by L. A. Rose
It takes me about half a minute for my second orgasm to come.
But Cohen doesn’t rest until he’s coaxed out a third.
And a fourth.
~11~
The next morning, I awake by degrees. The sunlight is two hot fingers pressing down on my eyelids. My mouth feels swollen and dry, like it's done a heck of a lot of kissing lately. Huh. I had the weirdest and sexiest dream, a dream about...
I roll over and find my arm tossed across a hard, flat stomach.
Attached to that stomach is none other than a sleeping Cohen Ashworth.
I freeze. Judging by the feeling between my legs, that soreness I'm all too familiar with, my dream was not a dream at all.
This time, though, the soreness isn't just soreness. It's almost...pleasant. I'd forgotten what the muscles down there feel like after an orgasm. Soft, tired, pliable. The more I stay still, the more the feeling spreads throughout my whole body until I don't want to get up ever again.
I slept with Cohen Ashworth.
And it was fucking incredible.
This is what it feels like, to be with a man by choice. To wake up with him afterwards without having to flee. To just...be. I'm overcome with the urge to do something incredibly domestic, like make him eggs and bacon and let him open his eyes to the smell. I try wriggling away, but I'm curved into his side so precisely that any movement jostles in. He lets out a tiny moan. I hold my breath, but his eyelids don't flicker. I want him to get some sleep. He always looks like he's in such desperate need of it.
Before long, though, the real problem surfaces.
I have to pee. I really, really have to pee.
I'm the master of my own body! I refuse to let my bladder control my fate! But no matter how many mantras I shout at myself, the bladder is the boss and the bladder is perfectly aware of that fact. I either have to get up and go to the bathroom, or Cohen is going to wake up to a far less pleasant smell than that of eggs and bacon. I squirm backwards, not realizing until it's too late that our legs are tangled up. Moving means his knees knock into each other.
He opens his eyes.
For a second, we stare at each other. Me wide-eyed and guilty, him with that expression people get when their bodies are awake but their minds aren't quite there yet. Vulnerable, guileless, confused. It's adorable on him. Until I figure out the confusion is because he has no idea why I'm in his bed.
After a second or two, he remembers. I don't know what I expect. A "good morning” maybe. A knowing smirk, a comment about how great last night was. What I don't expect is for his eyes to shadow over, to shut off as completely as they were when I first met him. He's a million miles behind those closed doors and I have no clue what's happening in his world.
"Hi," I say tentatively.
"Hi." His tone is curt. He sits up, the sheet crumpling in his lap. Even as nervous as I am, I'm still perfectly capable of ogling a great set of shoulders.
"Sooo..." I start.
"Last night shouldn't have happened."
It's a clean, hard declaration. I frown. He doesn't look at me, just gets out of bed and starts getting dressed. I gather the sheets up to my chest, feeling suddenly exposed.
"I didn't think it was so bad," I venture.
He doesn't say anything. Shit. He thinks it was so bad. He thought I was terrible in bed, and he regrets it! My skin heats up, and then I stop. What am I talking about? I know I'm fucking good in bed—and good at fucking in bed. If there's anything he's dissatisfied about, you can be damn well sure it wasn't my performance.
"What's the problem?" I say. "The silence act is so high school."
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, standing it on end. "I have to work today. I'd appreciate if you left me alone."
I'm struck dumb. And completely annoyed. I stand up, knotting the sheet around myself like a toga for the sake of having something to do with my hands. "Okay, back up. Call me crazy, but we connected last night. I know we did. And now you're back to acting like I'm just some bee in your bonnet? What gives?"
He stops halfway through buttoning up his shirt. The quiet stretches out, long. Finally he says, "You're not angry with me?"
"No, I'm definitely angry with you. You're being a dick."
"No, not about that," he says. "You're not...you're not angry that I slept with you? That I treated you like all those other men did?"
Oh! The surprise roots me to the ground. I blink a few times. "What do you mean?”
"I didn't want to have sex with you, Rae." His hands fall, leaving his shirt half-unbuttoned.
"You...didn't?" That's a little embarrassing.
"No, not like that! I mean, I did want to have sex with you. I've wanted to have sex with you since the first night you stayed here, Rae, of course I did, you're goddamn beautiful..." He runs a hand through his hair again, his words spilling out freely for once, and I want to catch them all up in a bucket and save them for later. "But I told myself I wouldn't do that to you. Every other asshole man you've been with has seen your value only in those terms. And I—I appreciate what you're doing for me. How you're helping me. I didn't want to take advantage of you."
I've been drooling over him enough to fill an ocean, and he's worried that he might have taken advantage of me? The one man I did want to sleep with...I cover my mouth to stifle a laugh.
He continues on, desperately. "Because...because I'm your client, Rae. How could I be sure you really wanted it, and that you didn't feel obligated? That you weren't doing it because of the money involved? I would feel like such a disgusting person if that were the case."
"Cohen," I interrupt.
"I lost control last night, utterly, and for that I’m sorry—"
"Cohen!" I raise my voice. "I wanted it."
He stops in the middle of another half-formed apology. "You...?"
"Of course I wanted it," I laugh. "Were you suffering some sort of hallucination last night where you were picturing someone else? Because if I was the one you saw, it should have been obvious to you how much I wanted it. Christ, Cohen, I was putty in your hands."
"You were?"
He's so insanely cute like this, still bleary from sleep, all contrite and guilt-ridden, with his hair in messy spikes. I want to pat it back into place for him.
"Yes," I say firmly. "The horniest putty in the world."
That word sparks something in him. In the lower half of him, specifically. And the sight of that sparks something in me. Down below, my body rumbles. Yes, please. I'll take a second serving.
He turns away from me. "Nevertheless, that can't happen again."
I quell my instinctive reaction, which is a drawn-out whine worthy-of-a-second-grader.
"Why not?" I inquire professionally.
"It just...can't. I can't afford that kind of distraction. Neither of us can. We have things to focus on, important things, and this is an unnecessary complication."
An unnecessary complication. Right. The warmth growing in me wilts like a flower in the first frost of the season.
"And," he says haltingly, "I can't give you...what you want."
"You most certainly can," I burst out before I can stop myself. Great, Rae. Now you sound horny and insane.
"Not that," he says. "I can't do a relationship. Love. It's just not in me. And I don't want to have sex with you and give you nothing else, Rae. That's been your lot in life so far, and I can't bring myself to contribute to it."
His expression is agonized. I've never seen him like this—full of emotion, forcing out one truth after another without a single acidic remark. It's clearly very difficult for him. And he's doing it for me.
"That's fine," I say carefully. "I understand."
"You're not...?"
"Angry? No." I smile. "That...it means a lot to me, Cohen. That you would think about me like that. It's a gift, more than any man has given me in a long time. I'll treasure it."
I'll just be taking a lot of lengthy solo baths from now on. Assuming I can survive the
remainder of the month knowing that the keeper of the best sex I've ever had is sleeping on the other side of the apartment.
He finishes buttoning up his shirt, slowly. There's still something pleading in his expression, but he's apparently lost the ability to put it into words. Which isn't surprising. The poor man's turn-your-emotions-into-words machine must be hella rusted up, after all this time.
I step toward the door. "I'll make some breakfast, yeah? Bacon and eggs. I'm starving. First I'm going to take a bath, though. A long, hot one. Is that okay?"
I can practically see the image flit through his mind's eye. I'm a little evil.
"Of course it's okay," he mutters.
Still holding up my toga-sheet, I cross the empty morning apartment and head for my bathroom. I turn the handle up to scalding and let the steam bury my mirror reflection. I can do this. It's only a couple more weeks. I'll just...think about totally unsexy things constantly from now on. Nuns. That weird haircut Benedict Cumberbatch had that one time.
Cohen's right, anyway. This arrangement will be far less complicated without sex in the equation. The only funny thing is that he thinks I expected something more than sex. Love? A relationship? I draw a crooked heart in the steam on the mirror and laugh. As if someone like him could ever love someone like me.
I've tossed off my sheet and I'm just stepping into the warm water when the bathroom door opens.
Cohen is standing there. His jaw is tight and a wretched "I couldn't..." escapes him.
"Get in here," I say.
He does.
And just like that, Cohen and I are hooking up.
We should have known all that blathering about how we shouldn't have sex wouldn't stick. Stuff like that never does.
After the bathtub sex, we both accept our fates. It's just what happens when you stick two people who are ludicrously attracted to each other in a single apartment for a month. It's simple math. It's the animal kingdom. What are we supposed to do?
He has one rule: not to bother him during work hours. Before me, work hours were apparently dawn till dusk. Now that I have forced him to make allowances for luxuries in his life, such as breakfast, and lunch, his work hours are somewhat more manageable. Ten till sex. I can totally leave him alone in his office for that amount of time. No problemo.
We end up having a lot of sex on his desk between the hours of ten and six.
As it turns out, he doesn't mind his papers getting disorganized if they're being pushed onto the floor by my bare back. Funnily enough, it doesn't bother me either.
Our third week passes by in a blur of nudity. But he never tells me where he goes at night.
It happens on a Friday. We've fallen asleep in his bed, and I wake up to that quiet shifting feeling of someone beside you getting up in the dark. For some reason, I don't say anything. I just let him move, watching him out of the corner of a half-closed eye and shutting it immediately when he checks to see if I'm still sleeping.
For a moment, everything is silent and still. I can hear his breathing in the heavy midnight air, and I make sure to keep my own even, the way it would be if I really was sleeping. Before long, I hear the rustling noises of him getting dressed. There's a slight bang and a muffled curse. I crack an eye again. He's rubbing his shin and stepping away from the corner of the dresser.
Turn on the lights, Cohen. Make some excuse. Better yet, tell me the truth. The curiosity is overwhelming.
But all he does is finish pulling on his shirt. He leaves the bedroom, shutting the door gently behind him. It's only by listening with every ounce of my being that I can hear him doing the same thing to the apartment door.
That's when I spring into action.
Sometimes you just have to do what your heart demands and worry about the consequences later. Right now, my heart is insisting in no uncertain terms that I find out where the fuck Cohen goes at night. So I rush to the other side of the apartment, throw on clothes and mismatched shoes, and hurry down to the lobby, past a sleeping Renard in his chair, just in time to see Cohen take a sharp left around the sidewalk in front of the building and disappear.
I thank the gods of proper clothing decisions that I thought to pick a black shirt and pants. Then I follow him.
I expect him to get into Geoff’s car, and I have no idea what I'll do if he drives away from me, but he doesn't. The Parisian night is thick with cool fog and city sounds, the figures of drunk young people stumbling around with wine bottles, but Cohen doesn't stumble. He's easy to pick out because he walks with such purpose. Wishing I'd grabbed a jacket, I hug myself and chase his faraway silhouette. Thank the gods of decent stalking weather for the fog.
We keep this up for about half an hour. Twenty-five minutes in, I'm freezing and all too aware of the monsters that could be hiding in every dark alleyway. I don't believe in fairytales—the only monsters I'm scared of are the human-shaped kind. I'm far enough behind Cohen that anyone could think I was walking alone.
But I'm in Paris, not LA. Presumably, there are fewer men with guns here. And if I do get attacked, Cohen's only a cry for help away. Though I'm sure he would then be immensely curious as to why I was following him in the middle of the night.
After a while, the amount of drunk young Parisians thickens. We're in a party district. It starts out with bar after bar, loud boys spilling out with girls on their arms, and occasionally the other way around. Then the flashing lights get more intense and the lines get longer. Clubs. Bizarre. Cohen never struck me as the clubbing type. Loud noises, big crowds, drunk idiots—in fact, I'm surprised clubs don't top the list of things he hates.
But that doesn't stop him from slowing down in front of the flashiest club of all, with the longest line and the meanest-looking bouncer.
I duck behind a crowd of people surrounding a fight, and watch. The line is miles long, and I'm not looking forward to waiting out here with the dregs of society until I can safely sneak in. But Cohen bypasses the line, striding to the front. He doesn't say a single thing to the bouncer. The man takes one look at Cohen and lifts the velvet rope, and Cohen disappears into the mess of manmade fog and flashing lights.
I've solved my mystery, then. Cohen likes to go clubbing. But something doesn't sit right with me. For one thing, it's completely out of character for him. For another, why is he so secretive about it? People his age go clubbing all the time, especially rich up-and-coming billionaires with the world at their feet.
I dart across the street and get in line.
It doesn't take as long as I thought it would, but it still takes pretty long. About an hour of standing uncomfortably between two big crowds of twenty-somethings in the world's most intense makeup. All the girls here are fully equipped with sheath dresses and stiletto heels. They look like weapons, and I look like I took an accidental tumble off the top bunk and into my wardrobe, which is just about accurate. I wish fervently that my shoes matched. If nothing else, it's a pain in the ass to walk with one leg propped half an inch higher than the other.
Eventually, the line moves up. The closer we get to the bouncer, the scarier he looks, as if Hagrid had shaved off every hair on his body and adopted Hitler's personality. I'm suddenly aware of the fact that I didn't bring my purse, and therefore my I.D.
The man glances at the I.D.s of the girls in front of me, ushers them inside, and stops me short. I make a show of hunting through my pockets and splash on a horrified expression.
"My I.D...? Where'd it go? Oh, no, I must have dropped it!" Please, gods of convenient languages, let this guy speak English. "Do you think you could let me in anyway? My friends are waiting for me."
This dude could give a rock a run for its money in the Most Expressionless competiton. For that matter, he could give Cohen a run for his money as well. Nevertheless, I sidle up closer and lower my voice to a fuck-me timbre.
"Help a girl out?" I purr.
"No I.D., no entry," he says. The man has the voice of a foghorn at dawn.
"S’cuse me." The guy behind me
pushes forward. He's twenty-something and cute, if a little bullish, with a drunk wobble to his step and a cocky smile. "She's with me, Edward.”
The man's brow furrows deeper than the Mariana Trench. "She gets me in trouble, I kick your ass."
"Fair enough!" the guy says, handing over a few euros—lucky for me, it looks like girls get in free—and pushing forward. I flash the bouncer a smile and dart after my drunken savior.
"Thanks so much!" I say as soon as we're inside, over the distant boom of the music. All around us, people are shedding their jackets and milling toward the coat check. "You really saved my ass."
"An ass like that is worth saving." The guy waggles his eyebrows downward, and I roll my eyes. But he catches himself. "S'cool. Us Americans have to stick up for each other. I could tell by your accent. And hell, a girl who ditches her jacket on a night like tonight just to avoid the coat check fee doesn't deserve to be turned away at the door."
"Yep, that's exactly what I did," I laugh. "I'm gonna go dance." Read: find Cohen. "Thanks again."
"Wait!" he protests. "Let me buy you a drink."
I want my wits about me, especially if I can't find Cohen and have to trek home alone. "No thanks. I'm, uh, already drunk."
His disappointed face fades into a blender of a hundred others as I push forward onto the dance floor.
I've been in clubs in L.A. before, so the wild mixture of lights and bass, heat and bodies, isn't unfamiliar to me. It is, however, a pain in the ass. I'd much rather be home, safe and warm, in my insanely expensive bed. Stupid Cohen and his mysterious clubbing habit. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind when I find him.
Which is a stupid idea, because he's an adult well within his rights to go clubbing at night if he wants to. I'm the one being a creepy stalker.
I stop, the only one not moving in a sea of bobbing heads and thrashing bodies. What am I even doing here? If I do find Cohen, what am I planning on saying to him? I don't want to destroy the tenuous trust he's placed in me. But now that I've put so much effort into getting in here, it seems like a shame to leave.