Imagine Me

by Fiona Cole

  “Maybe I can have Shane look into it.” Jack said

  I cringed just hearing his name.

  “I mean, obviously there’s some criminal activity. I’m sure he knows someone.”

  “Yeah.” I choked the word out. Jack didn’t seem to notice or care, but when I looked up, I met Evie’s shrewd gaze. Swallowing hard, I looked away. I didn’t need anyone digging deeper than what I’d told them.

  I sat through the rest of lunch waiting for someone to say his name again. Thankfully, I didn’t have to hear it again and hide my reaction, but Evie’s gaze never wavered from scrutinizing me. After I helped clean up and grabbed my purse, I waited for her to approach me and ask what was going on, but it never came.

  When I fell in to my seat in Jo’s car, she looked at me and said my two favorite words. “Alcohol store.”

  Which brought us to strolling through the aisles, trying to decide between a pinot grigio or a chardonnay, or to just say fuck it and throw back vodka-cranberries until our heads pounded from the alcohol and sugar rush. Each option had its own merits.

  We were discussing whether Chinese or Mexican went best with wine and vodka when our cart bumped into another, the bottles clanking against the metal like a car accident. Jo looked like she was about to rip into the person when suddenly, her eyes widened and she smiled.

  “Oh, hey, Dr. Voet.”

  I jerked my head from Jo to Dr. Voet, who stood tall, holding only one bottle of wine as opposed to our seven in the cart. Obviously, some of us were thirstier than others.

  “Hey, Dr. Voet.”

  “Hello, ladies. And please, call me Calvin,” he said as he looked over the contents we were pushing around. “You having a party?”

  “Nope. Just your typical weekly shopping trip,” Jo joked. Thankfully he laughed and didn’t assume we were a pair of raging alcoholics. “We’re just having a girls’ night, soothing our woes of Dr. Stahl.”

  “Jo.” I tried to reprimand her under my breath and remind her this was the head of our department.

  However, Dr. Voet—I mean Calvin—laughed and gave a knowing shrug, before turning to me and looking me over.

  “I hope you’re feeling better, Juliana.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Jo, the traitorous friend she was, abandoned ship. “Hey, I’m just going to go check out that other wine that we were talking about. The one with the alcohol.”

  I watched her walk away, holding off finally meeting the dean’s eyes. When I caved and peeked up at him beneath my lashes, he had a soft, knowing smile.

  “She’s not very subtle.”

  I laughed. “That she is not.”

  “I can’t blame her, I’m not very subtle when I want something either.” His eyes looked over my face, as though caressing my skin. “You look much more rested. Still just as beautiful.”

  I swallowed hard and ducked my head to hide the blush staining my cheeks. “Thank you.”

  Licking my lips nervously, I searched for something else to say, but the only thing I could focus on was the way my heart seemed to be trying to pound out of my chest. I struggled to decipher the emotions coursing through me. Was I excited? Was I nervous? I think I was mostly scared because it was a final step toward letting Shane go.

  “I know we work together, Juliana, but I’m not directly your boss, and there’s no rules against dating. We’re both adults, and I was wondering if I could take you on a date next weekend.”

  “Ummm . . .” I think I knew the question was coming, but I still stuttered over a response, unprepared. I opened my mouth, hoping the right answer would tumble out, when he stopped me.

  “Just think about it. Let me know tomorrow.”

  He squeezed my shoulder and let his hand slide down my arm. I nodded like a bobble head and watched him walk to the check out.

  As though she was watching the whole thing around the corner, Jo popped out and hopped from one foot to the other.

  “What the hell happened? Tell me everything.”

  I laughed at her excitement. “He asked me on a date.”

  “He what?” She whisper-screamed and I had to shush her, looking over my shoulder to see who had heard.

  “I can’t, Jo. I’m not really ready and we work together. And what if it didn’t work? Then it would be awkward.”

  Her eyebrow raised a little higher with each excuse that tumbled from my lips. “Jules. You better accept that damn date. He is hot, and I expect you to do it for me. I need to live vicariously through you, because that man is delicious.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Don’t you roll your eyes at me.” She pointed her finger at me. “You will. You at least have to try.”

  “Jo.”

  “Do. It. Dooo it,” she said.

  “Fine. Damn. I’ll let him know tomorrow.”

  “Hell, no. He’s just now checking out. Go. Tell him now.”

  “Jol-”

  “Now!” She turned my shoulders and shoved me away.

  I hurried my steps as I saw him grab his bag and head toward the door.

  “Dr. Voet,” I called out.

  He turned and smiled at my approach. “Calvin, please.”

  “Calvin.” I had to admit I liked the way his name sounded on my lips. “I actually don’t need until tomorrow. I’d love to go on a date with you.”

  His smile lit up his face, and I had to admit it was nice to see someone so excited to sit across a table and just talk to me. Get to know me, and want me for more than just sex.

  “Fantastic. Next Friday. I’ll make a reservation and pick you up at six.”

  “Six.” Walking backwards, I nodded and smiled a genuine smile. Nerves ran a riot through my body. Maybe I was making a mistake accepting a date so soon. But I also felt a little lighter trying to take a step in a better direction toward getting over Shane.

  Chapter 22

  “You can drop me off right here.” I pointed to the front of my building.

  He pulled up to the curb and parked. “Let me grab your door.”

  Watching Calvin walk around the car he was tall, broad, sexy, and smart. What more could a girl want? Dinner had been great. Filled with conversation and laughter. We’d talked about research, compared undergrad stories and how we got to where we were. He told me about the time in his graduate program where him and his buddies caught a whole lab bench on fire. I told him how I’d created a minor explosion in the chemical hood.

  It had been nice to share that kind of connection with someone. Someone who respected my brain and didn’t look at me as a cute little girl, playing at being an adult. Someone who didn’t look at me like they were trying to appease my desire to be a scientist. He’d smiled when I’d told him my accomplishments, touched my hand through dinner. I’d watched his long tan fingers stroke from my wrist to my fingers where he slid his hand under mine to hold it.

  I waited for the excited sparks to race up and jolt my heart into an excited thump. But they never came. How could I sit there with someone who respected me so much and look at me with such warmth, and yet still feel this empty, pinching pain for someone who didn’t want me?

  Calvin opened my door and held out his hand. I grabbed it and stood then pulled away, holding both my hands around my clutch in front of me.

  “I had a great time tonight, Juliana.”

  “Me too. I needed all that laughter.”

  “Any time you need me to tell you about my crazy mistakes, just let me know. I’m happy to regale you with many more from my past.”

  I laughed and looked up into his dark blue eyes. My smile dropped as I watched his hand lift toward my face and brush a loose strand back behind my ear. He stepped closer and I quickly ran through my options. I imagined him leaning down to press his lips to mine, igniting the fire I’d been waiting for. I’d drop my clutch and wrap my arms around him. He’d lift me up and we’d go inside where he would ravish me all night, and I would feel whole again. I would feel happy.

  Instead he lean
ed in and kissed my cheek, and I only felt his lips on my skin. No heat spread through me. No imagination came to life.

  He pulled back and I smiled, but I think he saw that lack of feeling. He smiled back, but his eyes looked resigned, like he knew it would be our last date.

  “Goodnight, Juliana.”

  “Goodnight, Calvin.”

  He got into his car and I walked toward my door, waving at him as he drove away. Just as I turned to mount the steps a shadowy figure stepped into the light.

  “Cute date.”

  I screamed before I could control myself and pressed my hand to my chest, trying to coax it back to safe levels.

  “What the hell, Shane? You almost gave me a fucking heart attack.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt your farewells, so I waited my turn.”

  I looked at him, leaning against the lamp post. One ankle crossed over the other, jeans and a long sleeve shirt encasing his large body. His icy eyes seemed to glow under the light.

  The fire I’d waited to feel with Calvin came flooding over my body at just Shane’s presence and it pissed me off. I marched over to him and jabbed my finger into his chest.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing here? I thought you didn’t waste time with little girls,” I said, throwing his cruel words back in his face.

  He didn’t respond like I wanted him to. He stood there and let his eyes scan me from my high heels to my skater skirt and blouse, until he lingered a long while at my lips. Everywhere his eyes touched, I burned, hotter than I’d been since that final night in his arms.

  “I was sitting at a stop light, minding my own business, and there you are at a table in a restaurant, laughing with another man who was stroking your hand.” Shane stood to his full height and took a step into me, so close there was only a small breath of space between us. “Did he kiss you? Does he know that wine tastes so much richer from your tongue?”

  “You don’t get to be jealous.”

  “I know I don’t. And yet, here I am.” He lifted his arms wide like he was just as baffled as I was that he stood before me, unsure of his real reason to be there.

  “Why?” I asked again, trying to understand.

  “I can’t stop thinking about your kiss, your taste, and it kills me at the thought of him—or anyone that’s not me—having it.”

  It was all about my body. He didn’t miss me as a woman, the one he held at night, the one he laughed with. He missed my body. His pride the only driving force for him to be there. It sparked my anger, the heat rising in my cheeks, my blood boiling, looking for an outlet.

  “I offered it to you.” I was close to shouting, the emotions flooding me becoming too much. “I wanted to give it all to you and you turned me away.”

  “Juliana . . .” His shoulders dropped on a heavy sigh, almost like he was bored with my need for more. I wanted to scream at him. Hate him for standing there, and even as he rejected me, he turned me on more than my amazing date tonight.

  I stepped forward and jabbed him in the chest. “Well, you can just go fuck your-”

  His mouth crashed down on mine, stealing the words from my tongue with his own. I wanted to shove him away, finish telling him to go fuck himself.

  Instead, I pressed my body to his. Moaned when his arms wrapped around my waist, grinding his cock against me. Wound my arms around his neck and dug my fingers into his short hair.

  I tangled my tongue with his and nipped at his lips, wanting him to hurt a little, even if I also wanted to make him feel good. He grunted and began walking me backward. I didn’t know where, but at that moment I would have followed him to the depths of hell if I could still feel his body pressed to mine.

  The light from the street lamp disappeared as we worked our way into the darkness, until the rough brick of my building pressed into my back. His hands slid down over my hips, gripping my ass, lifting me onto my toes so he could grind his dick against my core.

  His lips slid down my neck, biting, sucking, desperate for more. The sound of my moans were swallowed up by the night, and as his mouth worked its way between my breasts, I knew the moment to stop this was now or never. We were hidden in the dark alleyway of my building and the next. I needed to stop this. I even opened my mouth to say something. Stop, maybe?

  All that escaped was a gasp when he nipped at my nipple over my shirt.

  Instead, I dropped my hand to grip the hard length pressing against his jeans, loving the moan he let out against my skin. Loving the way he filled my hand, wanting him to fill my pussy.

  I worked the button and zipper down and shoved my hand into his pants as his worked their way under my skirt, under my panties. His large fingers slid between the lips of my cunt.

  “So wet. All for me.” His words were deep and soft against my neck.

  When his fingers glided over my clit, I squeezed his cock and he groaned. He removed my hand from his pants and I wanted to whimper at the loss of soft skin, but he turned me toward the wall, pressed my hands flat to the brick, and flipped my skirt over my ass.

  I closed my eyes, rubbing myself against the roughness of his denim. I focused on the way the cool breeze of the night rushed past my heated skin. I heard the crinkle of a condom wrapper and his moan as he slipped it on.

  Fingers worked at my panties, shoving them to the side, before he pressed the tip of his cock to my opening and began pushing in. A week I’d been empty without him, but it might as well have been years for as desperate as I felt to have him inside me again. I shoved back and we both let out guttural groans that we tried to stifle. It wasn’t very late, and if someone heard us, they would look into the dark and see two lovers pressed together, frantic to be closer.

  Shane wrapped his body around mine, one hand palming my breast, rubbing his thumb over my nipple and the other between my legs, touching my clit, feeling the way he slid in and out of me. His thrusts were frenzied and hard, each one causing a whimper to escape. I had to bite my lip to hold back the groan when his fingers moved in circles around my bundle of nerves, pushing me closer and closer to the edge.

  “I missed your moans when I’m inside you. Nothing like it.” His words were spoken into the back of my neck. The breath of them chilling against the sweat building there. “Missed the soft skin beneath my hands. Missed your taste, your lips.”

  Tears burned the backs of my eyes. It was all too much. The feel of him around me, inside me. His words telling me how much he missed my body. The pain that not one miss had been for me as a woman. My heart expanded and shrank in on itself all at once, trying to decide whether to burst with hope or hide in fear of getting hurt.

  “Juliana. Juliana.” He chanted my name.

  “I miss you.” I breathed the words to the ground, unsure if he even heard them.

  But I did. I missed him so much. The tears coated my eyes and spilled down my cheeks, falling onto the ground at my feet.

  “Come for me, baby. Let me feel your cunt squeezing me. Let me come in you.”

  His fingers pinched my nipple and worked my clit harder and faster, his thrusts changing their angle to hit me deeper and I had to use one hand to cover my mouth to soften the whimpering moans I couldn’t control. He pushed in harder, further than before and bit into my shoulder to hide his own groans. But I felt them in my soul and they pulled more spasms from my core. I wanted it to last, scared of what the end of the moment meant.

  He stayed inside me even after we were both done. I moved my hand back to the wall, needing to hold myself up. My legs were like Jell-O and my body weighed heavy with the fear of what was about to come. I tried to conjure the perfect picture in my imagination. The one where he would come upstairs with me and make love to me all night long. The one where he would go to Sunday brunch with my hand in his. The one where we’re together.

  But I knew—I just knew—that it wasn’t going to happen and more tears slipped out. The hopeful little girl he accused me of being couldn’t give up without using every last bit of figh
t in my arsenal. So, I said the words. I gave him everything and prayed he’d take it. Even if he didn’t, at least I’d said my peace.

  “I love you.”

  His whole body froze around me, still inside me. A minute on a precipice wondering which way I’d fall. It lasted forever. His arms tightened around me, his cock pushing in a little further even while softening, and the breath he’d been holding gusted out against my skin.

  And then he released me, pulling out. “I have to go.”

  I swallowed back the lump in my throat, keeping my position against the wall. Letting my fingers dig into the brick, trying to gain my composure before I turned to face him. Trying to fight off the hurt and anger filling me up. I didn’t even know which one filled me more. Hurt? Anger? Fight to win? Sulking away in loss? I wanted to slam my fist against the wall to release some of them.

  Instead, I stood up and my skirt fell over my bottom again, my core clenching in emptiness, and I turned to face him where he was avoiding my eyes and fastening his pants.

  While he looked away, I wiped my cheeks discreetly and struggled to find the words, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know anything and I hated it.

  “Why?” I didn’t even know what why I was asking about. Why he came? Why he fucked me? Why he wouldn’t be with me? All of them?

  He looked up and his eyes looked tired. Dark circles made the light blue stand out even more. But even the color looked dull. “I’m sorry.”

  His words hit me in the chest and the burning behind my eyes came on full force again. My breaths seemed to be trying to keep up with my pounding heart and the need to fight to win won out. At least for now. “Tell me you don’t care about me,” I pleaded.

  He stared, seeming to weigh his words. “Of course, I care about you. You’re Jack’s little sister. He’s my brother and I’d always protect you for him.”

  My heart rose and then plummeted to my feet, like a sick roller coaster ride.

  “I am not some little girl you need to protect.” I growled at him, angry that it was back to this bullshit excuse again. My shoulders heaved up and down with my angry breaths, fists clenching at my sides. “I am a woman you have made love to. I’m your equal.”