The Dirty Secret (7 page)

Killian finished his lunch as he worked. The food, instead of giving him energy, made him even sleepier. He sympathized with Vessa’s request for a plumbed-in coffeepot as his eyelids grew heavy with the monotony of plotting line after line, another and another. The walls became a labyrinth and he couldn’t find his way out, a way to get home. She was there—the girl with eyes like butterflies and the padlocked mouth, in the house, in the bathtub, fingers in the hair at the base of his neck, whispering his name in his ear.

“Tell me what you want,” he said.

“Mm. I want a lot things,” she said. Her voice was jarring, next to him, not beneath. “But I don’t want them at work.”

Killian wrenched his head up, rubbing his eyes as Starla’s face came into focus. “I was asleep,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. She ran a fingertip across his mouth. The offices were empty, save for the janitor in the hallway. “You should come with me.”

“Where?” he asked, pulling away from her hand to yawn.

“A hotel room.”

“Starla.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. She followed, straddling his legs with her knees, and curled an arm around his neck. Killian shook his head and eased her off his thighs. “No.”

“Why not?” She smirked at the blatant bulge in his khakis. “You’re obviously interested.”

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Because I’m not that guy, Starla. I’m not the scumbag who sleeps his way through every student who works for the firm. And you don’t want to be the intern with the reputation for getting ahead by sleeping with associates—”

Starla reached back with one hand and slapped his face.

“Shit,” he said. His fingers came away from his mouth with a smear of blood. “What was that for?”

“Fuck. You.” She turned on her spiky heels and walked out the door.

The ringing in Killian’s ears took a moment to fade. He stood, his chair catching on the plans he’d shoved to the floor, modifications due to the contractors at the job site tomorrow.

“Don’t think she likes you, son,” the custodian said.

Killian walked to his pickup, tonguing the cut on the inside of his lip, utterly bewildered. Starla’s car was already gone.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and texted Seth: Need to talk to you about master bath mods, and possibility of getting them done by the open house.

Seth’s reply was immediate: It’s done.

His phone rang in his hands, startling him like another slap in the face.

“Who is this girl, man? She had the tile laid out and labeled. The corners and everything,” Seth yelled over the noise of a drill. “She had border block! The idiot-proof stuff for dudes who don’t know how to work a tile saw. That shit went up in less than two hours. And she sent my guys a pizza. Fucking gourmet olive oil shit!”

“What?” A surge of adrenaline went up Killian’s spine. “Was she there?”

“No.” The head carpenter shouted at someone, and Killian pulled the phone away from his ear. “They put the tub in this morning. It looks really good, man. Deb took pictures.” A truck in reverse beeped in the background. “Gotta go.”

“What about the squeak on my second floor?”

But Seth was already gone. Killian left half his tire tread on the pavement, peeling out of the lot.

Vessa was in the bathroom, folding a towel. The bathtub was full of steaming water. The room was gorgeous, ivory and amber and bright copper tiles, a crystallized honeycomb edged with gold leaf. Little boxes were mounted to the wall like spice cabinets, or advent calendars, a hundred secret drawers to open, knobs to pull. In the corner was a stool, also with claw feet, and the cushion was covered in the fabric that bathmats were made of, like fur. And the bathtub was full of water.

“What did you do?” he asked, staring in disbelief.

She took a step back. “What do you mean?”

“How did you do all this?”

“The construction guys did it, not me. They did a great job. Did you send them?”

He picked up a computer rendering from the pile of books next to her patchwork bag. It was modeled in three-point perspective from a thirty-degree angle, and in color. The one beneath was a bird’s-eye view. “Where did these come from?”

“Hurtz Imaging. The card was in the packet you gave me, with all the purchasing stuff.”

“You drew this? In AutoCAD?”

“Yes. From the drawing you did. It breaks down the square footage for buying paint. Made shopping for the tile really easy.”

“You know how to use AutoCAD.”

“Sure. Second semester of Set Design is nothing but technical drawing.”

The girl had no idea what she’d done. “Vessa. When you upload CAD files to the firm’s share-hold—” he stopped, chuckling “—it sends it directly to the contractor. The materials list goes to the wholesaler, and the job goes into the labor queue.”

“Oh.” She was still, watching his face. “Is that bad?”

“Yeah, for all the other associates waiting their turn for their tickets to get approved and entered.” He shook his head and dragged his hand through his hair. Hysteria bubbled in his chest, in his mouth. For once, he’d been first, and this girl with her rainbow hair and gold glitter eyes had made it happen.

She was wearing a dress and had a pencil behind her ear and always that way of watching him that drove him crazy. “Your mouth is bleeding,” she said. “What happened?”

The bathtub was full of water. He did not want to think about Starla. “I fell asleep at my desk.”

He turned away from her questioning eyes and ran cold water in the sink. The knobs were porcelain, the old-fashioned kind, white, with
H
and
C
in the centers. He bent over, scooping water in his mouth and spitting it out into the basin. He peered into the foggy mirror. His elbows were bent at awkward angles, hair as fucked-up as a chimney sweep’s brush, bottom lip swollen on one side.

She scraped a match on the side of a box. When the flame sparked and grew, she touched it to a candle sitting on top of the partition. The light flickered off the tile and bounced on the glass and the whole room glowed, and then she reached past him and flipped the lights off.

“It’s like being inside a geode,” he said. “Or one of those jeweled eggs that has a tiny piano inside that really plays.”

Vessa stood behind him, watching with her gemstone eyes that shimmered like they were part of the room. She lifted her dress over her head, and stepped into the bathtub. She had a pretty stomach and lush hips and her panties were simple white cotton, no frills. Her breasts were gorgeous, her nipples the same blush pink as her mouth.

The tub was taller than its predecessor, and she stood nearly eye-to-eye with him. He pulled at the knot on his tie, watching her and the way the candlelight snapped around the room and on her skin. She twisted her hair up onto her head with the pencil, arching her back, her chest thrust toward him.

“What is it,” he asked, “about seeing a naked woman that just does a guy in?” She was bare of everything except her underwear, and he was in everything but his tie. “Nothing else exists but you.”

He should kiss her, he knew, but that would mean closing his eyes, and if he opened them, he’d wake up and maybe get his face slapped. He toed his socks off as she reached for the buttons of his shirt. He pulled it from his waistband, fumbling with the belt. Her fingers trailed down his skin as she went—throat, chest, belly. He kicked off his pants, staggering, hand flat on the tiled wall for balance. She slid his shirt off his arms, her eyes everywhere. Her hands smoothed over his shoulders, palms over his abs, and then her fingers caught his underwear at the waist and eased them over his erect cock. He pushed them past his hips to the floor.

She sank down into the water, still in her little white panties, until the water just covered her breasts. Her eyes were on his, like his erection wasn’t there—like they were in a public pool, a hot tub. Casual.

He stepped in, somehow pleased she’d left on her underwear—that she’d set those boundaries from the start. Her panties were almost transparent in the water, revealing too much, not enough. He moved slowly, the water inches from the edge. The water was scalding, his balls tightening in protest as he sat opposite her, but the heat seeped into the muscles in his back and eased the workday from his spine.

She reached an arm out of the water to touch the tiles on the new partition. “Funny how one simple thing could change a room so much,” she said. “The glass block on top really makes it work.”

She was complimenting
him
for this? They were in a different world, a fantasy. One she’d created out of thin air.

“What’s the story where the woman is locked in a tower, and the god comes to her in a shower of gold coins?” he asked.

“Danaë.” Her eyes glinted. “Another Klimt painting.”

He moved, then, too fast, sloshing the bath. He pulled her to him, a tangle of limbs in the water. But finally he was kissing her, and she tasted like mint and heat and
her
—girl and surprises and things he had no name for.

“How do you do it?” he said against her mouth, and his hand slid from her skin on her back, over her ribs, and settled on a breast, the delicate weight of it in his palm like a treasure. He dragged his thumb over the peak and it hardened. She did the same to him, fingertips teasing his nipple, and a shiver spiked through him from his chest to his groin. Her hand dropped lower, palms over his abdomen, and lower, and—
oh, fuck
—she was touching his cock, exploring his skin in the hot water.

He lifted his mouth from hers, looking down at her hands, distorted by the ripples, cupping his shaft. She squeezed him, sliding fingertips on ticklish places that made him throb.

Killian pulled her to him to taste her skin, her breast, the nipple thrusting on his tongue—a different flavor than her mouth—and when he sucked her she cried out, arching, pressing more into his mouth, her hands leaving his lap to grab at his hair.

“I could listen to you make that noise for hours.” He pulled away to move to the other breast, working his tongue against her until she moaned. She pushed him away to kiss his mouth, and her hands fell to his cock again, her touch firmer, grip tighter, working his skin over rock-hard flesh, and—

“I’ll come if you do much more of—” But his balls were already drawing up, and he was panting for oxygen in the steam, thrusting into her hands, his cock swollen and flaring. And she was
watching
, lips parted, as she pulled it out of him to spill over her fingers, milky white in the water. He was helpless to stop the mess.

He stared at her, then down at himself, still twitching in the water.

“Better?” she asked, like he had.

He ducked his head, lightheaded and sheepish with the solo release. “Yes, thank you.”

Vessa stepped out of the tub, her thighs pink from the hot water. She wrapped a towel around her torso and peeled her underwear off, dropping it into the sink with a splat. His drowned cock rose with renewed interest, but she picked up her dress and slid it over her head.

“Which room should I do next?” she asked.

Chapter Seven

Living la Fee Verte

Instead of buying a couch, Vessa ordered four matching love seats, boxy, with a rough linen upholstery called Plumberry Tweed. It was the most money she’d spent in a single transaction in her life. She tipped the movers but stopped them before they pulled the plastic off. “I’m still painting,” she told them.

She took a cushion home with her to Brass and Bones. The proprietor fell to his knees when she walked in the door. “My heart, Vessa. You cheat on me with other furniture.”

The betrayal was forgiven with her choice of a Persian carpet, violet and gold, comfortably worn in the center. She picked out throw pillows, too, broken-in satin with ragged fringe, as soft and messy as Killian’s hair.

“You have a boy,” Manny said. “You wear dresses now, every day.”

“A girl can wear a dress for herself,” she said, not meeting his eyes. A girl could play in a bathtub
without
a dress, for herself. She could have a fling, too, with an intense man with a surprisingly filthy mouth and an impressive erection, all caught up in the sexy creative atmosphere of his seductive little house. He could be
her
secret.

Vessa pointed to a glittering pile of textiles on his worktable. “What are those?”

“Costumes. From a ballet.” He held up a pair of dragonfly wings, chartreuse and gold, sheer silk stretched over wire. A dress was attached to them, and a froth of pistachio tulle.

“Are they ready for sale yet?”

“They’re not in the best shape,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the stains in the bodice’s armpit. “They came in an auction.”

“They’re perfect,” she said. “Give me all of them. And that little chair, too.”

She took advantage of the van loan, stopping at the home improvement store to buy the thickest rug pad they carried, regretting the stop the second she stepped back outside. The sky was heavy with threatening clouds.

She drove to the development as fast as she could, pulling up behind the green pickup as thunder rolled in the distance. Killian stood at the door, keys in hand, gaping at the outrageous van with flames painted down the sides. Vessa bolted from the vehicle, tugging on the rolled-up rug.

“Help me get this in before it rains,” she yelled.

He grabbed the end of the carpet in one hand, and the little chair in the other. “Go,” he said. “The door is unlocked.” He dropped his end just inside the foyer, and ran back for the rug pad, making it inside just as the sky opened. “Are the windows rolled up?”

“Yes, but my phone is still in there.”

“It’ll be over soon.” He poked at the rug. “What did you get?”

“Let’s see if it works.” She tore the bag off the rug cushion and rolled it out onto the living room floor, then kicked off her shoes to stomp on the curling edges. Killian watched her, and she imagined herself in his eyes, manic and silly, but he toed off his own shoes, stepping on the opposite end.

They unrolled the carpet together. It fit perfectly over the foam, six inches longer in every direction. “This is nice,” he said. His feet left divots in the fibers.

“Take your socks off,” she said, lying back and sweeping her arms above her head.

He slid one foot out of a sock and drew a bare toe through the heavy silk pile.

“Very nice,” he said, but he wasn’t talking about the rug. Lightning split the sky again, and rain pelted the glass that faced the street. He stepped between her feet, nudged them apart, and slowly, watching his face, she spread her legs wide.

He knelt between her knees, bending forward to kiss her mouth. Thunder cracked, loud and close, and she jumped, clicking her teeth against his. He laughed low in his throat, a shivery seductive noise, and pulled away. “It’s another cliché isn’t it, kissing a girl while it’s storming out? But it’s a good one.”

He bit her earlobe, and she gasped as his mouth moved lower, teeth raking over skin, heavy kisses on her neck, hot mouth hard on tender skin. He drew her dress up, hands smoothing over her thighs, then pressed her mons though her underwear before palming up over her belly, cupping a breast and toying with the nipple through her bra. He moved down again, stopping at the waistband of her panties. “Can I take these off you?”

“Yes,” she said. Yes, this was going to happen, with the rain beating at the windows in this seductive house, with him, in this perfect moment, isolated from the world by the storm.

He folded her knees together with her feet in the air to slide her underwear off her hips, drawing an audible breath when she lowered her legs and parted for him. He cupped her again, then explored with a fingertip, and then two, until her hips were rising to him. He rubbed the bud at the top of her folds, watching her face as he learned the right touch, what made her moan and clutch at him, until he took his hands away and she whined in disappointment.

He kissed her mouth again, his tongue thrusting between her lips with a blatant reference to sex. “All I think about is you. Kissing you, tasting you, fucking you.”

She arched, hips flexing, and he leaned down to kiss her stomach, the top of her belly button, then lower. His lips found her, warm heat and slow tongue, following the places his fingers had been—hotter, wetter, sucking while she thrashed. She slid her hands through his hair, rocking into his mouth, until it was too intense, and she cried out and squirmed away.

“No?” He looked up, his brows snapped together, concerned.

“Not like this,” she said. “Not empty.”

He slid a finger inside her, stroking, and then another, bending his neck to set his lips on her clit, heat and suction, and holy
hell,
he had long fingers, much longer than her own.

“Not like this,” she whimpered, her body disagreeing, belly and thighs tight with want. “Not alone.”

He was off her like lightning, and staggered down the hall as he pulled at his belt buckle. He returned to her, shed his pants, then left again to lock the front door.

Vessa touched herself between her legs where his mouth had been, astonished by the slickness, the liquid between her legs.

Killian stood at the end of the rug, erection curving back up over his shirttails. “That’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He tore the condom open as he dropped to his knees between her legs. He kissed her, touching her cheek with his fingertips, and she could taste herself on his mouth, smell her own excitement on his hand. Then he was inside her. He waited, then he pulled back to give her more, and then more, so deep, filling her, slowly, carefully, until she was working with him, heels digging in the carpet, meeting his thrusts.

“Like that?” He bent to kiss her face, and stole the
yes
from her mouth.

He leaned on one arm, spreading his other hand on her lower belly, thumb pressing at the top of her swollen flesh, and with each stroke of his cock, his shape pressed back from the inside. She arched into him, surprised at how good it felt, how full in all the right places.

His eyes were on hers, watching. He pushed, a little more, a little faster, deeper. “Like this?”

“Yes,” she whispered, shocked as her body soared, the flush starting where they were joined, thighs to breasts to neck to lips. The swelling heat took over her body and wiped her mind as she came. Then she was nothing but the pink heat contracting around his cock.

“Oh, fuck, you’re beautiful,” he said, and then he went rigid over her, head thrown back, pressed deep up in her where the muscles fluttered and clenched and sighed.

He collapsed, giving her his full weight, and she ran her fingers through his hair, listening to his breathing ease back to normal, watching the fan blades turn on the light overhead, lazy and voyeuristic. Killian kissed her cheek and pulled out of her, then stood, one hand on the condom.

Vessa sat up, retrieving her underwear from the carpet fringe. Her legs were boneless, and she had the urge to giggle—and maybe to cry, her brain still in chaos. But then he was back, pants on, kneeling in front of her. He kissed her mouth softly with swollen lips, post-coital and tender.

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah.” And then she did giggle, and he grinned, red-cheeked and almost bashful. The rain had slacked off to a few fat drops steaming in the sulky summer sun.

He caught her as she stood on unsteady knees, one hand under her elbow. “You okay?” he asked, hands lingering.

“Very okay,” she said, and his smile turned smug. “But Manny’s going to think his van eloped to Vegas with a U-Haul.”

“That thing is one frightening vehicle.”

Vessa left before she started to giggle again, or confess that she’d never had sex so good, that she’d never come like that before. Not during, not while penetrated. No boy had ever taken the time, had paid attention.

She got in the van, looking back once. Killian stood in the window, hands in his pockets. What would it be like to see him outside the house? To have lunch in a restaurant, to make him dinner in her apartment? Not a good idea. At his house, they had all the privacy in the world, and she could leave if she wanted. But he didn’t need to know her sordid, pathetic past.

Manny gave her a dirty look when she dropped off his van keys. “You were gone a long time.”

“Less than an hour,” she said. “The storm hit at just the wrong moment.” Or at the perfect one. Her legs still felt wobbly.

Her landlord raised an eyebrow. “You better have put gas in it.”

“To the top.”

She drove her car to the print shop without going upstairs to her apartment. The woman at the counter remembered her and helped her load the images she’d found online, scaling them to fit the vintage frames Vessa had found at Brass and Bones. She parked back at the shop and walked to work early, her head still full of ideas. She tied her apron around her waist and clipped her hair back from her face, then punched in.

“You have to be kidding me,” her manager said.

“About what?” Vessa woke from her daydreams of sex and paint and pigments.

“I don’t care if you use makeup, a scarf, or a studded dog collar, but you do not go out on my floor with hickeys on your neck. Jesus. Didn’t you look in the mirror before you got here? You look like you’ve had the starring role in an orgy. Go home, Tessa. Come back tomorrow looking like you respect this place, me and my customers, or don’t come back at all.”

Vessa ducked into the employee restroom and gaped at herself in the mirror. Four rosy marks bloomed across her skin—under her ear, down her neck and just above the hollow at her throat. She touched one. The bruise was tender and hot. No wonder Manny had given her such a dirty look. He’d probably thought she’d had sex
in
his van.

She shivered in her clothes, feeling Killian’s mouth on her neck whispering about the rain. She ran cold water on a paper towel and held it to the marks. The makeshift compress didn’t cool her fiery skin, it only soaked the collar of her dress. Releasing the clips that held her hair from her face didn’t help, either—the humidity after the rain made it curl away, framing her neck instead of hiding it. She left restroom, tugging at her hair, her face hot with embarrassment.

Her supervisor was standing outside. “Take your apron off and go home. And next time, save the make-out sessions until after your shift, not before.”

The hostess, a high school girl in tottering heels, gawked at her as she left.

The streets were still wet from the rainstorm. Vessa walked home, furious, humiliated, and aching to have him between her legs again.

* * *

Starla handed out packets—slick folders embossed with Bergman & Bjorn in gold—to each person at the boardroom table, and returned to her position at the front of the room. Bengt opened his and elbowed Killian, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s the realtor’s promo pamphlets,” he told Bengt quietly. “Invites to the open house. Vendor lists. And the schedule.”

“I’m quite certain Bengt can read his own materials, Killian.” Starla’s voice dripped icicles.

Killian froze as silence choked the room. Mara Bjorn’s mouth pinched tight, and the older architects exchanged glances. They’d known about her son’s dyslexia since he was a kid, but the newer associates did not.

“Actually,” Bengt said, “I don’t have my contacts in. I’m flying blind today.”

“I’ll be going over everything in the packet,” Star said. “So there won’t be any need for Mr. Fitzroy’s interruptions.”

“Ookaay, then.” Bengt shot Killian a what-the-fuck? look.

“Please continue, Starla,” Mara said. She narrowed her eyes at Killian as the marketing intern began to speak, then her gaze flicked to Star and back to him, a blatant question in her stare. Killian shook his head at Bengt’s mother—no, he hadn’t slept with her.

Starla ignored Killian throughout the rest of her presentation. She gave a good pitch, and her choice of wineries was excellent—Bergman had designed their restaurant and tasting room. Best of all, she was fast—the meeting was over an hour ahead of schedule.

“What the hell was that about?” Bengt asked him as they left the boardroom.

“I apparently said something offensive.” He held out his hand. “Let me have your phone.”

“Should we head over to happy hour early? Seth and Deb won’t be there until after five.”

“I’ve got to run an errand,” Killian said, tapping the screen of Bengt’s cell phone, dragging a file to a text-to-voice app. “I’ll catch up to you. And here. There’s an email from Bergman about the Danby quarry account that you should listen to.”

He sped through town, escaping the early rush hour on the way to the house. He’d nearly called her twice last night—to ask when she’d be there, when he could see her again, if she would let him kiss her between her legs again—but he’d set the phone down each time. He’d never called her before, and doing so seemed like a breach of privacy, as if interacting with her outside the house would be an intrusion.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her and how she’d felt beneath him. The image of her lying on that rug, her legs spread, hands between them, waiting, and the languid smile on her face after her orgasm.

She wasn’t a virgin. She knew what she was doing, but there was an innocence, too, in letting him initiate, and her astonishment when she started to climax, like she’d not expected it to happen. He wanted to give her that over and over and over.