Thursday.
At 4:01 p.m., I’m exiting my building.
“Oh, I’ll get the door for you, Miss Sheppard.”
Our neighbor from the third floor (who makes killer coffee cakes every holiday) seems to have been out walking her dog, her cat nestled in her arm. “Rachel, you look lovely with your hair down.” The cat purrs as she strokes the back of its ear. “I can’t even think of an actress as blonde and fair-skinned as you. Who did your makeup? It’s so natural.”
“My roommate, Gina.” I hold the door open for her. “She works in a department store, in cosmetics, and we’re trying out different looks on me.”
“Ah, yes. The day I have a ball and a pretty dress, I’ll go visit her.”
Her dog yaps at my ankle and I wince a little but stand my ground, then turn back to the street once she’s inside. I freeze. Instead of the Rolls, Saint’s black and shiny BUG 1 is parked just outside.
He leans against it, watching me. And he’s smiling. At me. He steps forward and says, “Hey.” To me. And I forget about everything. Even my name. Even that I’m supposed to be working today. My stomach contracts, and so does my throat.
“Hey,” I say, taking in his black suit as he opens the passenger door for me.
Oh god, what is this?
He offers his hand, and I look at it with dread and anticipation before slipping my fingers into his. He grips my fingers lightly as I slip into the seat, the touch lingering long after he lets go and closes the door.
Then he’s in the car, shutting his door and enclosing us in the most confined space we’ve been in since we met. His scent envelops me along with the leather of his car, and my lungs start to ache with every breath I take.
As I dressed, I kept telling myself that I didn’t need to look perfect because nothing would come of it. But I actually spent more time than ever thinking about what I was going to wear and wondering how he’d feel about it.
Dean sent a message instructing me to wear something comfortable because parts of the building were still under construction. I ended up wearing a favorite pair of worn jeans, a loose shapeless sweater I love writing in, and my warm boots, because I love having comfy feet. I’m a fan of chunky socks, my Uggs, and tucking my feet into anything soft and snug. But it doesn’t matter whether he likes it, right? Because nothing can come of this. I’m working, and he’s . . . well, he’s being nicer to me than I ever imagined by giving me a tour in the first place.
“I hope I’m dressed okay,” I whisper.
His green eyes run up and down my body, and suddenly more than my feet are warm as a small smile appears. He reaches an arm behind my seat and faces me completely. “I like this almost as much as I love what you wore the day we met.”
I cover my face and laugh. “You absolutely don’t mean that.”
When I force myself to drop my hands, he’s staring at me. I really have never been looked at the way he looks at me, with that glint of mischief in his stare, sexy, dark, and deep, roiling with the most exquisite promises. When he teases me like this, my flesh goes warm and things happen to me that could only be explained by collisions and particles and energy and chemistry. I can’t take it.
Without reassuring me any more about my looks or how much he likes or doesn’t like them, he gets the engine roaring to life, checks his mirrors, and sends the tires squealing as he pulls into the street. The next second, I’m flat against the car seat and without breath.
“This car is meant to be driven like you stole it,” he says.
He takes a curve a bit recklessly and starts to chuckle, the sound low and amused. “All right, Rachel?” He grins and squeezes my thigh, and I look up at him, the tingles of adrenaline and lust I’m feeling becoming bells chiming loudly inside me.
I smile and nod, but add, “You’re a devil, though.”
He slows down and starts driving like a normal person for the next couple of blocks, speaking low, with a sidelong, curious glance at me. “More devil than saint?”
“You couldn’t be a saint if we got you a halo.”
His lips tip upward, but there’s something about the smile that doesn’t reach his eyes as he turns back to the road. From the moment I met him, the air between us has felt different from the way it does when I’m not with him. Thicker, more electric, every glance or smile or word causing ripples in the atmosphere. But right now, inside his leather- and man-smelling car, I feel his presence with every breath. Every thought. Every move—those moves of his, as he turns the steering wheel, shifts gears. And those moves of mine: tucking my hair back, smoothing my hands over my sweater.
When we get to the Interface underground parking lot, he slides into the first empty slot, and I’m telling myself to freaking forget about his delicious ghost kisses as he removes his jacket and tosses it to his seat. But it’s no use; the glimpse of muscles rippling under the fabric of his white cotton shirt doesn’t help get my knees back into normal working order. He unknots his tie and pulls it loose, his biceps flexing under his shirt. My eyes—I can’t pull them away from him. I feel his call viscerally, right in the core of my being. I watch him, noticing the hair that fell over his eye as he raked his fingers through it just now.
A ball of tangled lightning is in my stomach as I follow him into the elevator and we ride to the top floor.
His textured voice suddenly runs like a feather down my spine. “Do you want to talk about Interface now?”
I tear my attention free from that beautiful set of lips of his to find him watching me. His stare is too keen and knowing for me to hold it for long, but I can’t look away, either. “I don’t know.”
“So you don’t want to discuss Interface?”
His voice is gruff, deeper than usual, and the sudden smile on his lips is absolutely sensual.
I bite my lower lip, uncertain of what to say as he takes a step forward, looking at me questioningly and also . . . expectantly. My heart starts thumping. I feel like something is happening. A hurricane called Malcolm Saint is happening. I’ve been dreaming of him—of us. Limbs, flesh, touching, those grazing kisses of his right on the corner of my mouth . . .
A prickle of nervousness tightens every inch of my body as he moves his frame to stand before mine. He stretches his arm along the wall behind me, his eyes glowing. He’s so close I can see the icy flecks in those irises, reminding me of other times, when those flecks seemed to have melted from warmth.
“Hey,” he says, running his thumb along my jaw as he suddenly smiles down at me.
He smells of soap. His nearness is lighting up my nerves like a Christmas tree.
“Hey,” I whisper, shooting for casual, failing miserably.
His closeness is unsettling.
He takes my fingers within one warm hand and tugs my arm up from my side, watching his fingers lace through mine as he holds my hand between us, at the level of our throats. “Ask me anything you want, Rachel,” he says, his thumb rubbing along the back of mine, the touch electrifying my nerve endings.
He reaches out with his free hand and strokes the note cards I’m clutching in my other hand. He peers at the top card. “ ‘Relentless,’ ” he reads out loud.
Startled, I jump into action and take the cards with both hands. His lips curve; he watches me shakily tuck the cards into my small bag.
You’re really unfocused, Livingston! I don’t know what to do, or what to say, only that this development is not good for Edge, for my career. For the exposé. Oh, fuck.
“You think me relentless?” He’s amused.
As I search my brain, frantic for an answer, I find him peering down at me with a sober expression.
“I’m much worse than that,” he murmurs.
The elevator halts.
Saint glances at the top. “We’re here.” We head outside. Marble, windows, everything new and recently cleaned. To one side are paint cans, the scent of drying paint mingled with plaster and plastic. The ceilings have cables poking out. It’s a masterpiece in progress, a visionary building for visionary people.
“Hey, come here, I want to show you something,” Saint tells me, watching me walk over to where he’s standing.
He leads me into a huge conference room.
I look at everything. “It’s beautiful.”
I realize he’s looking only at me. He looks at me like he wants something from me, like he wants something very much, and like he’s wanted it for a long time.
Aware that I’m blushing hard, I tear free of his stare and distract myself with the huge artwork on the wall to his left. The wall is so huge, I don’t recognize the splotches of color as I take them all in, but when I focus on each and every one, I do.
Here, covering one of his walls from end to end, is the huge canvas mural Gina and I made at the park, along with nearly a hundred other people.
Dazed, I walk forward, scanning all the hands. There is Gina’s. And, yes, there’s mine.
“What do you think of it?”
I look at him, not believing what I’m seeing. On impulse, I turn back to the mural and lift my hand and match it to my red handprint, finger to finger.
How did he know? When I went to his office, I was streaked with red paint, and I told him where I’d been. Oh wow. I look at our hands, still disbelieving as I step back.
I remember riding in one of his cars once while he bid in an auction.
I remember all the things he handled in the space of mere minutes.
And I can’t believe that one of those things, one of the times he was on the phone, one of these days, was regarding this one thing that means worlds to me.
“You see, I’m correcting an injustice,” he says behind me. “Interface has contributed to the cause you believe in so much . . . and you can’t give this one back.”
I laugh and face him, my knees feeling weaker and weaker. “I really hurt your pride returning your shirt, didn’t I?”
“I’m mortally wounded.”
He’s not grinning.
His pull is stronger than ever.
His stare greener than ever.
“The donations made by the institutions who acquire these go to the families of the victims. These donations really helped my mother when my dad died,” I hear myself admit, with a ball of emotion in my gut. “It’s such a great gesture. Thank you for helping.”
His eyes go liquid, as if all he wanted was this meager thank-you I just gave him.
He smiles and nods his dark head, and suddenly, it’s not enough. Not enough at all. I can’t believe it—this gesture out of a hundred gestures. On impulse, I walk up to him, my Uggs silent on the marble. Then I push up on tiptoes and kiss his hard jaw. He moves his head, so I end up kissing the corner of his mouth.
Startled, I ease back, gaping.
His eyes are dark . . . but glimmering in delight. As if he wanted the thank-you but will take anything else that he can.
I realize several things. He’s grabbed my waist to keep me from stepping back. His hands are on my hips. I shiver at his touch. I also notice the unmistakable, determined look of a hunter on his face, as if he doesn’t plan to let go, and I’m dizzy with his scent. Fast. I didn’t imagine the human body could want so fast and so much from one instant to the next.
“Put your arms around me,” he says, his voice a gruff whisper in my ear.
My stomach grips tightly in surprise, small butterflies exploding from its pit to the tips of my fingers. His warm, long-fingered hand curves around my hip, holding me close.
“Put your arms around me,” he repeats, slowly watching my reaction as he takes my wrists, lifts my arms, and links my hands together at his nape. He watches me as he ducks his head and, oh, the anticipation, the exquisite torture, of wanting this and not wanting to want this.
“I can’t breathe,” I whisper, somehow easing my head back as he edges forward.
His eyes start fluttering closed, the shadow of his eyelashes dark on his cheekbones as his lips come within a breath of mine. “I don’t want you to breathe.”
He kisses the corner of my mouth; my body tightens at the contact. He eases back—not a lot, as if he doesn’t want to let go or leave me for more than an inch—and looks at me like I’m absolutely new and precious and he wants to play with me so much, he actually isn’t certain if he wants to play with me completely or maybe save a little bit of me to play with later. And I . . . ?
I’m burning to my bones.
Beyond thought right this second.
I want him so deep I’ll end up broken. I want to forget there are multiple reasons why this isn’t a good idea—because it doesn’t matter if it’s good or even right, only that I give my body what it wants. And all I want right now is looking down at me as if he wants to give it to me too.
I’m scared, but that doesn’t stop me from tipping my head up in offering, my lips parted in complete recklessness. “Do that again,” I whisper. His eyes gleam as he watches me, his gaze somehow male and savoring as I lick my lips and squirm a little beneath him. “Saint . . . do it again . . .” I try again.
He ducks his head, and the second corner kiss is so close to the center of my mouth, I can taste him. Oh god, I want to taste him. He’s teasing me now. Teasing me with kisses and desire, the kind I’ve never felt, and it’s working; I’m aching, throbbing, wanting, dying.
“You like that?”
I nod fast, breathing heavily. “Again . . . please.” I tip my head farther back. He takes in my reaction with dark, hooded eyes, and I remain dazed, struggling to keep my lungs working. He tips my head back at the angle that he wants it.
The air between our bodies feels like fire, the places his thigh touches mine singe me, the tips of my breasts are crushed and hot against his flat chest.
He bends his head and takes my lips—front and center now. If I had just been burned at the stake, the impact would have been less than the hot feel of his tongue pushing my lips apart. I burst up in flames, and he pulls me closer with a rumbling noise as his tongue delves in and strokes mine, dominating, tasting, kissing.
“Do you like that too?” He dips his tongue, hot and wet, into my mouth; then he secures the back of my head in one curved hand and parts his lips and takes me deeper, harder. A rush of sensations knifes through me, and when he angles his head to get another, thorough taste of me, I part my lips wider so that he continues to do what he’s doing, continues rubbing his tongue along mine and feeding me with his indescribably delicious taste.
“Yes,” I moan softly, hungrily breathing his breath. “I can taste you in every inch of me.”
The sound of his hands sliding down the length of my arms, over my clothing, is decadent and delicious. We slant our heads and kiss a little, then a little more. Then his lips soften . . . retreat . . .
A tremor racks through me as his lips brush across my soft wet ones, the ghost of a tantalizing touch.
When we finally part, my mouth tingles, and I can see him perfectly up close. I notice the shifting shades of green in his eyes, the copper flecks scattered inside—not cold, not an ounce of cold right now.
I feel his fingertips graze my temples as he brushes my hair off my forehead to look at me. His hands remain there for what feels like an instant and, at the same time, forever. I blink as I grudgingly remove my hands from his nape and bring them, trembling, to my sides, my eyes focusing on his stunning, virile face.
“I . . . this can’t happen.”
“It’s happened. It’s happening, Rachel.”
His gaze is heavy, thick-lashed as he surveys his handiwork: my lips, wet. Swollen—at least that’s how they feel. I find myself touching his shoulders, nervous. “Saint . . .”
God. I don’t even know what it is I’m asking for.
He’s the sort of guy who’d never be in any woman’s friend zone or brother zone. He’s the sort of guy you fantasize about having for a lover, and he wants me. When he ducks his head, I go up on my toes so our lips meet again. Then we’re tasting, slowly exploring, and when I want to make it go fast because my toes are curling and my body’s trembling, he slows me down with his mouth, his tongue. Perfectly in control, he’s feasting on me and doesn’t want to be rushed. My mouth has become his expedition, and I want to be explored, just like this.
He pulls away—I have to swallow back a protest then.
He stares at me. Eyes, lips, eyes, lips, prolonging the looks a little more every time. I’m in agony. Suddenly I tilt my head and kiss his neck. He groans softly, fisting my hair in his hand, tipping my head back. And there, his lips wait for mine. Our mouths fuse as if each was somehow waiting for the other for a long time. The touch, the heat, is so electric, I pull back with a shocked gasp.
Our eyes meet again. We’re playing this game, kissing, stopping. . . . I can see by the curl of his lip that he’s enjoying it. But I’m not. I’m pained with desire, panting as I fight the urge to rub up against him like a cat, tug his shirt off his chest. I want to eat him up alive, so hard and so fast, I have to fold my fingers into my palms to keep from doing just that.
His hand cups my jaw and holds me still now. He watches me until the very last moment as his lips descend to mine. He tastes me, savors me; then the heady taste of him hits me again, melting me. I catch the rasp of his jaw against my cheek, the moist heat of his tongue on mine. When I let out a moan that scares me, he eases back for another moment to look at me again.
Oh god. Trembling with how much we’ve kissed and how much I still want, I stare at his mouth. Every time he’s stepped back, he’s come back to kiss me harder. Harder. His mouth—was it really just on me? I feel in a strange way like it still is. My lips tingle from side to side, top bow to bottom curve. He’s looking at them too. Then his hands tighten on my arms and his mouth crashes down on mine, hard this time. I stiffen against the onslaught, afraid of the cataclysm overtaking me. I try to move away and pull free, but his mouth shifts every time I do, and it is always there, ready to taste me again, the tip of his tongue brushing me open.
Excitement thrills through my veins as I dare open my mouth as wide as I can, and then he tastes me. A heart-stopping, whole-mouthed kiss that makes me dizzy and unsteady and amazed. My hands on his arms, my body leans on his so hard my breasts ache against his chest, and I taste him back. Not slow or in a savoring way; more in a way that means I will never be kissed like this again and I very much want him to eat me like I want to eat him.
This is Malcolm Saint—my dream story and the salvation of Edge—and I should’ve pushed him away. But I’m suddenly desperate. I’ve been paying attention to every visual sign, every word we exchange, trying to silence whatever it is he makes me feel. Some kind of need. Some blatant thirst. But his mouth is on mine, and I’m thirstier than ever.
We peel our lips apart, and his mouth immediately seeks a path down my throat. I turn my head and tug his earlobe between my teeth, running my hands over his hair. I’ve never touched a man like this, his hair thick and silky, dark as soot. He groans under my slow but impulsive caresses, and the sound runs through me in an erotic wave. His slow neck kisses drive me crazy, but I still crave his mouth; my mouth is sore, and it feels like the only way I won’t be aware of its soreness is with his mouth on mine again, pleasing me like crazy.
I turn my head. He’s there, as if needing my mouth too. Our lips open and fuse again. He groans; I moan. We taste each other feverishly. His tongue is hot and wet against mine, and this kiss alone has me more turned on than anything in my life ever has.
But . . . who do you think you are, Rachel? Come on! Elizabeth Bennett? Jane Eyre, perhaps?
Peeling away with effort, I shake in place, leaning my forehead on his while my breath stumbles back to me.
“We can’t do that again.” I ease back, running my hands down my hair. “Can someone . . . Can you call me a cab?”
He doesn’t say no, only stares at me, then stares down at his hands, then up at me. He glances at my mouth with heavy eyelids.
“I’ll drive you home. Just give me ten minutes to cool down.”
“No, I’ll take a cab. I need to cool down too. I can’t see you except . . . for interviews.” He looks so sexy, hot, and suddenly so attainable, I can’t bear to stand here anymore. I pull my bag close to me and head to the door.
“See me outside in ten minutes,” he says, his voice still thick with desire. “Just let me cool down,” he repeats.
But if I see you outside, I’ll be the whore who sold her soul for your story.
I shake my head, not turning around to see him following me to the elevators. “I need to go.”
“Rachel. See me for drinks tomorrow,” he says.
I press the “down” arrow several times and thank god the elevator door opens right away. “I can’t . . . Saint,” I say, and slip inside.
“Malcolm!” he calls back gruffly as I board the elevator.
I’m numb on the way home.
Malcolm.
I can’t even think his name; it seems so intimate, after what we did.
What did we do? He touched my hand. He kissed the corner of my mouth. And then he kissed me, tongued me, put my arms around him, and he felt so strong, tall, solid, powerful, and I felt so weak, so liquid, so vulnerable that I wanted him to do more things to me, things that make me feel both more and less whole, that make me feel like air, like a pool of desire
We didn’t have sex, but we hardly even needed to; I basically let him eat me up alive.
Exhaling noisily, I try to focus on the buildings ahead, on the people walking down the sidewalk. Get out of your head, Livingston. No, get out of your hormones. Use this for the exposé. Saint is challenged or intrigued by you, and soon it’ll be over and you’ll have everything you need, everything the world wants to know.
I pep-talk myself all the way home but nothing gives me peace.
The best work I’ve ever done in my life, I lost a little piece of myself. I can’t bear to think what size chunk I’m gonna lose by the time I’m done with the exposé.
I’m horny, and my horniness is due to the fact that Saint wants to have sex with me. It’s so obvious: his body was vibrating and his eyes were heavy-lidded, and against my body I felt the way he wanted me. Clearly he’s a playboy. He uses sex for . . . something. I can’t be used like that. I’m a professional. I need to keep barriers up—things like that can’t happen. As long as I put up the walls between us again, it’ll be good. It has to be.
During cocktails the next evening, Gina is outraged over Wynn’s anecdote.
“I’m telling you, he stepped into the store and asked me to pose for him,” Wynn assures us.
“Why, Rachel? Tell me why Wynn has a boyfriend and now has another guy hot for her. On her tail. And she did absolutely nothing but ask him if he was looking for any particular oil or candle from her shop!”
I sip on my cocktail, my brain all over the place. Maybe not all over the place; it’s just not here. It’s back in the top-floor conference room at Interface.
“Rachel? I mean, seriously, why does Wynn attract all the men? And let it be clear that I do not want one, but it would be nice if one wanted me, you know?”
God, he. Kissed. Me. HARD. I kissed him just as hard. We made out.
“So was he hot, at least?” Gina asks Wynn.
“Oh, he was definitely hot, but I’m with Emmett—I couldn’t possibly!”
Okay, so the guy can kiss. He’s a player, of course he can. But that doesn’t mean it will happen again. In fact, it means that I really should not allow it to happen again.
“Really, Rachel, are you listening?”
Because my friends look so puzzled, I try to pull myself back to the topic at hand. Wynn, yes. And her ability to attract more and more men even while happily in a relationship with one. “Like attracts like, I guess. Rich people become richer, the poor poorer, isn’t that how the saying goes? Give a poor guy a thousand dollars and he comes back with a pair of designer jeans; give a rich guy a thousand and he comes back with ten thousand.”
“Give a thousand to Saint and he comes back with a million.”
Saint, well, yes. “He does have the touch,” I admit.
“And you know this touch?” Wynn prods with a little smile.
There’s no way I’m divulging my darkest office-kiss secret, so I sip my cocktail.
“Oh, I know that look, the look of ‘she’s been dreaming of his touch,’ ” Wynn says.
I zip my mouth and throw away the invisible key, then I tease, “We all know you jinx your dreams if you talk about them.” I shrug. “Plus, the dreams need to stay in bed because it’s not happening. I mean, it’s ludicrous to think of giving up a great career opportunity just for a fling with a known womanizer. Right?”
“Found anything extra juicy?”
“You mean other than him?” I arch a brow. They laugh, but inside, I’m aching. My body’s aching in places it shouldn’t even ache. I didn’t know that your breasts could ache like this and it could have nothing to do with PMSing. Deep inside, between my legs, where I want him, I ache.
“I’m cutting tonight early,” Wynn says with a quick glance at her watch, reaching for her coat from the back of her chair.
“No, come on, it’s girls’ night, we don’t see you anymore,” Gina complains.
“Well, because I have Emmett. Relationships need to be nurtured. Like little plants!” She grins.
“I’m in a serious relationship with Chris Hemsworth, he just doesn’t know it yet.” Gina sticks her tongue out and then sucks on her straw.
“You two, really. Sometimes I just can’t take how you are.” Hands planted on her waist, Wynn shoots us an I-don’t-even-know-why-I-love-you stare.
“What? What’s wrong with us?” Gina asks.
“Well don’t you want it? Don’t you really want to find it? Because out there, half the people have it, the others are looking for it, others just lost it, but it’s there. You can’t ignore what it is.”
“It sounds like influenza,” Gina grumbles.
Wynn shakes her head. “You two can say anything about me, but I’m going for it. And to you two cowards, I say you should go for it too. Find a guy who can love you like crazy and love him right back. What’s the worst thing that can happen? That we’ll need a couple extra cocktails when we meet next time?”
When neither of us says anything, Wynn adds, “I’ll tell you what, they’re on me.”
“The guys or the drinks?” asks Gina.
The moment Wynn angrily drops a bill down on the table and leaves, Gina turns to me. “I think she told Emmett she loves him and he didn’t say it back yet.”
I think of how humiliating it must be to tell a guy you went ahead and fell in love with him and not have him say it back as I swirl my cocktail.
The rest of the night Gina and I discuss everything except the one masculine, relentless thing in my brain.
My T-shirt feels extra thin as I go to bed that night, and somehow my skin feels extra sensitive beneath it. So when I wake up in the middle of the night again, sweating and whimpering, I’m not even surprised by who it is I’m dreaming of.
My blood is lava in my veins, desire rushing through my body to the point that every inch of me is trembling under the covers. I wish it were just channeled desire; desire to know more about the subject, deep things, silly things, things nobody else will know, even things I might not include in my piece just because I need to satiate this need to know. But it’s also desire of another kind—uncontrollable, unreasoned, unplanned, and unwanted. Desire from the very pit of my being and not from my intellect but from something more primal and old inside me, something that hasn’t ever really responded to anything or anyone before.
“Oh, Rachel,” I groan when I find my hand wandering between my thighs. “Don’t, Rachel,” I say, stopping my hand on the inside of my thigh. For a moment I think I’m going to win, until I remember how he kissed me, remember how neither of us wanted to stop, and, because this is the only way I can let myself have him, I slip my hand deeper between my thighs and tell Saint how deeply and how deep I want him.
