The Dirty Secret (9 page)

Killian spun on his drafting stool. He smacked his palm against the divider, and Bengt jumped to his feet, pulling headphones from his ears.

Starla huffed. “I need your sketches for the developer’s brochure, guys. We were supposed to have everything to the printing place last night. Didn’t you get my email?”

Killian peered at the calendar over his desk, and the faded reminder in yesterday’s grid. He swore under his breath.

“C’mon, Star,” Bengt said. “Everyone knows I never look at my email. If you really need something from me, leave me a voice message. Or tell Killian.”

She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t realize you had a secretary.”

Killian stood, forcing her to crane her neck to look up at him. “What exactly did you need?” he asked between clenched teeth. He was being a dick, using his height to be intimidating, but Starla’s snide comment pissed him off worse than her slap had.

She took a step back, off the bit of carpet that delineated his workspace. Her expression was wary, but her back was ramrod straight. “I have to have a concept rendering of each of the four variants of your houses. Just the outside street views. I can hold the printer off another day, but you’ve got to get them to me by tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Bengt’s jaw dropped and he drew a breath to protest, but Killian turned to face him, blocking her view. “Pad Thai for lunch, man?”

Starla said an icy “Thank you” at his back. Her heels clicked away.

“How the hell are we supposed to come up with four full renderings in a day?” Bengt asked.

“I’ll pull up iso drawings of the plans. We’ll print them out and then you’ll go in and sketch pretty shutters and Bob Ross us some happy fucking trees. But first, we go eat.”

He strode from the office, Bengt on his heels. When they passed Starla’s cubicle, she gave him a tight little smile. He didn’t return it.

“You two really need to kiss and make up,” Bengt said.

“I’m not kissing her,” Killian said. “And she’s the one who slapped me. It’s not my fault who her parents are.”

“It’s not hers, either. You should deal with it, you know. Talk to her or something. You don’t want to let that shit fester.”

“How come you don’t go after her, anyway?” Killian asked, signing them both out at the lobby desk.

“Just not into her. And she’s a bit more high profile than I can do, anyway. I start seeing a girl like that, I’ve got to mean it.”

“Even when all she wants is a fuck buddy?” Was that all he was to Vessa?

“She’s in the society pages, dude. We hook up for a scrog and get caught in the wrong picture? She’s got to hint at a secret engagement to avoid a scandal, the firm gets named, and just...no. Too much of a hassle. Neither of us want that.”

“In other words, your mother would kill you.” Killian didn’t ask what would happen if he were to get caught with Starla. Newspapers weren’t interested in a debt-laden junior partner from backwoods Kentucky. “So because I’m the pauper and you’re the prince, she goes after me, but not you? Because it’s safer?”

“Yep.”

“Huh, so money really can’t buy love.”

“She’s not looking for love, Killer, she’s looking to get laid.”

“By someone disposable.”

“Do you
want
a long-term relationship?”

“With Starla?” He coughed. “No. Jesus. I live on your couch. And she... No.” Did Vessa want a relationship? They’d made it clear the house came first on Saturday, but after, when the house was done, would they be done as well? And if not, where would they go?

The waitress at Taste of Siam remembered his usual, and still ignored Bengt’s attempts at seduction in exchange for extra satay sauce.

“How’s the house?” Bengt asked. “You going to be ready?”

“There is a huge squeak in the second floor,” Killian said, prying apart the disposable chopsticks.

“Oh, that’s bad.” Bengt winced. “No realtor is going to show a house with an unstable floor. Makes clients uncomfortable.”

“No shit. Especially a new building, when you can’t blame it on settling. And I think it’s gotten worse as the weather’s warmed up.”

“You’ve put a ticket in for it?” Bengt flicked a red pepper across the table, onto Killian’s plate.

“Four. Hopefully one of them will make it into the job queue.”

“You want me to—”

“No.” Killian shoved noodles into his mouth. “Seth will get to it, eventually.”

After they ate they went back to the office, and Killian manipulated AutoCAD files while Bengt stood over his shoulder and pointed. At three o’clock he left for the imaging company and ordered their variants printed on art board. The girl at the counter told him they were backed up, and it would be an hour before they got to his order. He was out the door before she’d finished her apology. He pulled up beside Vessa’s taupe sedan in the driveway five minutes later.

She’d painted the hallway walls the color of her milky coffee. The satin finish picked up the lighter shade of the wood on the floor, and she’d done her thing with the sheer layers, washes of the tones from the other walls. The light fixtures looked like old gas lamps, with chandelier bulbs and rust, the light bouncing up and down the hall in square patches.

Mirrors lined the walls, all different, all in ornate frames, gold leaf and old mercury glass with bubbles, plate glass with silver tarnishing on the back, hazy and clouded glass with ripples. They were staggered, hung so none were parallel and reflecting another into infinity.

Vessa stood on a chair, adjusting an octagonal frame with smoky glass.

“It looks like the French palace,” he said. “Versailles.”

She sighed and hopped down. “It looks like a carnival fun house. I’m going to have to spray paint the back of this one.”

The mirror shortened Killian’s frame, compacted his string bean arms into something athletic, a body more like Bengt’s. “It’s not so bad.”

“It’s terrible! You’ll have clients coming in and leaving immediately, because they look like they’ve put on thirty pounds. This one, however, can stay.” She preened in front of the oval mirror, arching her back in her hoodie, turning to the side and unzipping it another inch.

Killian stood behind her to see and shuddered at his reflection. He looked even skinnier than normal, like he was half a foot taller with the same body mass.

“That one is my favorite,” she said, pointing to a long rectangular one with an arched top. The glass had ripples in it and a veil of mist behind, old and warm and timeless. She met his eyes in the reflection, a distortion running over her mouth.

His skin prickled, the hair on his neck standing like she’d pulled it, at seeing them together. She was a mess of color, a kid’s paint set, the pigments mixed up and swirled, and him the jumble of bones behind her, his tie all fucked-up and sideways.

He pulled her to him, her back against his chest, head tucked under his chin. The marks on her neck had faded to yellow smudges. “It’s like we’re lurking in some foggy London alley,” he said.

“Oh, are we up to no good?” she asked, turning in his arms. She kissed his mouth. He chuckled and kissed her back. She tasted like her coffee and the sweetness that was just her, and as always, he rose to the occasion, cock hungry, hands grabby.

She pulled off his tie, dropped it to the floor, then unbuttoned his shirt, breathing hot kisses down his chest where the fabric parted. He let her, bemused, turned on, not pretending that this wasn’t what he’d come here for.

She found his nipple and sucked on it, and it hardened in her mouth, sending shivers down his spine to his groin, his knees. She unbuckled his belt and his pants fell away, then her hands were on his cock, teasing and pulling, fingertips playing with the clear stuff running from the crease in the tip.

She smeared it with her thumb and brought it to her lips, her eyes on his, flirting with her lashes. “Did you like watching me make you come in the bathtub?”

She ran her tongue over her thumb and then brought it to his cock, wetting the head even more.

“Yeah,” he said, an understatement. He’d liked watching himself make her come even more.

“So watch,” she said, dropping to her knees. Fuck, her mouth was warm and her hands were everywhere, sliding on his skin, guiding him between her lips, pulling him out again.

It was indecent, the way his cock looked in her mouth, her cheeks distorted like the mirror, filthy and hot. She only took him halfway, her hands working the shaft, and that was enough because the suction was, just, fuck—

She pulled away, lips pursed at the tip, tongue flicking back and forth at the hole where his cock was crying tears for her, so in lust with her mouth.

“Are you watching?” she asked, glancing up at him, mischievous and just, just...
dirty
. She drew him in her mouth, taking him deeper than before, slowly, and then released him with a swirling kiss on the end.

“Yeah,” he said.

“In the mirror?” Her mouth engulfed him again, and he looked up. In the glass, the view shifted from personal to voyeur, the curve of her spine, the lace of her underwear rising out of her jeans, too erotic, too private. He ran his hands through her hair because he wanted to see it, to see himself touch her while her body leaned back and forth with the drag and release and that pulling kiss with the swipe of her tongue.

“Is it nice?” she asked, keeping the rhythm with her hands, looking over her shoulder at him in the reflection. She turned then, hands on his hips and his shaft, and slid him between her lips, and
fuck
. He could see it, inch by inch, disappearing and sliding out again, all the way, the crown swollen and wet and—

“Yeah, it’s nice.” It was a private show, all his, pornographic. Her red mouth held that wicked smile on the release with the kiss at the tip, and then she stopped.

He held stone still, waiting. She let go with her left hand, moving the hand he’d set in her hair to the back of her head.

“Oh no,” he said. He was not going to fuck her mouth—but she grabbed his hip and pulled him to her, and some detached part of his brain tried to say
but she can’t reach high enough to pull your hair
, but his cock was between her
teeth,
for fuck’s sake, so she wouldn’t have to reach his hair to tell him to stop.

Two strokes later he wasn’t fighting her and two more he was thrusting, her fist around the base, keeping him from going too far. He let go, pushing into her grip and her sucking, sucking mouth, and he was groaning until it was too much, too intense on the skin. He pulled out, covering her hand with his, stroking as he emptied onto the hollow between her collarbones.

He slid to the floor. “Fuck,” he said.

“Do you like this tie?” she asked, picking it up off the floor by its point.

“What? No, not really.” His breathing was all over the place, head still spinning.

“Oh, good,” she said, and wiped the mess off her neck with it.

Killian stared at Vessa, too post-coital to even laugh. The alarm on his phone chimed, a deadline for something he was surely behind on, but he didn’t look at it. Time had no meaning anymore.

Chapter Nine

Copper Bath

“This is fun.” Killian fingered the bristles of an old detail brush that held a roll of toilet paper.

“It’s not finished yet,” Vessa said, running her palm over the swath of blank canvas hung like wallpaper. The bathroom on the second floor was an artist’s washroom, rustic and haphazard, but two walls were still bare, and she needed to buy towels.

“I’ve seen this,” he said, pointing to the postcard of the
Mona Lisa
with a mustache. “
L.H.O.O.Q.
means she’s got a nice ass, right?”

Vessa nodded, straightening a hand towel splattered with drips, like a painter’s rag.

“But what about the shower curtain? Venus on the half shell. Where’s the girl in the middle?”

He’d fallen for the setup, hook, line, and sunk like a stone. She stepped behind the clear plastic curtain painted with the angel boys and the goddess waiting to put the cloak on the missing Aphrodite in the scallop shell, and pulled her dress off over her head. She covered her mons with one hand and her breasts with the other, in Botticelli’s classic pose.

“Oh,” Killian said, his eyes filled with light and something dangerous. He reached one long arm into the shower and turned the cold water on.

Vessa shrieked and scrambled out of the icy spray, calling him every foul name she knew, while he laughed like a fiend. He caught her hands and pulled her to him, her arms up around his neck. She jumped, wrapping her legs around his waist, soaking his clothes with her wet skin in revenge.

He grunted a protest and pulled her closer, tight to his chest. “Hold still,” he said.

“Why should I?” she asked, panting, one foot on the towel bar for leverage. She shivered from the cold, her nipples so tight they ached, and shook her wet hair at him.

“Because I want to kiss you, and you’ve been looking at my mouth since I got here.” The murmur in her ear was rough, deep, thrilling, sending heat down to her belly. She arched her back and shoved her breasts against his oxford shirt, her body instantly responding to his voice. His head tilted to hers, a heavy drugging kiss, one arm under her hips, the other hand in her hair, supporting her while he seduced her mouth.

“It’s all I think about,” he said, hot words across her cheek. “The way your mouth tastes. I think about you at work, at my desk, at meetings, what it feels like to kiss you while I’m fucking you.”

He set her on the vanity. The marble was cold under her ass, and she clung to him for warmth, for his smell, laundry soap and male lust and coffee on his breath. He knelt, palm on one breast, mouth on the other, his tongue moving, flat, gentle, warming her nipple until it swelled, puffy and thrusting. Then he switched, heating the other, and she trembled, but not from cold.

“I don’t know what is sexiest,” he said, rising to kiss her again. “The way you smell, the way you taste or the noises you make when I’m inside you.” His hands fell to the top of her thighs, spreading her legs, two fingers finding her slick flesh, curling inside. “The way you feel—so much heat and so soft, and so, so, wet.”

He slid in and out, knuckles doing lovely things in lovely places, and she rode his hand, grinding her clit into the base of his thumb. She whimpered, reaching for him, palms pressing his erection through his slacks, before tugging down the zipper and squeezing his shape in his underwear.

Killian pulled his hand out of her, slowly, fingertips circling at the top of her folds. “Stay here,” he said. “Do not move.”

She almost called him back to tell him she was on the pill, but this was not intimate lovemaking on a bed, with delicate conversations about testing and safety. This was a bathroom sink screw, a rushed assignation with a man she met only here, with her bra and panties hidden in her bag like a stolen dirty book or a pirated porno, and that required a condom. The secrecy of it both comforted her and made her heart bleed.

He had the packet open already, and Vessa kissed him as she fumbled with his belt buckle, tasting herself on his lips. He’d licked his fingers after they’d been inside her.

His cock was rigid, thick with veins up the length, head flared and shiny. He was most sensitive just under the crown, she’d discovered, at the base of the slit, where the clear slippery drop rose when she pressed with her thumb. He exhaled, a hiss through clenched teeth, brushing her hands away to roll on the condom, and then he eased inside. The breath sighed from her lungs as if to make more room in her body for his cock.

“Like that.” He grabbed her ass to pull her onto him, pushing deeper. “That’s the noise you make.”

She wrapped her legs around him, working for the right angle, then she found it, chanting, “Right there, right there.”

“Like that? Right there?”

“Yes.” She pulled him closer and he lifted her, broad palms supporting her weight, their bodies meeting with perfect emphasis on his thrust. Her breasts bounced, heavy and swollen, like he was fucking them, too, from inside her cunt, a whole body fuck. She hung on to his shoulders, arching into his rhythm.

“How do you do it?” His eyes dropped to her chest. “How do you do this to me?”

She was close, right on the edge, working her hips on his marvelous cock, free, her body keeping no secrets from him. She locked her legs around his waist, taking him as deep as she could. He gave it to her, whispering, “Come on, come on, come on.” And she did, legs and arms flailing, but he held her, working her on him, and she rode her climax out, helpless on his cock, body shuddering while he held her and watched.

Her hips snapped with aftershocks. She reached for him, kissing his mouth. “Now you.”

He shifted the angle, long deep strokes that had her clutching at him again, and then he moaned, eyes shut, mouth open, impaling her so deep she imagined tasting him in her mouth as he came.

His arms fell away from her, limp, and she untangled her limbs while he staggered back, one hand on the condom, the other grabbing the towel bar for balance.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He laughed silently, his cheeks red. Vessa hopped down from the sink as he peeled the condom off his still-erect penis, and she swiped at her own stickiness between her legs with a square of toilet paper. She stepped out of the bathroom into the sunlight of her favorite room in the house, windows and ceiling peaks and a view outside at every turn. The floor squawked, protesting her weight as she rummaged in her bag for her underwear.

“I could take you again,” Killian said, “right now. And I’d still not last more than five minutes.”

She stepped into the lacy thong and matching bra, bought yesterday—her new second best, made of shimmering copper satin, the fabric orange one way, fuchsia the other. She’d painted the bathroom walls the same, a wash of orchid over marmalade. The bra pushed her breasts together, creating more cleavage, and she arched her shoulders back, posing for him in the sunlight.

“Do you want to?” She walked toward him, pulling his head to her mouth, kissing his bottom lip. “Do you want to bend me over the sink and take me from behind, so you can watch yourself fucking me in the mirror?” She took his hand, sliding his fingers under the lace between her legs.

Killian didn’t last five minutes.

Neither did she.

He begged her to return the next day, saying he wanted more, that he couldn’t get enough.

She couldn’t, either. She was addicted to him and their sex, his hot words and the way she opened up to him. It was liberating—that her body could be so completely honest with him—hiding nothing when he was consuming her. Her secrets didn’t matter when his cock was inside her—they didn’t define her arousal, her pleasure. It was only afterward, when he left, taking the heartbeat of the house with him, that she remembered it wasn’t truly theirs. When the house was done, they would be, too.

Vessa bought towels on the way to work, hyperaware of the texture, her skin alive under her clothes, impatient for his touch again.

The Pizza Piazza’s dining room was noisy with forks on plates, beer glasses on tables, the rattle of an empty straw sucking ice. She tied her apron around her waist and clocked in. The hostess gave her two tables immediately and a minute later caught her eye again, leading a tall man to one of the larger party booths.

She stared at his profile—strong nose, high cheekbones, easy mouth—and her stomach dropped to her shoes. She shook her head at the hostess and backed into the employee bathroom.

Vessa forced herself to take a deep breath. She hadn’t told him she worked there, but he might have guessed from all the boxes she’d brought, one meal a shift her only job perk. She hadn’t wanted him to know, the instinct of the out-of-work artist—that you were a failure if you couldn’t make it on your talent—even if tips made you more in a week than an entire run of a sold-out show. Then a delicious idea rolled over in her brain.

Biting her lips to bring out the color, she undid two buttons of her dress, pulling her bra straps higher. Her boobs were nearly falling out of the neckline as she left the bathroom. This time, when the hostess caught her eye, she winked as she sauntered into the dining room.

Killian was sitting with a woman.

“Who is that girl?” the hostess asked. “I’ve seen her before.”

Vessa froze in her shoes. Her heart stood still in her chest, and then lurched with an icy
thump
. The woman sitting across the booth from Killian had strawberry-blond hair, perfect makeup and a smart little suit that wasn’t a knock-off.

A drop of cold sweat rolled down Vessa’s neck and slid between her breasts.

“She’s Starla Jamison.” The name hurt to say, the consonants slicing her tongue like a pizza cutter. She couldn’t see Killian’s face, but his hands reached for the woman’s, his hands with the long fingers that had touched her hair, her face, between her legs.

“I’ve seen her on TV, haven’t I? Like at fancy things.”

Vessa closed the front of her dress with shaking fingers. “She’s the lieutenant governor’s oldest daughter,” she said without thinking.

“That’s where I’ve seen her. The tree-lighting ceremony at the capitol.” The hostess clutched two menus to her chest. “Are his other daughters as pretty?” she asked wistfully.

Vessa turned around and walked back to the kitchen. She knocked on the manager’s door and opened it at the shouted greeting. Her supervisor closed the computer window on a solitaire game and spun in the desk chair. “What now, Tessa?”

“I can’t go out there.”

“Why not? Are you sick?”

She swallowed. “You could say that.”

“At the top of your shift? You’d better be puking your guts out right now. How many tables do you have open?”

Vessa looked down and touched her midsection, wondering if she might throw up and if it would help. “Three.”

“Finish them and then go home. I want a doctor’s excuse on my desk tomorrow.”

She shook her head at her boss. “No. I can’t.”

“Look, it’s obvious you have something personal going on, but you don’t just walk off the floor like that. Take five minutes, pull yourself together and finish your open tables. Or else give me your apron and you’ll get your last paycheck two weeks from today.”

Vessa walked back to the employee washroom and sat on the closed commode. Her heartbeat was erratic and her breathing audible in the tiny bathroom. In the mirror over the sink she met her own eyes, wide under the costume makeup. Her lips were chapped, and her hair was a clown-colored jumble tufting out from a bandana made from a twisted Piazza napkin. The secondhand dress she wore wasn’t old enough to be stylishly vintage, or even coolly retro. Accessorized with the stained apron from her minimum wage service job, she was everything opposite the girl sitting with Killian. And there was no way she was going to
wait
on Starla Jamison’s table, even though she had no idea who Vessa was. Especially not in front of him. Even if it cost her her job.

A tentative knock tapped at the door. She opened it to the worried face of the young hostess. Behind her, across the restaurant dining room, sat the gorgeous redhead with the matte rose lipstick and the gleaming jewelry.

Vessa slid past her coworker and walked back through the kitchen. She untied her apron and laid it on the manager’s desk.

Her boss sighed. “Really, Tess?”

“My name is Vessa,” she said, and walked out the back door, still holding her dignity in place, and her secret, the one she had been paid to keep since before she was even born. Her full name: Vanessa
Jamison
Ratham.

* * *

“Well, to be fair, I’m sorry, too.” Starla spun her bracelet on her wrist. “Bengt told me you didn’t know. And I feel horrible about hitting you.” Her face wrinkled up. “Did it hurt?”

“As slaps in the face go, it was a pretty good one,” Killian said.

“Do you get slapped in the face a lot?”

“Nope, just the once.”

She covered her face with her hands, the jewelry clattering. “I feel so terrible. I don’t even know what happened.”

“It’s okay, Star. I’m fine.”

“It’s not okay. It wasn’t your fault. I was already pissed off, and you were just icing on a really big cake.”

The hostess came back to the table. “A bit of a mix up with our servers, folks. Can I get you something to drink while you wait for the rest of your party?”

“Rum and Coke,” Killian said.

Starla flipped over the menu and drew a pink fingernail down the wine list. “I’ll have a glass of Beaujolais.”

The girl walked away, mumbling, “Bojolay and rumancoke. Bojolay and rumancoke.”

“I’d just gotten off the phone with my mother,” Starla said, as if she were admitting to being the victim of a heinous crime. “And there you were, saying the same things she does, over and over. ‘Trust me, Starla, you don’t want to make the same mistake I did.’ Like she has such a hard life. Ugh. You were just trying to be an honorable guy, and I just
lost
it. I’m not so good at rejection, I guess. I mean, I’d have been fine if I hadn’t just gotten off the phone with her.” She glanced up at him, fiddling with the menu, then rolled her eyes. “See, this is where you’re supposed to say, ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ or ‘If we weren’t coworkers, I’d have asked you out ages ago,’ or something like that, so I’m not even more embarrassed for admitting I was butt-hurt.”