The bright side is that she and Sabrina are bonding and that she’s happy here.
She’s even been up to my bedroom. I used sex in the elevator to lure her upstairs and now she associates the small box with good things like pressing her face against the glass walls and both of us coming like freight trains.
I want to broach the idea of her meeting with Isaiah instead of Dr. Terrance, but I don’t want to spring a hundred new things on her at once, or make her think that I feel she’s defective and I’m trying to fix her.
The last thing I want to deal with is Laura, a woman I’ve seen once in about six years and thought of even less. Unfortunately for me¸ I’m going to have to deal with this myself instead of hiding behind Natalie.
“I’m here to see you, Jake,” Laura trills. “Your place is lovely. Who decorated for you?”
While it’d be great to feign ignorance, her flirtatious smile and the touching are signals that are hard to miss. “My mom and sisters,” I answer as repressively as possible and shift so her hand falls away.
Belatedly I realize that my answer implied I had no woman in my life. Her eyes light up and she advances into the living room. I have no choice but to follow. “Well, I might have used a little less of a lemon yellow accent, but it’s still nice. Was it renovated when you bought it?”
I nod curtly, refusing to sit even as she settles into one of the brown leather chairs. “I’m working, Laura. If you need help with something, why don’t we go down to my office?”
She shakes her head. “Surely you can take a coffee break. Or donuts? Cops like donuts, right?”
I sigh and scrub a hand down my face. Where’s Sabrina? At least she could come and help me. “I’m not a cop. I run an investigative and personal protection service firm.”
“That sounds naughty.” She raises an eyebrow and licks the corner of her lip. Laura is attractive and I’ve had sex with her many times before, but none of her antics move me. But I cared for her once; hell, I might have even married her had my life not made such a dramatic turn, and I don’t feel right about placing my boot in her ass and kicking her out.
On the other hand, it doesn’t feel right having her in the same house as Natalie. I glance at the entry, where just a few days ago, I’d taken Natalie. I still feel the soreness in my abs from the long bout of predawn sex we’d had this morning.
I curl my fingers into my palm. No, it wasn’t right that Laura was sitting here without Natalie knowing.
“I’m seeing someone,” I say baldly. “My donut breaks are saved for her.”
“Oh.” Laura looks down at her hands and then at the fireplace. Anywhere but me. “When did this happen? Because when I saw you in Rockefeller Plaza, you implied you were single.”
I didn’t remember saying anything like that, yet it’s possible I might have told her that I wasn’t too busy to have a drink with her. I see now Laura took that to mean I was open to getting back together. “A few weeks ago.”
“Then it can’t be serious.” She rises from the chair and sways over to me. I step aside, adroitly but obviously. A frown creases her forehead.
“It’s serious.”
“It can’t be that serious. You said you just started seeing her a few weeks ago. Don’t you remember what we had together?”
“It was a long time ago.” And I never asked you to marry me. It was just something that both our families thought would happen. I never needed you, not like I need Natalie, I think.
“We have a long history and had some really good times, Jake. During my divorce I couldn’t stop thinking about you. When I saw you at Rockefeller Plaza, I knew that we’d made a mistake all those years ago.” She places her hand on my chest. Her eyes dart to my left side. “Even that doesn’t bother me.”
I raise my left hand and make a fist. “This? My stump or my prosthetic?”
She grimaces at the word. “I can get used to it.”
I walk over to the entry and pick up her coat. “You’re a nice woman, Laura, but so long as Natalie wants me, she’s going to have me. Hell, even if she doesn’t want me anymore, I’ll probably spend the rest of my days trying to convince her to give me a second chance. There’s nothing for you here.”
Hurt mars her pretty face and I can see the spiteful words form before she opens her mouth. But then her good manners take over and she manages to sniff haughtily. “Your loss.”
Silently I hand her the coat, which she practically rips out of my hands. She spins and jerks open the door and then runs out. Behind me I hear a shuffle on the stairs.
“You should go upstairs,” Sabrina says.
I nod. “Thanks.”
As I pass she says, “You made the right choice.”
“There’s no choice to be made,” I tell her. “It’s Natalie or no one for me.”
“Same.”
The one word strikes me hard. Does she really feel that way about Kaga? I push that worry aside and hurry up the stairs to reassure Natalie.
“Can I come in?”
Natalie turns away from her desk. The computer monitor that shows all the exterior feeds is asleep and her manuscript is up on the main screen. “How am I supposed to finish with all these interruptions,” she teases while gesturing me forward.
“It’s a conspiracy,” I quip. “Did you see we had a visitor?”
“We?” she says with a raised eyebrow. “That lady looked like she was here to see one person only.”
I pluck her from her chair and then sit down, settling her on my lap. Talking about exes necessitates a closeness. I want Natalie to know she’s it for me, and I can’t fully express that with her across the room. “That was Laura. I dated her when I was in college and then for a couple years after. I hadn’t seen her once in eight years, and then about six months ago I ran into her at Rockefeller Plaza. She said we should get together and catch up and I told her to call me because it seemed like the social, polite thing to do. I put it out of my mind and didn’t give it another thought.”
“But because you took a long time she showed up at your doorstep.”
“The hazards of working out of one’s home, I suppose.” She buries her nose in my neck. “We okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I need to worry about your exes showing up?”
“No, Adam and I didn’t have that kind of relationship, and in the end, he was mad that the game was taking so much flak and I was mad he didn’t defend me more. I think we were glad to see the back of each other.”
“Speaking of exes, did you have a chance to look through your emails?”
She stills in my embrace and then shudders. “I can’t. Oliver told me I should go through my old emails, make a list of potential perps, but I can’t, Jake. I just can’t go through all the horrible stuff again. I’m afraid they’ll eradicate every tiny little bit of progress I’ve made.”
“All right. We’ll work without it.”
“Thank you.” She snuggles in closer.
I tip her head up for a long kiss before I head back downstairs. We might not be married, but it feels like it. And it’s not a bad feeling. Not at all.
I end up working late and Natalie is still in her office. Sabrina is gone, but there’s pasta in the refrigerator. I reheat it and then head upstairs.
“You hungry?” I knock on the door.
She opens the door. “Sabrina fed me a few hours ago.”
“Do you mind then?” I gesture toward the food. She shakes her head. “Mind coming upstairs?”
“No, I can do that. Can we ride the elevator?” Natalie believes the elevator inside the house is tremendous. After our sex ride, I’m beginning to agree with her.
“Yes, but I need to eat before I can service you.”
She sticks out her tongue. I whip out my left arm and drag her to me, burying my nose in her neck as she squeals. It’s a tremendous relief not to worry about which arm I’m using to touch her.
“Come on.” I drag her into the waiting box and press the butto
n. I shovel the pasta into my mouth as the elevator rises from the third floor to the fifth. She stays snuggled up to my side. “How’s the writing going?”
“Good, I’m nearing the end. I can feel it. I think a couple more days and I will finally be able to answer Daphne’s emails.”
We walk out and my knee locks up. Stumbling, I drop the bowl and it crashes to the ground. “Fuck!”
Natalie grabs my arm to steady me, but my heavy weight nearly takes her to the ground. I shove her roughly away—too roughly. Cursing, I apologize. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”
There’s glass everywhere. The sauce has splashed the walls, the carpet, and me. The burn of humiliation crawls over my skin. Natalie tries to pick up the glass.
“Stop. Just stop,” I snap.
She does immediately and scuttles back, looking hurt and concerned. Fuck.
It’s the first time I haven’t felt completely competent around her and it’s pissing me off. I close my eyes and gather myself. “Sorry.” It comes out grumbly so I try again. “I didn’t want you to hurt yourself on the glass.”
She swallows. “I just wanted to help.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’m a fucking beast.”
“You’re not, but I know what it’s like to not always be showing your best side.”
I take a deep breath and then another. “I want you to think of me as a man.”
“I do.”
“A normal one.”
“You are.”
I wipe my hand across my mouth and start picking up glass.
She watches me for a few moments, and then says, “You know, Jake Tanner, you talk a good game.”
“How’s that?” After she gets to her feet and disappears inside the bathroom, I limp over to the dresser and pull out some T-shirts. I dump them on the floor to cover the mess. I’ll get someone up here tomorrow to clean it up. The best I can do now is make sure Natalie’s feet don’t get cut.
“You tell me I’m fine when we both know I’m not, yet you have to be perfect at all times? Even if you had your two original limbs, you would trip and fall because you’re human. I trip and fall. I drop things. It doesn’t make me less of a woman. And, if you do think that flaws make you less than normal and not worth loving, then what am I?”
She dumps the towels at my feet and drops to her hands and knees to clean up the mess I made. Poleaxed by her comments, I don’t try to stop her. I’d thought I’d made the big sacrifice by taking my prosthetics off in front of her, but I hadn’t fully let my guard down. She wore her flaws on the outside, like me, but she’d accepted them and allowed herself to be loved.
So I owed her the same or I didn’t deserve her. She’s allowed me to see her at her most vulnerable and to help her. I can’t turn her away now. I limp over to the bed and unfasten my jeans, pushing them down until the top of the compression sleeve shows.
“Will you help me?” I gesture toward my leg.
Her eyes widen and she nods. Halfway across the room, she turns back to look at the spill. “What about the mess?”
“Leave it for tomorrow. Someone will clean it up. Right now, I need you.” I needed to hold her in my arms and reassure myself I haven’t fucked it up too badly.
She kneels between my legs, looking like both a supplicant and aggressor. “What do I do?”
“There’s a valve behind my knee. Turn it to the left. You’ll hear the air displace and then the compression sleeve will loosen. Pull the sleeve down.”
She does as I instruct, her hands all over my prosthetic. But she doesn’t look revolted or, worse, turned on. The fetishists, the ones who get aroused by the amputations, the stumps, the devices, are worse than the ones who pity me. But there’s none of that in Natalie’s face. She’s full of intense concentration as she twists and then sits back to wait for the vacuum seal to evaporate.
“This is really cool. I’m going to incorporate some of this in my next story.”
She might be turned on a little, I guess, but just by the technology and the marvel of it all. Truth be told, it is cool and I’m glad that fascination is her response rather than revulsion. She pulls on the sleeve, her warm fingers a welcome touch. The sleeve goes nowhere.
“More force,” I say wryly.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.
She reapplies herself to the task and as she pulls, her little tongue appears between her teeth. My body responds in predictable fashion.
“Does this feel good?” she asks in surprise. My newly formed hard-on is hard to miss.
“Nope, this is just the result of being near you.”
This generates a smirk. She gives a hard jerk and the compression stocking gives way. When her hands pull down the inner lining and her knuckles brush against the tender skin, I shiver.
“Did that hurt?” She tosses the liner behind her and pulls my jeans all the way off and out of the way.
“No.” It’s my turn to laugh slightly. “It’s sensitive.”
“In a bad way or a good one?”
“Don’t know.”
She runs her hands down what’s left of my calf and I flinch at the sensitivity.
“Too much?”
“A little,” I admit. “I haven’t had anyone but a medical professional touch me. It’s not a very erotically charged situation.”
She rubs her hand on my knee. “Maybe another time.”
I don’t say no. The sensation was strong and maybe if I had time to steel myself to it, it might end up being very arousing.
I hold out my arm and she stands between my legs and helps me off with the arm. She picks up both devices and takes them over to the chair. I watch her with bemused affection.
I could get used to this. It was a lot easier with her help than doing it by myself.
“You up for a shower?” I ask.
“Tonight?” she says, turning around and climbing on top of me. I steady her with my forearm and squeeze her plump ass with my right hand.
“The hot water can make it harder to get into the prosthetic in the morning.”
She nods eagerly and we go into the bathroom. The shower has a wide marble bench for when I want to lie down during a steam. I place a couple of heavy towels on it and turn on the steam to warm up the enclosure.
Sitting down, I pat my lap.
She crawls on top of me. The rain head sprinkles hot water down on us and we make the sweetest, most tender love of my life.
I didn’t know it could feel like this. I’ve come hard for her and wanted her more than anything, but this?
There’s no describing it. There’s her slick flesh rubbing against mine. Her bouncy tits squish against my chest as she rides me. I grip an ass cheek and hold her hip steady with my forearm.
The water sluices over us, a stream that we drink in as we kiss each other in deep open-mouthed caresses. She rocks against me and I swell inside her, getting harder and bigger with every thrust. We make love for an endless amount of time, until our skin is wrinkled and we are dizzy with pleasure.
With love.
“I love you,” I whisper into her mouth.
Her breath catches and then releases on a half sigh, half sob. “I love you too, Jake. So much.”
And then the words as much as anything drive us over the cliff.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NATALIE
Dr. Isaiah Crist is one of the most imposing men I’ve ever met. I fight not to cower under his dark stare. He doesn’t intend to be intimidating, but he’s got a command, a presence. Jake has something similar, but he wears it more casually—only occasionally trotting it out in the bedroom, to my eternal dirty-girl delight.
Crist’s demeanor is familiar in the way he holds himself, slightly erect, slightly alert. It doesn’t remind me of Dr. Terrance, though. I agreed to meet him at Jake’s request. After all, Jake met with him, and frankly, I’m at the point where I’m willing to do most anything to be better. I do believe that Jake accepts me as is. The other nig
ht when he allowed me to help him off with the prosthetic, I felt like the tectonic plates had shifted and I was right where I needed to be.
But it isn’t enough. I want to be able to go out with Jake, meet his friends, make new friends. I want to eat at a new restaurant and see a Broadway show.
So I said yes to Dr. Crist. I’d say yes to anything at this point.
As he greets me, I try hard to concentrate on the fact that I’m safe, that no one is going to hurt me, that no one would even be allowed into this house without Jake’s say-so. I can’t hide from the good doctor, and when he hands me a white paper bag, I take it gratefully.
Shoving it up to my mouth, I take one gulp and then two.
“Easy now,” he says and I concentrate on slowing down and taking more measured breaths. He settles into the sofa across from me and sets his overcoat to the side. “I thought it might rain today,” he says, tilting his head toward the coat. “I’m not a fan of umbrellas.”
When I’m in control enough to set the bag aside, I share, “I saw this invention for a hover umbrella. It displaces water through air, so it’s like holding a big hair dryer over your head, pointing to the sky.”
He stares. “I think I’d rather get wet.”
“You probably would if you used it on a windy day.” When I go to fold the bag I notice it bears the words Dr. Isaiah Crist’s Breathing Bags. “You have personalized barf bags?” I gawk.
He smiles, a big giant smile. His perfect teeth set against the dark skin are almost blindingly beautiful. I blink at the full force of his charm. “One of my men gave me that.”
“Oh?” Then I realize that the familiarity stems from Jake. There’s something vaguely soldierish about their bearing, I think. It’s in the way they walk with precision and the watchfulness in their eyes. “Did you serve with Jake?”
“No, I predate him by a decade, but bless you for thinking I’m so young.” He leans back and undoes another button on his vest. “Jake’s a very special man. Have you talked about his service?”
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