Steele

by Stacy Gail

  Now, after two hours in her apartment, every clock in the world seemed to have come to a standstill and all she could do was try to fill the emptiness of waiting by being busy. But so far, all she had managed to do was stub her toe on the table and stab herself with a straight pin.

  Obviously, she wasn’t the kind of girl who could play it cool.

  “You might want to think about making that onesie a smidge bigger than the pattern,” Carla advised from the safety of the sofa, her feet tucked under her as she watched Essie whirl around the small space like a tornado. “Apparently I’m feeding my son the baby’s version of Miracle-Gro. Every morning I expect to wake up and find a teenage-sized Dillon sitting in his crib sucking his thumb.”

  “Right. Big. Cut it big.” Satisfied that the pattern and fabric were just how she wanted it, Essie looked around. Then spun around in a complete circle. “Where the hell did I put my scissors?”

  “They’re right there, in the cup where you always put them.” Wide-eyed, Carla pointed to the Big Gulp cup that held fabric chalk, a ruler and three types of scissors. “Um, Essie? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Aggravated, Essie plucked up the scissors, glanced at the microwave clock, then bit back all the swear words she knew when she realized only a minute had passed since she’d last checked. “Actually, no. I’m kind of not okay. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  Carla made a sound of sympathy. “I take it the meeting at House Of Payne didn’t go as you’d hoped?”

  “No, the meeting went fine. Great, even. For what it’s worth, I’ve got a fairly decent handle on my collection and I hope to have at least four separate lines completed by the deadline. It’s… something else. Something good. I think.”

  “Aha. Steele.”

  Essie stared at her. “How did you know?”

  “Girlie, only a man can make a woman so damn frazzled she can’t see a pair of scissors that are sitting right in front of her.” Carla’s laugh was enviably carefree before she patted the cushion beside her. “Come on over and tell Mama all about it.”

  “There’s not much to tell.” With a gusty sigh, she dropped the scissors back into the cup and came to sit beside her friend. “I mean, there’s not much to tell apart from how Steele gave me an orgasm while we were in public, he thinks of me as a virgin, I have zero clue how to control the freak show going on in my panties whenever he’s around, and he says he wants to teach me everything I need to know about sex via practical application. Oh, and I’m calling him Professor now, because he seems so concerned with my sex education. But that’s all.”

  “That’s all,” Carla repeated faintly. As Essie had talked, her friend’s eyes had widened to the point where they could have conceivably popped out. “Wow. Just…wow.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal, is it?” She wouldn’t know, since she had nothing to compare Steele to. Then again, she had a feeling no one on the planet could compare to Steele.

  Carla shook her head. “Let’s start at the beginning. He gave you a… a public big-O?”

  “Yeah. He’s a resourceful guy who decided to take full advantage of when the lights went out at Lights Out. Before I knew it, he had his hand in my panties and I was trying not to faint. Oh, and by the way, Lights Out is now my favorite local hangout for obvious reasons.”

  “Holy crap.” Carla did some serious pearl-clutching. “I’m so totally jealous! You know, Patrick has never wanted to do anything risqué in public with me. It’s all I can do to make him acknowledge that we have even a nodding acquaintance whenever we go out. He’s so damn conventional he’d probably call for an exorcist if I suggested he gave me a quick public finger-bang.”

  “Conventional isn’t a word I’d use to describe Steele,” Essie drawled, leaning an arm on the back of the sofa. “The thing is, as unconventional as it sounds—getting into my undies in public—what he gave me was really kind of perfect.”

  “Well, yeah. Any orgasm is perfect.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Though she couldn’t argue with Carla on that. “I knew I was safe. I was safe because of where we were, if that makes any sense. I wasn’t as tense as I’m sure I would have been if we’d been, say, here. Alone and isolated. As a first lesson of what to expect from him—apart from the unexpected—I’m now totally looking forward to lesson number two. And three.” She grinned. “And four.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it, you’re horny and you don’t care who knows it.” Carla laughed, clearly delighted while Essie’s face got hot. “This could get interesting.”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “Just make sure you’re careful, and I’m not only talking about safe sex,” her friend added, and her serious tone made Essie’s smile fade. “Sex is great, and I’m glad that positive message is at last getting through to you. It’s the most fun two people can have outside of video games, but for us women it can also get complicated. You need to be on the lookout for various pitfalls.”

  Essie frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we’re a bunch of starry-eyed morons, Es. We go into intimate relationships leading with our hearts. Men don’t do that.”

  “They don’t? I mean,” she added hastily when Carla rolled her eyes. “I know they don’t, not like we do. But, there is some feeling there… right?”

  “Sure, there’s some feeling there. And that feeling is ‘I wanna get laid.’ We lead with the heart, and they lead with their dicks. Honestly, they can fuck anything, anywhere, at any time. It’s no big deal for them. It’s their damn nature. But we women have a completely different way of looking at it, you know? We have to trust the man we allow that close—it’s a survival instinct more than anything. We have to trust him as much as we like him, and we have to be attracted to him to even get to that point. Put all that together, and what does it spell?”

  “From the sound of it, trouble.”

  “Exactly.” Carla nodded. “We women get all that going on, add in a shitload of hormones and dreams of happily ever after, and before you know it, bam—you’ve gone and fallen your ass straight into love. But it almost never starts out that way for the men. That’s what I mean when I say I want you to be careful. This is all so new to you. I don’t want your heart to get hurt.”

  “Love, huh?” Essie’s stomach did a weird little dip as Carla’s words hit her like a sucker punch. “I never even gave it a thought until now.”

  “That’s how it sneaks up on you. Keep a sharp lookout for it to make sure you keep yourself safe.”

  “But I do trust him, Carla. And I haven’t been able to keep my mind off of him since we met. He makes me laugh even as he’s melting me from the inside out whenever he’s around.” As she watched, all traces of humor vanished from her friend’s expression. “That’s not love, though. Right?”

  “No, but it’s not something you just ignore, either. I’m not saying it’s wrong to fall in love, girlie,” she went on when Essie continued to frown at her. “Trust me, that’s the last thing I’d ever say. Being in love is the absolute bomb. I can’t even begin to imagine what my life would be like without Patrick.”

  “So then, what’s the problem?”

  “This is your first time around the block—something Steele obviously knows since he thinks of you as a virgin, and I’m glad he’s aware of that. I just hope he also understands that because everything is so new to you, you’re more vulnerable than probably anyone he’s ever hooked up with.”

  “I’m not vulnerable,” Essie objected, a little miffed before her inherent honesty got the better of her. “At least, I don’t think I am.”

  “That’s when you really need to be on your toes, hon. You’re no player, so you don’t know how things usually go, and you sure as hell don’t know the rules.”

  “Oh great, there are rules now?” This was getting way too complicated.

  “There are always rules to sex.”

  “This better not be a lecture about whether or not I should swallow, because
seriously, that’s just way too personal, even for us.”

  “It’s about being clear on what the hell you can expect from your potential partner from the very beginning,” Carla said, then tilted her head, considering. “Though, since you mentioned it, my advice is to swallow.”

  Oh, my God. “Carla—”

  “The main rule that needs to be established for your own peace of mind is to find out where he thinks this thing between you is going. If it’s just sex and he’s really into you, then fine. Keep it uncomplicated and enjoy the lessons he’s obviously hot to give you. But don’t let him into your heart.”

  Her stomach was doing that uncomfortable dipping again, and she didn’t like it one bit. “And how am I supposed to find this out?”

  “Ask him,” came the shrugging reply. “You deserve an answer, because he won’t be hitting the sheets by himself. If he reveals to you straight-up that it’s just for fun sexy-times with no strings and no expectations of anything long-lasting, then fine. An honest answer like that shows he respects you, and let’s face it, you could use the education. And as an added bonus, he knows every last detail about your history, so I’m thinking he’d go to great lengths to not scare the shit out of you while teaching you everything you need to know.”

  Essie nodded and looked away, not sure why she felt so deflated over the possibility that this could be just a new brand of fun for him. “True.”

  “You also have to be prepared for the possibility of another kind of answer.”

  She brought her gaze back to her friend. “Such as?”

  “He could be pushing this sex education thing because he’s serious about you and he thinks this might be the beginning of something big, maybe even life-altering. You need to know about that too, and decide if that’s a good fit for you.”

  Essie digested this with another nod. That sounded reasonable, even if everything inside her went all warm and weird at the life-altering part. “What if he doesn’t answer at all?”

  “Ah.” Carla grimaced. “Okay, well…that would be kind of a worst-case scenario deal, but I don’t see a man like Steele dodging that bullet like a coward. But, since we’re talking about this, you need to be prepared for it in case that happens. Generally speaking, if a man doesn’t answer the question of where he’s going when he’s pushing a woman into bed, either he’s unable to consider any other consequence beyond his stiff dick—which is not a turn-on—or he doesn’t want to let you in on what his true motivation is.”

  That weird warmth inside dried up and turned into cold, hard concrete. “Why wouldn’t he want to let me in on his true motivation?”

  “I don’t know. It could be a lot of reasons. It could be because he doesn’t trust you to handle it if he’s looking for a no-strings bang. It could be because he’s just not interested in letting you in. Or it could be because he knows no woman’s going to be thrilled if a man tells her upfront that he sees her as the ultimate fuck challenge, and that his true intentions are to pop you and drop you. I don’t know,” she said again, shrugging. “The only thing I do know it that whatever the reason, it’s never good when a man gets shifty.”

  Essie nodded and locked her jaw against a surge of unease. Just the thought of Steele looking at her as the ultimate fuck challenge grounded her with a painful thud. But it was what she needed. A good-old-fashioned dose of reality would definitely keep the fantasies of a princess wedding and adopting a boy and a girl that looked just like Steele at bay.

  Definitely.

  “But like I said, I don’t think that douchey behavior fits your Steele,” Carla went on when Essie didn’t answer. “First off, that kind of shitty juvenile way of thinking belongs to immature high school assholes, and Steele strikes me as a man who grew up a long time ago. I don’t think he keeps score on how many babes he bangs, and I don’t think he has to feed his ego by bagging notoriously difficult-to-bag women, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. “ Unfortunately.

  “And from where I’m sitting, he seems more selfless than selfish. After all, he gave you an orgasm without demanding you drop to your knees to return the favor. In my book, that makes him good people.”

  Essie tried to dispel the gathering clouds by blowing out a long breath. “It doesn’t take much to win you over, does it?”

  “Honey, he went above and beyond the call of duty on that score, so he’s got my official stamp of approval. Just keep in mind that no matter what answer the man gives you—even a non-answer—this can still be a great opportunity for you if you go into it with your eyes wide open. You can still have fun with the lessons he’s willing to teach you. You don’t have to fall in love to enjoy the act of making love.”

  “Right.” Essie nodded one last time, because what Carla said made sense.

  She just had one small problem.

  She wasn’t sure how to enjoy Steele and his lessons without having her heart get tangled up in the mix.

  Steele hustled up the stairs to Essie’s floor, not bothering to look at his watch. He knew what time it was. It was approximately five hours from the time he’d sent a quick text to her—“hung up at work, C U when I C U.”

  Five fucking hours.

  His empty gut rumbled, deepening his less-than-great mood. His best friend at PSI, Luke Keyes had kept muttering at him throughout two meetings and a lockdown to stop looking at his watch, but he hadn’t been able to put a leash on his need to get to get out of there.

  No. That wasn’t right. He hadn’t needed to get out of there.

  He’d needed to get to Essie.

  Hell of a note.

  He was just lifting a hand to knock on Essie’s door when it suddenly swung open.

  “Oh!” Clearly surprised, Essie stepped back, freezing in the process of tucking her phone case into a pocket of a pair of baggy denim overalls that had the cuffs rolled up to the knees. “Steele. Wow. Talk about timing. I was just headed out to the car wash and then on to the store to pick something up for dinner.”

  That news flash distracted him from how little-girl cute she looked, complete with a high ponytail that made his fingers itch to take it down. “Did you forget I was coming by after work?”

  Those amazing amber eyes of hers flashed with something that looked dangerously like irritation. “No, but since I didn’t hear from you and it’s after six, I figured you were the one who’d forgotten. All the stuff I put on hold for the day still needs to get done. I’m heading out because I’m starving, I have no food in the apartment other than cat food, and if I don’t get something into me soon I’m going to turn into Super Bitch.”

  He bit back a short sigh. Yep. Definitely irritation. “I had a situation that needed my attention at PSI, which happens from time to time. Communication isn’t always possible, so I couldn’t let you know when I was going to be here.” What sounded like thunder from above had his gaze snapping to the hallway’s ceiling. “What the hell is that?”

  “The other reason I need to get the hell out of this place,” she muttered, and the unvarnished anger in her tone brought his attention back to her. “The jerk who has the apartment right above mine is a drummer in some half-assed local band, and he doesn’t give a damn about his neighbors or the cat that supposedly belongs to him. That poor animal is so scared of all the noise that jerk makes, he slinks down the fire escape and crawls through my window whenever Thor starts hammering. Right now he’s hiding under my bathroom sink, shivering, refusing to eat and losing clumps of hair. The cat, not Thor.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” The thought of gentle Essie trying to take care of a helpless animal that wasn’t even hers hit him in a place he didn’t even know he had. “Does this happen a lot?”

  “Every. Single. Day.” The aggravation in her voice hit the red zone, and he hoped she never aimed that particular tone of vicious disgust on him. “Talking to him doesn’t work. Talking to the super wasn’t much better. Thor was given a warning about not playing his drums for more than an hour a day, and never after
sundown, but it didn’t do any good. This—“ she stabbed a finger sharply toward the ceiling, “—has been going on since before you texted me.”

  He’d texted her around one. This asshole had been terrorizing his neighbors—for fuck’s sake, Essie—for more than five hours.

  “That’s the real reason I’m heading out,” she gritted out between her teeth. “If I don’t get the fuck out of here this very second, I swear to God I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “Understood.” First things first, he told himself while his temper threatened to blow like Mt. Vesuvius. “My lady’s a little hungry, a lot hangry, so I need to get you out of here and fed.” With that, he pulled her out into the hallway. “Do you have your keys?”

  “Yeah, but… wait, Steele. I can’t go out to dinner like this.” She swept a meaningful hand at herself, and it made him take another, more detailed look. She wore a skinny, buttercup yellow tank underneath the overall bib. The generous swell of breast beneath it and the inch-wide strip of satiny, golden skin that showed at her hip where tank ended and denim began made his mouth go desert-dry. “Like I said, I’m heading out to wash my car and do some grocery shopping.”

  “You look fantastic.” With that, he reached in, closed the door behind her and shook it to make sure the lock had engaged. “I hope you like authentic Japanese-style ramen. The place we’re going is the absolute shit. Swear to God, you’ll never want to eat anywhere else after you have a taste.”

  The incessant pounding overhead continued as she tried to tug her hand from his. “Look, I’m serious, okay? I can’t go dressed like—”