by Natalie Wrye
And with a handful of bills to Julio, we make our ascent up to my penthouse.
The ride in the elevator is icy between us all the way up, and when I finally push my way into the penthouse apartment door, dragging our Arizona luggage inside, I glance back to find her dawdling in the doorway.
I turn, staring. “I’m sorry. Did you turn into a vampire in the last few days or so?”
Emily’s face scrunches, her pretty brows furrowing. “Not last time I checked. Why?”
“Because you’re behaving as if you need an invitation to come in. The apartment’s yours.”
She nods, but I can see the wariness in her face.
Robotically, I carry Charlie all the way to the guest bedroom, setting her out-cold form on the sheets.
Unfamiliar with the protocol of putting a kid to sleep by myself, I try my best.
I remove her light-up shoes, placing them at the foot of the bed. I forego any pajama changing, slipping a quilt over her tiny body instead.
Sweeping the sandy strands of hair away from her eyes, I prepare to leave her to the bedroom by herself. But I can’t help myself.
I lean in, tapping a quick kiss to her forehead, fighting back a ball of emotion that lodges in my throat.
I close the bedroom door behind me when I leave, the click soft as I shut it slowly.
But the voice from behind me when I shut it is even softer, barely louder than a breath.
“The vampire has decided to enter,” she declares, cradling Felix in her arms. She gazes out my living room’s floor to ceiling windows, taking the Chicago horizon in. And I watch her.
All soft lines and slender curves.
But the look she’s throwing is anything but soft.
I lean against my wall. “You seem like you want to say something.”
She gazes up, catching my eye. “If I did, would it make a difference?”
“Of course it would.”
“Okay, well, then, I just wanted to say you were a complete dickhead back there in that veterinarian’s office.”
I remove myself from the wall. “Excuse me?”
“Pretty sure I didn’t stutter, Sevin,” she breathes, glancing at the furry feline in her hands. She lowers her voice. “You could have jeopardized everything. Yourself. Charlie. Your career. My career. Until this thing is wrapped with Charlie’s mom, we have to avoid any and all microscopes. And what you did, arguing with that guy, it put us under one.”
I take a step closer, feeling my head heat under my baseball cap. My footsteps sound loud to my own ears as they land over the hardwood.
“Better that I let the asshole act like complete scum?”
“Yes, actually.” She blinks, her slickened ponytail swinging, soft enough to grab with my whole fist. She closes her eyes before opening them. “You overreacted. Which will cause people to wonder why you overreacted.”
My pulse picks up. “I’m just protecting me and my mine.”
“Like you did back in the car in Arizona?”
The memory makes my teeth grin. Emily keeps speaking.
“You react too quickly. Too fast. You don’t think things through. Or consider the consequences before you make a move.”
“Oh, you mean the way that you do? Overthinking every single step before you make it without a single thought of spontaneity in your brain?” I scoff, crossing the room. I reach the bar on the opposite end, but I no longer have the desire to remove any of the bottles.
I turn. “You’re the most tightly wound woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
Emily navigates to the huge sectional couch taking up space a few feet away. She deposits a sluggish Felix there, standing to face me.
“And you’re the most impulsive man I’ve ever known.”
“Why?” I incline forward. “Because I won’t follow your imaginary book of rules?” I snort, planting my hands behind me on the bar. “Excuse me for being honest, but sounds stifling as hell to me. I can’t imagine a life like that.”
She glowers. “Good thing you don’t have to. Because it is my life, Sevin. And that’s how I like it.”
“Really?” I glance up, finding Emily shifting on her feet, the fight in her eyes making her face flushed. “You like being bound to nothing but your career?”
“I could ask you the same thing. With your focus on nothing but baseball, it’s no wonder a man you hate wound up raising your daughter.”
The statement makes me stop, and I face Emily, finding myself gazing into a mirror I don’t want to see. My throat mimics the Sahara, completely sucked dry, and shock plants me to the floor, keeping me there as Emily just stands there, severing my brain’s synapses with each step as her face flushes.
It hurts to swallow. But I manage anyway, forming words. “What did you say?”
She sighs, and the flush on her face is in her eyes. She wipes at one corner. “Your ex-roommate Finley… I should have told you when Charlie confessed.” Her shoulders lift and fall. “He’s the man who’s been raising Charlie. He’s the man who’s been raising her as her dad.”
There are some secrets that you share with your closest bros. Secrets you take to the grave.
And then there are others, like sleeping with your coach’s only daughter, that you never tell a soul.
I’d told my ex-best friend. And paid for it.
He’d stolen my girl.
But a piece of me has been paying ever since. Because while most of my own soul belonged to baseball, there was still this other part, however small, that still belonged to both Kimmy and Finley.
I was a slave to my mistrust.
I’d filled my nights with music and sex because risking another heartbreak was something I wasn’t willing to do.
But I wasn’t alone. Because Emily was doing it too.
Even now I can see the terror in her eyes. Taste it.
So, Finley was setting me up to take a fall in some twisted scheme of his. What else was new?
But I can see that Emily was a person who weaponized the truth. Clearly she’d been burned in the past like me.
But blackmail scheme or not, I wasn’t throwing away the last week or so.
Not when it’d been the best of my life.
I push away from the bar, strolling near, my hands at my sides, realizing that I don’t give a fuck. Not about Kimmy. And definitely not Finley.
I close the distance between Emily and me drawing a deep breath. And it’s as if she can feel it.
I watch her sigh.
“So what?” I utter out loud. “What does it matter?”
She blinks. “What does it… What do you mean, Sevin? It matters. It matters a whole lot.” She uncrosses her arms, her back straightening. “Doesn’t it?”
“No. No, it doesn’t. I won’t let some asshole stop me from living my life. Not even one like Finley. I can choose to never trust again. Stay exactly the same: A workaholic. Career-obsessed.”
I take a few more steps, shrinking the space, and Emily watches me, her breathing picking up pace as I amble nearer. The air grows thick.
“It’s time I took that finger you talked about before and point it right back at myself, don’t you think? I’ve hardly been the most trusting man in the world. And those were your words.”
I keep walking and talking, never missing a beat. “For all the women I’ve been connected to in the press, I’ve never once come public with a woman. Never once claimed one for my own.” I count on my fingers. “Not a wife. Not a fiancée. Not even as much as a girlfriend.
“You see, there’s a reason I’ve been this way, Emily. A reason why I won’t so much as let myself get comfortable with a damn hallway cat.”
I cross my own arms, forgetting that I’m supposed to be professional. I couldn’t be if I wanted to. Not when Emily looks so damn delectable. Good enough to taste. I practically can.
“See, kitten, I know I haven’t been so great with people this past decade or so. But I’m not the only one.”
I slow dow
n just a foot away. “I’m not the only one terrified of tying myself to another. Afraid of being abandoned. Because I can see the same in you.” I hesitate just before reaching her. “Are you saying that you like living this life? This fit-in-a-box existence? Days full of sameness and nights alone?”
I inch closer, staring at her beneath my Cougars baseball cap, watching her squirm in her sensible high heels.
And she lets me. She doesn’t move.
I reach a hand to her chin, tracing its line, taking my time.
Stroking her satiny skin, I catch the slightest hint of her arousal, my mouth watering at the thought. The sexy scent of it was present in my Arizona hotel room during the hot as hell kiss, but now it’s full-force, making everything below my waist a beacon of steel.
I’m knee-deep in needing. Wanting. Waiting for the chance to slip my equally sensible little lawyer right out of those heels and into my arms.
And all I need is one hint, one nod to let me know that I’m not alone in this. In wanting to step outside of myself.
To trust again.
The light in my apartment is so muted, so low I can barely see her expression. But I can tell she knows I’m right.
But in order to get her to give in, I know I have to push her buttons. Prod her to the brink.
I do so with my touch, tearing down her guard. Silky inch by inch.
“Are you telling me that you like your life exactly this way? That there’s nothing you would change? Because if I had my way, kitten, there’s a lot I would change…”
She breathes against my hand, and it is the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced. Her jaw lifts. “And what’s that?”
“Off the record?” I tease.
She nods, and my tone goes serious. I swallow.
“I’d change into a man more worthy of you. I’d change into a man not scared shitless of what’s happening between us. I’d change into a man who could say that kissing you, touching you, wanting to take you to bed won’t change a thing. I’d change into a man who could and would play by your rules. But right now, the best I’ve got is to be a man who wants to make you break at least one of them...” My eyes sink to her lips, and I brush a thumb there. “Starting right the hell now.”
If I did have an imaginary book of rules, it’d be out the window the moment I capture Emily’s mouth with mine.
And she tastes better than I remember.
Her chin still in my hand, her tongue against mine, I explore the wet cavern of her delicious mouth, wondering how I lasted the last eighteen hours without it.
There is nothing normal about the connection we have every time we touch.
We match each other perfectly. Touch for touch. Taste for taste. Lick for lick.
Her small tongue reaches out to brush against mine, and I suck its pink tip, eliciting a small moan that makes my very skin vibrate. Our bodies move into one another, joining. And nothing has ever felt more natural.
I’m breaking every barrier I’ve put up with women for Gods knows how long with Emily. And damn, it feels good watching all the pieces crash at my feet, my guard annihilated, surrounded all too willingly to this woman.
And I have no regrets.
Somehow in the span of a week and a half, she’s awoken a side of me I thought I’d lost. Taught me more about myself than I’ve ever cared to explore.
She’s opened up my world to more than my career. And so has Charlie.
I’ve already decided that even when Deborah, Charlie’s mother, comes calling I’m not going to be so willing to let Charlie go. I can barely let Emily go.
And as I wrap my arms around her, tugging the tiny attorney close, I can only wonder if she knows it.
I break our kiss, stepping back to find unadulterated passion in her hooded hazel eyes. I gaze down at her.
“Which rule did that kiss just break?”
She huffs out a hurried breath, her amber eyes glowing under the moonlight. “Uh, every single one of them?”
“The Homeowner’s Association is going to be so disappointed in us.”
She shrugs. “There’s no telling what Hank the doorman will do when he finds out.”
“The MyNeighbor app will be buzzing by morning.”
“Not if we stop this now…” She trails off, biting her bottom lip. “We technically haven’t gone too far yet, Sevin. I mean, we could stop this right now. No harm. No foul.”
I run my fingertips across her hairline, tracing where the moonlight hits her face, committing the feel of her skin to memory. I reach for the edge of my baseball cap, removing it to toss it across the room.
I let it land on the nearby sofa before focusing my gaze back on Emily. Her kiss-swollen lips are still slightly damp. And holding back from kissing them again literally hurts.
I chuckle, the sound echoing low in my empty penthouse. “‘No harm’? You’ve gotta be kidding me…” I hesitate, desire gripping my throat tight. “Kitten, we passed the point of ‘no harm’ a long time ago. Neither one of us is walking away from this without harm.” Tilting my head to get a better view of her, I at last touch the edge of one fingertip to her soft mouth, wanting to delve further.
“So what do you say?”
It’s a request. An act of asking for permission.
And the second time I’ve put the call in Emily’s hands. Something a superstar athlete never gets used to doing.
But if I’m being honest with myself, giving in to Emily is reclaiming a piece of myself I thought I’d lost nine long years ago. A piece I thought I didn’t need.
It feels surreal. To want a woman like this.
To need her so viscerally.
I wait for the sexy brunette to say something—anything, and I can feel her fighting with her decision. The soft light in the penthouse, the midnight sky outside the windows and Sears Tower gleaming in the distance do nothing to make the mood lighter.
Her delicate face furrows under the living room’s softened light, and the sensation of déjà vu takes root inside my body, my skin vibrating as the air grows silent around us.
That familiar urge to take fight or flight.
And goddammit, it’s hard realizing that the remnants of fear from Kimmy aren’t behind me, aren’t buried in the past where they belong.
As a man, a baseball player known the world over, it’s hard as hell to admit: My body is strong. But my will, my resolve, is weak.
And nine years later, here I am. In the same position.
Caught between my career and a soft Emily, I have to make another decision between a woman and baseball. Knowing I can’t have both.
But I know what I choose.
I choose her.
The thought is killing me that maybe she doesn’t feel the same.
Emily says nothing for several tortuous seconds before lifting her face to mine. Her voice is soft, her words slow and measured as her eyes raise to look at my face.
She sighs. “I say yes…if you answer one question for me.” She inhales, blowing out just as quick. “Le Perla lingerie or Bugs Bunny bikini briefs?”
“Is this a serious question?” I raise a brow. “Depends on which fabric I can take off faster.”
She smiles. “That was the right answer.”
She finishes her reply by kissing me, and the fear I felt, a decades’ worth, goes flying out the window. I kiss her back, ready to make good on all my unspoken promises.
Chapter 22
EMILY
Saturday night
The Chicago night sky outside of Sevin’s floor-to-ceiling windows reminds me of all the rules I made back in Arizona.
And how great it feels breaking each one of them.
Ben and Violet were right; chaos does taste good.
Fortunately, for me, Sevin tastes even better. And when I wrap my arms around his neck, fingers intertwined into his dark hair, I sample as much of him as I can take, letting his mouth slant against mine to the rhythm of my racing heart.
His kisses are ravenous. And I’m i
nsatiable.
He backs my body towards his wide windows overlooking the city, and I am a mess by the time my backside presses into the glass, our embrace on display for all of Chicago and the overlooked Lake Michigan to see.
I’m breathless by the time the kiss breaks. “How sturdy is this glass?”
“Sturdy enough to hold you, kitten,” Sevin whispers against my mouth. “I only sprung for the best in this penthouse.”
I shudder. “Fancy.”
I don’t tell him I’ve dreamed of being in this very penthouse. If only to kill him.
I’d secretly fantasized in the few weeks of Sevin’s and my fiery feud about setting flames to this place. Of watching it burn.
But now the only thing on fire in this grandiose apartment is me. And I’m only too relieved when Sevin strips me of my blazer, his mouth connecting to my collarbone as his fingers make their coordinated way to my blouse.
He pulls on the first button and I whimper, squirming in my heels. “Am I stupid for thinking of how many other women have been in this apartment?”
“Crazy?” He keeps unbuttoning. “Yes. Stupid? Never. If I were you, I might have the same thoughts.” His eyes meet mine, and they’re on fire, burning in emerald tones like never before—almost an entirely different color. They frighten me. And excite me. “But I don’t bring women to my apartment. I never have.”
I pause. “But I’ve heard you. In the ceiling above me. I heard the moaning.”
Sevin shoves off my shirt, letting it slide to the floor. “I’m sure you did hear moaning. But it wasn’t from anyone that I was with.” He inclines closer. “Sawyer’s been staying in that guest bedroom while his own place is being renovated. Can’t say I’ve been the biggest fan of his guests, but I stay on other side of the apartment.” He points. “Over there. And I did tell you back outside of your apartment that you were taking your outrage on someone else’s love life.” He grins. “I just never said that sex life was mine. And you never asked.”
I feel foolish enough as it is, and my face flushes. But Sevin soothes my exposed ego with an open-mouthed kiss, and I know all of our animosity, all of the neighborly anger and tension is in the past, buried beneath the passion we have for each other.