She threw the glass at him and he ducked to the side. The glass sailed past his head but splattered him with the absinthe in passing.
“God, how I detest you!” she said, springing out of the chair. She came to stand over him. “You are a hateful little son of a bitch!”
“Yep, that’s exactly what I am,” he said.
She slapped him hard enough to rock his head to the side but he never flinched. He kept his face averted for he knew she’d do it again given the chance, maybe even rake her fingernails down his cheek. She’d done it before.
“Fuck you, you useless little prick!” she hurled at him then spun on her heel.
“You forgot your shoes,” he called after her but she never turned around. His front door opened and closed with a savage bang.
He sat there for half an hour with the anger and hurt building. Tears pricked behind his eyes but he refused to shed them. He concentrated on maintaining slow, steady breaths but after a while his heart felt as though it was going to explode.
He reached for his cell phone.
“Can I come over?” he asked.
“Of course.”
She’d just taken her shower and was putting on her pajamas as the toaster oven cooked the frozen jalapeño poppers that would be her supper. The moment the bike pulled up in her driveway she regretted that she had given in to the temptation of such a terrible choice. She’d probably have heartburn all night now.
The sound of a key in the lock stopped her in midstride.
“Damn it, Kiwi,” she said on a long sigh. She had to get that key away from him.
Padding into the living room, she was surprised he wasn’t in there. She stuck her head around the archway into the front hall and found him standing in the foyer. He had his back to the door, leaning against it. The look on his face was devastating.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, hurrying over to him. She reached out to put a hand on his arm.
And just like that he crumpled, going to his knees with such force she flinched. He wrapped his arms around her waist, buried his face against her stomach, and the most heart wrenching sound she’d ever heard was torn from his throat. He clung to her—keening, sobbing so wretchedly she was shocked to the very core. She put her hands on his shoulders but she couldn’t hunker down before him for his arms were so tightly constricted around her.
“Kiwi, what’s wrong?” she asked, terrified something had happened to Jonny or Craig or Jake. “What is it?”
The pitiful crying, the desolate, hopeless, helpless sound of it made her soul ache for him. She curled her arms around his head and held him as tightly as he held her. His tears were soaking through the material of her T-shirt and were scalding her.
“Baby, what happened?”
But until the tears were spent and the last racking shudder left him, he kept his silence and his body rigid. She felt him beginning to relax the tense muscles and put her hands to his cheeks, lifted his tear-ravaged face up to her. The look in his eyes tore into her like an arrow.
“Let’s go in the living room, okay?” she asked, fanning her thumbs under his swollen eyes. “That floor has to be hell on your knees.” She swept her palm over his left eye and up his forehead into his short hair. “Okay?”
He nodded and released her, got to his feet as though he were an old man. He ran the back of his forearm under his nose.
“Oh, that’s just nasty,” she said. She turned and plucked a trio of tissues from the box on her foyer table. “Here.”
She left him blowing his nose and went into the living room. Sitting down on the sofa, she watched him walking toward her with his shoulders slumped dejectedly and his head down. She patted the cushion beside her but he knelt at her feet, wrapped his right arm around her legs and laid his head in her lap, his face away from her.
“Kiwi, that has to be uncomfortable,” she said as she smoothed her palm over his head but he didn’t reply.
They sat that way for the longest time and she thought he had fallen asleep but when he drew in a long, wavering breath she knew he was ready to talk.
“You want to tell me what happened?” she asked, fearing some terrible news about Jonny or Craig.
“My knees are killing me,” he said.
“Then get off the floor, goofball,” she told him.
He pushed wearily to his feet but instead of sitting beside her, he stretched out on his back with his knees drawn up and once more laid his head in her lap. One hand rested on his stomach and the other was splayed on his thigh. He craned his head back to look up at her. His eyes were sorrowful blue pools rimmed in red.
“Can I spend the night?” he asked.
“You know you can,” she replied.
“Because I’m paying you to be nice to me,” he said.
“Because I like you, Kiwi,” she said. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t still be here.”
He stared hard at her. “You’re still here because of the money.”
“I won’t deny that but I think you and I both know it’s become more than just about the money,” she replied.
He lowered his eyes. “Maybe.”
She took a deep breath, almost afraid to ask. “Did something happen to Jonny or Craig?”
His eyes flicked up to hers again and frowned as though he didn’t understand then shook his head when he did. “No, nothing like that.”
“Then what?” she pressed. She ran her hand over his forehead, stroking him as she would a little boy.
He reached up to capture her hand, brought it down to his heart and held it there. He took a deep breath. “Olivia came to see me tonight.”
That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. She tried to keep her voice even as she asked if he’d been expecting her. “Your mother? I thought both your parents were dead.”
“Surprise,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’ve always dreaded this day would come.”
“You didn’t want anyone to know about her,” she said. “I understand.”
“She called me from the airport to send a limo to take her to the Hilton,” he replied. “She ordered me to have the limo available to her for when she needed it.”
“Ordered you,” she repeated and the first word put a bitter taste in her mouth.
“That’s why we couldn’t go to the Room tonight,” he said. “She told me she was coming over to speak with me.”
“I see,” she said. “When I took over MI,” he said, “I bought her a condo on the North Shore. I gave her carte blanche to decorate it as she liked and I paid for everything. I give her a new car every six months and I pay her credit cards which have no limits. I give her an allowance every month.”
What he was telling her made her grit her teeth. She knew the woman had never done anything for him in his entire life, had neglected and abused him when he was younger yet he gave her everything he could. She wondered if he realized he was trying to buy her love.
“Why did she come to see you?”
“To demand I give her seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars,” he said and she heard the bitterness in his tone. “Seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars for plastic surgery on her boobs, her arse and her cunt.”
The thought of a mother asking her son for something like that turned her stomach. “Did you give it to her?”
“No,” he said. “And I’m not going to give her another penny of my money.” He clenched his jaw. “Not another red cent. The condo and everything in it—as far as I know—is paid for. The condo is in her name. I’ll pay off the credit cards but that will be the last money she ever gets from me. She can let some old bastard keep her from now on.”
“Good,” she said and when his eyes flicked up to hers, she smiled. “I think it’s well past the time you cut the cord from your mother.”
He grinned then his eyebrows drew together. “I’m hungry.”
“Me, too,” she replied.
“You didn’t eat?”
“I was about to when you called.”
He sat up and swung his legs from the sofa. “What did you make?”
She felt the heat staining her cheeks. “Jalapeño poppers.”
“Are there enough for me?”
“No, but I can make some more.” She looked past him to the archway and the kitchen beyond. “I’ll have to reheat mine. Are you sure you want poppers for supper? That’s not much for a growing boy.”
“No, but I’ll order a pizza while you’re making them.”
She stopped. “How did you get past the reporters?”
“I have a new bike and that thing can moooove!” he said. He chortled. “And go places news vans can’t.”
He lay on his side with his head propped in his hand and watched her sleep. To him, she was the most beautiful woman in the world and with her lips slightly parted, the back of one hand resting on the pillow beside her head, he thought of sleeping beauty. He wanted to lean over and kiss those lush lips, to wake her but he contented himself with just watching her until his eyes grew too heavy. He moved over on the bed and laid his head beside hers on her pillow and went to sleep.
She woke to a low rumble of thunder and the nerve-grating sound of him snoring beside her. She turned her head to look at him. He was lying on his back with his head on her pillow. His left arm was pressed tightly to her side and lay crooked over his chest. He drew in a long, earth-shattering snort as lightning flared beyond her window.
“Kiwi?” she said. “Turn over.”
He mumbled something unintelligible and smacked his lips.
She nudged him with her foot. “Kiwi? I mean it. Turn over.”
A loud clap of thunder shook the windows and he stirred. Another shook him awake and his eyes came open as another flare of light pulsed through the blinds. He turned his head toward her.
“Eh?” he asked.
“You were snoring,” she accused.
“No I wasn’t,” he mumbled.
“Yes, you were.”
“I don’t snore.”
“Yes, you do,” she insisted.
“That wasn’t snoring. I don’t snore,” he told her.
“Then what was that god awful noise you were making if it wasn’t snoring?”
“What you heard was just the Gigantitron idling,” he said with a smirk.
“Goofball,” she replied.
“Wait ‘til you see him in gear,” he said with a wag of his brows. “You won’t be so dismissive then, woman.” He draped his right arm over her and gathered her to him. “Now, shut up. I’m sleepy.”
She was almost asleep when he nuzzled her neck.
“No,” she told him.
“Still?” he asked.
“Afraid so.”
She heard him sigh and hoped her period would end the next day.
She was in the shower when he woke to a leaden-gray morning with rain pounding the windows. Not a good day to be riding a motorcycle, he thought.
He had to piss so badly his teeth were aching so he got out of bed. He hoped he could do his thing before she finished bathing. There was only one small bathroom in the house and not for the first time did he wish she’d let him buy her a new place to live.
He tried to keep his face averted from the shower curtain behind which he could see her shadow but as he lifted up the toilet seat his eyes kept straying that way. He was standing there with his dick in his hand when the water shut off. In midstream there was no way to cut it off and when the plastic curtain slid aside on its noisy hooks he deliberately looked away from the tub.
“Good morning,” she said.
“G’day,” he replied and felt heat spreading over his face. He could hear the scrape of the towel as she dried off and desperately wanted to see her completely naked.
He finished pissing, shook himself, and then stuffed his dick back into the black boxer shorts she’d given him to sleep in the night before, thinking about the anger that had burned him to the core as he waved them in front of her.
“Where the hell did these come from?” he’d demanded.
“They are brand new. I just took them out of the package,” she said. “I bought them for—”
“For who?” he had shouted.
The look she’d given him had set his teeth on edge before she answered, “For Drew. My brother.” She’d cocked her head to one side. “Who did you think I bought them for, Kiwi?”
“Oh,” he’d said sheepishly. “I thought—”
“I know what you thought,” she said. “Shame on you. Until the end of the month, I’m all yours.”
Those words hadn’t registered the evening before because he was distracted, but this morning they drove under his skin like sandspurs and he turned to face her. Luckily for him—or unluckily depending on how he looked at it—she had the towel wrapped securely around her, her long hair hanging wetly down her back as she padded over to the small vanity.
“What the hell did you mean?” he asked.
She paused in running a comb through her hair. “About what?”
“That you were mine until the end of the month.”
“Thirty days,” she reminded him. “Isn’t that what the ad said?”
He stared at her and felt anger bubbling up from the volcano of his temper. “You think that’s when it will end?” he asked.
She gave him a look he couldn’t read. “I guess that depends on you, Kiwi,” she replied and walked past him. “Flush the toilet and wash your hands.”
He reached for the handle and stood there watching the water circling down the toilet. Something dark moved inside him as he turned to the sink. He looked up into the mirror hanging above the little vanity and saw a man he didn’t recognize staring back at him.
“I guess that depends on you, Kiwi,” he repeated to his image.
And for the first time he understood the ball was in his side of the court.
Chapter Nineteen
Night Sixteen
“Well?” he asked as soon as she came into the Room. He was standing under the pool of light over the straight-back chair.
She turned to twist the deadbolt on the door.
“You can answer, you know!” he snapped.
She faced him. “The wet season has passed,” she said and watched triumph spark through his blue eyes.
“Good,” he said then snaked out an arm to capture her. He dragged her to him and slammed his mouth over hers. She felt the hot press of his tongue pushing past her lips.
He took her mouth like a conquering hero his due. His lower body thrust savagely against hers so she could feel the hard prod of his cock. Lacing her arms around his neck, she pushed back, rubbing her groin along his.
“Jesus, woman,” he breathed against her lips. He snapped away from her, putting her at arm’s length. His hands were shaking as he licked his lips. “Take off your blouse and your bra and your skirt!”
She smiled and began to slowly unbutton her blouse, keeping her eyes locked on his.
He growled.
She stopped with her hand on the second from the last button.
“You want that blouse in one piece at the end of the evening?” he asked in husky voice.
She gave him another smile and finished unbuttoning the blouse. She shrugged out of it just as slowly as she’d ran the buttons.
“You are going over my knee if you don’t speed it up,” he warned.
She turned her smile into a smirk as she dropped the blouse behind her.
He snatched it before it hit the floor. “You should take better care of your clothes.”
Just as slowly, she reached behind her to unhook her bra then eased one strap down her shoulder while cupping the opposite breast in her hand.
“Woman…” he groaned.
She moistened her lips, watched his blue eyes widen then turn hot as hell.
“Take it off or get it ripped off,” he told her, a muscle grinding in his cheek.
Lowering her arms, she let the bra slide over them. He didn’t bother picking it up. Instead,
he leaned down, cupped her left breast and drew the nipple into his mouth.
She sucked in a breath as he ravaged the peak with his lips, his tongue, nipped it lightly with his teeth. Pressure shot instantly to the juncture of her thighs and she felt her womb pulse. The thick bulge pressing to her made her knees weak. He must have sensed it for he tightened his hold on her, growling deep in his throat as he worked her nipple. She put her hands to his head to hold him against her and as soon as she did, he let go of her and stepped back.
“You…I…” He scraped his hand across the top of his head. He was trembling and she knew it was from the force of his arousal.
She wanted him. She wanted to know him as a woman knows a man. The only way she could do that was to make him lose control of the situation, to back him into a corner and hold him pinioned there. He’d told her he had a timetable for her deflowering.
She needed to fast forward that timetable. She reached for the bottom of his dark gray T-shirt.
He tightly clamped his lips together as he raised his arms so she could remove his T-shirt. His cock was so hard it hurt. She tossed his T-shirt to the chair then put her hands on him, her palms just beneath his pecs, then slid them upward. As she did, a quiver went down his spine.
She was looking up at him with her eyes trusting and needing and hot as hell as she dragged her fingertips over his paps. Just as he had done, she stepped in and placed her lips—gently but firmly—around his nipple and he could have broken concrete with his cock.
He let his head fall back as she suckled him, stabbed the peak with her sweet tongue then nipped playfully. He closed his eyes and drew in long, wavering breaths as she plied that wet warmth over him. His hands jerked at his sides but he kept them off her. He was afraid if he touched her, he would drag her down to the floor and take her, fuck her so hard and for so long they would both be sore come morning.
And she wasn’t ready for that yet.
Baby steps. He…
His heart stuttered to a stop for her hands had dragged from his pecs to the buckle of his belt and she was unbuckling it. When he made to push her hands away, she shook her head vehemently, shooting him a narrow-eyed look that made him put his hands down slowly. His fingers twitched and he swallowed hard as she pulled the leather from its prong then out of the buckle, peeled the belt back and reached for the closure at his waist. He lowered his head, opened his eyes to stare down at her as she took hold of the zipper pull.
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