But he doesn’t withdraw his offer.
“Yes,” she says in a small voice.
He nods and leaves the bedroom. He returns several minutes later with a glass of cold milk and a mayonnaise sandwich on a plate.
“It’s all I have in the fridge,” he says with a rueful smile. “I’m not too good with keeping up with my grocery shopping.”
He watches her while she bites into the sandwich hungrily.
“Do you live here alone?” she asks.
“Yes. I don’t think anyone would want to be roomies with me with the current state my apartment is in.” He laughs.
“Are you an artist?”
“Yes.”
“Are you famous?”
He laughs again. He has a vivid laugh, rich and full of baritone. “I wish. I’m barely surviving.”
She nods and finishes the last crumbs of her sandwich.
“Do you want some more?” he says.
“No.” The burn of the stomach acids is appeased for the moment. But it will come again, she knows. She quickly downs the glass of milk.
“Good, because I don’t have any bread left. I’ll get some more when I come back.”
“When will you be back?”
He hesitates again, perhaps gauging what to tell a stranger.
“Tomorrow morning, perhaps. But you’ll be all right here. Do you have someplace to go?”
“No.”
“How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty,” she lies.
He eyes her skeptically. “You don’t look twenty. You sure you’re twenty?”
She nods.
He sighs, aware that he is not going to get the truth out of her tonight. Then he gets up. “I’ve got to go. Just get some sleep. It’s safe here, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some food. What do you like? Peanut butter? Oreos? Minute rice?”
“Sounds good.”
“Don’t mind if I change in here?”
It’s your room, she wants to say, but doesn’t for fear of sounding trite in the face of his kindness. It’s funny for him to be tiptoeing around her like this. But he’s probably as wary of her as she is of him, two strangers thrown together by unique circumstances.
He turns his back on her and opens his closet doors. He then peels off his white T-shirt and jeans. She can see the interplay of muscles on his magnificent back, covered by his golden skin. His torso narrows fetchingly into ‘snake’ hips. He wears Y-fronts, but nothing else underneath. He quickly puts on a black sleeveless shirt with snaps instead of buttons down its front and a pair of black jeans.
When he turns to her, she can see how nicely his arm muscles are defined. She wonders if he is going clubbing. He is certainly dressed for it. Perhaps he is meeting his girlfriend. A part of her brain goes fuzzy with disappointment at that thought, but she brushes it aside.
She doesn’t ask him anything and he doesn’t volunteer information.
“I’ll see you,” he remarks, a little shyly. His large eyes are framed by the longest lashes, she notices.
“Thank you, Devon,” she says, smiling weakly.
“Don’t let anyone in,” he warns as he exits.
She hears him shut the door outside and lock it.
She lies there for five minutes before making herself sit up. Her head spins a little, but she arrests herself. Then she hops out of bed to rifle in his bedside cabinet drawers. There is no spare cash. A cheap leather-strapped watch, but nothing of value. She looks under his bed. There are dust-covered suitcases, and they are empty.
Does she really want to rob him when he has been so kind to her? She’s desperate, but not desperate enough to do this to him. Besides, she has no place to go and whatever petty cash he has in this apartment probably wouldn’t be able to cover half a night at the YWCA.
She forces herself back on the bed. Sleep comes easily once she allows herself to drift on her pleasantly full stomach.
LUST
Devon finds himself thinking about the girl he just left in his third floor apartment. That was smart, he berates himself wryly. He just left a total stranger there. For all he knows, she might have absconded by now with all his valuables.
The good thing about being a starving artist is that he has no valuables, unless you count his paintings, which may or may not be worth something one day when he is dead. But of course, he’s hoping to make it big while he is alive, and preferably not without all his teeth.
The trouble is that he has lost his spark, and lost it in a major way. He hasn’t been able to paint for weeks now. He would start something, and then tear up the canvas in a fit of self-loathing. He rented the apartment because of its unique light, but it isn’t in a rent-controlled zone and the place is costing him an arm and a leg.
His friends – models, busboys, students who haven’t dropped out of college the way he did – have always marveled that he is able to afford a place of his own. He tells them he gets commissions from rich patrons to paint their loved ones or pets.
This is only partially true.
The sky has stopped weeping and the streets have thinned out considerably of people at this late hour. The wind is still chilly, and he wraps his leather jacket tighter to his body, tucking his hands into the deep pockets to keep them from losing heat. He takes the subway downtown and gets out at a stop near the Central Park reservoir.
He walks a little distance and stops outside a swanky apartment building. The doorman gives him a strange look as he enters and swipes his own card to take the private elevator up to the penthouse.
Once there, he walks to the handsome double doors and presses the buzzer. He waits there for someone to come to the door.
He is assailed by a sense of déjà vu as he stands there. He remembers every imprint of the sturdy wooden doors, every whorl of the polished wood, every curve of the careful geometric pattern carved into its frame. He has stood here for so many nights, studying every detail of the doors and wondering how they would look on his canvas.
The door finally opens a fraction, and a woman peers out. When she sees him, she smiles.
“Come in, Devon.”
“Hello, Claire.”
He steps in, always a little apprehensive at the start of any date. She turns and walks down the hallway to a magnificently lit lounge. Here, the high ceiling is vaulted and bedecked with frescoes of lotus flowers. The woman is clad in an apple green terrycloth robe, and her hair is damp, as if she has just stepped out of the shower.
She goes to her Chanel purse, nestled by a large vase of flowers on a Welsh dresser. She fishes out five hundred dollars and hands it to him.
“Here,” she says.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he says. It does sting a little – the callous way she still treats him despite the fact they have known each other for well over a year.
“You were the one who established the boundaries, Devon,” she reminds him.
He flinches. Yes, he remembers that all too well. He accepts the money, folds the bills and pockets them.
“Take it off,” she orders, eyeing him as though he is a piece of horseflesh. “Take it all off.”
He does this slowly, knowing that she enjoys the show. Off comes his leather jacket, dropped in a careless heap upon the white marble floor. Off comes his black shirt with the snaps, and off comes his jeans. He knows he looks sexy and he revels in his effect on her.
He wears only his briefs as he goes to her in a dance they know so intimately. He is far taller than she is, and he has always admired her petite brunette beauty.
“Take me,” she whispers, her dark eyes flashing.
He bends his head for a voracious kiss, grabbing her body against his in a bout of passion that she craves and would never get from her rich lawyer husband. His hands roam over her waist and hips and breasts, undoing the sash of the terrycloth robe so that it opens to reveal a generous expanse of cleavage and stomach.
He drops her robe, crushing his mouth to hers and running his tongue and lip
s down her jawline and neck, nipping her well-scrubbed and satiny skin very lightly with his teeth. Then he scoops her up in his strong arms – the very arms with which he has carried the girl up three flights of stairs to his apartment earlier. His cock is rock hard and ready as he carries his writhing burden to her bedroom.
Once there, he throws her onto the flouncy, four-posted bed. Her red lips smile up at him as she reaches for his well-formed cock. He slashes away her groping hands. It’s a game they like to play, this push and pull. He would be the dominant aggressor and ravisher, and she would be his willing slave.
He falls onto her with wanton abandonment – kissing and sucking her flesh in a riot of need and desire. He suckles her dry breasts, reveling in the smell of her sweetly soaped skin, and traverses his tongue downwards to lick her velvety core.
Then he slips on a condom in a practiced way and takes her hard – the way she likes to be taken. He bends her legs until she is almost folded in half, and ruts against her in this manner, all the while lowering his head to devour her lips.
He loses himself in the passion of fucking. For it is fucking – nothing but the pure, pristine slap, slap, slap of sex organ cleaving into fleshy sex organ walls, because he does not allow this transaction to be anything but monetary.
He makes sure she climaxes before he does so that he would have a satisfied customer. Then he rolls himself off her and tears off the sodden condom. He ties it up with an expert loop and throws it into the bin beneath the dressing table.
He flops himself onto the bed beside her and stares at the ceiling.
“Turn off the lights,” she says.
He gets up to obey without question. He climbs into bed beside her again and draws the covers over both their naked bodies. This is the part that he likes best of all – cuddling. And she only allows him to do it because she’s all climaxed and sated with sex.
“Where’s your husband?” he asks.
“London.”
He relaxes and holds her in his arms, stroking her hair absently while he thinks of the girl he left back in his apartment.
Abby.
He wonders if that is her real name. She is pretty in an elfin way, but far too skinny. He remembers how large her eyes are in her thin face, and how frightened she was when she gazed at him for the first time. He doesn’t get that look often from girls. They look at him with desire, perhaps. Lust. Longing. But never fear.
It makes him feel like a predator.
He wonders if she is running away from something. No, scratch that. She is definitely running away from something. Or more likely, someone. He is sure that she is a victim of abuse. He is not equipped to deal with abuse victims, but she does not seem to be psychologically damaged on the surface.
Who abused her then? A father? Stepfather? Boyfriend? She appears rather young, and he wouldn’t put her age past eighteen.
When she’s ready to talk, he reckons she will talk. When she’s ready to disappear, he reckons she will disappear too – in a puff of smoke. But she’s no ordinary victim. There’s something about her that isn’t right. Something in her demeanor that hints at layers between layers of conflict.
Meanwhile, Claire is drifting off to sleep in his arms. She is warm and compact and nice to hold.
“Don’t forget about Rachel tomorrow,” she murmurs.
“How can I?”
“You don’t like her.” Claire fingers his chest lightly, tracing a nail in the depression between his pectorals.
“She can be cruel.” He cringes when he thinks of the things Rachel makes him do.
“She pays well.”
That she does, he concedes.
And he will take every red cent he can get.
MORNING
When he gets back to his apartment, Abby is up and frying something in the small kitchen. The aroma of pancakes permeates the entire lounge.
“I found some old pancake flour in your cupboards,” she says, turning around to greet him as he enters.
“It’s probably expired by now.”
“By three months,” she agrees. “But it smells OK.”
“I’ve bought some bread.” He holds up a paper bag. “And peanut butter. And plenty of crisps.”
“Did you get any more eggs?”
He shakes his head, feeling deficient. He isn’t aware he is out of eggs.
“It’s OK. We can go grocery shopping later. Sit down and have some breakfast.”
He sits down at the table while she flips a pancake onto a plate and sets it before him. He feels ill at ease, as if she’s the host and he the guest in his own apartment.
“Did you get butter?” she asks, rifling in his bag.
“Margarine.”
“Good.” She takes it out and sets the tub on the table.
He smiles at her. She has certainly made herself at home in a short period of time. She is looking so much better today. There is more color in her cheeks and her face does not appear to be so gaunt. Her short dark hair is neatly combed. She wears his T-shirt and shorts from last night, and they hang from her small frame like oversized cloth bags.
“You don’t have a TV,” she observes as he forks a cut piece of pancake into his mouth.
“I don’t watch TV.”
She does not appear disappointed. Perhaps she is planning to leave today.
He says, “Do you need to go anywhere? A doctor perhaps . . . ”
“You’re still trying to fob that doctor off to me. Why? Do you get a commission for referrals?” she teases.
“I just thought – ” He motions to her scratched and bruised arms.
“They’ll heal,” she says dismissively.
“Where are your parents?”
“At home.”
“They know you’re here?”
She shrugs. “They don’t care.”
“You sure about that?”
She makes a warding off gesture.
He tries a different tack. “You have someplace to stay in New York? You know anyone?”
“I know you,” she says softly, her eyes bright in her face. His breath catches a little in his throat. When her expression is wistful, she’s almost beautiful.
“I’m someone you just met last night.”
She shrugs again.
Then she says shyly, “You were kind to me.”
He doesn’t say anything as he eats the rest of his pancake. When he finishes, she asks, “Would you like another one?”
He nods, and she puts another on his plate.
“Funny,” he remarks. “I was figuring I’d come back here and you’d be gone with all my furniture by now.”
“Well, yeah, I get that a lot from people.”
“How old are you really?”
“Old enough. Where did you really go last night?”
They lock eyes. He’s the first to grin.
“OK,” he concedes. “You have your secrets and I have mine. I get it.”
Of course, the problem now is what he would do with her. She can’t live with him indefinitely.
“Listen,” he says, “you can’t stay here. You need to decide what to do. You won’t let me call your parents. You won’t let me you call a doctor. Should I be calling social services?”
“No,” she says quickly. “I have decided what I’m going to do.”
He waits as she flips a pancake for herself. She puts it on a plate and sits down at the table across from him. She slathers her pancake with butter. She looks up, her dark eyes beguiling. They are a coal black color, swirling with infinite mysteries. He can’t help thinking that with a little makeup and the right clothes, she would be a beauty.
In fact, he can’t help thinking what a great subject she would be to paint.
She says, “I’m going to get a job. Then I’ll find a place for myself. You know of any good apartments around here?”
He thinks for a while. “It may be difficult for you to afford one of your own right now. This is New York, after all. The best you can do is
to find a roommate. There are student newspapers going around in which people advertise for roommates.”
He pauses. He is thinking that it would be nice if she stayed a little longer.
“You can stay here until you get back on your feet,” he adds, hoping she would say yes.
“Where would I sleep?” She flashes him a sudden coy smile.
He laughs. “Don’t worry. I won’t compromise your virtue. You can sleep on the couch. It converts into a sofa bed and it’s quite comfortable. I have some spare pillows. But I do expect you to pay part of my rent. This is not a free ride.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t have it another way.” She cocks her head thoughtfully. “I need to borrow money for some clothes. I’ll pay you back, of course. Do you know of any jobs I can do?”
“I can think of something.”
He tells her what he has in mind.
POSE
Abby sprawls sideways on the leather couch as Devon sets up his easel, palette, canvas and paints. The atmosphere is rich with the smell of oils and turpentine. The light in the room is indeed very revealing. She is self-conscious as he eyes her pose critically.
“You’re too tense,” he says. “Tilt your head a little backwards. Not like that. I’m going for innocent, not sexy.”
“So I guess you don’t want me to take my clothes off.”
She enjoys teasing him because he actually blushes.
“Not yet. I want to do a series called ‘Phases’. In it, I’m going to capture you as you metamorphose into different phases of yourself against different backdrops.”
“How do you mean? You’re going to paint me against snow-capped mountains and cherry blossoms some day?”
“I haven’t thought that far. I’ll just let inspiration guide me.”
He starts to rigorously sketch something on his canvas, glancing at her now and again. His strokes are quick and purposeful. She wonders how he sees her. She has never thought of herself as pretty, let alone beautiful, so she is pleased that he sees something in her that no one else does.
She finds herself studying him as he studies her. How the light settles on his rich chestnut hair, giving it body and nuance. How his eyes sparkle as he executes his craft with dexterity. One of his eyes is more golden than the other, but both are equally beautiful. He is almost like an otherworldly creature floating in this plane of existence.
The Alpha's Touch Boxed Set (14 Book Bundle) Page 121