Like You (Perfectly Flawed #1)

by Dunning, Rachel

  Damn, I can't blame her.

  I fan my shirt...

  It takes ten more minutes to get the gear packed away. "Emeryk" the Hutt is back at the entrance. The place has started filling up. Emeryk the Hutt nods at Axle as we leave. He's massaging his neck. Axle nods back. Must be some kind of Alpha Male respect thing or whatever.

  We throw the gear in the car and I'm elated. I'm so excited about all the shots we've done and I can't wait to look at them, exhausted as I am.

  Only inside the car do I realize how smoky it had been in that brothel. I can smell it strongly on my clothes now.

  Karolin and Thomas are jabbering away in the back seat, talking about the different poses and which was their favorite. Axle looks serious. He keeps looking in the mirrors as we drive. As we move further away, he lightens up.

  Karolin thanks me again and again for the photos and the way I treated her and says I'm all professional and stuff. She's making me embarrassed. She says she can't wait to get her own portfolio shots done with me because she's so comfortable in my presence.

  The statement almost brings a tear to my eye. It's been so long since someone commented positively about my work that I'm not used to it.

  I thank her for her help. She puts a hand to my shoulder and I cover it with my own.

  She also thanks Axle again and also squeezes him on the shoulder. But her hand lingers on it much longer than I think it should. And then she slides her fingers away as if she were giving him a massage. I feel suddenly insanely jealous.

  Oh, Gen, don't be so childish!

  Axle doesn't respond in the slightest and Karolin sits back, defeated.

  Then she and Thomas blabber on about more shots and poses and the whips and oh my god what do they do with all those props? Thomas mentions the times he's been handcuffed and we start to laugh. He tells us we're "old-fashioned" and not in with the times.

  "Have you ever been handcuffed for sex, Axle?" Karolin asks with a curious lilt.

  He coughs. His face goes red. "Uhm, sorry, what?"

  "Handcuffs. Have you ever been in them...for sex?"

  He laughs. "No, I'm a no-handcuffs-during-sex kind of guy."

  Axle looks over at me and raises his eyebrows as if to say, What the fuck?

  I shrug and turn my palms upward.

  We're approaching my place. I feel sad to leave. I look at my camera in my hands. It's great to take shots with, but it's no friend. It doesn't talk back. It doesn't answer when I ask it questions.

  It doesn't make me coffee in the morning...

  Then Thomas says, as if it were the expected thing to do, "We are not getting a drink!?"

  I look back at him from the front seat. "Do you want to?"

  He stares at me in shock. "Genevieve, if you have any 'opes of making it in the business of photographing models, you must know that after every shoot, everybody gets crazy and madly drunk and has sex with each other!"

  I laugh. It sure sounds like fun—the drinking part at least. It sounds like so much more fun that sitting in that dreary gallery, alone.

  I look over at Axle. His eyes are to the road but he's looking at me from the corner of one of them. He smirks.

  "You joining us?" I whisper.

  "For sex?"

  I slap him on the leg. Hmmm, firm leg. "No! For drinks!"

  "Why not?"

  "OK guys, you're on!" I say.

  "On what?" says Thomas.

  "You're on. It means we have agreed to something."

  "Then why not just say you have agreed?"

  Now I slap him on the leg!

  "Stupid Americans."

  Karolin is laughing and smiling and I notice her hand tapping and slapping Thomas's knee.

  I tell Axle I just need to do a backup of my shots first and explain what that entails.

  "That'll take all night," he says.

  "I know, but I can't lose them."

  "Bring your laptop along. You can plug it in at Frankie's place and let it run while we drink ourselves into a stupor down at his pub. That is where we're going, right?"

  "I guess. It seems to be the place to go to drink oneself into a stupor."

  He shakes his head, smiling.

  "How do you know him?" I ask.

  Axle pauses, grips the steering wheel tighter. He doesn't have his ring on again tonight.

  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just because you helped me get these shots doesn't mean I'm allowed to pry."

  He looks in the rearview. Thomas and Karolin are yapping away and giggling and not listening to a word we're saying. "You mean getting you into a brothel doesn't automatically make us BFF's?"

  I laugh.

  "Frankie was going to be my brother-in-law once upon a time."

  "Oh. And what—?" I stop myself. Too loaded a subject I imagine.

  Axle doesn't comment. Then: "So your name is Genevieve? I thought it was Jenny, or Jennifer or something."

  "Nope, Genevieve."

  "Not a very German name."

  "My mom wasn't German. She chose Genevieve."

  He nods pensively. Pauses. "Something tells me you and I are not going to be able to avoid loaded subjects when we talk to each other."

  "It's like walking over a landmine field," I agree.

  "My sentiments exactly."

  "But why do you say that now specifically?"

  He looks in the rearview again, turns up the music. He speaks softly. "You said your mom wasn't German... You look too young for her to have passed of natural causes."

  My eyes shoot out toward the city. It was like a javelin to the heart. I gather my wits. "Perceptive."

  He parks the car and we're somewhere I don't immediately recognize. He tells Thomas and Karolin where the Irish Greenbacks pub is. We're coming at it from a different side and I get my bearings after he explains its location. Axle tells them we'll meet them there shortly.

  When they're out of earshot, he says. "I'll make a deal with you. I'll tell you about Frankie almost being my brother-in-law, and you tell me how you got that scar next to your eye."

  Another javelin. I look down. Axle doesn't apologize. He knows just how far to push it without having me go over the edge.

  But the scar is everything. It's the whole iceberg. I can't explain the scar without explaining all of it.

  "Maybe we could start with something other than the scar," I say.

  "Maybe we could start with something other than Frankie."

  "Deal."

  We get to outside the pub and peer inside. Thomas and Karolin are already at it with Guinnesses in their hands and celebrating. Even on a Wednesday night the noise is so loud from where we stand that I can hardly hear Axle talking anymore. He walks in and arranges for Frankie to let me plug in my laptop and unload the photos upstairs where he apparently lives.

  When I get back downstairs I see Axle sitting on the wall-seat we sat at on Sunday. But, instead of beer, he's drinking something that looks like a soft drink. I sniff it. He pulls it away. "Hey!" he says.

  "Is that Sprite?"

  "It is."

  "Giving up drinking?"

  "Just for a bit."

  "Why?"

  He cocks an eyebrow.

  Me: "Loaded question?"

  "Are there any other types of questions between us?"

  Good point. "I see you took the liberty of ordering me a Guinness. Trying to get me drunk?"

  "I already got you drunk once." The words roll off his lips with such confidence that my heart does a dance. I take a quick sip of beer. Then I sit.

  I drink some more and then I stare at him for a while, caught in his eyes, his rough, stubbled face. There's warmth in those eyes tonight, and a sparkle. A sparkle of something I didn't see the other night. Hope, maybe.

  I want to run my fingertips across the back of his sturdy hand. The one holding the glass of Sprite. He sips it, looks up at the TV screen where they're showing Formula One or Two or Three or NASCAR or whatever it is. I never know the difference.

&n
bsp; Then he looks back at me.

  His lips are parted just slightly. I feel myself falling toward them. The din of the pub disappears. We're caught in each other's gaze as if there were nothing else.

  But there is. There is so much else. Both in here, and out there.

  In here, there are people cheering and drinking and clinging glasses and howling, and there's even a bit of singing. Brown Eyed Girl, by Van Morrison.

  And, out there, there are devils and fears and pain and suffering and questions so loaded they'd put Einstein and atomic fission to shame.

  And, yet, there is also nothing. Just him, me...and those lips.

  I move forward to them, closer, closer.

  He closes his eyes.

  And just before I reach them, he pulls away.

  The room explodes into noise that I'm sure wasn't there before.

  The moment is gone.

  CHAPTER 23

  -1-

  A.

  I clutch her hand instantly.

  She says, "I'm sorr—"

  "No!" I hold her hand tighter. I pull her toward me, move my lips to within a half an inch of hers. She smells sweet, rosy... Womanly.

  I shouldn't be doing this. That's why I pulled away. And yet, I can't stop myself from doing it.

  My other hand moves to her waist. I squeeze it. I feel the need already below. But this is no momentary urge. This is a burning attraction the likes of which I've only felt once before. Maybe not even then. Because I was innocent then. I know more now. And I know the emotions women can engender in me.

  Except this one.

  This one is new.

  "It's not you," I tell her, and I hear my voice break.

  Didn't the doc say kissing was OK? I want to kiss her so badly. I move in toward her neck. She's still resisting. I scared her, embarrassed her.

  That's not good. You can't do that to a girl.

  And what if I do kiss her? This isn't a girl you can kiss and let go like Namibian Natalia or Fuck-me-a-Lot Blondie.

  I shouldn't do it.

  I'm still moving closer.

  I feel her move a fraction nearer in return. I move beyond her parted lips, down to her cheek. In the roar that is the pub, I can nonetheless hear her breathe. She makes the slightest of whimpers. I feel her silky breath, warm, by my own cheek.

  Her waist trembles underneath my hand. I rub it gently.

  My nose brushes against her flowery skin. I smell the sweat of a day running to take photographs, the soft mixture of tobacco and alcohol and human flesh from the grimy environment of that brothel, mixed in with this pub. All combined with a scent which is purely her: Syrupy, fresh.

  I keep moving down and then linger at the base of her neck, breathing her in, clutching her hand so intensely that I feel I might snap her fragile fingers.

  I move back up to her ear, whisper in it. "I want you so badly, but I'm no good for you."

  She doesn't respond. She bites my ear and pulls, licks it. Her hand clutches my shirt and there is no more world around me. Just us two.

  I pull her closer. Our stomachs almost touch. I imagine my bare skin rubbing against hers. I imagine taking her top and jeans off, lying engorged on top of her. And kissing her on her collarbone, her breasts, the pink around her nipples.

  She moves her lips to my neck, starts kissing me gently down it.

  It melts my defenses.

  I'm suddenly hers.

  All hers.

  She hasn't drunk much tonight. Half a beer. I haven't touched liquor because the doc told me this particular antibiotic mixed with alcohol means you'll be spending a night with the ceramic god.

  She moves back. Her large eyes quiver. Light dances off her pupils. She's searching me, looking me deep in my own eyes. I see a world inside her.

  I can't wait anymore.

  I take her.

  -2-

  Our lips meet and she tastes of Guinness and breath mints combined. I bury my tongue in her. I can't kiss her fast enough. My heart races faster than Jimmie Johnson in a Chevrolet SS. My hands tighten on her tee. I hear that Thomas dude give a howl and I think he's talking about us but I don't care.

  Her kiss is oxygen, air for someone buried in water.

  She kisses me back in a way I've never felt before. She kisses me like I mean something, like I'm the lifeline she clings to.

  But she's wrong.

  Because it's the other way round.

  She's my lifeline.

  -3-

  G.

  I can't let him go. Our tongues massage each other, fight each other, devour each other.

  He tastes sweet. He tastes like Sprite.

  His body under his top is hard as a statue. His size covers me and all I can think of is being taken by him. Just for a night. A long, heated night under the covers where there is no past. No memory. No pain. Just us. Just a man and a woman, being there for each other the way men and women have been there for each other since the beginning of time.

  I kiss his rough chin, his cheek. I wrap my hands around his face. I kiss his scars. His beautiful, ragged scars that betray a life of battles and fighting and turmoil and pain and suffering.

  A life like mine.

  I kiss him on the lips again.

  He moves his massive forearm around me and clamps me against him. I've lost control of my breathing. Below I'm moist. I want him. I want him for all the wrong reasons. I want him for sex. For physical comfort.

  I can't do it.

  But I am doing it.

  He kisses my neck, moves his hand to my thigh. Rubs.

  I start shifting, opening my legs, closing them, moving, twisting. I can't get close enough. I kiss his ear. I wrap my arms around his head. My lips move back to his beautiful tongue.

  It swirls around in my mouth, under, over.

  He braces me. Not letting go. I like the feeling, the feeling of being held firmly like this. The feeling of not being able to be blown away by a stray wind.

  I whisper in his ear. "I want you."

  He stops. Sighs.

  Looks down.

  "I...can't," he says.

  I'm not hurt by it. He's not my dream man, my knight, or any of those things. So I understand. "It's OK," I say.

  "No, it's not. And it's not like you think." His voice is deep, a turbulent and low rumble in a tempest which is the pub's clamor. People are singing, cheering.

  But they might as well be sleeping. Because they seem so far away...

  I hear nothing of them. Only his voice.

  "Gen..." He clutches my hand. "I'm no good for you."

  "You've said that, but I'm a big girl. I know what I'm doing."

  "If only it were that simple."

  "It is."

  "No, it's not."

  His eyes flicker away briefly. What is he saying? There's no lie in those eyes. I know what lying eyes look like. His eyes are pained, hurting.

  Screaming.

  But they're honest. Intense, and honest.

  "I understand," I say. "Friends?"

  I stick out my hand to shake his.

  -4-

  A.

  Friends?

  She's gotta be kidding.

  "No fucking ways."

  I grab her hand and almost knock the table over when I stand. Frankie's grinning. I throw a ten down on the counter for him and walk outside, dragging Gen by her tiny fingers.

  A hard, cold wind assaults me as we get outside. Not even that can cool me down.

  She stops, tugs at my hand and pulls me toward her, easing her back to the rocky wall and pulling me into her body. She slides a leg open and wraps it behind my calf. My cock's hard and screaming.

  But that can't happen tonight.

  What can happen, is something else. Something for her.

  "Take me here," she says. "Now, against this wall."

  I smile, because I'm not going down that road again! "No, not here." I pull away, grab her hand and walk.

  "Wait, I need my laptop!"

&
nbsp; She goes to grab it while I wait an eternity outside, shivering, hands in my pockets, mulling over what the hell I'm getting myself into.

  She's not a fuck-em and leave-em girl, Axle, I warn myself.

  I pick my ring out of my money pocket. I did take it off as Frankie insisted.

  I read Zoey's name inside. "Sorry, babe. But you're not invited to this one. I think you'd like her. She's probably the first one that you'd approve of." I kiss it and put it back in my pocket.

  It's the first time I don't feel so naked without it.

  Gen walks out, laptop in hand, and I'm as hot for her as I was ten minutes ago. Her hair whips against her eyes as the crazy wind slams against her.

  She's smiling brightly. And this is an entirely new smile.

  We walk up the dark street and get in my car. When I'm in she squeezes my thigh tightly above my jeans. She's hot for this. As am I. I know that look in women. I know it well. The only problem with this woman is that the look makes me dizzy. With other women I can handle the look.

  Not this time.

  I park on the sidewalk by her place and don't give a damn about the possible parking ticket. We can't get out the car fast enough. We race to her door. She fumbles with keys and giggles.

  Her ass faces me. I can't wait anymore. I push my pelvis against it and press her to the door. She yelps, fumbles with the keys some more. I kiss her neck, rub her waist. I grab the seam of her shirt and start lifting it—

  She grabs my hand. Shakes her head. "Uh-uh," she says, "not the shirt."

  I move my hand away. I'm not sure how to read that. Maybe she doesn't want sex. That'll save me a whole lot of explaining because I can't have it anyway.

  We stumble through the entrance and she almost trips over a step as we get in. I catch her from behind and she laughs.

  I close the door behind me.

  "We need to lock it," she says.

  She does.

  My cock is almost exploding out my jeans.

  She grabs me by the hand, pulls me toward the back. We get to the kitchen. I just can't wait anymore.

  I push her against the counter. I rub my clothed cock against her crotch and hear her groan. She eases her legs open. "Let's go upstairs," she says.

  No, I think. Because there's a mattress upstairs, and all the more reason to take our clothes off. And that I can't do.