by Linda Grimes
I gripped his shoulders, sliding up until I felt the tip of him at my entrance. A shaft of moonlight from a gap in my curtains fell across his face, delineating his hard-chiseled features, highlighting the intensity of his dark gray eyes. A tiny droplet of sweat made its way down one temple, with more of them spiking the wisps of new growth at his hairline.
He was holding himself in check, waiting for me. And it wasn’t easy for him.
In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought, and reached down to adjust his angle. I watched his face intently as I lowered myself, taking his fullness into me slowly, until I had him completely engulfed. He held himself still as stone until I began moving.
Leaving me to set the pace of our lovemaking, he stroked my breasts, alternately kneading them with his palms and flicking his thumbs across the tips. When I started whimpering, he reversed our positions and stopped holding himself back.
If I’d had any fingernails to speak of, he would have had stripes on his back by the time we were finished. Lying there in his arms, too bemused to speak, I wasn’t sure if Billy had exorcised my fantasy of Mark, or had only succeeded in entrenching it more deeply.
Chapter 15
I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and then, needing more time to sort out my feelings, decided to put on my robe and go downstairs.
“I’ll be back in a sec—just getting us something from the kitchen,” I said, hoping he’d take the hint and give me a minute.
Staring into the freezer, trying to decide which flavor of ice cream the situation called for, I couldn’t help wondering if this whole thing had been a supremely bad idea. Sure, it had been exciting as hell, but—
No. That kind of thinking was puritanical, wasn’t it? Nobody was more comfortable with what it meant to be an adaptor than Billy was. Changing our appearance was a core part of who we were—shouldn’t we embrace that part of ourselves along with everything else?
Or was I over-rationalizing?
I was reaching for the Rocky Road when I heard Billy’s voice.
“Hey there. Couldn’t wait to get out of the dress, huh? Too bad. I was looking forward to ripping it off you with my teeth.”
I froze, suddenly colder than the ice cream in my hand.
Oh, God. NO. No, no, no, no … It couldn’t be.
He hugged me from behind.
“Billy?” I said weakly.
“Who else?” he said, and kissed my neck.
Normally, that particular action would make me turn around in his arms, ready, willing, and happily anticipating anything he might have a fancy to do. All it did now was paralyze me with guilt. My mind went numb, absolutely refusing to consider what his presence here in my kitchen, at this moment, meant.
No, I thought again. It had to be a joke. He’d put on some of the clothes he kept in my spare room, and followed me downstairs. He was teasing me again. Please, God, he had to be teasing me. He always teased me.
“Ciel? Are you all right?” He turned me to face him, concern filling his gorgeous eyes. “You’re not sick, are you? The caterers didn’t give you food poisoning, did they?”
I shook my head. He wasn’t teasing me. He just got here. Which meant—
“Everything okay, Howdy?”
I spun my head around to see Mark had come down. My one reprieve from total fucking disaster was that he was dressed. Maybe he’d heard Billy come in—his hearing had always been incredibly sharp. His collar was undone, and his tie was hanging out of his tux jacket, but Billy wouldn’t think that was strange. Ties were a pain.
“Hey, Mark,” Billy said matter-of-factly. He knew Mark often stayed in his old room when his boat wasn’t available for whatever reason. “I got everything finished up, no problem. Subject showed up shortly after you left, and has been safely delivered to your bosses. He’s singing like the proverbial canary.”
“Great. Thanks again,” Mark said, a bit stiffly, I thought. He had his “assessing” face on, sizing up the situation, and, I was terribly afraid, coming to the correct conclusion. “It means a lot that I didn’t have to miss Tom and Laura’s wedding. I’m sorry you did.”
Billy, still oblivious to the load of shit that was about to be dropped on his head, draped one arm casually over my shoulders and pulled me away from the fridge.
Mark’s eyes narrowed.
“No problem,” Billy said. “I’ll catch it on video. I’m only sorry I didn’t get to see Ciel in the infamous yellow dress in person. But no doubt there’ll be plenty of pictures.”
I felt a little sick, remembering exactly where the dress was, and whose hands had removed it from me. “Trust me, it’s not a look I wanted to have commemorated,” I said, my voice hollow.
Billy tugged my hair. “Bet you were beautiful, cuz.”
“She was,” Mark said. “The prettiest one there.”
He seemed to be waiting. For an explanation, probably. A confession. Something. I stared into his eyes, silently begging for understanding. For time. Because I had no fucking clue what to say that could possibly make this situation all right.
How could I ever explain this to Mark? Right now, either he was thinking I was a duplicitous bitch for throwing myself at him with no intention of breaking up with Billy—and maybe feeling guilty for participating—or else he’d figured out what had actually happened, in which case he would be feeling used and maybe even violated.
Neither option left me smelling like a rose.
When no words found their way out of my mouth, Mark smiled—it didn’t reach his eyes—and said, “Well, I better get going.” He dug into his pocket for the car keys and laid them on the closest table. “Here you go, Billy. Nice ride, as always. Mine out front?”
Billy tossed him the set of keys he still had in his hands. “Yeah, right behind the Chevy. Thanks for seeing Ciel safely home.”
Mark pierced me with one final look. “It was my pleasure.”
* * *
I locked the door behind Mark and turned to face the music. From the look on Billy’s face, he was beginning to hear traces of the tune.
He took me by the hand and led me to the living room. I sat on the sofa, tucking my legs under me, and hugged a red chenille throw pillow to my chest. If only it were shaped like an “A” it would be perfect.
Billy sat next to me, for once not immediately pulling me into an embrace.
“The spook seemed a little tense. You gonna tell me what’s going on?” he asked. His voice was low, almost hesitant.
I finally looked him, really at him. What I saw there upset me more than anything so far. Fear. He was afraid of what I was going to tell him. He thought—
“No! It’s not like that … Billy, I never would have … you know you’re the one—”
I thought I saw a tiny amount of relief in his eyes. Would he understand? Would I, in his place? The one thing I knew, as cowardly as I was feeling at the moment, was that I had to tell him what had happened. I couldn’t compound my wrong by lying about it.
So, I started at the beginning. Took him with me through the wedding and the reception, explaining, as dispassionately as I could, my thought processes, trying to make him understand how I could possibly think he would do such a thing. I, of course, didn’t go into detail about my encounter with Mark, other than that it had happened—that would be cruel, not to mention incredibly stupid.
I finished up my painfully long soliloquy with, “And then, when you came in”—I hurriedly wiped the tears from my face with a corner of the pillow—“and I realized what I had done…” I couldn’t go on, not without sobbing, and I wasn’t going to lay that on him.
He’d held himself still and granite-faced the whole time I was talking. “Thank you for telling me,” he said at last, in a quiet monotone.
I was starting to panic. He looked so stunned, so emotionally … not there. I had to—“Billy, I love—”
“Stop.” His voice was harsh. “Do not tell me you love me. Not now.”
I drew back, shrinking into
myself like he’d backhanded me. “I—I—am so very sorry.” I was crying openly, unable to hold it in anymore. “You have every right to be mad—”
“Oh, I’m mad.” His eyes frosted over, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking toward the front door.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said quickly. Probably too quickly. But, God, I would hate myself even more if what I’d done caused a rift between Billy and Mark.
“Don’t be stupid, Ciel. Of course it was,” he said, voice rock hard.
“No, I told you—he thought I was mad at you, that I was questioning my relationship with you. I—stupidly, I know—let him think that, but only because I thought he was you. I was trying to goad you into telling me it was you, to make you come clean. It was part of the game I idiotically thought we were playing.”
“Ciel, none of that matters. What matters is he betrayed me. Even if everything you say is true—and, don’t worry, knowing how your mind works, I believe your story—even so, he should have, at the very least, waited.”
My sobs were coming faster and harder. He finally gathered me in his arms, holding my head close to his heart, stroking my hair, not saying anything.
When I still didn’t stop, he lifted my chin and kissed me, not at all gently. Fiercely. Possessively. I responded—I couldn’t not respond to Billy, it seemed—and it made me feel all the more shame. I pulled away.
“I … I need a shower,” I said.
A look of bleak understanding fell over his face, followed by stony determination. He stood, and pulled me along with him, not stopping until we were in my upstairs bathroom.
“What are you doing?” I asked, though it was becoming more obvious by the second.
He yanked open the shower curtain and turned on the water. The spray was still cold when he lifted me and put me under it. I stood there as he kicked off his shoes, sputtering as the water hit my face. He stepped in and reached for my robe. Stopped himself.
“May I?” he said, with a forced calmness.
I nodded, standing there like a mannequin.
He pulled the robe off me and dropped it on the floor next to the tub. I was trying very hard not to shake, but the water was taking a god-awful time to warm up. I wanted so badly for this night never to have happened.
Billy found my bottle of body wash and squirted way more than I usually used onto his hand. He started with my back, working his way down until he got to my feet, then turned me around and continued, methodically replacing the aroma of Mark with the scent of cucumber melon bath gel. He saved the center of me for last, and by the time he got there I wasn’t shivering anymore. Not from the cold, anyway.
I held on to his biceps to keep from toppling over as he let the now warm water cascade over me, washing away the last bit of foamy gel.
“Your clothes … got wet,” I said inanely, my voice small.
He pulled the black henley over his head and dropped it, sopping, on top of my robe. His jeans took more effort, but they, too, eventually came to rest on the wet pile.
Naked, he took my hands in his and looked into my eyes, hard. “I should have told you I wouldn’t be at the wedding—that part was my fault. But I have to know—did you really think he was me?”
“I did, Billy. I swear I did. I never would have—”
He pulled me into his arms. “Shhh. It’ll be okay.”
Chapter 16
Billy was gone from the guest bed when I woke up, giving me a moment of panic until I heard him in the kitchen. I went to my room for something to put on and was surprised to see the bed stripped down to the mattress. Sheets, pillowcases, and bedspread were nowhere to be seen. Ditto my dress, underwear, and bra.
I checked the bathroom. The pile of sodden clothing was also missing.
I dressed hastily in a T-shirt and a pair of yoga pants and went downstairs to find Billy at the stove, scrambling eggs. His eyes were guarded, but otherwise he seemed to be his usual cheerful morning self.
I thought we’d maybe weathered the storm. We’d slept in my guest room. Well, kind of slept. Mostly, we’d put a great deal of effort into proving we couldn’t get enough of each other. He’d seemed determined to wipe any trace of Mark from my consciousness, and I was equally determined to prove he had nothing to worry about on that score.
Heck, I had more than enough worry for the both of us.
“Hi,” I said.
“Cuz,” he said with a tiny bow of his head. “How many pieces of bacon would you like?”
“Two,” I answered automatically, not really giving a damn about bacon. I wandered closer to the stove and leaned back against the counter. “So, I notice my bedspread and sheets are gone…”
He shrugged and kept pushing the eggs around the pan. “I threw them away. Don’t worry, I’ll buy you some more. Bra and underwear, too. I don’t expect you want me to replace the dress.”
Okay. I could understand his actions. “No, I don’t need another dress like that one.”
He scraped the fluffy yellow eggs (they looked much better than when I cooked them) onto two plates and added strips of bacon. Not looking at me, he carried our food to the dining table. I followed him with forks.
“Juice?” he said as I sat, sounding like a waiter.
I let out a breath through puffed cheeks. “You’re still mad.”
“No, I’m not.” He sat, started to take a bite, then pushed his plate aside. “Okay, I am. Damn it, Ciel, you should have known.”
“How? How could I know for sure? You’re a damn good adaptor—when you’re wearing someone else’s aura, nobody can tell it’s you unless you allow it. I assumed you were going for complete realism.”
He looked at me wryly. “That’s just it. How could you think I’d be Mark?”
“Why wouldn’t you? We all cover for each other. You know how seriously Mark takes his job—I assumed if one of you had to stay and finish the assignment, naturally it would be him.”
“I wasn’t asking that, and you know it. I meant how could you think I’d be Mark for you?”
“Geez, Billy, it’s not as if you haven’t offered. I mean, the other day you were ready to sweep me off my feet as Jackson Gunn!”
“Yeah, and that would have been fine. I knew it wouldn’t mean anything to you. Hell, I’ll be happy to wear Hugh Jackman for you, or Daniel Craig, or that guy you like on the Vampire Diaries—”
“Ian Somerhalder? Don’t bother. You look enough like him as it is,” I said, trying desperately to lighten the moment.
He lifted one corner of his mouth. Halfway there?
“The point is, I know you don’t feel anything beyond a passing lust for any of them. If I were going to pretend to be Mark for you—and that’s a damn big ‘if,’ because, trust me, I’m not that big an idiot. Anyone else, fine—but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I lost my freaking mind and did it. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t have thrown in something to crack your impression that he’s perfect?”
He seemed to be loosening up, now that he was letting it out. When he saw I wasn’t going to argue with him, the barest hint of humor appeared in his eyes.
“Hell, I would have given him Limburger breath, if I thought it would kill your crush. At the least. And probably a really tiny dick.”
That surprised a laugh out of me. I clamped my mouth shut, but the giggles kept coming.
Billy reached across the table and took my hand, his eyes finally forgiving me. “Now, Ciel. Tell me when you’re laughing. I couldn’t stand to hear it when you were crying.”
My heart full, I declared it openly to him for the first time. “I love you.”
His face relaxed, the tension he’d been holding at bay gone. “Told you so,” he said with a wink. “Eat your eggs before they get cold.”
* * *
Billy left me to my own devices after breakfast. He had a client of his own to meet with back in Manhattan.
As he walked out the door he said, “Limburger.”
“What?” I
said, perplexed. “You want me to get you some cheese?”
He shook his head. “That’s our new safe word. If you ever need to know it’s me, ask if I want some cheese. I’ll say ‘Limburger’—that’s how you’ll know for sure.”
“Okay. Limburger.” I supposed it was better than “tiny dick.”
I was hoping the drive would give his anger toward Mark a chance to cool, but I hadn’t brought it up again, not wanting to strain our fragile rapprochement. When he came back, we were going to put our heads together and figure out the best way to deal with the Jackson Gunn situation.
The first thing I did after he left was reach for my phone. I doubted Billy would appreciate it, but I had to explain things to Mark. I wasn’t looking forward to it a bit either, but confession was apparently good for the soul. Besides, in the immortal words of my dad, if you make a mess, you clean it up yourself.
Mark didn’t answer, so I left a message to call me when he got a chance, hoping my voice hadn’t cracked as much as I feared it did, frankly grateful for the reprieve. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to say to him.
I showered again, put on clean clothes, and dug out fresh sheets for both beds, wishing it were as simple to tidy up my conscience. That was when I noticed the small, still-damp velvet case on my nightstand, and my heart tried to exit my body through my mouth. Was that Billy’s surprise? Surely he hadn’t intended to …
But no. What it was clamped around my heart more than any ring could have. It was a small brooch, made of diamonds and white gold, shaped like an open parachute. The folded note in the case read: Congratulations on facing your fears. Stick with me, Ciel—I’ll never let you fall.
He must have had it made after my first ride in his plane. I felt the tears prickle again. Aw, crap. Why’d he have to be so thoughtful? And how could I have been so stupid? Had I wanted to have my cake and eat it too so badly that my brain had come up with the perfect scenario to achieve it without guilt? Man, I sucked at being a girlfriend.