She holds it, evaluating the temperature. “Perfect,” she says.
“Move over.”
“Just give it to me,” she says.
“I’m right here. Let me.”
“I have these things on the ends of my arms, you see.” She holds up her hands.
“It’s better for somebody else to hold it and you know it,” I say. “You can concentrate on softening the joint.” That’s what dancers always used to say.
“Leave me alone. Let’s just get through this thing, okay?”
Get through this thing. What the hell am I doing? I should tell her she can have the papers. They’re still in my briefcase. All I have to do is sign them and give them to her to sign.
“Move over, come on.”
I see it in her face when she’s about to relent. I feel it in my chest. We’re too connected, or at least, I’m too connected to her, a woman who discards people as easily as peanut shells.
She rolls her eyes and scoots over. I settle in next to her and she puts her legs over my lap, wincing briefly. I don’t like it. Her pain tugs on something deep inside of me—some primal need to protect her, to find a solution.
Fuck.
I hold the heat pack in a concave manner so that it gets all the spots at once. She leans back, eyes closed, finally relaxing. “Thank you. I guess this is nice,” she says.
“You guess,” I say.
A smile lights the corners of her mouth. She smells like spicy flowers—even the shampoo she uses is her specific Jasmine. A melodic song is playing over the sound system. Something sweet and old by Bowie. I’m glad it’s not something annoying.
Her legs feel fucking amazing on my lap. I could so easily lean down, press my face to her PJ—pants-clad thighs. No other woman has ever inspired the urges in me that she does. Even her flaws are sexy—her impulsiveness. Her fanaticism. Her pigheadedness when it comes to injury—even that makes me want to kiss her.
But I keep it objective. I’ve seen guys lose their objectivity over a woman and it’s not pretty. She ripped a hole inside me once before and I won’t be that besotted kid again, twisted up in painful knots of one-sided love—or what he thought was love.
“That’s the problem with palatial penthouses,” she says. “Everything’s far away from wherever you’re sitting. Extreme wealth really is so inconvenient.”
“Oh yeah?” I say.
“In little apartments, the microwave is just a few steps away from the comfortable living room chair. Way better.”
I keep the contact light and present, nearly all the way around to the back of the knee.
It’s strange. In my long-gone juvenile ideas of us together, it was always her dazzled by me in some way; it was never anything so human as this. One person caring for another.
“You have good friends,” I observe.
“I do. I’m really lucky—I absolutely lucked into that building. And then my roommate moved out, and I was so sad, but this shy, rural girl answered my ad and we were instant best friends. Noelle—you met her.”
“The mail carrier,” I say.
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’ve been here for years and I don’t even know my neighbors,” I say.
“Most people in the city don’t. I think part of it is that a lot of us are just so passionate about the things that we’re passionate about, and that connects us. I have friends who are artists or in the theater or starting their own little businesses…they all get what it’s like to be giving up a lot of your life to chase a dream, and not everybody understands that. Not everybody understands when you’re not automatically free to watch a football game on Sunday or go out on the town. Not everybody understands when you say you won’t be free for the next six months. But my crew at 341 understands that. You understand it.”
“I certainly do,” I say, shifting the pack.
She gazes out the window. “When you live in the same building, you can walk down the hall and have a twenty-minute visit with a friend without blowing up your whole day. In rehearsal season, I’m so busy, I’d only see other dancers if I didn’t live there.”
This twist of sadness moves through me thinking about James. Strangely, it helped to talk with her about him.
“You were friends with the gang at Beau Cirque,” I remind her.
A fleeting smile touches her lips. “And you were so over them. You were your own little island with a keep-out sign.”
“Hardly,” I say. “It was the reality that I had in front of me, that’s all.”
I feel her gaze snap in my direction. “You would’ve changed it if you could have? Even with the Beau Cirque dancers? You wanted to be chummier?”
“Well, I would’ve settled for not making them nervous. I didn’t want to have resting annoyed face.”
She narrows her eyes. “You mean, like resting bitch face, except you looked annoyed?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re telling me you weren’t annoyed all that time?”
“Not all that time,” I say.
A smile touches the corners of her lips. “I don’t know, Benny,” she says. “I think you were annoyed some of that time.”
“Fine. Some of the time. I’d say it was only fifty percent of the time that I was annoyed. The rest of the time I only looked annoyed.”
She’s just laughing now. Only Francine would laugh about this. “I don’t know if that helps your case!”
“What?” I protest.
“Annoyed only half the time. Please, folks, don’t get the wrong idea. Benny’s only annoyed about half the time, lest you think he’s annoyed all the time.”
“There are a lot of annoying things out there,” I say.
“And vexing,” she adds.
“Many people are far more easily vexed and annoyed than I am.” I form the pack over the part that is the traditional pain point, pressing gently.
“That feels good,” she says.
This puffs me up ridiculously. But lest things go too well, the Dave Matthews Band comes on.
The Dave Matthews Band does not feel good. It feels like nails, in fact, scratching on a chalkboard. I stare longingly at my phone, just out of my reach on the side table. What the hell! Why does that keep happening? If only the phone were nearer, I’d zap that song to high heaven.
She’s staring at me, wide-eyed.
“Sorry, I hate that band,” I say.
“It’s okay if you want to get up and change it. I would totally understand.”
“That’s okay, I’ll pour bleach in my ears later,” I say.
“You’re not gonna change it?”
“This is a very delicate procedure with your knee here,” I say.
The way she looks at me, it’s like I turned into Mother Teresa or something, just because I don’t want to leave my post of knee-pack holding, even though turning off the most hated music on the planet could only be helpful. She may not hate the Dave Matthews Band the way I do, but it has to be doing something destructive to her on a quantum level.
The strains of Dave Matthews go on. It blows my mind, because how can a band pack so much insipid annoyingness into one song? Teams of musicologists could work around the clock studying it and never figure it out.
“Dude, change it! Every fiber in your being is itching to change it!” she says.
“Maybe Sloan-Kettering can give me a lobotomy later,” I say.
She smiles and I feel this rush of affection for her that I quickly tamp down, because I know better. She pushes my hands from her knee and lifts her legs. “Grab your phone and change it already! It’s like you’re being boiled to death right before my eyes!”
I twist to the far side of the couch and lunge for my phone, stabbing a decisive thumbs-down.
I settle back in and she flops her legs back down onto my lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I carefully press the ice around her knee and we sit in companionable silence. It feels good to be with her.
“I still need to get those
Dave Matthews Band tickets for us and Juliana,” she teases.
I give her a dark look.
She pets Spencer’s scruff. “So how’s the sale coming?”
“The negotiation of it is done. We’ve met each other. There are a few more details to handle, but the next step is to finalize the terms and then close the deal.”
“And that happens when?”
“In five days, supposedly.”
“Supposedly?” she echoes.
“Well, there’s the reality of working for somebody for a year,” I say. “It’s a year of my life.”
“Oh my god, are you rethinking that crazy plan?” She sits up. “Are you coming to your senses on that?”
“It’s not as simple as coming to my senses,” I say. “A lot of things would have to change if I nixed the sale. I started the business with a friend who had a similar vision, and that friend is gone.”
“Right,” she says softly.
“Being in the trenches with a best friend like that, solving problems, getting ideas, weathering defeats, having each other’s backs, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
She doesn’t rush to fill the silence that follows. I look up and she’s watching me, and I feel her kindness, her compassion.
“Six months,” I add, meaning, that’s how long he’s been gone. “People have moved on. Rented his home. Filled his chair. Closed his memberships. Like he’s erased.”
“You remember. Spencer remembers.”
Of course she gets it. She sits there silent, a warm presence on my lap. Maybe I can’t trust this easy feeling between us, but I’m eating it up.
“Was he into robotics like you?”
I sniff. “Was he as big of a nerd as I am? Is that your question?” I ask.
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, though you wouldn’t have known it from the outside—he looked like he belonged in the Rocky Mountains more than subway cars, but he knew his way around a lab. We loved having freedom to pursue crazy ideas. Solutions to impossible problems. We gave each other a lot of shit. We played a lot of ping pong.”
“A friend like that is everything, Benny.”
I shift the pack. Her empathy feels real and I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want things real with her. I don’t want to be unraveled. Those things belong in the past.
“To find a counterpart in that way,” she adds. “Will Juliana’s firm allow you to continue those pet projects at least?”
“No, they’re all in on the microrobotic cleaners.”
“Well then why sell to them?” she asks.
“Because I can’t run the firm alone. Big-picture thinking is not my thing,” I say. “Don’t forget, I’m the microrobotics guy.”
She gazes up at the ceiling. There’s a skylight up there, and you can see fluffy white clouds sailing slowly across the bright blue sky.
“My roommate Noelle and I used to eat chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream,” she says. “The only good part was the chocolate chip cookie dough. So, whenever we’d have it we were both always angling to get the bites with chocolate chip cookie dough. One day I found a package of just chocolate chip cookie dough. And I was like, why are we not getting this? So we got it.”
“It was better?”
“Much better. So my question to you would be, what are the chocolate chip cookie dough parts? Is there a way that you can arrange your company so there are only chocolate chip cookie dough parts?”
I shift the pack. “How did I skip the chocolate chip cookie dough section in my business courses? I can’t imagine how it happened.”
“Seriously!” She pokes at my thigh. “Tell me the chocolate chip cookie dough parts.”
I’m watching her, mind spinning.
“What?” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re looking at me funny.”
I adjust the ice pack. It’s a good question she’s asking. Simple. “Chocolate chip cookie dough parts,” I say. “Working with the team in the lab. I’m not good with people—”
“Wuuuuut,” she jokes.
“Right?” I say. “But when we have a project between us, a natural thing to orient around, then I enjoy a team.”
“What would you work on? If you had that year and that team. If you weren’t in Juliana’s lab.”
Before I can stop myself, I’m telling her about microrobots scavenging vibrations for energy. She thinks I’m making it up. I’m laughing, going on and on, fed by her amazement. At one point I notice she’s beaming at me. “What?” I ask.
“I love how intense you are about it,” she says. “When you’re in that lab, you probably give it your whole soul.”
“My whole soul! Let’s hope not,” I say, and she snorts.
I don’t know what to do with her affection, her help, her kindness. This marriage is a mirage and I’m dying of thirst.
“I mean, can’t you get a team like that?” she asks.
“I have one, but I can’t run the business without James.”
“Can’t you find another James? And you go, here’s some money, please steer this thing and leave me alone in my lab? Aren’t there headhunters and things?” she asks. “Don’t you deserve to be happy?”
That question, I don’t know what to do with it.
I sit there with her legs in my lap like the sexiest keyboard in the world, my hands formed around an ice pack, trying to still the thundering in my chest.
I’d meant to keep her at arm’s length, but I’m doing a shit job of it. Things are feeling real now, and I’m feeling raw.
I need more of her. And I also need her to stop.
I lower my voice. “Are you even concentrating on relaxing your muscles?”
Her gaze rivets to me. The low voice affects her—I noticed that earlier.
“Or are you worrying about my business?” I rumble, brushing her thigh as I adjust the pack.
“I can do both at once,” she says.
I draw a finger up her shin bone, up to where the pack covers her knee. Her skin feels like warm silk.
A wary light appears in her eyes.
“I can’t have my show horse limping around, can I?” I lower my voice to an even deeper rumble. “It simply won’t do.”
She sucks in a breath. “You mean, your magnificent show horse?”
“I can’t have my magnificent show horse in anything but peak condition.”
Her voice, when it comes, is throaty. “Because of how you like to work your assets?”
I slide my hand down her calf, taking full control of the situation. “I like to work my assets wickedly hard.”
She gasps as I slowly push a sock off her foot, then I bare the other. I’m not a foot guy, but I’m not above going with the flow. I let her feel the weight of my hand, let her feel like I’m in control here.
Even this slight touch overloads my senses, threatens to crash my control. Which tells me that I shouldn’t be doing this—I really shouldn’t, but I can’t seem to stop myself. It’s the feel of her skin. It’s her heated expression. It’s her Francine-ness.
“With your wicked ideas?” she asks with a mischievous gleam.
“That’s right,” I say.
She tries to sit up but I settle my other hand on her belly, push her back down. “Stay there,” I say. She’s threatening to steal all of my practiced control just by lying there—I don’t need her hands on me, sending me over the edge.
She watches me, belly quivering with arousal.
Carelessly, I toss the ice pack.
A grin touches her lips.
I lay an arm lazily over her calves, holding her there while I creep my other hand down, down from her belly to the tie of her pajama pants. Slowly I loosen them, watching her watch me, aroused, which is a total turn-on. I’m hard as rock under the perfect weight of her legs. I can feel my pulse clear into my cock.
Francine reaches for me. “Let me—”
“Not a word, not one word,” I say, pressing my hand down to
the wetness between her legs.
She lets out a surrendering groan.
I pull her pajama pants clear off.
“Your shirt,” I rasp. “Off. Now.” I say it almost as a warning, letting her know that this is my show.
Her skin looks alive, cheeks darkened with excitement. Shaky hands move down to the hem of her shirt, then she pulls it clear off her head. Her flimsy bra that does nothing to disguise the sexy brown coins of her nipples. How many hours had I spent wondering what she’d look like?
I reach up and graze a hand over one perfect breast.
She tugs at my shirt. “I’m feeling a bit of clothes inequality here,” she says.
“And you’ll continue to feel it,” I say, kneeling on the couch between her knees, efficiently stripping her bottom half bare, exposing her perfect mound, just a strip of dark hair that I have big plans for.
“If you think you’re doing Sexorator 2000 again…” she says.
I don’t know what she’s talking about. All I can focus on is how badly I need to taste her.
Roughly I hoist her leg—the non-injured one—over my shoulder, struggling not to lose my senses in the face of her hotness, her spicy scent.
“Benny—”
“If you don’t have that bra off in the next two seconds...” I turn and place a kiss on the inside of her thigh.
Her lips part, forming a soundless “o.” That fucking “o” is everything. I kiss her thigh again, struggling to maintain control. “If you don’t have that bra off in the next two seconds.”
In my days of polishing my sex technique, I found it best to give commands. The more unreasonable, the better. I’m not bossy by nature, but when I learn a thing, I learn it well, and right now I’m learning her. One of us will be losing control and I plan for it to be her.
“Now. If you want to keep going…”
There’s a torn look on her face. She wants this but she doesn’t quite know what to make of me like this.
I kiss higher, a bit nearer to her sweet spot.
Her rib cage rises and falls. “God, Benny,” she says, voice hoarse with wonder.
And then, wide-eyed, she does it—she pulls her bra off, revealing perfect breasts, smooth and perfect as the rest of her. I groan. I’m so fucking horny, I feel like my skin might rip apart from the inside.
I kiss my way up her inner thigh as she pants, rocks with need. I plant a kiss on that strip of hair. “Open your knees. Wide—wide for me.”
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