by Gabi Moore
A tiny note inside was scribbled with a time and a date, as before. It was from him. I was being summoned, again. I snapped the box closed and flung it aside. Here I was trying to brainstorm a flattering and subtle profile for this man, and he was just a garden-variety player after all. Trying to buy me with stupid trinkets… One hot tear was growing on my lower lashes.
I had never both badly wanted and not wanted a thing at the same time before.
Chapter Eight
I returned to 67 Baltic Terrace the next day with quite a bit more apprehension than the first time, which is saying something.
Oppressed on all sides by sparkling fountains and trimmed topiaries, I felt more keenly than ever how much I didn’t belong here. Not only was this attention from Tom Hood, the Tom Hood, entirely unexpected, I felt compromised by it instantly.
Was he making fun of me?
I was nothing like Kai, nothing like the leggy goddesses that seemed to follow him everywhere. I was dumpier by miles. Completely lacking in glamor. Matte, even. So, what was the game, then? I couldn’t decide if I felt more humiliated that he had given a gift at all, to me, or that I was completely, utterly, one hundred percent wooed by it. Not only did this playboy jock have the audacity to mistake me for one of his floozies, but astonishingly, he seemed to be doing a good job of it. And here I was, dressed up, again, excited nearly half to death to see him once more.
What an idiot, I thought, as I found myself again in that cool marble entrance hall, except I wasn’t quite sure if I meant him or me.
Half expecting Kai to glide down the staircase and collect me again, I was surprised instead to see him, standing at the top of the staircase, looking down at me. This time, there was no broad, easy grin. Just his face. He was covered up this time, too, and the contrast to before seemed more intimate somehow.
“Hello,” I said, my voice echoing slightly against the walls.
He simply stared at me a little longer, then gestured for me to come up with a small, noncommittal lift of his chin. I obeyed. It must have taken me roughly 40 years to ascend that staircase, or perhaps it only felt like it with his eyes following my every step. But I reached the top landing and looked him square in the eye – or as square as I could given he was more than a foot taller than I was.
His gaze moved down the length of my body but stopped, and he frowned and suddenly looked crestfallen.
“You didn’t wear the bracelet,” he said, already seeming to accept the unhappy fact.
I had come here full of indignation for him but with these simple words his disappointment crushed me and I realized that I had offended him, again, and that it was the last thing I had wanted to do. Why hadn’t I worn it? I had no clue.
“I’m …I’m sorry but I …” I could do nothing but trail off as I stared at his eyes again, and what I found there stunned me a little, so that even I, Katie Mack, who always has something to say, was speechless. It was a naked gaze, a look so full and open that I blushed instantly and started stammering again, desperately trying to normalize the situation.
“I can’t accept gifts you know, especially as favors, it’s just completely unprofessional…”
The disappointment on his face remained. I had blown it. But blown what exactly? I didn’t know. I had gone through my entire life level headed and sober and somehow this, this man with just a few words could send my whole head into a fluster and have me bumbling like an idiot.
He looked down again at my bare wrist, reached out to softly take my hand and then led me along the corridor, to a different part of the house from before. My heart was beating violently inside me, his touch, though casual, seeming to send a wave of invisible goose bumps all up my arm.
We reached a dark, small room with a modest wood fire burning at the far corner. This room had a different character to the rest of the house. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out a few details here and there: an expensive speckled hide on the floor, two Bohemian looking red brocade chairs, arranged as though they were having a light conversation in the corner, an empty Chinese vase laced with red and gold filigree. I thought of poor Tigger alone at home, in my pitiful flat with its peeling wallpaper and budget shower fittings.
He sat down in one of the chairs and I followed and seated myself in the other. I would submit my article to Penelope tomorrow, and then …I didn’t know what would happen then. I couldn’t think of anything beyond this warm, strange moment, and this curious face in front of mine, so strange and yet so familiar all at once, lit gently with the light from the flickering fire.
I reached into my bag and pulled out three printed pages, then handed them over to him. My article. He took them, looked at me, then lowered his eyes. Dozens of editors had ripped into my work, people had criticized things I’d written nearly half to death, all my life, and like a good little journalist, I had taken it all with a thick skin, swallowing my hurt ego and committing to learning more. But this felt different. Very different. I sat in painful anticipation, studying his face to find any hint of what he thought of the piece, inwardly desperate for any flicker of approval, any sign that I had pleased him, at least in some small way.
His almond brown eyes flicked through the lines rhythmically, and he read quickly and quietly, not betraying his thoughts about it at all until he nodded once and raised his head again to speak.
“It’s … very good,” he said simply.
I felt warm and happy and confused and filled with a strange growing hunger that had no direction, no focal point except to do whatever he would find pleasing. It was a silly, girly state of mind, but as his praise hung there between us, I didn’t care, and I relaxed a little in the thought that I had written something good. For him.
“Thank you,” I said, consciously trying to reign myself in.
He let the pages drop to the floor and looked at me again, cocking his head to one side.
“I’m sorry about what I said the other day, about you being a cowardly journalist,” he said. The warmth and darkness of the room seemed to be closing in all around me. “I just don’t like to see people being …well, you have a talent, and you censor it. Why?”
My face flushed with this new, gentle turn his attitude to me had taken. I tried to think of some witty comeback, something to quip in response. I tore my eyes away from his and tried to think.
“What are you afraid of, really? Why do you hold back all the time?” he said, and I was again thrown off by the casual intimacy of the question.
“Hold back? I never hold back,” I snorted. I told it like it is. That was my whole job, right?
“Yeah you do,” was his immediate response. “You go up really close to something you want, then you back away. Like you’re scared.” He shifted his weight in the chair and let his eyes wander shamelessly all over my body. “I meet a lot of women. A lot of women. Some are more closed up than others, and that’s fine by me. Take a woman like Kai. Now she’s not afraid of a damn thing. Her heart’s completely open.”
The mention of her name felt like finding a bitter seed in what till now had been a sweet fruit. I hated hearing him talk about her.
“Yeah, I’m sure being a gold digger like her takes a lot of guts” I said.
He laughed.
“See? See how closed you are?”
“But come on Tom, Kai? Of course her ‘heart is open’, I mean she’s stupidly beautiful and she probably has had men paying her way all her life.”
He raised his eyebrows at this little outburst.
“Where is she anyway?” I asked.
“She’s in Brazil right now. I only see her a couple of times a year.”
“In Brazil? Attending a sugar daddy conference is she? Getting some more plastic surgery?” I felt growing anger that we were talking about her at all, that she was in the way, even when she wasn’t here at all.
“No, not at all. Kai owns a coffee plantation in Minas Gerais and she’s in some serious talks with the unions there about implementing more environmentally
friendly farming techniques.”
It felt like Kai had appeared before me and slapped me hard across the face.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK, you’re jealous of her,” he said simply. He smiled at the frown this brought to my face. “You know, if you just opened up a little, you’d probably discover lots of other feelings, too.” His eyes were moving over me again.
“Ok, fine, I am jealous of her,” I said. I did feel relieved to say it out loud like that.
“See, was that so hard?” he smiled. “To be honest, I’m a little jealous of her,” he said, laughing.
I laughed too.
“You’re also very attracted to me,” he said suddenly, and I stopped laughing.
“What?”
“Yeah. You keep coming here, getting really close …and then running away again. You’re attracted to me.”
“I…” I stammered, but realized I was only going to say something stupid, to lash out again at him. It seemed that every wall of resistance I put up, every jab and barb, was melted by him. It really was an uncanny ability of his. Disarming.
“Hey, it’s OK, though. I know that you are, and you don’t have to pretend you aren’t.”
I said nothing.
He leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling.
“Why do people walk around this earth so tightly wound up? Why does everyone censor themselves and pretend not to want what they really want? There’s something I admire about people who can surrender. Who have the guts to be themselves. People who can look at something bigger than them and just let go, just release into it, you know?”
I did know. It was something, in fact, that I admired in him. Suddenly, all the tales of his exploits and orgies in the media were falling into place. Maybe Kai wasn’t so bad.
“Maybe it’s just my ego, but I’m convinced I could get you to open up, too. To me,” he said, completely unguarded.
He extended one bare foot in my direction, and we both watched as he gently let his toes graze the edge of my ankle and then rest on the floor again, right in the empty space between my feet.
“Let’s try an experiment, ok? I’m going to compliment you and try to make you feel good, and you’re going to not be a big ol’ bitch about it.”
We both laughed.
“No seriously. No arguing back. No smart-ass comments. You just sit there, and enjoy it, ok?”
“Ok,” I said, already way, way out of my comfort zone.
“Ok.”
The fire crackled quietly.
“You have very, very pretty hands, and your hair is really sexy,” he said.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or squirm and hide under the seat. He was right; I was completely incapable of receiving any sort of compliment.
“I like how little your body is. You have such dainty wrists and arms, they’re really pretty…”
I opened my mouth to speak but he jumped in.
“Uh uh uh! Don’t argue! Just enjoy it. Doesn’t it feel good, to be told that you’re pretty?’
I felt like I had turned the most obvious shade of school girl pink and would die of embarrassment any second now.
He leaned back in his chair again, looking off towards the fire. “I think this world would be a very different place if people weren’t so afraid of pleasure. Of pushing themselves to see what they’re really capable of.”
“Ha!” I interjected, “Tom Hood, the philosopher, fancy.”
He shot me a cold look.
“So what if I am? Is that bad? Maybe it seems cheesy to you, but I don’t want to hide behind make-believe barriers, too afraid to feel anything.”
It occurred to me that he was probably slightly drunk. It also occurred to me that I didn’t care. At all. I wanted to be persuaded by this strange argument. I wanted to go along with it. I had this vague notion that if I just blurted out how meeting him here, like this, was the single most thrilling moment of my life, that he would judge me, that my excitement would seem unsophisticated, that we would withdraw everything and I would be humiliated.
“I’m attracted to you,” I said and braced myself. He looked at me with a bright face.
“I’m attracted to you too” he replied, quickly.
The fire crackled on, oblivious to this new change in dynamic. I hadn’t had a single sip to drink but felt myself intoxicated nonetheless. By him. By the thrilling thought of myself and what I was capable of right now, in this moment. Surely life doesn’t really work this way? Surely people can’t go around blindly declaring one another hot and boning in the streets? If it was such a good idea to be this “open” why didn’t everybody do it?
“I’m wondering if you’re going to kiss me,” I said at last, feeling somehow that narrating my own thoughts felt less intimidating than baldly saying what I wanted, outright.
He smiled.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
What?
“Trust me,” he said to my shocked expression.
“But I…”
“No! Just stop thinking for a moment. No excuses. Just listen to me. Do you trust me? Or are you going to turn around and run away from me again?”
“Yes bu--”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” I breathed quietly, sealing my fate.
“Good. Then take off your clothes.”
I already felt half way naked as it was. I stood up gingerly, hands shaking.
“It’s just that I’ve neve--”
“Did I tell you that you could speak?” he said, throwing a playful look at me.
I smiled.
With fingers that felt like they didn’t even belong to me, I awkwardly peeled off my blouse, raising it over my head, feeling that the brief moment my face was hooded by the fabric was insanely dangerous, exposing me completely to him. I never wore a bra; my two breasts stared back at him like two sleepy creatures who had been pulled from their bed. He said nothing, only drank up the sight of me with a very serious look on his face. His gaze urged me on. I unbuttoned the top of my skirt and felt the scratchy fabric drop to the floor. This, along with the shoes I had kicked off, was tossed aside and left me with only my panties, which I wriggled off all at once, almost relieved to be fully naked now, entirely nude in front of him.
“There. Now you’re at your most powerful,” he said.
I was nearly overwhelmed with my own nakedness, and the shock of feeling the plain air rushing over every part of me, unprotected.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat down.
“Spread your legs for me.”
I paused, then slowly lifted one and then the other leg, placing each on the arm rest of the chair, relishing the delicious agony of having the most intimate part of my body exposed to him in this way.
“Good,” he said, and moved forward off of his own chair, dropping to his knees just a few feet from me.
“Wider,” he continued, and I felt an instant twinge between my legs. I obeyed, stretching my legs further out, pushing my crotch even closer to his now-lowered head.
He placed one broad hand on my inner thigh, and with the other, he hovered unsure fingertips over the skin there, the delicate touches sending hard shivers all up my spine. He traced a gentle line upwards and to my bellybutton, something so soft, so fleeting and tender, I couldn’t help but hold my breath.
His face was a blend of awe and utter concentration, as though something of unimaginable value had been placed before him, but only for a moment, and if he should make even a single wrong move it would flutter off instantly. A slight smile was at the corner of his mouth, waiting there, and I found my hands rising of their own accord and finding their own way to the top of his head. His hair was so silky.
I had never had a man look at me like this.
Ever.
Shifting closer to me, he lifted his glance to me, releasing that little quivering corner of his mouth into a full, warm smile. I blushed and smiled back. He was intoxicating. I ha
d yearned for that look the moment I saw him lavishing it on Kai. Fuck. Kai. How many other women were there anyway? My body grew a little colder. And how many had been lured here this same way?
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I blurted, instantly breaking the spell and making the smile fall completely off his face.
He frowned and leaned back, then looked away, as though thinking.
I suddenly felt stupid. Exposed. I hated this. So, he wasn’t denying it, then? Why was he irritated – that I was on to him?
The warm intoxicated feeling was rapidly floating away; I snapped my legs shut and sat up, a little dazed.
“It’s late. We should probably get some sleep,” he said and swiftly rose to his feet.
“Yeah, I should get going.”
He shot another hard look at me.
“You want to go? Just stay here.”
My face burned. As always, I was the idiot. Something clicked in me and I saw only an insult hanging in the air, the suggestion that he thought I was “easy”, that I was just another stupid slut he could conquer. Did he think I was buying any of this? That he wasn’t using the same tired tricks on me he had used on every able-bodied woman this side of the Atlantic? I should have seen it earlier. Nothing had changed, I guess. I was still my desperate 16-year-old self who turned to stupid-jelly at the merest whiff of attention from a man, and now here I was, compromised beyond belief and—
“You’re really petrified of sex, aren’t you?” he said, his demeanor seeming to harden with each passing moment.
“Petrified? Nope. But I know when I’m being strung along. I’m not one of your little groupies, sorry,” I spat.
“No, you’re really not,” he said, a little sadly.
I searched his face, desperate to find something there. Would he rush in and try to placate me? Tell me I was wrong and that he wanted nothing more than for me to trust him? What kind of a relationship could two people like us have, anyway? It would be a one in a billion chance, an airheaded Cinderella story. Unbelievable. Did I really expect that he would date me, an awkward idiot earning 25k a year? My shoes were scuffed second hand heels I had snatched from Goodwill, a $10 throwaway of some rich girl’s who had the life I really wanted. I was a hack. I had nothing but an old laptop that needed updates and a kitchen drawer filled with mismatched spoons and a sick cat and—