She had deep red hair and a pale but luminous complexion. She was beautiful and very young.
She was a famous singer. I knew the name of at least three of her songs, so she was very famous. She was one of those young starlets that were always being linked romantically to other celebrities.
And at the moment, she seemed to be very interested in my ex-husband.
I couldn’t recall them ever being linked in the gossip rags. Though I liked to pretend I didn’t keep track, I was up to date enough that I thought I would have remembered this connection.
The girl was just so young. Nineteen, if I was recalling it right.
She wasn’t too young to make him laugh, or to appreciate whatever he was saying enough to laugh herself, and to touch his arm several times, and just in general seem ecstatic to have his attention on her.
I turned around and left. I didn’t need to see that, or hear it, or ever think about it again.
I couldn’t, however, manage to keep my mouth shut for even a second when he approached me again, several minutes later.
“God, it was bad before you were famous. You must have to beat them off with a stick now. Or not, I guess. There’s plenty of you to go around.”
His expression, which had been smiling, wiped clean, becoming very blank. “I don’t think we want to go there. Either of us.”
I rolled my eyes, because it was no competition. His revolving bedroom door and my locked one were not even in the same category.
“Am I allowed to ask if this is jealousy?”
I bristled. “No, you’re not. You do whatever you like. It’s no business of mine.”
I started to move past him, but he caught my arm, turning me slowly back to him.
“That’s quite an invitation. Anything I like, huh? Let’s go back to your hotel room. Right this second.”
I rolled my eyes, jerked my arm out of his hold, and stormed away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TRISTAN
It took her hours to finish up, but I waited patiently. Better to wait hours here, then days, weeks, months, somewhere else. And in spite of all that had happened, I had no doubts that it was a very real possibility she would just cut me out again, if I didn’t press the issue now, tonight.
“This can’t be convenient for you,” she told me sassily as I held the door open for her. Even her walk, limp and all, was sassy.
I felt myself getting hard.
“This isn’t really about convenience, now is it?” I asked her pointedly.
She didn’t answer, just folded her arms across her chest and stared at me.
The gallery shared a parking lot with a Cavendish resort, so I assumed she had a room there for the night, since it was clearly too late for her to make it back to Vegas.
“Let’s go talk in your room,” I said with a smile, watching her face for a reaction that I was way too excited about, considering that I knew it wouldn’t be a positive one.
She gave me a dirty look, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, my cock twitching restlessly.
“I’m so not taking you there. No way in hell.”
I tried not to let my grin grow too big. “I saw an all-night diner on my way here, maybe five minutes away.”
She gave her narrow eyed agreement to let me take her there.
We stared at each other across a tiny table and ordered cheeseburgers. The table was so narrow that our legs would have touched if I hadn’t spread mine wide, letting hers rest between.
It was surreal, just to get to stare at each other under bright, unforgiving lights.
Of course, Danika didn’t need forgiving lights. She was perfection, even under the harshest of conditions. So beautiful that my chest was aching enough that my hand had been rubbing at it for a solid minute before I caught myself and lowered it. And the entire time, I just kept drinking in the sight of her.
There were so many shocking, drastic changes and painful, wrenching similarities between the girl and the woman. The girl had been playful, fresh-faced, and beautiful as a freshly bloomed flower. The woman was quiet and elegant, and so heart-wrenchingly exquisite I would have given up another piece of my soul just to keep looking at her.
I couldn’t believe she’d let me have her again. Even as I clearly recalled the encounter, how she’d let me inside of her, bare; let me come in her, skin on skin; let me empty myself deep inside of her, I almost felt as though I’d dreamed the whole thing.
That was all we did for the longest time, just stared at each other. I was hesitant to be the first to start talking. The faster we talked, the sooner this was over, and I was content to drag this out until dawn.
“Does this place even have good burgers?” she finally asked. “Because I’m warning you right now, I’m not wasting calories on a bad one.”
I smiled fondly at her. “What, you think I’ll get upset with you if you don’t eat the food you order? Who do I look like, Ike Turner?”
She stifled a laugh, and then refused to look at me for a while, not talking either, just staring down at her hands in her lap while I marveled at how even the curve of her brow was just lovely.
Very slowly, I closed my legs until my knees touched each of hers. I reached under the table, cupping her clenched hands in my grasping ones.
Her chest shuddered as she took in a very deep breath. “So what are we doing here? Tell me how you see this playing out.”
I wasn’t sure which version to give her, but I didn’t think I should start with the brutal truth. I sugarcoated the hell out of it, going into pure survival mode. “I think we should become friendly again. I come say hi to you at work, we grab a bite to eat, and make each other laugh, etcetera, and so on.”
“And the rest. What happened at the ranch, back at the gallery. What’s your solution for that?”
To do it every chance we get, day or night, until we pass out, or hell, fucking keel over and die.
I had a very vivid but too short vision of her sprawled out naked on this very table, taking every inch of my cock, no, not just taking, begging for it. I figured my chances of fucking her again this very night were slim to none, but a guy could dream.
I smiled pleasantly. “Ball’s in your court. You want platonic, I can do that.”
“I think that would be for the best.”
I tried to keep my expression neutral. “Okay. I think it’s pretty obvious; I’ll take what I can get.”
“Want to hear my theory on that insanity back there?”
I sighed. I knew I wouldn’t like whatever she had come up with, but I humored her, “Yeah, shoot.”
“I think it’s some survival instinct kicking in, some biological, physical drive that kicks in when we’re near each other, because we never got real closure, so our bodies want to cling to each other, because we’re worried we’ll never get the chance again. You can’t cut someone out of your life like that and not have closure. We need closure.”
I wanted to quote my therapist to her. He always said closure was a myth, or at least what people had turned it into was, but I stayed silent, because I wanted her to cling to this theory of hers.
This theory was my ally. It clearly had her changing her tune after all these years.
I mean, I hated the theory, and I thought it was complete bullshit, but I was in no position to dispute it. If I could have said what I wanted and not scare her off, I would have pointed out that it’d always been like that between us, there had always been the drive to touch, to feel each other in every way one human could touch another, inside, outside, body, soul.
But I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. Not yet.
Step one: Get back into her life again.
Everything else was secondary. The rest would come with time, God willing.
“Maybe we should set up some ground rules, like only go out with a third wheel, some type of chaperone.”
My smile felt like it wanted to crack my face. I really, really didn’t like that idea. “Whatever you think is best.”
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She sighed, as though conflicted about it. “We’re two mature adults. We shouldn’t have to resort to a babysitter.”
Here, here.
“We’ll keep our hands to ourselves. It’s just that simple.”
The fuck it is, I thought, giving her my blandest smile. I wasn’t optimistic enough to think I’d get to fuck her again anytime soon, but I spent a lot of time plotting out how I could get her to let me eat her pussy. She became very receptive after I went down on her for a few minutes, I recalled.
I had a brief and intense fantasy where I buried my face between her legs and made her lose it. I wanted to taste her, even if it was only for a moment. I needed to know if I remembered even that last detail as well as I thought I did. How long did a tongue’s memory last? I badly wanted to find out.
My mind wandered to our encounter from earlier. It had been so incredible. The feel of her hot walls closing on me; God, I needed to get a grip.
I couldn’t believe that, even as I sat there, my dick was still covered in the evidence of what we’d done. That got me thinking about how it couldn’t be that hopeless of a cause.
I started plotting ways to get up to her hotel room with her.
She was still talking, and I tried to pretend that I hadn’t been daydreaming about the things she was talking about never doing again.
“I don’t need conflict, I need peace. I don’t need chaos, I need order. I’m dealing with needs here, not wants, not wishes. And you need to understand that. You need to respect it.”
I made her look at me, straight in the eye, when I spoke. “Whatever you need me to be, I’ll be that. Whatever you want me to do, however we need to make this work, we will do it.” And it was as I spoke that I realized that I couldn’t seduce her again so soon, certainly not tonight.
I needed to bind her to me again with more than the most incredible sex of my life.
We needed to become best friends again. Yes, that was how I would do it. I needed to become so essential in her life that she couldn’t conceive walking away.
I meant to break her.
Needed to break her.
Whether it be with deceit, subterfuge, cold calculation, or sheer willpower alone, I was set in my course.
She’d built a wall up against me. A wall that seemed to me to be interwoven into her very soul.
For years, I’d thought that wall was impregnable. But a few words, a few brief encounters had shown me that the wall wasn’t stone, but glass.
I meant to break it, and her, and anything that stood in my way. I was going to shatter all of the things she used to keep us apart.
It had become my sole purpose. And if she failed to give, to yield, I’d break myself in the process.
I was prepared for that. At this point in my life, with what I’d learned from our separation, I was willing to risk it.
“So it’s pretty obvious you’re never going to call me. Let’s start with baby steps. How about you just start to actually answer when I call you?”
She chewed on her lip for a minute and then nodded.
“And we work in the same building, so how about I come by sometimes, and say hi, and you don’t call security, or hell, our boss, to get me to stay away?”
That got me a rueful smile and another nod.
“And you let me walk you up to your hotel room. We can cuddle for a few hours, no funny business.” I smiled. She’d say no, but it would be sassy and cute, so I tried anyway.
She rolled her eyes, a corner of her pretty mouth kicking up. “Not happening.”
“Well, I had to try.”
Our cheeseburgers arrived, and we ate. The burger must have been good, because she ate the whole thing, wasting lots of her allotted calories on it.
I finished mine too, but I couldn’t have said if it tasted good. I was too distracted, too focused on her, to notice I was even eating until the food was gone. I’d inhaled the thing, the fries too.
She shook her head at me, still working on hers. “Must be nice to get to eat however much of whatever you want and still have a perfect body.”
I grinned at her, the word body making me think of nothing but what mine could do to hers. “I do spend two to three hours in the gym every day. Weights and calories go hand in hand.” I flexed my arms a bit, loving the way it drew her eyes and made them glaze over. Only with Danika could workout talk become foreplay.
I ordered a milkshake after she finished her burger. She declined dessert, though she eyed mine up hungrily when it arrived.
It was banana, not the real banana flavor, but the fake banana flavor.
I knew that was her favorite kind of shake. I’d only ordered it to stall and draw the night out longer but when I saw the chance to torment her, I took it happily.
I took a long drink, moaning appreciatively, like it was the best shake I’d ever had, though I barely tasted it.
“Want a drink?”
She shook her head stubbornly.
“One drink won’t affect your diet.”
I slid it her way, and she tried it. Apparently, it did taste good, because she just kept drinking, and as she always said, she didn’t waste calories on sub-par food.
She finished the whole thing, then blamed me for letting her have it. “Now I have to hit the gym extra hard tomorrow.”
“I could always give you another workout tonight.” Even if we were in friend mode for the moment, what could it hurt to flirt?
Of course, if she’d taken me up on it, nothing on earth could have kept me from following through.
Unfortunately she didn’t. Instead, she glared.
I ordered cherry pie a la mode, just to keep dragging the night out, then proceeded to go on and on about how much I loved to eat pie.
Just to make her laugh.
And it did. And her laugh made me happy, as it always had.
Next I ordered coffee, and she had a cup as well.
I was stuffed, but I ordered an omelet next.
She’d caught on by then, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m tired. I need to get to bed, sometime tonight.”
“You want me to go to bed undernourished? Let me finish this last thing, and then I’ll take you back.”
I finished the entire omelet, and all of the sides that came with it, dragging it out to the last.
“You flying or driving back to Vegas?” I asked her, as I finally took her back to her hotel.
“I have a flight in the morning. Early.”
I nodded. I’d driven, as this trip had been a last minute impulse; I’d learned about the show the morning prior. Also, I liked to drive. If I thought I had a chance in hell, I’d have put some real effort into getting her to drive with me.
“Well, I drive in the morning. Let me know if you miss your flight, or just want to sleep in, you can come with.”
She didn’t respond. I hadn’t thought she would.
I walked her in and got a room there myself.
I tossed and turned all night, obsessed with the fact that she was under the same roof, somewhere.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DANIKA
I’d bought a house the year prior, less than two months after I’d moved back to Las Vegas.
It was an odd move, because I’d never even considered buying a place before. I’d been a pretty happy renter.
But I made good money, and I’d just started looking at houses, with a mind to planting some roots. Very quickly, I’d found a cute little place in Seven Hills. The commute wasn’t bad into work. The traffic was a dream, compared to what I’d gotten used to in Los Angeles, and my location gave me a few route options, if I hit it at the wrong times.
It was a quiet area, and for the most part, my neighbors kept to themselves.
The lady next door had what seemed like thirty cats, but that didn’t bother me. I didn’t have pets, but I loved pets, so I found myself buying cat food, and putting it on my back porch, shamelessly feeding the felines so they’d like me.
I traveled too much to have my own pets, so I just borrowed a few sometimes.
There was an orange tabby and a blue point Himalayan I was particularly fond of, and those ones even got to come into my house.
I had a promising future as a lonely cat lady.
I’d been back in town for two days and still hadn’t had any contact with Tristan. I’d gotten right back into work, and I knew Tristan’d had his show the last two nights.
Some days I enjoyed the peaceful solitude of my little house in Seven Hills. Some days there was nothing I loved more than coming home from work, putting on a pair of sweats, collecting my furry friends, and curling up with a good book, shutting out the world, getting lost in fantasyland. Nothing beat an absorbing book in terms of distraction.
I wasn’t feeling that need for solitude so much that night. I wasn’t in the mood for reading or borrowing cats.
In fact, I felt so lonely that I found myself doing something I almost never did.
Logging onto Facebook.
It was my personal account, so there wasn’t much going on. I had two friend requests, but only one of them had my heart racing. I clicked confirm on both before I could talk myself out of it.
Less than two minutes later, a little red number one appeared above my message box, and breathless, I clicked on it.
Tristan had left me a short message.
Tristan Vega: Thanks for accepting my friend request. I promise to try my hardest to refrain from sending you too many dick pics.
That surprised a laugh out of me, and then a smile that just wouldn’t go away.
Danika Markova: How sweet. What a gentleman you are.
Tristan Vega: By too many, I mean more than a dozen, just so you can’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.
Danika Markova: Don’t make me find the unfriend button.
I sent it as a joke, but his response back was effusive and apologetic.
Tristan Vega: I’m very sorry. I was totally joking.