by Huss, JA
He reaches over, not with the hidden hand, and picks up a glass of wine and hands it to me.
My fingertips barely understand what to do with the glass because the only thing on my mind is where his other hand is. We each take a sip and then he bites into a cherry, taking half of it in his mouth, and spits out the pit.
Antoine barks something harsh in French and Ronin laughs. "It's a fucking pit, Antoine, it's not litter." He rolls his eyes at me. "Sit still now, Rook, and keep your mouth closed for a moment."
My mind is still on his fingers as they caress my inner thigh, but I do my best not to squirm.
He brings the cherry to my lips and I keep my mouth closed. This makes him smile and then he traces my lips, dripping juice as he paints them. I'm just about to let my tongue dart out and get the juice when Ronin's mouth reaches up and licks it off, stopping to suck on my bottom lip, and then gives it a little nibble that makes me cry out.
He bites into another cherry and again, to Antoine's disgust, woofs out the pit into the grass. Spitting is a skill only boys really acquire. They are so good at it. It might gross out Antoine, but not me. I think just about everything Ronin is doing with his mouth is astonishing right now. The secret hand under my dress appears again. He lifts my left hand and paints each fingertip pad with cherry juice, then sucks it off, nibbling them one by one, just like he did my lips.
I just stare at him and his eyes never leave mine. "What?" he finally asks.
"You—" I say.
He raises his eyebrows.
"—are bad."
He laughs. "If you were naked right now I'd drip this juice all down your belly and let my tongue—"
"OK, that's enough," Antoine says. "Excellent job, Rook."
Fucking Antoine.
I bite my lip as Ronin licks my fingertips one more time and then grins up at me like an idiot. "Want to come over and watch a movie, Gidget?"
I nod enthusiastically as Elise helps me up, and then Ronin bounces to his feet and puts his arm around me protectively. "You fell asleep pretty quick last time, are you sure you're up for a movie?"
I'm not sure if a movie is the code word for sex or not right now, but either way, I'm definitely up for it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Ronin
"Hold on, stud!" Elise calls out before I can swoop Rook back inside and up to my apartment.
"Go change and I'll meet you outside the dressing room, OK?"
Rook nods and walks off and I watch her until the glass doors close behind her and she turns the corner. I turn back to my meddling sister who is already shaking her head at me. "What? That was some shoot, eh? Don't you think? She's perfect. I can't wait till tomorrow." I laugh a little because while I really am excited for tomorrow, I know mentioning it like this is pissing Elise off.
Bad.
"You are not dating that girl, Ronin. I mean it. She belongs to the studio for now—when this contract is up, you two can talk about having babies and all that shit. But for now, you stay out of her pants, do you hear me?"
"I'm offended, Elise. Really. I'm a professional."
She eyes me cautiously for several long seconds. "If you do, I'll know. And I will be pissed, do you understand?"
"It's a movie, Elise. I'm gonna feed her some more fruit and get her a little drunk, what could possibly go wrong?"
"I'm not kidding. I saw your little stealth hand move, by the way. Next time I'll pull the plug, but Antoine is exhausted tonight so I ignored it." She stops to glare at me. "I won't ignore it again. And she's not even legal, Ronin. You will not get her drunk."
"Would you relax, Ellie! It was a joke, since when do I get minors drunk? Fuck, I don't know why you're going all batshit about this. I'm gonna take care of her just like I take care of all the rest, except I'm gonna enjoy our photoshoots just a little bit more than usual." I grin, thinking that remark is fantastically fun in my mind, but Elise is not amused.
"That's what I'm concerned with, Ronin. We don't need another Mardee on our hands."
Oh… buuuuuurn. What a bitch. "You know what? Fuck you, Elise. I was nineteen fucking years old when she came through here. I had no idea what she was doing."
"And that's my point, dumbass. This girl is nineteen too, she's had some kind of very recent upheaval in her life, and you're fucking with her head right now. Stay out of her pants, do you understand? Or I will pull you from this project so fast your dick will spin."
"Whatever." I wave her off and go back inside. I am not responsible for Mardee, that's one thing I've come to terms with since all that shit went down. I could no more have stopped her than anyone else. And Elise insinuating that I dropped the ball when she was modeling for us just pisses me off.
Rook is already dressed when I get back inside. She's waiting by the door, biting her lip.
"What?" I ask, a little impatiently as I direct her up the stairs.
"What was that about?"
"Nothing, don't worry about it."
"I put the dress back in the bag and hung it up on the rack."
I shake Elise's words off and take my attention back to Gidget as we round the corner and head to my apartment door. "Perfect, I'll take care of it in the morning. Are you still up for a movie?"
She nods. "Yeah, sure."
Rook is not Mardee, in fact, Rook is the anti-Mardee. There is not one thing I can think of that might link the two. They don't look alike, they certainly don't act alike, and I never thought of Mardee as anything more than a fun interlude between girlfriends.
And she thought the same of me. We were mutually apathetic towards each other.
"But Elise didn't look too happy."
I push Rook inside the apartment and close the door, then take her face in my hands. "Who cares?" I kiss her again but she's not as interested as she was down on the terrace. "She's just overprotective, that's all. She worries about the girls, especially the ones I date." I stop here to make a point. "But I'd just like you to know, I don't bring them home, Rook. Ever."
She shoots me an incredulous look.
"I swear, I'm not saying I'm celibate or anything, but I don't bring them here to this apartment."
"So where do you take them?"
"It's a four-story building and we're the only people who live here. There are lots of places downstairs."
"Oh," is all she says to that and I take a deep breath, feeling stupid for admitting that I fuck girls in random rooms in our building.
"You have to be hungry, are you?" I ask, trying to change the subject.
She pushes me away from her, then ducks under my arm, walks into the living room and takes a seat on the couch. "I am. What do you have?"
Yeah, that moment during the photoshoot is pretty much gone. I go into the kitchen and open the fridge. "Fruit," I call. "Apples, Cuties, grapes, and pomegranate seeds."
"That's quite a selection," she says from behind me.
I spin around, surprised. "I love fruit. I blame it on Antoine. He gets fruit baskets delivered every week. I'm not even sure where they come from, like maybe he's got a subscription to one of those Fruit of the Week Clubs or something? I'm not sure. But for the last dozen years or so I've been eating fresh fruit out of a basket that sits on Antoine's desk in his office."
She's smiling again and my heart lifts. Maybe I didn't fuck it up?
"You've never asked where they come from?"
"Nope."
"Why? If you've always wondered."
"Because it's gonna be something stupid like Mamie Chaput or the fucking Fruit of the Week Club. And I'd rather imagine something more exotic, like maybe it comes from some long lost love who lives in Fiji—and she misses Antoine so much, she sends him fruit every week to remind him of what they might've had?"
"You have a Mamie Chaput?"
I laugh. "Yeah, well, Antoine is French, in case you haven't noticed. I kinda got sucked into the family by extension."
"Wouldn't that be weird for Elise if there was some woman sending Antoine fruit baskets
every week?"
"Yeah, probably. But I like picturing this girl in a string bikini, lying in the sun on a tropical island, pining over the one that got away. I never said it was practical, just exotic."
I hand her a Cutie and take out a container of pom seeds for me.
"So all you eat at home is fruit?" she asks, looking at my fridge.
"Nah, I eat everything, but I never go grocery shopping, so I just steal fruit from the baskets downstairs."
"But you have beer?" she adds, looking at the many different Colorado microbrews I have stashed in the fridge.
I grin at her. "OK, enough of your questions. Go eat your orange."
"So you make it to the liquor store and the fruit basket, but that's it? And you don't bring girls up here, but you do take them to some hidden harem room downstairs?"
I'm not sure if she's joking at this point.
"That's some picture you've painted in my head, Ronin."
I take her orange back and start peeling. The sooner she can eat it, the sooner she stops psychoanalyzing me. "That's not the picture I want you to have at all, Rook. I'm just your typical twenty-two-year-old guy."
"OK," she says, taking the orange back half-peeled. "I get it."
"Get what?" Somehow this whole day has turned against me and I'm not quite sure where it all went wrong. "I wasn't sending any messages, so I'm not sure what you get."
She hands the orange back and walks away.
"What?"
I let out a deep breath as the front door closes.
And I sit on the couch, absently flipping through channels, wondering how the fuck I just blew this whole day with a conversation about fruit baskets.
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Rook
OK.
I'm certifiably stupid for just walking out over a fruit basket, but it's not about the fruit. It's about Elise's warnings. Both the one she gave me last night and the one she just gave Ronin downstairs. I only caught part of it, and maybe I don't know who Mardee is, but whatever happened to her, Elise thinks Ronin was the cause and Ronin was immediately defensive.
I'm no shrink, but I'm guessing that defensiveness comes up when you're playing defense. Which means he had something to do with the bad thing that happened to this Mardee girl, regardless of what he says.
I head straight for the door and skip down the stairs to get my own food from Cookie's. There's no baseball game today and lunch is technically over, so the streets are fairly quiet. I walk the block over to the diner in thought, then tell the hostess inside that "I belong to Ronin" and head back to the table. It's empty so I sink into the booth and grab a menu sitting behind the salt and pepper shakers.
Elise also said I needed stability and maybe Ronin doesn't fit that criteria. I think that bothers me a little more after he got all personal in the photoshoot than it did before. Before the shoot we were just flirting, but his hand went beyond flirting today. And then there was the little remark about Elise being protective of the girls he dates.
Why?
I mean, I don't consider us dating, but beyond that—why does Elise need to feel protective towards the girls he dates?
I order a salad and watch people as I wait. This place is still pretty busy for being almost three o'clock. A guy comes in who catches my eye. Not because he's hot, even though he is hot, but because from the minute he comes through the door he's watching me. I look behind me just to make sure, but there are no people dining behind me. He takes his attention to the hostess. He's got short messy hair, not quite blond, but not really brown either, and a little bit of facial hair. Enough to make him look rough, but not unkempt. The waitress points back to me and I watch the hot guy smile.
What the hell?
He starts walking towards me and once the counter is out of the way, it's hard to miss the fact that he's a biker. He's got the tell-tale biker boots on and they sound off a manly thud on the polished concrete floors as he approaches my booth. When he pushes up the sleeves on his white thermal I see what else he's got. Tattoos all over. Like everywhere.
He stops right in front of the booth and smiles down at me.
"Let me guess," I say sarcastically, "you belong to Ronin?"
He slides into the booth across from me and laughs. "Hey, if it gets me a seat here with you, I'll belong to that dickhead for an hour." He offers his hand. "Spence."
"Rook," I offer back as I shake his hand.
"Yeah, I figured. Antoine described you on the phone, but shit, he really played you down. You're perfect."
I twist my eyebrows at him. "Perfect for—?" and that's when Ronin walks into the diner. The hostess points back to us, but he doesn't need an invitation, he's already halfway down the aisle. I watch him very carefully, but whatever his deal is, it's got nothing to do with me because his eyes are blazing at my new dining companion.
"Spencer Shrike, what the fuck are you doing sitting in my booth talking to one of my girls?"
Oh, really! If these asshole men weren't about to throw in the diner I would be so offended at that comment!
Spencer Shrike gets to his feet and claps Ronin on the back. "Good to see you too, asshole. Now sit the fuck down. You know too fucking well I'm here on business. And now that I've met Rook, I'm more convinced than ever you guys deserve the STURGIS contract."
Ronin motions for me to move over and pushes on my upper arm a little to make me hurry. I shoot him a dirty look as I scoot, but he ignores me. "Rook has a job, sorry. I've already set up Bonnie and Val for you to try out tomorrow."
Spencer takes his attention to me as my salad arrives. We all sit back and shut up until the waitress leaves, but then Spence picks it up right where it left off. "Is that so, Rook? You're booked up through August?"
"August? I have no idea," I admit. "When does this job end, Ronin?"
Ronin growls and it takes all my self-control not to spit out a crouton as I laugh. Oh, shit. He might start pissing on me soon.
I shake my head. "I highly doubt I'll be busy until August. Is this another modeling job?" I take another bite of salad and chew methodically as I watch the silent bro-down going on at the table.
"She's busy," Ronin says through clenched teeth.
"I'm not busy, Ronin. Let the man speak."
Spencer smiles and then scoots down his booth bench so he's across from me again. "It's a complicated deal, Rook, but I'd love for you to attend the meeting I have with Antoine in about," he checks his phone, "thirty minutes. You in?"
"How much does it pay?"
"Not set in stone, so don't worry about that. We've got studio money behind us for this job," now he's talking to Ronin, "so think about that before you turn into a Neanderthal, Flynn. Can I expect to see you in the meeting?"
His blue eyes track back to me and I shrug. "Sure, what do I have to lose?"
Spencer Shrike slips on some very dark sunglasses and shoots me with his finger. "See you then, Blackbird."
I smile at the nickname. A rook is a blackbird over in Europe. Not many people know that. Most of them think I'm named after a chess piece.
Ronin catches my pleasure and even though every defense mechanism left over from my previous life tells me to hide that smile to avoid a confrontation, I don't. I flash it even bigger, daring Ronin to make a big deal about getting my pants charmed off by a biker.
I take another bite of my salad and then Ronin gets up and follows Spencer out the door, leaving me alone.
I show up fifteen minutes late for the meeting. On purpose. I figure they're all in there acting like dicks and that's not something I need to be a part of. Chaput Studios might own me for the TRAGIC contract, but I highly doubt this thing lasts for three months, so there's no way they can stop me from doing this STURGIS job if I really want to. It's best to just let the men-folk fight that out in private, come back to reality when they figure out none of them are in control, I am, and then settle back down in the world I live in.
The one where I call my own shots.
I knock softly
and Ronin opens the door.
There are like ten people in the room, some suits, some bikers, and of course, Ronin, Antoine, and Elise. It doesn't take a genius to understand the STURGIS contract is about bikes. Obviously the only thing associated with Sturgis is bikers. So this should be interesting. I'm game, that's for sure.
Everyone goes silent as I enter, then Antoine takes over.
"Sit, Rook. Spence invited you, so you're welcome to listen in, but there will be no model negotiations for this meeting."
I almost do shut up and sit down, because that's basically what Antoine just told me to do. But that's dumb. "Well, I'm not about to sit in on a tense meeting when it has nothing to do with me, so if I'm not going to be provided with any useful information, I'll just take off."
They all stare at me.
Spencer stands and takes control. "Rook, we're going to offer you the contract. I've been told that TRAGIC wraps up next week…"
Next week? That was quick. I figured this job would last a little longer than that. Ronin was not kidding about modeling being erratic. I think I might actually need this job.
"… so we'll talk more then."
Wait—what did I just miss? Everyone is looking at me, waiting for an answer, and I break into a sweat. "OK, yeah, sure. I'll leave you guys to it then." I pull the door closed behind me and go back to my apartment, still thinking about how quick I could be homeless again. I mean, this is their place, I'm no one, just another model among hundreds who have probably come through here, and they are letting me stay here because I have a contract with them.
Which will run out next freaking week!
I plop down on my couch and watch TV for a while, my gaze absently wandering to the front window, waiting to see if Ronin will come by for a visit tonight.