“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snarled.
“Maxwell. Sorry, I’m late,” I said, smiling. “Audra lives in Noe Valley. She needs a ride home.”
“You think she doesn’t have one?”
“I think you’re exactly the kind of creep who’d try get her liquored up enough to stay here with you. Whatever quarrel you have with me, leave her out if it.”
“She was having a fine night before you showed up. Face it, Lee. I didn’t twist her arm to get her to come here. She wants to be here.”
Before I could say anything, Audra walked into the room. She looked between the pair of us before walking up to Max and thanking him for a good night. She kissed him on the cheek. I held the door open for her and followed her down.
“Are you proud of yourself?” she asked, not looking at me. “I didn’t do this for you,” she said. “Max doesn’t need to suffer because of your stubbornness. If you really want to embarrass him, try doing it when the stakes are lower.”
I ignored the stab of jealousy I felt that she was defending him.
“Let’s go. I called a car,” I said instead.
She didn’t say anything all the way to her house. She didn’t say anything as we went up the stairs. She was quiet till we were both on the other side of the door, inside.
“You made your point. You can go now.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Leave, Levi. I don’t know how you believe your behavior is appropriate in any way. Sort your differences out with Max before you get me in the middle again.”
“He’s using you to get to me. You can’t believe a word that guy tells you.”
“Don’t… you know what? You really want to stand there all night, fine.” She turned on her heel and went to her room. She closed the door behind her, not really slamming, but closing it with enough steam to make a point. She didn’t want to be followed. Okay. I could wait.
I walked around the apartment. It was two bedrooms. It had an open floor plan, and some of the furniture was clearly for the cats. She hadn’t welcomed me to make myself at home, but I wasn’t going to just stand there.
I looked inside the spare bedroom. I had to turn the light on. There was a desk with a lamp beside it. It was tilted at about forty-five degrees and another against the other wall. I pulled the drawer out. Paper, ink pots and what looked like fountain pen nibs. She had mentioned something about that to Sissy. She was an artist. I walked back out.
I walked around the couch in the living room. One of the cats jumped up to see who I was. Hairless cats—they were so ugly it circled back around to being sort of cute. I scratched the animal behind its ears. It had a sweater on.
“Hey, little guy,” I murmured. “Your mom’s really mad at me. Any tips?” The cat purred. “Yeah, you’re right. I should have brought flowers.” The cat slunk away and rubbed against a box on the floor. It jumped into the box. There was some commotion, then the box fell on its side. The other cat had been in there too. I walked over to the box. Large color photographs had slid across the floor, with silky lengths of fabric and what looked like a tiara. I picked it up. It was a tiara.
“You’re still here,” I heard Audra say. I looked up. She was standing there in what I guessed was her pajamas. The fabric of the top was thin, and it was short enough to leave a sliver of her stomach bare. Her hair was damp. The shorts were thin and fit loose on her. She walked over and started to pick the items off the floor.
“I didn’t want to leave without seeing how you were.”
She didn’t look up.
“You haven’t cared till now. What changed?”
“Audra, look at me. Audra.”
She stopped and looked at me.
“I thought that by now we had established that this couldn’t work.”
“I haven’t established shit. What do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t have sex with you again. Not if you won’t give me the dignity of being present. I wanted you, and I thought you wanted me too. I thought that meant that when we slept together…” she stopped herself and looked back down at the scattered photographs. “Was it even me?” she said sadly, almost to herself than to me.
“I still want you, Audra. That’s why I’m here now. That’s why I can’t stand seeing you with Max.”
“Whatever pissing contest you have with your brother, I don’t want to be part of it.”
She stood and started walking away.
“Audra, come back, we haven’t finished talking.”
“Yes, we have. I don’t have anything more to say. I don’t want to see you again.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“When we had sex, I felt like you weren’t even in the room. I felt like you needed to get off and I was the most convenient person to do it with. I’m not putting myself through that again, Levi. Not even for you.”
“If you don’t like being bound, we don’t have to do it again.”
“No,” she said sighing. “It wasn’t that I was bound. It was you. Where were you? When you kiss me, I can feel you there, Levi. I was obviously asking too much. I obviously expected more from you than you could give and for that, I’m sorry. I can’t continue whatever it is that we have on those terms. I thought I could. I thought I could have sex with you the way you can with me, but I couldn’t.”
She started towards her room. I grabbed her arm.
“Let go of me, Levi,” she said. She was crying. Shit. I looked at her. Her face was wet with tears, and her eyes were bloodshot, but it wasn’t there. She wasn’t unsure. She was serious. I let go. She walked into her room and shut the door.
I shook my head. I wasn’t smart enough not to go after her. I was at her door before I could talk myself out of it. I began to open it then stopped.
“Audra. I can’t leave you here alone like this,” I said. Silence. “I’m not going to leave until you let me know that you’re okay.” More silence. “If you don’t say anything Audra, I’m coming in.” I waited. More silence.
I took a deep breath and opened the door. She was on the bed, on top of it, she hadn’t gone under the covers. She wasn’t asleep; it hadn’t been long enough for that to happen. Beyond getting in the door, I had nothing. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. No, I knew that; I wanted to make sure she was alright. I just wasn’t sure how to do it.
I walked up to the bed with enough noise so that she could hear me. She sniffed quietly. Fuck, no more tears, why did she cry so much when we were together? Heh, guess I knew the answer to that.
“I don’t care if you stay or go. Just don’t be here when I wake up tomorrow morning,” she said. Her back was to me. I didn’t want to fight her. She hadn’t asked me to leave; she just didn’t want to see me the next morning. I untucked the covers and turned them down. I walked around the bed so I could look at her. Her face was wet. She wasn’t looking at me. I pulled the covers out gently on that side too.
“Get under the comforter,” I said to her. Her eyes met mine briefly before she sat up and got under the covers, letting me tuck her in. I kissed her forehead. She didn’t stop me. I stood. Was I too smart to try to get in the bed with her? Yeah. I was. I walked towards the door. There had to be something else I could do. I didn’t want to leave. I wasn’t going to leave, but there had to be something else I could do or say.
“I’m sorry for making you believe I didn’t care about you. I do, Audra. So much it scares me. I’m sorry for ruining your night,” I said. I opened the door and walked out, closing it behind me. I heard her voice, muffled through the door asking me to wait. I opened it up again. She was sitting up in her bed. Her face was red. She paused.
“Why did you send me the butterfly case? The photo print?”
“I got them because they reminded me of you,” I said. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since we met.” I took a few steps toward her.
“It’s late. Do you want to stay? Just to sleep, not to… will you stay?” she a
sked. I started unbuttoning my shirt. She watched me silently. She didn’t stop me when I started on my pants. I climbed onto the bed with her, and she didn’t tell me to go away and sleep on the couch. She turned her back to me, settling onto the pillow.
I did the same. Her bed was smaller than I was used to, but she was there, she wasn’t pushing me away. She was letting me near her. I reached out to touch her arm, stroking it before kissing her shoulder.
I pulled her into me under the covers, so we were pressed together. If I got wood, she’d feel it. I kissed the back of her neck. She had braided her hair down her back. I wasn’t going to try anything. I knew I couldn’t—wouldn’t—get away with anything else. If this was all she was giving, I was taking it.
Her hand covered mine under the covers. I was smart enough to do the right thing—that time.
I held it.
16
Audra
I could even feel him while he slept. His presence—that thing about him that I sensed even when I couldn’t see him. It hummed, calm and quiet, but it was there, not to mention the fact that his arm was wrapped around me. He was big and hard and warm. We had shared a bed together, and it was just before six in the morning.
I had been conditioned by Hecate and Hephaestus to wake up invariably at the ass crack of dawn. If I wasn’t, I’d be woken up with sandpapery kisses all over my face. Right on cue Hephaestus walked into the room, jumped up on the bed and head-butted me, meowing. They had been up on the bed too at some point of the night, but they’d escaped to tend to their important nighttime kitty business.
I never stopped them from coming up on the bed with me. They were hairless. It was warm. They liked it. Was this embarrassing? Was I a cat lady? The answer was yes, but did Levi think so? I wasn’t pre-chewing their food for them or building shrines in their honor, but I’d known enough guys in the past who had taken umbrage. He hadn’t seemed to mind them. He wasn’t allergic—that was good.
I carefully removed myself from him to fill up the food bowls. I went to the bathroom and rinsed my face. I had been crying the night before; my face was a little puffy. Attractive. I had asked him to be gone in the morning, but how mad was I that he hadn’t been? Not mad enough to wake him up and kick him out.
I walked back into the room to check my phone, taking it to the kitchen with me to get the coffee started. Would he want to eat when he got up? I didn’t really do breakfast at home; what would I prepare? What did he like? With a body like that, he probably hadn’t eaten a simple carbohydrate in his life. What about coffee, though? Did he have any allergies? I used Almond Dream in my coffee; was he violently allergic to nuts? Would he go into anaphylactic shock in my bed? Was I going to kill him this morning?
I was being frantic. I’d just give it to him black, and he’ll tell me if he didn’t like it that way. I had to relax. I had seen and felt too much of him to still be this nervous about talking to him. We needed to talk this morning. Last night had been… eventful. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell Max I had gotten home safely, or reply to any of the calls or messages Zahira had left for me. I had messages from Zahira from the night before asking me to meet her for breakfast, saying that she wanted to talk to me. It was too late to make it now. I asked her whether she’d be free during my lunch break. How was I even going to begin telling her what had happened in the last eighteen hours?
I walked back to the room with two coffees. He was still asleep. Hecate was dozing on his chest, and Hephaestus had burrowed under the covers in the space between his body and his arm. He was on his back. Should I wake him up? He had work to do, right? I did. I didn’t want to leave him here when I left—no way. I walked over to the bed and placed his coffee on the bed stand beside him, climbing onto the bed on the side I’d slept on. I fought the urge to touch him. I really wanted to. He was right there. One of his arms was up on the pillow, his right arm, the tattooed one. I reached for it, holding his hand and squeezing.
He squeezed back. I watched his face as he woke up. He scrunched his nose up and sighed deeply before opening his eyes. He took a second to take in his surroundings, the woman on the bed, the cats, daylight streaming through the window. He looked at me and smiled.
“Hi,” he said. His voice was deep, drowsy and sexy.
“Hi. Good morning. I brought you coffee. It’s black. I don’t know what you like to put in it.” He sat up—as up as he could sit without spilling Hecate off his chest. He scratched her behind the ears drinking some of his coffee before putting it back on the bed stand.
“Black is fine. Thank you. What time is it?” he asked.
“Almost six-thirty. Too early?”
“No,” he sighed. He covered his mouth yawning. He was tired. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it had, a little. Just because he seemed superhuman didn’t mean he was. He still got tired. He would still get drunk if he had too much whiskey. Still fall when he tripped over something. “I need to get on California time,” he joked.
“Were you in New York?” I asked. He nodded. “Why did you come back?”
“I wanted to see you again. I couldn’t stay in New York after the last conversation we had.” He reached for me, and I didn’t hesitate to take his hand. “I’m sorry, Audra.”
“Buying me expensive art and antiques isn’t going to make me forgive you,” I said.
“I know it won’t,” he said. “But I’m not going to stop. Give me another chance. I want to see you again.” I looked down at our hands.
“How long are you here before flying back?” I asked.
“I leave again after the auction. It’s New York, Audra, not New Zealand,” he said smiling. “I can come back. I want to come back. Tell me when I can see you.”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” I asked carefully. He smiled.
“Let me take you out somewhere,” he said.
“Can you come here tomorrow night?”
“Here?”
I nodded. Here. What did a date with a guy like him mean? A three-course dinner somewhere stuffy and formal where I would have to wear a gown again? I wanted him… well, to myself. I had seen how he could be when he was comfortable and relaxed; that was at lunch with his sister and me. I wanted that man. It was all the same man, but I wanted him to feel like he could be like that with me. For that, we needed as few distractions as possible.
“Doesn’t it count as a date if it’s here?”
“Okay. Here,” he conceded. He let my hand go to drink his coffee.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. He lifted Hecate off of him so he could stand up.
“Not… for food,” he said, looking at me. His gaze could have burned my pajamas right off my body. He came around the bed. He took the coffee cup from my hand and set it down before pulling me up. He kissed me, holding me tight to his body. My shirt had ridden up, so he was touching my skin.
“I have to go to work,” I whispered, breaking the kiss.
“Just give me fifteen minutes,” he mumbled, kissing my neck. He palmed one of my tits, squeezing my nipple under my top. Ooh, I felt that. My breasts were pretty tender; I was probably pre-menstrual, the sensation was magnified. I could feel him hardening between us.
“Levi,” I said, pulling my top back down. Our eyes met, and I saw how much he wanted it.
“Ten minutes. Five. You won’t last ten,” he growled. He turned me around and held me to him, tight while his other hand went down my shorts, inside my panties. I gasped feeling his fingers rotate over my clit a few times before two of his fingers were inside of me. I moaned feeling him finger fuck me. I reached back and held the back of his neck. His dick, completely rigid pressed into my back. I didn’t last long. I couldn’t. He whispered dirty things in my ear, about how hard he would make me come, how wet I was for him, how hard he was going to fuck me the next time he saw me.
I completely unraveled, coming around his fingers, collapsing forward so his arm around me was all the support I had. He spun me back around before kissing me sens
eless. I felt dazed in his arms, high from feeling him, really fucking feeling him. He wasn’t guarded. He wasn’t keeping me at arm’s length. I felt dangerously attracted to him like I was getting back what I felt for him. I needed to get to work, and I did, after sucking his dick before he went to take a shower.
I wasn’t an auctioneer, I worked behind the scenes, you could say at Strickland’s, but I had felt like this particular auction had taken years to put together, not just weeks. Saying I had been the head appraiser and cataloguer in the Jackson Strickland Collection auction had to count for something. Max’s guests from the night before had sure been impressed. This was like my Titanic. My Saving Private Ryan. My Mona Lisa. A lot of them had just asked me why Strickland’s didn’t have art storage services, and what Max had done to get a girl like me to be his date. I’d just thank them graciously for helping make the auction a success and asking them to talk about what lots they had put their guarantees on.
Oh yeah, Max. I’d have to talk to him. At the very least thank him for the night before, maybe apologize on behalf of his brother. Something. I was obviously in the middle of something with the two of them. Things were different now, in a way that made me feel I couldn’t talk to Max anymore, not even as a friend. Levi and I were going to have a date and maybe more dates after that. He wasn’t going to tell me who I could and couldn’t talk to, but going to see his brother would be outright baiting him. I wasn’t going to do that.
Work slogged by hour by hour before it was time to break for lunch. Zahira and I had chosen a place walking distance from Strickland’s to go to. French bistro—there were no good Asian places in SoMa which was what I really wanted. She was there before I was even though she had a longer way to travel.
“Hey,” I said, flopping into the seat across from her. “I’m sorry I took so long to get back to you,” I said, preempting her worry.
Levi (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 4) Page 12