You still are.

“Still getting the moon?” I ask.

He’s quiet. Then, “Something like that.”

And silence again.

I step out his door, peering inside. “Thank you for my lifetime collection of wine,” I add with a little smile.

His smirk is back. “You’re welcome.”

We stare for a minute. From the shadows, his eyes gleam a pure male gleam as he looks at me. I hurt thinking this isn’t real, it can’t be real.

“I’m a challenge to you, Saint. You’ll finally get me and then you’ll be done with me.”

Before I can turn around to walk away, he grabs my hand in his. He pulls me closer to the door. Reaching out with his free arm, he snaps open the glove compartment, and brings out a pen.

My heart stutters when I recognize the pen.

It’s the pen from the hotel room.

I’m singed by his fingertips on mine as he brings my palm to his lap. His eyes blaze between his lashes when he notices me tremble, and his gaze never leaves my face as he scrawls something on my palm. Then he curls my fingers closed.

“Don’t underestimate me,” he whispers.

I savor the possessive way he looks at me as he speaks, so thickly it’s almost inaudible, as he slowly—torturously slowly—lets go of my hand. “Good night, Rachel.”

I feel his eyes on my retreating back as I head toward my building.

When I turn by the door, my sexy parts tingle as I see him one last time; he’s lounging back with an arm draped on the passenger seat, predatorily, with deceptive relaxation, but I’ve never seen eyes look at me so intensely as he stares at me through the open car window.

Helpless to free myself from his gaze, I feel for the door handle, manage to open it, and then exhale when I’m inside.

Shutting the door, I put my fingers on the glass. I can feel Saint through it and the rumble of his car as he starts it back up. I feel his chest under my fingertips and the energy of his being, like a bolt of white-hot liquid lightning flowing through my veins.

I force myself to go upstairs, then walk into my apartment and then lean on the shut door, breathless and I open my hand to read what he wrote.

Dibs.

“I
say the baby blue.”

“I vote the light pink.”

“Baby blue. The perfect event deserves the perfect dress, just like the perfect man deserves the perfect girl,” Gina argues with Wynn.

“I’m not perfect, but I want to look perfect tonight,” I tell them both.

“Your billionaire just struck gold with you tonight, you look like a million bucks—well invested and soon to yield.”

“Wynn!” I laugh.

“I still don’t get why you didn’t just bring him up to your room yesterday and let him stake a physical claim on you.”

“Because . . . we haven’t been together in a month.”

“Exactly why you shouldn’t have talked at all! What’s there to talk about? He wants you, you want him.”

I rummage through my earrings for a pair of small silver studs that bring out the gray in my eyes. “He . . . well, we’ve gone over it, I’ve told you two.”

“No, you haven’t. You get red and that’s it. You can’t talk about him without spacing out . . .”

I groan. My friends, Gina and Wynn, they want to know that I’m going to be all right.

“He read my article,” I say.

They’re looking impatient, their faces alive with anticipation. And I’m remembering. I feel his hands cup my face again. I feel his eyes on me again. His lips so close, and so far away. And suddenly . . . on the very edge of my lips. I look down at the palm of my hand, the invisible
Dibs
that unfortunately washed off after a week of showers.

“He asked me to go out with him tonight.”

Gina opened one of my wines and when she comes back with three foam cups, I tell myself—please don’t ever let Sin see we’re drinking this wine in foam cups. “Publicly?” she asks, handing a cup to each of us.

“Finally?” Wynn asks, taking a sip.

Setting mine aside, I nod as the butterflies fly fly fly in me.
Still
hidden in my closet is
his
shirt. I pulled it out of hiding last night—a shirt that brings back every memory—then I quickly stripped and slipped my arms into the sleeves, buttoning it up.

And that’s how I slept.

It felt like hot, sheet-clawing sex on my skin. I lay in bed, my hormones all crazed, telling myself that I’m not going to do anything sexy until
he
does it to me.

“And I said yes. And he told me to get a dress.”

He’d said it low but casual, as if it were the most natural thing for him to do for me, in his voice that never fails to get to me. Then I refrain from telling them the rest; that he marked my hand with a pen . . . and I went to my bed, and called my mother in the darkness, and told her . . . and unexpectedly, burst out crying from the happiness when I heard her voice.

“We’re doing this black tie thing and if it’s the last thing I do, I want to look incredible tonight,” I admit, looking at myself in the mirror above my vanity.

I haven’t looked this happy in a while—but I haven’t felt this happy in my life.

“This dress does the trick. The side slit is perfect, the strapless bare shoulders, the way it goes all the way down to your toes. You want to say:
you know I’m naughty deep down but it’s only for you
,” Wynn says.

“Oh please, like he’s not naughtier than anything we’ve ever known,” Gina groans.