‘You love it when I talk too much,’ he went on, goading her. ‘I’m your perfect excuse to run your mouth. All day you have to smile at every asshole in a cheap suit, all “yes, sir” and “thank you, sir”, and then I come along and dish it to you, and you get to dish it right back.’
All Molly could do was let out the deliriously happy laughter that had bubbled up as he spoke. God, he was so right. It was that mocking tone that had got under her skin to begin with. She loved to be pushed, and to push back. She loved that he kept finding new buttons to push.
It wasn’t just the size of his dick and the way he used it: fucking him was just pure fun.
But she wasn’t going to admit it, at least not right now.
She pushed back harder against him, enough to disrupt his solid rhythm. He grunted and clamped down, but Molly was already up on her knees. ‘Admit it, you just like hearing yourself talk.’
A hard sound came from the back of his throat as she seated herself firmly over his dick and squeezed her inner muscles. The sound lingered, rumbling while he ran his hands past her ribs.
His eager hands turned soft once he had her tits in his hands, lifting and squeezing, rolling hard nipples with his thumbs until they were like stones. He quickly defeated her with his sudden tenderness. She rested her head back against his shoulder and relented as he began to move.
‘I won’t deny it,’ he murmured into her ear, ‘I love hearing myself talk as much as you do. I know what hearing those words does to you, and I can’t wait to let them out and watch that hunger take over your face.’
‘Like you’re casting a spell,’ she said, giving her suspicions a voice for the first time.
‘Exactly.’ He barely spoke the word, but she felt it move through her like warm water. ‘You should see yourself. Your eyes get a wild look to them and you show your teeth a little, maybe bite your lip, and you start to writhe as you get wetter and wetter. A little of that, and I can do whatever I want with you, can’t I?’
He licked her earlobe, and, as she shook with the reminder of what he could do to her with that tongue, he struck, suddenly dragging her back up onto her hands and knees.
‘A little of that, and I get a whole fucking lot of this.’
Gone was the gentle lover of moments ago, and with him the kitten he had tamed in his arms.
As they punished her bed with the building frenzy, it occurred to her that they had suddenly stopped screwing.
This was loud. This was chaotic. This was rutting, pure and perfect.
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any better, Quinn helped himself to a handful of hair.
‘Keep talking,’ he urged her, tugging her head back as far as he could before she resisted. ‘Keep running that dirty mouth, princess.’
She was dishing it, all right. She was dishing it with her body bucking against his and with a mouth straight out of porn. She couldn’t believe the words exploding from her overworked lungs. They just kept coming, and the more she egged him on the harder he rode her.
The last swollen syllable dropped as he released her hair and took her around the waist once more. She came in a storm, fighting to keep from being driven over the edge of the bed as he reached his own climax. He roared while Molly was choked. There was just too much energy to come out and not enough breath, and so it remained trapped and burning.
The moment that glorious flood passed over, her head began pounding. She breathed out and flopped, uncomfortably, half off the end of the bed. Quinn followed suit and became dead weight on top of her.
At some point the room stopped flashing with coloured lights and Molly became aware of his crushing bulk. Her small body warred against his solid girth until he groaned and rolled off.
‘That was energetic,’ she said, as they lay sprawled side by side across the bed.
He let out an exhausted, rattling laugh and pushed his fingers into his hair. ‘I haven’t done anything like that in a while.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Seriously. I’d be led out of the hotel in handcuffs if I went off the rails like that with a client.’ He drew a deep breath and yawned it out as he pushed up onto his elbows, then grinned down at her. ‘You’re a terrible influence. What was that you called me when I was fucking you?’
Molly giggled. ‘Never mind, and yes, I am a bad influence on you and your virgin ears.’
Quinn rolled onto his side and scooted close. She couldn’t keep her hands off him. He was a magnet that kept drawing her in. As he draped himself over her, chest to chest, Molly looped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a kiss.
‘What do you say?’ he murmured against her mouth. ‘Nap or coffee?’
‘Oh, God, do I really have to choose?’ she moaned, and wriggled happily as he made a damp trail of kisses from one side of her neck to the other.
He lifted his head and grinned down at her. ‘You have a butler hiding around here?’
She breathed a sigh of defeat and ran her hands along the rolling hills of his damp shoulders. She would have been content to entertain herself with just such a sinful diversion for the rest of the day, but they’d been in bed for a total of thirteen hours.
They rose, but Molly consoled herself with the thought that they’d end up back in the bed before the end of the day. Quinn took a shower first while Molly stripped the bed and loaded the washing machine, and then it was her turn.
When she came into the kitchen he was at the island with his hands wrapped around one of her yellow mugs. A second was opposite him, steam curling up from the dark brew. She leaned over it and breathed in the rich scent.
‘I’m still in shock that you didn’t give me shit about my cheap coffee.’
‘This is gourmet compared to what I started out drinking. My grandfather always bought store brand – not the good stuff, but the cheap kind that came in a yellow can. I already put sugar and cream in it.’
‘I need more than just a little caffeine and sugar. I need sustenance after that number you did on me. God, is that really the time?’
She dug into the fridge for the makings of homemade breakfast sandwiches, and as she laid it all out she stole quick glances at him and tried to imagine the life he had lived before and after he took up his career.
‘What do you do when you’re home alone?’ she asked. ‘You don’t seem like the type to watch television with your hand down your pants like the rest of us.’
‘I’ve been known to cuddle with my balls while watching Family Guy, but not a lot. I read. I wore out the barcode on my library card once a year before I bought one of those digital things. I read on my iPad while I’m on the treadmill, I listen to audiobooks when I’m running or primping in the bathroom, driving and so on.’
She cracked two eggs into a bowl. ‘What do you read?’
‘Anything. Everything. I’ve got a soft spot for fantasy and those old action stories – you know, Conan and Tarzan. I watched all the movies when I was a kid, and had no idea they were even books until I found them online, but I’ll read anything that’s fantasy.’
‘Nerd,’ she teased. ‘Were you like that when you were a kid?’
‘Jesus, no. I only had a fifth-grade reading level when I got picked up off the streets. I had a counsellor who told me I’d be one of those people you see pushing a shopping cart filled with tin cans if I didn’t learn to read, so I learned to read.’
‘My God, Quinn, listening to you sometimes, you’ve had such a life.’ She dumped the makings of an omelette onto the griddle and turned to him. ‘What the hell are you going to do with yourself for the other half of it? You’ll be bored to death unless you take up something like espionage.’
‘I have things I want to do. I have a, what do you call it? A bucket list, I think. And I want what everyone else wants.’
‘Money? You have that. A lot of it.’
‘But I’m alone. I’ve got friends I’m in contact with every day but they’re spread all over the place. My most meaningful relation
ship up until now has been with my stylist.’ He dropped his gaze and for once his mouth lost that ever-present smirk. ‘I’ve been on my own for so long, and I’ve liked it, but now I want to do some sharing with more than just my dick. I want someone to know my favourite song and turn it up when it comes on the radio, you know?’
Even if she could have come up with something to say, Molly never would have got it out. She felt as if a tennis ball had lodged in her throat. He kept silent as she flipped the eggs, and was still looking into his coffee when she returned her attention to him.
‘You OK?’ he asked.
The ball dislodged as she laughed. She grabbed four pieces of bread and popped them into the toaster. ‘I get what you’re saying. I can’t remember the last time I met a new person I’ve had any sort of social intercourse with – before you, that is, and I still met you through work. Plus, the older you get, the less you want to learn to deal with someone else’s shit. It’s easier when you’re young. There’s less baggage to deal with. Once you hit thirty, all you get is bruised and banged up, and you have to try and find someone whose pile of shit isn’t bigger than yours.’
‘Jesus, did I scare you that much?’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just …’ The time had come: time to open herself up and show him the black, gooey mess inside. ‘I want to tell you why I want to keep the house. No, wait, that’s wrong. I don’t want to tell you. I want to keep it from you, but I need to tell you.’
‘You don’t have to tell me anything if you’re not ready.’
‘That’s the thing, I won’t ever be ready, so why not now?’ She pushed the pan off the heat and set the spatula aside, then turned back to him. ‘There’s a room next to the bedroom. I keep the door locked.’
‘The one with the rubber-duck sticker,’ he said quietly, and shrugged at her surprised look. ‘You can still see the outline, and I had a look the first night when I was coming back from the bathroom. I’m nosy like that.’
‘That would be it. It was going to be her room: Natalie. It would have been her room if she had been born.’
She looked him in the face as she spoke. If she took her attention off him, images would accompany her words – she wouldn’t just be stating facts but experiencing a memory – and so she anchored herself to his gaze.
‘I was never one of those baby-crazy women. I figured Aaron and I were going to be one of those couples who stayed childless and free to do what they want, when they want, but then we had a slip and there was Natalie. We were having a baby and we wanted one. We moved out of the apartment and into the house, and we started the room for her.’
The toast popped up and she dropped it onto the plate alongside the toaster. ‘Then, I had what’s called a placental abruption and started to bleed. I almost died and Natalie didn’t make it. A week after we buried her, I came home and found my husband in that room dismantling the crib. I told him to get out. I told him if he ever went into that room again I’d kill him. He never went near it again, and we never went near one another again. He moved out about two months later, and he’s been at me to sell the house ever since.’
‘Who painted over the door?’ he asked. He hadn’t looked away as she told him about Natalie, and he didn’t alter his tone when he spoke to her. He gave her no pity, showed no discomfort. There was only the question.
‘I did, on my lone attempt to actually deal with the problem,’ she said as she set the food on the island. ‘That was, oh, ages ago. I painted the door and for a moment I was so proud of myself. That lasted long enough for me to have a cup of coffee and a sandwich. That room is where I keep things I want to remember but I can’t stand to think about: my bills, my wedding dress and other stuff from my marriage, and Natalie. That’s why I can’t sell the house, even if I am up to my eyeballs in debt. If I agree to sell the house, I have to go in there and take everything out of it.’
He pressed no further, instead following her suit by buttering his toast and sprinkling pepper on his omelette.
When they had finished their breakfast, Molly pushed her plate aside and wrapped her hands around her warm cup. ‘Thanks for not bolting.’
‘I can’t stand being a hypocrite, and what have you told me that would make me want to leave? I’ve told you about all the chinks in my armour and you still made me breakfast.’ Quinn mirrored her pose, hands on his coffee cup and bare shoulders slumped. ‘Right after I turned thirty, I took on a client that almost made me quit once and for all. She was almost sixty and she looked like someone’s grandmother, white hair and all. She liked to do it with the lights out so she could pretend I was her late husband. They’d been married for forty years and just for a little while she wanted to pretend he was still there. Afterwards, every damn time, she’d cry her eyes out. I don’t know why she tortured herself like that, but I suppose it was something she needed to do.
‘So, you have a room in your house where you keep that part of yourself that can never heal,’ he went on. ‘Everyone has a room like that, only it’s usually in their minds. One day you’ll be ready to clean out that room. Until then, you’ll just have to be as bruised as the rest of us.’
The shock didn’t hit her immediately. Like a machine, she processed his words and felt a light current of electricity in her. She’d expected him to tell her she needed to move on, to psychoanalyse her, to offer some sort of coddling. That’s what everyone else did.
But Quinn wasn’t everyone else, was he? He’d simply absorbed what she told him and rather than tell her that she was going to be all right, he told her that she was all right, that she was just like everyone else.
And strangely enough, she felt better. She felt all right, all because he had said so.
He got to his feet and carried his cup to the counter, where he poured out the rest of the coffee.
Molly leaned forward and shook her head. ‘How do you do that? How do you just take things, take life the way it is without falling apart even a little?’
‘I used to,’ he said, and tapped the scar over his wrist. ‘Every so often, I still do, but just when I get sick of life it gives me a little surprise. Like one afternoon I was genuinely thinking of putting my condo on the market, and that evening I walk into a hotel room to find a stunning brunette with lips like Marilyn waiting for me, and suddenly pulling up stakes becomes a terrible idea.’
Molly’s cheeks burned, but it was a happy burn, and her smile was unstoppably huge. ‘That must have been quite a blowjob.’
‘I told you, you suck like a pro.’
Laughter, wonderful laughter that came up from the bottom of her stomach, bubbled up and lifted her to her feet. She came around the counter and wrapped her arms around his torso.
It felt nice. It felt right with his heart beating beneath her cheek and his arm braced across her back.
‘Thank you for making me laugh.’
‘Thanks for laughing.’ He kissed the top of her head, and all too soon the embrace ended and he was putting his cup into the dishwasher. ‘You know I want to spend the day with you, but I have fish to feed.’
‘I didn’t know you had fish.’
‘In addition to being a giant book nerd, I’m also a tropical fish nerd.’ He paused at the doorway, hands on narrow hips. ‘Do you think you’re ready to come to my place? You might fall in love with the two-minute commute to work.’
‘I didn’t know I needed to be ready.’ She leaned back against the counter and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Is there something shocking there? Do you have a sex slave you keep in a crate?’
‘It’s very telling that your mind immediately goes to sex,’ he said, returning her cagey look. ‘It’s my turf. So far we’ve only been on yours.’
‘Do you think I’m ready for it?’
‘Molly, since the moment I met you, you’ve been ready for anything I can throw at you.’
Chapter Seven
The longer Molly stood at the sink, the longer she got the impression that Scot derived an immense amount
of pleasure from watching her burn off this irritation.
The cat had situated himself on the windowsill, paws tucked under his fluffy body, blinking his yellow eyes with what she could have sworn was a smirk.
She glared back at him as she squirted more detergent under the running water. She half-expected a speech bubble to appear over his head: What’s the matter, sweetheart? Feeling a little tense? Keep it up and you’ll have the cleanest house in Ontario.
Molly withdrew a plate from the suds and scrubbed at it so hard it was a wonder the glaze didn’t scrape off. In the last two hours she’d vacuumed the upstairs, then stripped the bed and the windows of dressing that now rumbled in the dryer in the small alcove off the kitchen. The bathroom was so clean it could blind a person when the lights were on.
Cleaning had long been her coping mechanism. When she’d quit smoking; when she’d been stressed over wedding plans; after Natalie and after her marriage had crumbled; and now, when she was crazy for a man who was off earning big bucks fucking another woman.
There was nothing she could do about it except end the affair, and that was out of the question. She adored Quinn too much to end it, and so she picked a project and threw herself into it, but that frustration kept flaring up in her chest.
She dipped a dirty wok into the water to soak and then snapped off the rubber gloves, gleefully spraying Scot with little flecks of foam. He merely blinked and twitched his ears and another speech bubble appeared above his head.
You could start a blog about what it’s like to fall for a male prostitute.
The voice in her head sounded sarcastic, but the notion wasn’t completely crazy. A few nights ago she had become tired of cleaning and gone online. There was a big world on the Internet with millions of stories. Surely someone had one like hers.
She found someone on the first page of search results and had been floored: an article from a women’s blog by someone who was in a long-term relationship with an on-again, off-again male prostitute. They were a normal couple with two children and owned their own business. When things were lean, the husband would moonlight. The wife was not only fine with it, but was the one who set up the appointments, ‘because he’s my husband, I trust him, and we’re in this together’.
Holding My Breath Page 11