by Lily Zante
“Different how?”
“You weren’t angry or irritated about finding me and Jamie in the library?”
“Should I be?”
She raises an eyebrow.
I stop eating. “Was I really that bad before?”
She gives me a slight nod.
“Well, maybe I have something that he doesn’t.”
She tucks a stray lock of hair away from her face. I like it when her hair tumbles over her bare shoulders when she’s in bed with me. Now she’s got it pushed away from her face and in a bun, but every now and then a stray lock of hair escapes. I used to be tempted to want to move it out of the way for her, and now I can.
“He was annoyed that I left the bar and went to a party without him.”
“Is that what happened?” There I was thinking something completely different.
She tells me what happened that night, and I have to say, if I were in his place, I would have felt the same.
“It surprises me because that’s not like him,” Mari continues.
I’m not worried about Jamie or Danny or anyone else. She’s with me, for now. “Maybe he hates his job?”
“Working for you?” She shakes her head. “He might not act like one of your biggest fans, but Jamie loves your writing. He was blown away when I told him I was working for you.”
I had noticed, because he asks me so many questions, and I don’t like to talk about my writing. “Aren’t you having lunch?” I ask, when she gets up again to leave.
“I’m in the middle of cleaning the bookcases in the library.”
Bookcases? “Mari, this isn’t my house. I don’t own it. You don’t need to clean every nook and cranny.”
“What else is there to do?” she wails, sitting back on the stool again.
“Aside from cleaning the rooms we use, I’m not too worried about the rest of the house. Go shopping. Read. Watch TV.”
She looks affronted. “I’ve been cleaning like a fiend for weeks.”
“It was in the contract,” I remind her.
“It’s not like I have anything else to do.”
I take her hand. “I’m telling you now, you can go easy on the cleaning.” She jumps off the stool, her face one huge smile. “I could read your manuscript and give you feedback, check for errors—”
I cut her off. “That won’t be necessary.” No way. I get up and take my plate over to the sink.
She rushes over to me. “Why not?”
“You don’t read horror. You told me.”
“But I could try. Now that I’m sleeping with the author, I wouldn’t be so scared of the story.”
“You think so?” This clearly makes no sense, and I have to laugh at her simplistic conclusion.
She nods enthusiastically. “Come on, give me a chance. Before you send it over to Rob, let me have a quick read through. I want to be of use.”
I can’t have anyone read my manuscript. No beta readers or proofreaders. No one. Only Rob gets it in the first instance, before it goes to my editor.
“Are you sure?” she asks me.
“I’m sure.” I tap her on the nose. It’s her face I want to cup, her lips I want to kiss, but kissing will lead to something else, and that interruption won’t help me to reach word count today. Better to get my reward after, when I feel I’ve earned it.
“In that case, I’d better get back to my cleaning then. I won’t be giving you any rewards,” she admonishes me.
“Not even if I hit my daily word count?” Naturally, with a specific goal to reach—sex with Mari—I’ve been hitting my word count with ease. Also, not being frustrated or lusting after her now, because she’s all mine, seems to have unblocked whatever was hampering my creative flow.
Now that I know I can have her, I no longer jump and fantasize each time I hear her footsteps. I can focus on my writing, and know that if I’m good, I get to spend time with her.
It works.
She’s happy, and so am I.
This calm and steady environment does wonders for my creativity and the following weeks run smoothly. I work better when I only have my words and story to think about. I have never lived like this, with someone around all the time, someone I have feelings for. Someone I have come to trust and open up to. It’s been a long time since I’ve allowed someone in. Allowed someone to get close, someone who genuinely cares for me. I’m in danger of getting used to this and wanting it to be this way forever.
One evening I go to her room, knocking on the door, waiting for her to let me in. She’s lying on the bed suggestively in her underwear. “Reward time?” She spreads her legs, and props herself up on her elbows. Her breasts threaten to spill out of her bra cups.
She takes my breath away. I fight the urge to strip and dive onto the bed but my cock has other ideas.
“I hit seven thousand words today,” I say, sounding like a schoolkid.
She gets up, flips herself so that she’s on all fours, still on the bed. Her dangling breast are an invite. She knows exactly what I want, and what I want is a release. Just not of the bookish kind.
I strip down to my boxers and dive onto the bed. We’re a tangle of limbs, of hands, and tongues. I clamp my lips over hers, and kiss her, fucking her mouth the way I intend to fuck her below. We roll around on the bed, fighting for dominance, her wanting to be on top, me letting her for a few moments before throwing her onto her back. She’s beautiful, and lush and inviting, and I’m the luckiest man alive. I pull down her bra cup and suck.
“Hey.” She grabs a handful of my hair and lifts my head. “Let’s go slower.”
I glance down at her breast, see the nipple erect. “I can’t go slow. I need my reward.” I suck her other breast harder, but she’s not reacting the way I expect. I lift my head. “I don’t get my reward?”
“Why the rush?” Her fingers run through my hair. She loves doing that and I love her doing it even more. “You don’t play with me anymore,” she says in a childish voice. I lift up on my knees, ready to pull my boxers down. “Play?” I’m desperate to thrust into her. Knowing she’d be waiting, I tortured myself with the wait, and managed to write more than I had intended. The waiting has taken me to the edge. All I want is to explode inside her.
But she’s not smiling. “What’s wrong?” I toss my boxers to the floor. She sits up, reaches for me, does her magic with her fingers, grabs my manhood and runs her thumb over the tip then begins to slowly pump.
“Nothing,” she says, then watches me fall apart while she does her usual magic.
I lie down on the bed, and she shifts position so that she’s leaning over me, taking care of me with her hand while she dips her head down and kisses me. It’s the softest, most gentle kiss, it’s more intimate than her touching and stroking. We stare at one another and I swear I feel a level of connection that sends a shiver through me.
“I wish we could talk more,” she whispers.
With her stroking me so beautifully, talking is the last thing on my mind. “We can talk after.”
Her stroking continues. My breath catches in my throat. She’s sad about something. There’s a somberness to her mood. I should ask her, find out what’s wrong. Later. I hiss out a breath when she pumps me harder. Is she going to use her hand to make me come? I had other ideas.
“Something wrong?” I manage to say.
“I wish it wasn’t always about the sex.”
“You’re the one who put the rewards system in place.” She speeds up her movements. Oh, fuck. If she continues doing that, I’ll explode in her hand.
“How many times have you been in love?” she wants to know.
What? I can feel my eyes rolling towards the back of my head. I jerk, hissing out another grunt because Mari has perfected this art so well.
“In love?” I manage to rasp.
“How many times?” Her hand stills on my manhood.
I can’t believe she’s asking me these questions now of all times. I push her hand away even though heat flush
es through my body. I sit up, even though I’m rock hard.
“You’re asking me this now?”
“Now that I have your full attention—who was your first love? Like, a real proper first love?”
“Why are you asking me all these questions now?” When I’m minutes from release. My past girlfriends are the last things I want to talk about now.
“Mari,” I rasp, wishing she would start stroking me again. My spirits are slowly deflating just like my manhood. “I love …” I pause, hissing out a breath. What do I love? Her? No, it’s too soon. I feel something, because I have given her more than I have others. I miss her, I need her, but this isn’t love. Love hurts, and twists, and destroys.
“You love what?” she whispers.
I groan inwardly. This has turned out to be nothing like the evening I had in mind. We’ve derailed. She looks at me “I love this, what we have.”
“Being in bed with me? Is that all?”
She’s busting my balls, literally. Why do women want to talk all the time? “I love having you around, okay?”
“I don’t want you to get mad at me, I just wanted to know. I feel as if I don’t know much about you.”
“Maybe I like it that way.” This is why emotional entanglements drive me crazy. Women want to get inside my head. They want to know everything. Maybe I don’t want them to know everything.
“You’re a mystery. I was only asking about your past love life. It’s not an unusual question.”
“Maybe I don’t want to open up the past.”
“Is the past so bad?”
This is getting unreal. “You know it is.” I sit up and push her hand away.
“I can make it better,” she says.
“You have.” I walk over to the chair and grab my sweatpants. The mood has turned. I’ve lost interest.
“Don’t go.” She jumps up and rushes to me, taking my sweatpants from my hands.
“Leave it,” I grumble. “I’m not in the mood. You keep talking.” I can’t hide my displeasure. I came here to fuck. Not to have a debate about my relationships. I have an erection as long as my arm. Feels like it. She bites her lower lip and leads me back to the bed.
“I was just wondering what happens when you finish the book.”
The book? I blink. All I ever think about is the book. I hate it, and like it, and then rewrite it and suffer over it. She is the only one who provides me with something else. “I haven’t thought that far. Why?” I don’t understand what she’s getting at.
“It was just a question. There’s nothing deep about it.”
“What do you want, Mari?”
She looks as if she has something to say. I’m all ears. “Well?” I prompt, when she appears to hesitate. She shrugs.
“What do you want?” she asks me.
“Sex. That’s what I came for.” But I’m not prepared for the way her face crumples. I feel like a douchebag. “You devised the system,” I remind her. “It spurred me on to write more than usual.”
“Then let me give you the reward you’ve earned.” She pushes me onto the bed and strips off slowly. I lie back, rest my arms behind my head and watch her. That’s better. She’s a tease, and she’s so insanely good at it. I lick my lips when she’s completely naked. I couldn’t have asked for more.
She climbs onto the bed and lowers herself slowly onto me. Desire thickens inside me and I hold my breath, not wanting to take my eyes off her. She has become my salvation, this beautiful woman with a heart of gold. She is starting to erase old ghosts, and as she sits, having taken all of me inside her, she looks at me as if I am her world.
Now that’s the kind of reward seven thousand words is worth writing for.
Chapter Thirty-Five
MARI
* * *
The night ends with us cuddling up in bed after sex. Just like it ends most nights. He hasn’t answered my questions. I have a feeling he doesn’t want to talk about it.
I’m making the same mistake again. Mistaking sex for love, and foreplay for connection. Ward’s been hitting his word count goals, so naturally I reward him with sex. There’s no need for him to wine and dine me. No need to build up to anything, what we have is purely physical. I’ll take it because it’s the only way I can get close to him. I wish he would open up to me, I wish this could be more than just sex, but Ward doesn’t seem to want more.
When it comes to relationships, I seem to always be chasing a shooting star. Ward comes to my bed, but other than that, I can’t reach him. He’s closed off and I know next to nothing about him.
I tell myself that this is something that suits us both. We were filled with simmering lust before and now at least we get to satiate our needs. This should be enough, but it isn’t.
Jamie has calmed down. We are friends again. He asked if I wanted to go out on Saturday night, just me and him, on account of us having had that little disagreement. I told him it wasn’t a disagreement, it was him being petty. I also feel that it’s too soon, only weeks after Raleigh’s get-together. I’m not ready to go out again. The real reason I don’t want to go out is because the object of my desire is here at home.
As with most nights, Ward leaves somewhere in the middle of the night, and even though I’m wide awake, I pretend to sleep until I hear him leave and close the door.
I try to ignore the sadness that pinches my heart. This is my fault. I’m the one who made this into a game. I’m the one who started the whole word count and sex reward. I fooled myself into believing that we were on the edge of a new start, having given in to our baser instincts, but there is nothing deeper for us.
Ward, too, is struggling with our arrangement, I can tell. One night he almost fell asleep in my bed. I was curled up against him, nuzzled against his chest, feeling wanted and cherished with his arm around me. I hadn’t been held like that in months. I was almost falling asleep when he climbed out of bed. I asked him to stay but he refused, he said something about it being better for us to stick to our boundaries. The clock showed 3:15 a.m. He left even though most of the night was over and I lay in my bed all alone, missing the warm space he had vacated.
I must be careful and guard my heart. It’s not something I’m good at. In the space of a few months, I have gone from being cruelly cheated on to finding sexual gratification with a man who seems incapable of connecting.
Lurching from one situation to the other isn’t the wisest move for anyone, let alone someone like me with all the things that are going wrong in my life, but at least it’s better than being alone.
“Let me help you with that,” he says one day when he sees me in the entrance hall about to go upstairs with the vacuum cleaner.
“It’s okay. I can manage. You have words to write.”
“If only.” He takes the vacuum cleaner from me. “I’m stuck.”
“Stuck? On what?”
He reaches the top of the stairs and sets the vacuum cleaner down. He winces, shoves his hands in his pockets. He never talks about his writing. Never tells me what exactly he’s stuck on. I’ve tried to pry it out of him, but the man won’t give anything up. He plays his cards too close to his chest.
“Just ... stuff,” he says, in his usual vague and cryptic manner. “It’s in my head but it won’t come out the way I want it to.”
I make a face. “So, give me some specifics.”
Give me something.
He sighs loudly then shrugs, choosing to hold on to the problem, whatever it is, and not wanting to share it with me. I can’t help him if I don’t know. I also can’t mean much to him. But I still want to help him. I hate seeing him stuck and weighed down, and he so clearly is. “How about we get out of the house?” I suggest, since he is clearly struggling.
“Leave the house?”
“Yes. Do the impossible. Leave the house.” Being inside all the time can’t be good for him. All that stale air in that stuffy room. He needs fresh air, and I’m surprised he doesn’t know this. “It will be good for you. I’ll
come with you, if you like.”
“And go where?” At least he’s considering the idea.
“To a coffee shop. Or a bar. Or, heck,” I throw my hands into the air. “We could even have dinner outside.” I should be mad at him for being so uncaring, and yet this is who I am. I do care that he’s struggling. I don’t want him to be stuck. I want him to get his book done on time. I want him to be happy.
Why can’t he act like he wants all these things for me?
“Dinner?” He wrinkles his nose, the idea is clearly not appealing.
I’m romantic and foolish and desperate to move what we have out of the bedroom and have it be more like a normal relationship. “We can do anything you want.”
He’s not even listening to me. His gaze is somewhere else, as if he’s thinking. “Maybe I should go and revisit where I used to live.”
This is unexpected, him sharing something personal with me. I leap at the opportunity. “We could do that. We should do that. It will be nice!”
“Nothing about it will be nice.” He clings to the handrail, his knuckles so tight that the skin is stretched taut.
“Then why do you want to go?” I ask softly.
“Rob thought it would be a good idea.”
“You don’t always have to do everything Rob says.”
“He knows me better than I know myself sometimes.”
That hurts. Because I want to know him better than Rob does. “Then maybe we should go. It might help with your writing. Help you to get unstuck.”
He starts to go downstairs.
“Is that a yes?” I call after him.
“I’m still thinking about it.”
One day, when I’ve stopped working for Ward and he returns to New Orleans, I’ll tell Jamie what went on between me and the author he so admires, but I won’t tell him how much he breaks my heart.
Chapter Thirty-Six
WARD
* * *
I’ve got my writing flow back now that I’m not frustrated or distracted. This new arrangement has been working. Mari’s rewards motivate me, as sick and perverted as it may seem. I no longer procrastinate because the carrot she dangles works, but lately, something new bristles beneath the surface of my skin and I can’t pinpoint what it is. The words come, but a melancholy sweeps through me and it affects me enough that I consider Mari’s suggestion to go outside.