Getting Even

by Avril Tremayne

  He’d written Alejandro gutsier from the start in Stomp—appropriate, since Rafael was now a strong, successful twenty-nine-year-old! If you could call it gutsy to be a vengeful asshole, wreaking havoc on those you think have betrayed you. Stomping on the heart of the woman you loved because she dared to move on.

  Three hundred thousand words in total: one man’s quest to get a woman out of his head.

  And yet she was not only still in his head but in the marrow of his bones.

  He sighed as he set the manuscript down.

  So much for fucking her out of his system—all it had taken was two nights and he’d fucked himself back into love with her.

  No, that was a lie.

  The truth was, he’d never fallen out of love with her.

  The truth was, what he’d really intended to do when he’d gone after her at the wedding was to show her not what she’d been missing but who he’d become—a match for her at last, someone she could love again.

  The truth was, he was going to go on loving her when their two weeks were up and she left him—and she would leave him, because he’d written three caustic books about her and she wasn’t looking especially forgiving after the first half of Catch, Tag, Release. The most optimistic spin he could put on her reaction was that she’d seemed to accept he’d written it in anger. Anger was something she’d always readily understood, given her own firecracker temper. And at least she hadn’t kicked him out of bed. He smiled suddenly—well, okay, she had kicked him out of bed, but not until four o’clock, by which time she’d worn him out.

  As for Liar, Liar? He might get away with that one. For one thing, he wasn’t in it himself, even in disguise. For another, “Emma” could be any New York socialite, and Emma’s husband “Martin” was a step away from a caricature, drawn out of Rafael’s jealous anguish. It was unlikely Veronica’s marriage to Simeon had been seething with the sexual frustration and miserable boredom he’d ascribed to that of Emma and Martin.

  But Stomp? Well, she was in Stomp right down to the eye color.

  And he was writing it now—not as an angry young man in the early throes of a devastating breakup, but as a man who should have at least tried to get over his broken heart the way she’d tried to get over hers. Because she had tried, he had to accept that; she’d blocked him and she’d gotten married. All he’d done was write crap about her to share with the world—and in Stomp he’d turned her into something she not only would never understand but would despise: a woman who wouldn’t think twice about letting herself drop dead of a broken heart.

  Which brought him back to the dread certainty that even if by some miracle he managed to hold on to her past the two weeks they’d negotiated, once she read Stomp everything would come to a screeching halt.

  Talk about irony! Stomp had been his way of extricating her from his life—and yet it had taken Stomp to get her back into his life—and Stomp would ultimately be responsible for taking her so far out of his life. Stomp would end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy and driving him fucking insane because he’d forever wonder what could have been if he’d never written it.

  He sighed deeply and went to stare out the window at the moors, touching a hand to the windowpane as though he could feel Hope’s ghost through the glass.

  Something about Alejandro’s despair at that moment reminded him of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.

  Veronica’s favorite book—she’d read it aloud to him once upon a time. He could still see her face as she’d read that scene where Heathcliff begged Cathy not to leave him, to haunt him, to drive him mad if she had to...

  “‘I cannot live without my soul,’” he said, and now both his hands were on the window. And God knew that was Rafael’s own problem—turning himself into a madman because he was living without his soul.

  “¿Por qué no puedo sacarte de mí?” he murmured. “Ha, good question. Why can’t I get her out of my soul?”

  And as though Heathcliff’s ghost had slapped him around the head, the solution was there, fully formed. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t get her out of his soul—what mattered was finding his way back into hers! All he had to do was make her fall in love with him again!

  Okay, it was going to be tricky since she’d told him not once, but twice, that she hated him. But she couldn’t hate him as much as she wanted him to believe, because she came apart in his arms every time he touched her—and she gave as good as she got. Lack of attraction sure wasn’t an issue, and where there was attraction there had to be hope.

  Of course, he had time constraints. He only had twelve days at his disposal. But it had taken only a minute to fall in love with each other the first time around, and that was in a crowded bar. This time they were completely alone together, on neutral ground in a can’t-hide-yourself cottage neither of them owned, and the rich girl/poor boy dynamic that had caused so many fights no longer applied.

  Which left only the one obstacle. Stomp.

  “Hello, moron,” he said out loud and laughed. “You’re the fucking author. Don’t revise it, rewrite it! Give yourself a happy ending. Get the girl. Keep the girl.”

  A burst of manic energy had him hurrying to the desk, composing an email in his head for Bryan to flag that a rewrite was necessary, for which a detailed synopsis would shortly be under way, so to go no further with reading Stomp Mark I.

  But when he opened his emails he saw Bryan’s name in his inbox, which had to mean Bryan had already finished reading it. He hoped Bryan didn’t love it, because if he did, the poor guy was going to be disappointed.

  And then he took in the subject line—Kill That Bastard Alejandro—and burst out laughing.

  Odds were he was about to make Bryan happy. He read on.

  Rafe

  Finished reading Stomp.

  Two things to think about—and please remember these words are coming to you from a place of love.

  Alejandro sounded interesting when you talked to me about him, but on the page he’s out-Heathcliffing Heathcliff. He needs to grow the fuck up—being unlucky in love isn’t enough of an excuse to turn into a complete asshole, and we don’t want your female readers to hate his guts. Rewrite him, redeem him or kill him off. The way it currently stands, I want him dead.

  Your sex scenes need work. Mawkish in first third, brutal in the middle third—no wonder Hope decided to die. The flashbacks about them in the final third are mawkishly brutal. Quite a feat. What the hell happened to you? Either reread Catch, Tag, Release or read some romance to refresh your memory of how it’s done, otherwise the only prize you’re likely to win with Stomp is Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction prize.

  Other than that, the writing is tight and the pacing is good.

  See you next week. Looking forward to talking about Melissa Charles, who called me today!!!!!

  BL

  Those five exclamation points at the end were...interesting.

  But not quite as interesting as the feedback on the novel.

  “Kill the asshole and have more sex—check and double-check,” Rafael said and burst out laughing again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE FRUSTRATING THING about having to keep yourself aloof for sixteen hours a day when you were a sex maniac for the other eight hours was that it was almost impossible to keep the boundaries intact.

  Veronica had nevertheless done her best in the face of extreme provocation.

  She’d reverted to dressing stylishly but demurely as befitting a Johnson who’d been beautifully “finished” at the Koller school. But all Rafael had done was smile and look through the damn clothes as though he could not only see her skin but her internal organs, as well.

  She’d gotten her industrial-strength concealer onto that first shocking love bite, the second one that had appeared on her left breast on Monday night, and the third and fourth (right hip and inner thigh) from Tuesday nig
ht, expertly enough to make a Hollywood makeup artist proud. But he’d merely examined all those places from a distance as though figuring out where to deposit the next one.

  And she’d adhered to a strict personal timetable that had her hurrying through breakfast while he was out for his run, hidden away in the shower when he returned, and working in the living room by the time he was eating his breakfast. She’d thought the message was obvious: hands off until 8:00 p.m., so he might as well close himself in the second bedroom and curse at his computer (and she knew he did that because this was a small cottage and sound carried).

  Unfortunately, Rafael didn’t seem to get that message. He’d taken to wandering downstairs and into her space whenever he damn well felt like it. Bringing her cups of coffee, making her lunch and depositing it on the coffee table in the living room for whenever she was ready to eat it, and popping in to ask for editorial advice she was quite certain he didn’t need.

  Occasionally, he’d refer to Catch, Tag, Release—the purpose of which seemed to be to gauge if she’d read the second half (she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do so thus far) and suggest that he’d provide context when she did (and she was very sure context would be a bad idea—she didn’t want to be put in a position where she’d either forgive him or kill him).

  He spent an inordinate amount of time during these excursions reaching his arms over his head—ostensibly to stretch out his “computer-hunching” muscles, but coincidentally straining his T-shirt over his superb chest. As if that wasn’t bad enough, on Wednesday afternoon he stripped the damn T-shirt off, right in front of her, because apparently he needed to go into the garden to do something—not that she knew what it was he actually did out there because she was not going to look!

  With her nerves fraying, Veronica slipped on one of her diamond engagement rings before dinner on Wednesday night. She told herself it was to remind herself she wasn’t a young, in-love college girl anymore and therefore wasn’t susceptible to falling for Rafael a second time, but she couldn’t quite suppress the thought that it was more about needling Rafael into doing something she could resent. He’d always had a deep vein of jealousy, and if she could use it to jolt him out of the frustrating calm that seemed to have descended on him, it might drive a much-needed schism between them and remind them both what this time together was supposed to be about.

  Of course Rafael noticed the ring—it was such a whopper it was hard to miss—and as his lips tightened, she thought he was on the verge of an explosion... But then his hand went to the right front pocket of his jeans, his eyes closed for a brief moment, and when he opened his eyes, the moment was gone.

  He picked up the bottle of red wine she’d put on the table and poured out a glass. “Are you happy with the wine they’ve provided?” he asked.

  “Um...yeees. Why?”

  He handed her the glass. “Because I’m going into Leeds tomorrow. I’ve run out of clothes and can’t work out how to use the washing machine so I’m going to buy a few things. You can come with me, if you like...?”

  “No! No. No! No.”

  He seemed amused. “No?”

  “No!”

  “Okay. Anything at all you need me to get for you? If not wine, how about food?”

  “I got some groceries from the village today, so we’re set.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. I have a few new recipes to try.”

  “Oh,” he said, and stared into his bowl with a look she couldn’t interpret. “And tonight it’s spaghetti, I see. Great.”

  * * *

  Just because he was in love with Veronica didn’t mean he had to love everything she did—and Rafael most certainly did not love her cooking.

  He was starting to wish he hadn’t made that crack about the chef on Monday morning, because when they were living together in real life they’d have to hire one.

  Living together in real life.

  God, he liked the sound of that.

  He’d certainly been pulling out all the stops the past few days to get her to imagine that life with him—and, okay, he’d struck some pretty demeaning poses as he went about it, but he was working with what he had. Still, gratifying though her nonverbal responses were—the blinks, the change in her breathing, the quickly averted eyes—his main aim was for her to imagine life outside the bedroom, since they both already knew that inside the bedroom was as perfect as it could get.

  Coffee, lunch, laughs, conversation—these were going to be the key. Which meant his priority now was to get them off that dumb-ass schedule that tied them to working hours and therefore gave too much emphasis to the eight-til-four sexfest. He was on hyperalert, watching for any trigger he could use to shift them into a more-cruisy/less-full-throttle life. Normal—he wanted normal. The kind happily married couples lived.

  As things transpired, the trigger came that night.

  He’d just finished a prolonged session of cunnilingus, which he enjoyed immensely—not only because he loved the way Veronica tasted but because he’d wrung a seemingly endless stream of orgasms out of her.

  Appetizer, he thought, smug as hell, and reached over to the nightstand for a condom because it was his turn to come—and by God did he need his turn—only to find...no condom.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HE SCRAMBLED OFF the bed, checked on, under and behind the nightstand.

  Nope. No condom.

  Opened the nightstand drawer.

  No condom.

  Raced to the spare bedroom to check in his suitcase—nope. Into his bathroom, where he rifled in a panic through his washbag. No condoms. He’d used them all up.

  Back to her bathroom to check in her toiletry bag, even though he knew she wouldn’t have any because Piers and Simeon—those fucking assholes—hadn’t had to use one.

  Shell-shocked, he robot-walked back to the bed.

  Veronica had sat up, drawing the sheet coyly up to cover her breasts. “No condom?” she asked.

  He shook his head, bereft of speech.

  “Oh, silly me! Of course! We used the last one at three o’clock this morning.” She was doing her best to look sympathetic and only managing to smirk. “If you’d told me, I would have bought some when I drove into the village today.” She sighed—way over the top—the wretch. “That’s it for tonight, then, I guess...?”

  He was caught between an instinctive urge to howl like a wolf, an almost irresistible compulsion to laugh at her pathetic attempt to look sympathetic, and a desire to throttle her.

  But then she said, “Although I suppose a hand job is doable.”

  Hand job.

  He remembered Veronica telling him she needed either an all-clear STD test result or a condom if he didn’t want the next two weeks to be all about hand jobs.

  Fate.

  Because he’d be in Leeds tomorrow.

  And tonight?

  Well, there were hand jobs and then there were hand jobs.

  “Let go of the sheet, Veronica, and come here,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m taking you up on the offer of a hand job.”

  She laughed as she flung off the sheet and got out of bed. “So where do you want it?”

  “Where do you?” he asked.

  “In the bathroom, I guess? Or at least, I want to use my vanilla oil if you’re okay with that.”

  “I’m definitely okay with your vanilla oil in the bathroom. Can we watch ourselves in the mirror?”

  “Suuure,” she said, leading him to the bathroom but sounding as though she was at last realizing they might not be talking about the same thing.

  She watched him warily as she tipped some oil into her palm and rubbed her hands together. And then, “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “I am,” he said—but when she reached for his cock, he stopped her, even
though it half killed him to have to do it. “But you’ve got the wrong idea.”

  Her alert eyes went to his. “I don’t under...ssstand...?”

  “The hand job is for you.”

  A heartbeat’s worth of staring, and then she laughed again—breathlessly now—as he positioned her to face the mirror, with him at her back, watching over her head. “Touch yourself,” he said.

  “But—”

  “Touch yourself. Play with yourself. Let me watch.”

  “So I’m giving myself a hand job? What do I need you for?”

  “I’ll chime in,” he said, and kissed the top of her head, “starting...here...” His hands came around her to cup her breasts, his thumbs grazing across her nipples. “I promise I won’t leave you wanting, so give me this gift.”

  “Gift,” she said as though that were an alien concept, and he realized then how few gifts he’d given her. He’d been too focused on not accepting her gifts, because he couldn’t give her anything to equal them. “All right,” she said, and she offered him a tremulous smile as she slid a hand down her body and slipped her fingers between her thighs. “I’m already wet from your tongue, but the oil feels good.”

  He groaned; she laughed.

  “Sure you don’t want to do it?” she asked huskily.

  His turn to laugh, very, very shakily. “I’m very sure I do want to do it...and I will, very soon.” He thrust his cock against her lower back “But if I’m going to have to suffer, I might as well share the suffering and make you wait.”

  He watched her small fingers with their delicate pink-polished nails sliding against her clit, listened to the sounds surrounding them—the swish of oil, her own quick breaths, his pounding heart—and it was erotic to the hilt. So hard to stay as he was, his agitated fingers plucking at her nipples in time with the movement of her fingers. So hard not to take over. She’d let him, he knew she would, but he also knew there would be time for him tomorrow.

  “Open wider,” he said, his voice hoarse in her ear. “Make room for me.”