Manwhore: Chapter 22

We spend Sunday with the guys watching another White Sox game.

I fully intended to write notes on my phone to keep adding to my file, but I’m so relaxed, I’m letting myself chill out for a while.

I’m starting to feel comfortable with them—they’re like the noisy big brothers I never had. They both seem to have gone to some sort of function because they’re in suits, their ties discarded on the side, one’s jacket slung over the chair, the other’s over a sofa.

The announcer’s voice is saying something about a goal, or maybe it was a touchdown or whatever, and the boys are glued to the television screen. I’m sitting next to Malcolm, who is wearing a light blue cotton T-shirt that clings to his shoulders and light-wash jeans. He looks comfortable and commanding, sprawled on his couch. Callan and Tahoe are saying something about some player and Malcolm still has his eyes on the TV, occasionally taking a sip of his wine. That’s right, no beer for these boys. They watch their games with Pinot Noir.

A day in the life of Malcolm Saint. I laugh inwardly and try to focus on the game, but all I can think about is Malcolm’s arm behind my back. He looks so inviting in that T-shirt, all I want to do is cuddle up closer to him and bury my face in his chest and have him hold me to him with his strong arms. Instead, there’s about three inches of couch between us, which I deliberately put there for the same reason that I want to crawl into his lap. I need to calm down.

Just then, Malcolm drops his arm around my hips, and he draws me to him in one swift motion. I end up with my thigh touching his, and his arm around me.

“That’s better,” he says, satisfied with himself as he leans back again and keeps watching the game. Another sip of Pinot Noir.

Tahoe seems to have seen Malcolm’s little move, because he starts laughing. Malcolm shoots him a glare and draws me closer to him.

Men. I roll my eyes and bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. I turn to see Malcolm staring at my lips, which are pursed and lightly twisted in a barely controlled smile.

“This mouth,” he says, reaching down and using the pad of his thumb to pull my lips apart. He’s still looking at my lips as he withdraws his hand. He leans down to kiss me, and I freak and turn my head away. He just chuckles and places a big kiss on my cheek.

“Damn, I’ve never seen that before,” says Callan.

“What?” I ask.

He motions to Malcolm. “The king being rejected by a woman.”

“I didn’t reject him!” I say quickly. I’m pretty sure I’m blushing. I turn to look at Malcolm, and he has a slight scowl on his face. I’m sure he’s making a mental note to kick Callan’s ass later.

“You did,” insists Callan. “You’re gonna have to nurse that wound later.” He winks at me, and I feel Malcolm grow tense next to me.

“What? What did I miss?” says Tahoe, with his eyes still glued to the TV.

“Oh, nothing, it’s just that our boy here just got—”

“OOH!! FUCK YEAH! THAT’S RIGHT!!!” Tahoe shoots up from his chair and claps his hands together. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!!!”

I think something good just happened. Callan and Malcolm look back to the screen and join Tahoe’s little celebration. I feel Malcolm’s chest vibrate with his deep voice, and I feel my head instinctively sink a little closer to him.

He leans his head down to my ear and explains what happened. I nod, but all I can think about is how his voice sounds. Deep and manly. And I just want to crawl into his lap again.

He plants a kiss on my temple and looks back up at the screen.

This is too much. I try to move away from him, but he just tightens his arm around me. Fuck.

I hadn’t really been into baseball so much until now, and even though I’m so relaxed that I could tune out, Malcolm keeps reminding me that he knows I’m here with his stupid little touches. Sometimes it’s a kiss on the top of my head, or his hand on my thigh, or his thumb rubbing across the inside of my wrist. Each and every touch makes me dissolve and dissolve and dissolve. They’re little, insignificant touches, but they make my head swirl and my stomach flip.

I promised myself I wouldn’t, but by the end of the game my head is on his chest and his arm is holding me against him. Callan and Tahoe keep staring at us A) like we’re some kind of dinosaur/extinct animal they can’t believe is actually there before their eyes, and B) like we’re some kind of magical sight that might disappear in a blink of an eye. I can tell they’re not used to seeing Malcolm like this. And I feel like I’m playing with fire. I feel like the closer I cuddle into him, the more I relax into him, the more I let my head settle into the crook of his shoulder, the harder I’ll burn later.

At one point in the game, I stand up to get some air because I feel like I’m doing something I really shouldn’t be doing. It takes every single ounce of self-control I have to edge away from Malcolm’s huge chest and go to the kitchen. It’s like leaving bed on a Sunday morning, Malcolm being my own personal king-size mattress. The moment I leave I miss his warmth, his arms, the sound of his voice next to my ear when he talks. I remember I could even feel his abs move under my head. His stomach is rock hard. I shudder and focus on getting my cool back.

When I come back, I sit down with ten inches of couch between us again, hoping that I’m sending him a message. He doesn’t even think about it this time, just looks at me like I’m doing something funny, and snakes his arm around my hips again to drag me back to my place. Which, in his opinion, is under his arm and against his chest. And so we stay like that for the remainder of the game. Tahoe actually stands up at one point and gives my leg a little nudge because apparently I’m falling asleep.

They joke that it’s time for my afternoon nap, and Malcolm just tells them to shut the fuck up and watch the game. The fact is, I was actually falling asleep. He has a very comfortable chest—the asshole. I hate that he’s making me feel these things. I hate how I feel naked if I’m not next to him. I hate how I feel like a part of me has been ripped off if I’m not lying on his chest or his arms aren’t around me. And I hate how the guilt creeps up and starts to corrode me.

“Do your parents know you’re here? Bartender, you might want to check this girl’s ID again,” Tahoe says.

I glare. “Why do you insist on joking about my age?”

“T.”

Tahoe grins. “Yeah, Saint?”

“Leave her alone.”

I twist my hair up in a bun, suddenly feeling very female under Saint’s protectiveness. The sexual chemistry leaping between us is undeniable. The more I try to suppress it, the more I’m aware it’s there.

Tahoe laughs and reaches out to tap my shoulder, presumably wanting to tell me something.

“Don’t touch her, Roth,” Saint says.

Tahoe leans back. “Dude, do you have to have them all?”

“You can have your pick of anyone.”

“Well then—”

“Except her,” he says, not even looking at me to see if I agree. “I won’t say it again.”

He stands to go get more wine and Tahoe grins, while Callan leans across the coffee table. “He’s in a piss mood.”

“Why?”

“Old man is having a commemorative event for his mother. If Saint has a button, that’s it.”

“His mother? Or the dad?”

“The combination,” Callan says.

I can’t ask him anything else because Saint comes back and glances at me with all the concentration of a torpedo. He takes his seat and puts his arm around me and runs his thumb over the side of my neck, and I blush beet red, my body hot. “I like your hair up,” he tells me.

“Thank you.”

He smiles and runs his finger down my jaw like he does.

I exhale through my lips; I can’t believe how easily he arouses me. All of me. All my senses; hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch.

“Stop sweet-talking her, Saint, her ear is going to fall off,” Tahoe ribs him.

I study Malcolm’s somber, brooding expression as he sits quietly beside me. “Right? His talk is cheap but very, very sexy,” I tell Tahoe, trying to make Saint come out of his man cave. “He doesn’t have to worry. I’m so emotionally unavailable right now, he has no clue,” I say dramatically.

“Trust the man! He knows all the locks and bolts to go through to get a girl like you to open up.”

“I’m not a regular vault.”

Malcolm says nothing. I look at him, then lean in and whisper, as I trail my fingers up his chest, “I want to cheer you up, Malcolm.”

All that does is get him to shoot a frown my way. “Who said I needed cheering up?”

“Don’t sound mad. I can tell the difference between you being simply quiet and relaxed and quiet and mad.”

He takes my chin in his hand. “I’m not mad at you.”

Yeah, I guess. Still, I want to see that smile reach his eyes, I want to kiss his wounds better, but I know there are those that no Band-Aid can touch. What kind of wounds made such a hard, unemotional man?

I’m quietly pondering that when he drives me home that night. “I have something tomorrow. I’ll see you another day?” he tells me as he walks me quietly to my apartment door.

I really ache a little. I want him to share, but he’s a man, and we’re having a . . . what? A prolonged one-night stand?

“Sure, good night,” I whisper.

But before I go in, I lean back against the door, wanting him to kiss me.

So when he curls his hand around the back of my neck, I instantly go on tiptoe, wrap my arms around his shoulders, and meet him halfway. His kisses are my number-one addiction. One minute becomes two, then three, until he pulls away and looks at me. “I’ve got to go.” He runs his hand restlessly through the sexy disorder of his hair and heads off.

I want to call him back. He seems on edge and as if he doesn’t trust himself to be with me and in control like he’s used to. “Saint,” I call to him as he gets into the car. I consider asking him to spend the night, but he doesn’t hear me.

I scowl and go inside, then rub my hand over my chest. Did you want him to spend the night, Livingston? No man has spent the night here, and Gina would flip. It was better that he leave, right?

So what are the pouty feelings for? Did you actually expect him to invite you tomorrow, Rachel? Really? To his mother’s commemorative event?

Well, maybe I did. And I hate that the next day, I feel like a voyeur looking in on his pain as pictures flash on the internet. Saint, his father, their faces, the tension. The event is held in memory of his mother, who died of leukemia; his father hosts the yearly gala to raise money for a foundation in her name.

“Noel and Malcolm Saint, as we can see, are still not talking to each other. . . .”

I slam my laptop shut and go do something productive instead. I start scanning all of Gina’s fashion magazines. “Don’t unfold the folded corners,” she warns from where she’s on her laptop, listening to music on the living room couch. I untuck a folded corner and wonder why she marked the page. Maybe the cute boho bag? Or the yellow shoes the model is wearing? I’m mindlessly flipping, then I see his text message.

You busy?

My heart leaps so hard in my chest I forget the cardinal rules of not texting back too fast. I instantly text him back, No

I wait, my pulse fast in my body as the image of him standing tensely by his asshole father comes to mind.

Pick you up?

Where are we going?

Anywhere

Give me 5 mins

I leap to my feet and hurry to change. “Oh no,” Gina groans from the living room.

I slip into a pair of sexier underwear—white lace. White lace for Malcolm. Then I select a cute little skirt and top. I know Saint is closed off. There’s no real hint of his inner psyche, aside from his rebellious nature, in anything online that I’ve read. The fact that he texted me when I know he’s had a difficult evening makes me feel somehow protective of him in a way I’ve never been protective of anyone except my mother, Gina, and Wynn. I can barely stay inside my skin when I spot the Rolls out the window.

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” I tell Gina.

“Rachel!” she calls worriedly after me, but I’m trying not to hear that right now. I can’t. There’s no place in all of Chicago I’d rather be than at his side, and that’s all there is to it.

I climb in the car, my eyes hurting from my glimpse of him across from the bench I sit on. He’s cloaked in shadows, but some of the lights outside the window fall on his neck, his square jaw. His lips. As I grow accustomed to the dark, I slowly study the clear-cut lines of his features. He’s so handsome, with those emerald-green eyes and a secret expression, and suddenly the cool ice in his eyes warms when they fall on me. “You look edible.”

His voice ripples down my body. Quiet, but not cool as usual—warm. Quite unexpectedly warm, as if I’ve just heated up his whole existence.

“Yeah? I’ve got news for you,” I say with a sultry little smile. I value words, but Saint is a man who values action and I want to take some action tonight. I lift my fingers up, tug my sleeve a little to the side to reveal a creamy expanse of shoulder. “I am edible.”

“And I want a bite.”

Seized by my own desperate, growing, clawing hunger, I pull it downward, Saint’s face absolutely livid with lust.

“Where? Here?” I ask in a sensual whisper as I brush my fingers over my shoulder. I can’t even find words to describe how much I like when his voice goes rough like tree bark.

“Right there. I’m running my mouth up your neck, down your shoulders, your arm.”

My breath’s gone.

Like a living, breathing thing ready to devour the both of us, desire leaps between us, arcing from him to me, from me to him. “What else will you do?” There’s need in my voice: arousal. I can’t hide it, not from him.

“I’m going to make love to you hard, and then I’ll take you softly. Show me your other shoulder, Rachel.”

I do.

The car is rolling down the street now, but if you ask me, the entire universe is in this car, looking at me.

My veins sing happily over his stare as I drop my top sleeve as far as it will go, baring the most of my shoulder possible. Every day my desire for him deepens and intensifies, magnifying my attraction to him to a level I could have never imagined. I know him by heart now, the different angles his mouth twists to create each of his smiles . . .

“I’m going to run my tongue over its curve, dip it right where your pulse beats fast,” the Universe says. “Show me more,” he coaxes.

“Mmmm. You’re so greedy. Will anything in your life ever be enough, Malcolm Saint?”

He shakes his head very slowly, as if in warning, a tinge of amusement in his voice. “Nothing’s ever enough and it’s especially true when it comes to you. Show me more, little one.”

I tug my top down an inch, enough that he can see the top swell of my breast beneath my lace bra. He growls in his throat, and I blush and go warm as I straighten myself. “I was happy to hear from you, big one.”

He chuckles. Then, more tree bark, rasping over my skin. “I was happy you could see me tonight. . . .”

I angle my head a little and study him, the roiling energy circling around him. His thirst, his desire, his frustration evident in the fists at his sides.

My heart tumbles over itself to get to him.

“Rough evening?” I ask softly.

“It’s looking up.”

The ice that’s usually in his irises is completely subdued as he reaches out for my hand, pulls me across the car, sits me as close as possible to his side, and starts kissing my mouth, running a path to the shoulder I bared, running his fingers over the curve. Heat, moisture, the softness of his lips with the strong movements of his mouth. “Definitely looking up,” he rasps. “And you?” He nibbles a path up to my mouth. “What were you doing before I came calling?”

“Hmm. Let me think,” I say, pretending to think hard about it. “The real answer? Or the one you’ll like most?”

Shifting so I can watch my fingers slide up his throat, I run them to his square jaw, a jaw that is so stubborn—as stubborn as him—and I like that he lets me touch him like this very much.

“Both.” While he caresses my shoulders with his hands, his thumbs dip into my top, slowly tracing my collarbone.

“I was working.” My own thumbs run over the stubble of his jaw now. “But while I was doing that, I was anxiously waiting for you to text me and invite me somewhere.”

“Anywhere,” he corrects, husky.

“Exactly.” I press my mouth to the corner of his mouth, not even thinking of what I’m doing, acting by pure instinct now. “Are we there yet so I can gorge on you too?”

His arms tighten around me, and one of his hands slips under my shirt to explore the hollow of my back. “Rachel . . . I didn’t want you to see me when I’m not at my best.”

“On the contrary, I want to see you like this. I desire you, I crave you, and I want to comfort you and give you whatever you want.”

Hot lips nibble on my shoulder. “Then I want you.”

“Anywhere” turns out to be The Toy. Away from prying eyes and from the public—to my complete relief and delight—it feels like we’re in another world. The yacht is docked and the crew is not aboard, so it’s just Malcolm and I sitting in silence up on the top deck, both of us still a little sweaty from the hard, and then the slow, fuck he just gave me.

He’s wearing his black slacks but nothing covering his chest, while I’m wearing the shirt he was wearing not long ago. He’s brooding and silent, and I’ve never felt so protective toward something so large and strong before.

“M4,” I whisper, my cheek resting on his chest while the rest of my body conforms to his hard lines. “You do things by four so many times, I’ve noticed. Why four?”

We’re almost to our fourth time together. Are we over then too?

He exhales and sips the last of his wine, sets the empty cup aside, and we stare at the Chicago skyline. “I have a temper.” He stares into the distance, his profile thoughtful.

I reach for his hand on his knee and link my fingers through his.

He looks out, his voice coming lower, husky, almost regretful. “It was worse when I was young. Control is something that’s always taken me some effort. The staff kept quitting because nobody could keep me under control; the more they tried, the angrier I became. But my mother was the embodiment of patience. I guess this is why she could tolerate my father. She was patient, far more understanding than anyone should probably be. When I lost it, my mother said to count to three, and I’d argue that I had. That I’d counted to three—it didn’t work. So one day she pulled me aside, worried because my father has a temper too—she could predict the worst for me and the ways I seemed to push his buttons. And she told me I’d need to count to four. And that’s what I’d do. More than anything else, that’s what came with being a Saint. If you were asked for three minutes, you gave four. If you had to count to three, you counted to four. I do things in fours.”

“You even like foursomes.”

He lifts his brows. “Not with you. I enjoy taking my time with you.” He runs his hand up my spine, under his shirt. I shiver.

Shiver and want and melt.

And most of all, I’m crumbling to pieces inside and eaten alive with guilt over knowing such an intimate detail about him.

Heavy with feelings I can’t even process, I roll to my back to put a little distance between us. He props himself up on one elbow and flicks open the button of my top, and oh, god help me but there’s definitely more melting, melting, melting. I don’t protest, don’t move, only helplessly watch him pop a second button. Then three. Four. While the body beneath the shirt he’s parting open starts trembling in every centimeter.

I want to tease him, to lighten the intensity of the wild ache building in me. I whisper, barely managing to get it out, on a breath, “Take your time with me. It doesn’t bore me one bit.”

Four buttons. Five. And six. Until he spreads my top open and leans forward to kiss the center of my throat. The centers of my breasts. The center of my abdomen. And the center of my sex. Four kisses, then he nuzzles me between my legs. “I’m not one bit bored with you either, Rachel.”

I remember being so shy before. This time, when he flicks his tongue across my clit, I moan and spread my thighs wide open, rocking my hips up wantonly as I whisper, “Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm . . .”

“Hmm,” I whisper an hour later as he nibbles my ear, waking me from a little doze I was taking in the cabin.

“Your ear,” he rasps against the object of his delicious attentions. “I’m partial to it, and it matches your other one.”

I stretch with a smile, and he eases back to look down and watch me.

“I love it here on your yacht, it’s so peaceful,” I say, walking my fingers up his tanned chest.

“I’m never here alone. Too peaceful. I can hear my thoughts too well.” He frowns as he gets up from the bed and heads for his clothes. Dreamily, I roll to my side and stare at his absolutely mesmerizing physique as he jumps into his slacks. “Are you happy at Edge?”

I shake off the sleep fog, then sit up, one sheet clutched to my chest as I feel around in the bed for my underwear. “Why do you ask?”

“Rumors are it’s coming down.” He rams his arms into his shirtsleeves, measuring my reaction as he slowly starts to button up.

“I hope not. I like Edge very much.” Somehow I manage to find my panties and bra, and have to drop the sheet to get them on. “Why? Are you venturing into publishing . . . ? ” I ask, afraid.

He’s quiet as he tucks his shirt in, adds his belt—becomes Malcolm Saint right before my eyes.

“No, I’m not buying the magazine—that’s not where I see the money going. Businesses require time and vision. Reviving businesses is not where my passion is.” He looks at me for a moment. “Is owning your own business a dream of yours?”

“No, I want to write. I want to earn a good living so I can write more. More than more.”

He smiles. “You’re so little. I get a kick imagining those little hands typing up your big ideas.”

The fact that he thinks about me at all makes me butter.

He watches me dress. “So you see your future at that magazine even if you had a broader range of options?” he asks.

I’m taken aback. A grain of concern suddenly drops, like a tiny, uncomfortable little pin, in my belly. I think over my answer carefully.

“I guess . . . in a general sense, my ideal future is to feel safe in my career and, I guess, in my life. I want my mom to be and feel safe, and if I could help make the city physically safer for others as well, it’d be a dream. That’s the kind of thing I want to write about. But that kind of journalism takes time, and Edge has given me better opportunities than anywhere else. I feel linked to it, somehow. If it grew and I could grow right with it, that’d be a dream, it really would,” I admit.

He comes to sit on the bed and he edges forward, his expression intense. “Like, what would you like to do for the city? What’s your idea?” He tucks my hair back from my forehead with one large hand, searching my face.

“I don’t know. Change doesn’t happen unless there’s a huge collective effort, unless you’re very powerful.”

His lips quirk and his eyes glimmer with a predatory light that never fails to thrill me. “You’re sleeping with a very powerful man.”

I bite my lip. “Yes, yes I am.” I laugh and feel myself blush. He cups my cheek, and once again, I tuck my face into his palm, seeking his touch. “You’re not how I imagined you’d be, and I have a good solid imagination,” I whisper.

“That’s because you’re all good. Terrible things made me.”

“Oh no.” I laugh, but he doesn’t laugh. He’s quiet. “We’re all made of good and terrible things.”

“Are we?” He studies me again. “What do you see in me?”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“I’m a difficult man, I’m not easy to handle—some might argue I refuse to be handled. I’ll never commit to anyone—I never have, and I don’t think I ever could. You don’t want my money, you don’t want to party with me—not the way others want. You almost wouldn’t sleep with me. But then you come to me as if you want my protection, and it makes me want to be that man.”

I stare at him, quiet.

He’s always said I confuse him, and he looks so confused right now, I’m confused by his puzzlement too.

“Malcolm,” I begin, but what can I say? So many truths, and in the end, he’ll think all of them a lie. It breaks me to think about it all of a sudden.

“When my mother was diagnosed . . .” He pauses. “I promised I’d be there for her. By her side. She was given two years. She still had a year and a half left . . .” He pauses again but never takes his eyes off me. “She didn’t want me to know the leukemia came back. And when it was only a matter of hours, my father refused to let anyone tell me. He thought I should be punished for leaving the country for Tahoe’s birthday.” I can feel the blood drain from my face. “So you see? I’m no good with promises. But I’ll take your cause as if it were mine.”

“I’m so sorry. I . . . when my father died, I was too young. But I have nightmares sometimes about the way he died, alone.”

We share a stare.

“She died asking for me.” He looks away, then heads for his phones and other items, his jaw completely flexed.

“She knew you loved her,” I whisper.

“Did she?”

“Women know these things. My mother said . . . she knew even before my father did that he loved her. Women know these things. Your gender wasn’t made for subtleties, you need to be hit in the head with it, and sometimes love just creeps in even when all your doors and windows are shut to it.” He stares, and I add, “Everyone is born with a natural love for their parents.”

“You outgrow that love. There’s no point to love. Truth, loyalty—there’s something that lasts.”

Speechless, I’m not sure if I’m more surprised by the words or the casual tone he used, which only brings home that the sentiment is so completely natural to him.

The fact that he has no trust in love, any kind of love, astounds me.

I drop my face a little to hide the tender emotion I’m sure he’ll be able to see reflected in my eyes. My chest feels suddenly swollen with it.

But we have so many things in common—Saint and I. We love to work. We work hard, squeezing in a little fun but not much else. We’re both proud, maybe closed off. I also thought I didn’t believe in love, not romantic love like Wynn does. So why do I suddenly feel like changing my mind?

I finish dressing, unable to look at him again.

After the “truth and loyalty” comment I’ve gone quiet, very thoughtful because, naturally, I’m questioning what the hell I’m doing with him right now. What do I think will come out of this affair?

I didn’t think, I guess. I only wanted. I wanted, obsessed, and had to have, like a young, reckless girl. Like a girl he brings out, someone I’d never been until now. I’m acutely aware of his effects on this girl as he drives me home.

I should feel satiated, content, and happy by now. Instead I don’t want to say goodbye, and when he tells Otis to wait for him as he walks me up, I feel frantic that he won’t stay. That I’m not truthful and loyal, and he will soon go away.

“I have work tomorrow,” I say, just to give him an easy out.

“I have work too,” he says, but he keeps following me to the door, waiting behind me as I open.

I shiver when he nibbles the back of my ear, his hand running up my bare arm to caress the shoulder I teased him with hours ago when he picked me up.

“Do you want to come in?”

“Yeah.” He kisses my ear.

I can’t even explain the way my heart unravels in my chest, spreading warmth all over me.

Not wanting to bump into Gina like this, I press my finger to my mouth, hook my little finger in his, and pull him into my bedroom. We shut the door. He looks big and beautiful.

“Sit down,” I gesture toward the bed, my hormones already joining the party.

He starts unbuttoning his shirt as I go and slip into my Wildcat T-shirt. I walk back to my bed. He looks at me with that naughty curve to his lips, and from his expression you’d think I was the sexiest thing to come out of my university. I look down-to-earth, while he looks exquisite, his shirt stretched in all the right places.

Quietly I straddle him and unbutton the rest of his shirt while he eases his hands under my T-shirt, squeezing the flesh of my ass.

“Malcolm, I don’t have condoms. . . .”

He kisses me slowly, deeply, savoring me. “Don’t worry, I got us covered.”

In less than a minute we’re all set, all naked, and I’m pushing him down to my bed, delighted that he lets me straddle him. Run my hands up his massive chest. Watch him watch me move over him. I take him in my body, and my breasts feel heavy with need, tender from his fingers as he caresses them, raises his head and licks and laves the sensitive tips. He sits up with me, then, eye to eye, we move together. He pounds me with his hips, pulling me down harder to meet him. He comes fiercely, my orgasm tearing through me at the same time.

Our breaths come fast. He looks confused, awed, grateful. He wanted to break me, but I could almost see a crack in his huge, huge walls as we made love. Because that’s what it felt like. Strangers who should be fucking somehow ended up giving more and opening up more than planned. Content, I rest against the hard, warm lines of his body for a long time, his hands lazily trailing a path up the line of my spine.

I go out on a limb and whisper, “I like being just like this with you.”

“Do you?” he asks, his look soft and teasing, tender.

I nod.

He pats his chest. “Then come back here.”

I put my hands around his neck and curl into his chest. He smells like safe. Like strength. Like his shirt I now have tucked in my closet. He smells like control and power, and he also smells like sex and connection and happiness to me. I turn the feelings around in my being and then in my head, but I won’t be writing these words on my note cards. These are just mine, and though they’ll leave my mind, the feelings behind them, I know, will stay.

He says, “Hang on,” grabs his phone, then sends off a text. “You okay if I spend the night?”

I smile, nod. “Did you tell Otis that you are?”

“I did. You sure it’s okay?” His eyes twinkle. “We won’t get much sleep if I stay.”

“Who needs sleep with you in bed?” I grin; then he makes the bed squeak as he rolls to his side to watch his hand caress my abdomen on the way up. I watch my own fingers crawl up his throat, his jaw, and I whisper in his ear, “Help me keep quiet. I don’t want us to make noise.”

He rolls me to my back and sinks his hips between my thighs, his palm spreading over my cheek. He presses his thumb between my lips and strokes it against my tongue so that I can suck it instead of make noise. There’s such raw need in his eyes. Suddenly I’m jealous thinking of him giving this to anyone else. I’m so jealous I can’t claw my way close enough. A moan flows out of my mouth as I press my body upward. “Come closer. Come closer and tell me what you want, say it dirty,” I beg in his ear.

“Tell you?” he says in his quiet voice. “I’m going to show you.”

Watching me, his fist slides over the length of his erection until he’s grabbed the base; slowly, he introduces the head into my body. “How dirty?” he coaxes, eyes gleaming in the lamplight. “Rachel?” The desire in his voice excites me even more. “How dirty do you want it? How hard?”

He slides, inch by inch, between my legs, and stops midway. Warm hands take the backs of my knees, and then he spreads my legs over his square shoulders. The move opens me up like a flower, my pussy exposed. His hips settle between my thighs, deeper this time, and he enters me the rest of the way, and I take him with a long, erotic moan, the pressure of his cock entering me robbing me of my breath.

Alight with exquisite pleasure, my body’s throbbing for him. We both begin rocking in unison, seeking the ultimate closeness.

My nails sink into the back of his neck as my legs loosen so he can fold me over and get as deep as possible. His powerful body moves above mine in a ripple of muscles and a flex of hips and arms. God, the friction. The friction brings him balls deep. Every in-stroke brings his body to stimulate my clit. Slowly, but with expert control and powerful thrusts, he moves above me. Inside me.

The pleasure is exquisite torment: my senses attuned to his breath, warmth, weight, I don’t want it to end.

He fucks me hard, every controlled thrust bursting with power, his growls a low vibration in his chest until he has no choice but to duck his head and bury the gruff sounds against my hair, and me, in his throat. We undulate together, straining to get closer, and it feels so good, so right, that instead of slowing down, I let my virgin little bed scream for mercy.

There’s something so intensely good, a fierce connection—invisible but intimate—in waking up to find a man watching you sleep. It’s not the first time I catch Malcolm watching me, but it’s the first time I don’t start. The first time I open my eyes, meet his quiet stare, and feel a pool of heat in my stomach build and build as I slowly start to smile.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” He cups my cheek, and the brush of his thumb over my lips makes me turn my head into the touch and savor it a little. “Hmm,” I say, admiring how adorable he looks recently awake.

We have officially hit the “four” mark in the sex department, and a part of me wonders if this is it.

He looks at me with respect this morning, as if he liked all the sides of myself I showed him yesterday, and I can’t miss that glint in his eye that somehow silently tells me, I know how you like it. Lazily, he asks me about work, specifically he asks me what I’m working on. It’s the second time he’s asked me—the first was at the Tunnel. My heart leaps a little bit, but he’s too relaxed after all the night’s sex to notice.

I turn the topic around with a frown mixed with a smile. “Don’t you have work too? What are you doing in bed with me?”

“Getting hard.”

I laugh.

With a wry smile, he tilts my chin. “I had a good time last night.” He kisses me softly, no tongue, and it feels as intense as if he’d tongued me.

I count down to ten. Then I groan in protest as I wiggle out of his arm. “Be a good boy and wait,” I say. “I don’t want Gina to have a heart attack.”

I kick the sheets off, slip into my terry robe, and pad out into the kitchen to put coffee on. I come back into the room to brush my teeth and wash my face, then I ponder whether I should put on some makeup. I stare at my reflection. I look bare . . . my skin pale, my sad-panda eyes all dark and tired after last night. But my irises are glowing bright and I can’t really keep my lips from curling upward at the corners. I grab a lipstick and a brush, but then stop myself. It’s not like this is going anywhere, is it? It’s not like I want him to fall in love with me—it was just a hookup. So I force myself to drop the brush and to leave the lipstick where it is. Shaking my head at myself, I don’t bother primping when I go back out to check on coffee and then come back to my room with a cup for each of us in my hands.

In true man-form, Sin’s spread on the bed, completely useless and clearly spent from fucking this lady right here. The duvet is at his ankles, every inch of him bare, one muscled arm behind his head, the other stretched out under the pillow I was on. Fucking god, he’s glorious. I want to catalogue every detail of him—I know Gina will want to hear all about it . . . so will Wynn . . . but he’s in my bed, and I don’t even want to share the details about how he looks in it with my internal journalist.

“What’s that?”

Checking out the goods I carry, he sits up, the muscles of his arms rippling with the move, and smiles at me. When I automatically smile in return, I feel vulnerable, real . . . and human. Why I chose to open up to a guy like him is beyond me. But I feel like my walls are still not erect. I don’t want to put them back up yet.

“Coffee, or me?” I lift the coffee cup and my eyebrow at the same time.

His laugh is soft and raspy as he drags a hand through his rumpled hair, looking even more handsome as he tsks and shakes his head. “You don’t know by now?”

“How greedy you are? You’re right, I do know. I bet you want both.”

He flashes an all-mischief smile as he pats the side of the bed, calling me back to him.

I head over with the coffee, and when he takes his cup, I slide into bed with him. We sip coffee in silence.

Before I’m finished with mine, he takes my cup and sets it on the nightstand closest to him. In one smooth, strong move, he presses me down on the bed and I fall back, breathless as he braces himself above me, his arms long and taut. He takes my fuzzy socks off. His fingers brush my arches, and I can’t hold back a choked little laugh. “Your feet are ticklish, Rachel?” He’s amused. I love how he says Ray-chel.

I nod, growing more and more breathless.

He presses his lips to mine, hard, not forcing me to open up, just soft, warm, demanding lips pressing down. I feel myself yield; and I love how he softens the kiss the moment he feels my resistance vanish. And I love what he’s doing now, giving me some earlobe love, licking me, tugging and kissing my lobe, his breath warm on my ear. “You’re such a man-eater, Rachel. I’m disappointed we didn’t break your bed, though.”

He stands, and he is beautiful and virile and edible as he dresses. “How’s Saturday?” he asks.

“Excuse me?”

“How’s Saturday for you?”

“I, um. For breaking my bed? I might be free Saturday.”

He laughs lazily, completely relaxed this morning, all the tension from last night’s event with his father completely gone. He totally fucked it out of himself. “Pick you up at noon? Wear something comfortable.”

“Wait. What? Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

Butterflies in my stomach. Followed by tangled ropes, reminding me I can’t be feeling like this. I’m not a girl anymore, I’m not free to fall for a boy like this. Not this boy. I could not have chosen a worse time, an even worse circumstance, or a more elusive man to fall for. “Sin, no, I just remembered I can’t. I just can’t.”

He studies me; then he nods quietly. “I’ll call you, then.”

“I’ll be busy all week,” I lie.

I need space between us, I need to get back to the groove of work. He stops by the door and I already miss him—the distance between my body and his suddenly too much. God, what’s wrong with me?

A minute later he drives off to his office, I suppose, and when I can’t seem to work, I unhook my phone from the charging outlet, power it on, and, like an addict, already worrying about when her next hit will come . . .

On the other hand, I just moved some things. Saturday is great.

I step into the shower, then check his message when I step out and wrap a towel around myself.

Good

Oh typical. He’s so limited with words! I quickly wrap a towel over my wet hair and text back:

You know, I like words. You can totally use a few more

Good girl

Hahah OK.

I had a good time

Me too. I already miss you

Oh boy. Did I say that? I stress about it. Then before he can answer or feels obligated to say something like that, I quickly text:

Ok, gotta get back to work. XO

I set my phone aside and then take out my notepad, trying to write something, but I find myself doodling his name.

Malcolm Saint