“I might believe that if you didn’t look as blissed out as a dead saint.”
Considering the turn this conversation had taken, that couldn’t possibly be true anymore. Yet Dani caught a glimpse of her distorted reflection in the metallic side of the coffee grinder and realized that Sorcha was, somehow, correct.
Well. It had been six months without sex, and for Dani, that was rather a while. A little excitement was to be expected. Which explained why, by the time she sailed into Echo and slapped down Zaf’s morning coffee, she was ready to vault over the desk and rip his bodice like a true romance hero.
Until she saw his face.
“Morning,” he said gently, the low gravel of his voice standing out above the familiar whining of passing staff and students. His hair was messier than usual, falling over his forehead like glossy ink, which meant he’d been running his hands through it. His heavy-lidded eyes were cradled by shadows like indigo thumbprints, which meant he’d slept even less than usual, and his golden skin looked pale against the black of his beard.
“Oh no,” Dani blurted.
He blinked, then arched an eyebrow.
Since she couldn’t let the rest of that rogue thought spill out—it ended with mortifying concern, as in, Oh no, are you okay?—she searched for something else to say. After a moment of roiling nerves and surprisingly intense worry, she settled on, “You’re confiscating the dick, aren’t you?”
Because he probably was. He’d been fine, if a little quiet, during their five-minute phone calls last night, but that didn’t mean a thing. People hid their feelings all the time, wrapped them up tight until the pressure turned explosive, and then boom: your self-image was in tatters and you were throwing someone’s clothes out the window in a rubbish bag like Keyshia Cole.
Zaf had probably put the phone down and spent the rest of the night balancing Dani’s many faults with his various romantic ideals, and had decided even the majestic power of her tits (bountiful, obviously) and tongue (long and very flexible, in case anyone was wondering) just wasn’t enough to lead him into joyous sin. He certainly wouldn’t be the first to make a negative worth calculation when it came to Danika Brown. Although, keeping things purely physical was supposed to prevent the outcome of those calculations from actually hurting.
So the hole his dark gaze punched through her chest must have something to do with divine nudges and destiny. Yes, that was it: the fact that her universe-mandated sex buddy didn’t want to be her sex buddy was what had Dani’s mood falling like bird shit—splat—onto the pavement. Oshun really must stop messing her around. Or perhaps this was supposed to be character building? Like fasting was for monks.
“No,” Zaf said, standing up to lean against the security desk. “I’m not—” His lips twitched, and his voice lowered to a pitch that rubbed against her legs like a purring cat. “I’m not confiscating the dick.”
“Oh. Well. Lovely,” Dani babbled, trying not to be too alarmed by the sudden upswing of her spirits. But really, this morning was becoming almost violent in its ups and downs. She felt slightly nauseous and somewhat unsteady on her feet. Which probably had something to do with relief, her clitoris, and abrupt changes to blood flow.
“I do have bad news, though,” Zaf said. Then he took a nice, slow sip of his coffee, because he was, apparently, a professional torturer as well as an ex–rugby player. He really had to stop hiding all these past lives. Friends didn’t keep friends in the dark about their wide and varied special skills.
Which was why Dani would soon be teaching him all about her bedroom expertise.
She was distracted by the rhythmic bob of his Adam’s apple for a few seconds before impatience won out. “What? What’s the bad news?”
Zaf put down his coffee. “Didn’t want to tell you over the phone yesterday, in case you thought I was avoiding you again. But I need a rain check on tonight.” The words were pushed out on a wave of disappointment, as if whatever had caused him to request a delay of their frantic bonking was so unwelcome, he’d barely prevented himself from kicking that thing into the sun. Which went some way toward soothing Dani’s pang of unhappiness.
Although she didn’t know what she could possibly be unhappy about. She’d survived on vibrator-given orgasms this long, and it wasn’t as if she’d been looking forward to spending the evening with Zaf. That would be silly. Especially when she could just call him.
With that fact in mind, she asked calmly, “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” A tentative smile teased his mouth. “Things are pretty great, actually. Aside from us not—well. Yeah. Radio Trent want to interview me.”
“What?” Dani felt as if a bulb had been lit inside her and now she was glowing gentle pleasure right through her skin. “That’s wonderful, right? That’s huge!”
“Yep.” Zaf nodded, looking away as if he was embarrassed. His smile was cautious, hopeful, sweet. Something about it punched her in the heart, which was highly uncomfortable and made her ribs ache.
“They want to talk about Tackle It,” Zaf was saying, “and about us, obviously. I really can’t . . .” He paused, his tongue gliding over his tempting lower lip before he reached across the desk and caught her hand. It occurred to her that, for the first time since they’d met, Zaf was completely ignoring his security duties. Usually, when they spoke, his gaze flicked everywhere and he burst out with scowls and orders at random, reminding people to flash their ID. But right now? His eyes were pinned to Dani as his fingers laced through hers, and all that dark, velvet focus sent a thrill racing through her blood, and she felt singularly . . . wanted. Really, really wanted. Her breath rushed out like the tide, and she couldn’t bring it back again.
“Thank you,” Zaf finished softly. “For all of this. It’s ridiculous, I know it is, but it’s doing so much.”
He was so disgustingly sincere. Dani must be allergic, since every time he thanked her with those big, puppy dog eyes, it made her feel hot and flushed and jittery inside. “Never mind all that,” she said briskly. “Do you need me to come?”
Zaf rolled his lips inward. “They asked if you would, obviously. But I told them you’re busy, so . . .”
She was busy, horribly busy preparing for the symposium—last night she’d woken from a fever dream in which Inez Holly had asked her a question about an obscure Afro-Swedish theory on intersectionality in late nineteenth-century literature, and Dani hadn’t been able to respond. She should be glad that Zaf didn’t need her company. And yet, she found herself asking lightly, as if it were a joke: “What, you don’t want me there? I’m wounded.”
He laughed a little, because, of course, she wasn’t serious. Of course she wasn’t. “You’re already doing a lot for me, Dan. I’m not about to start dragging you to interviews.” His voice lowered as he leaned in. “Or asking you to lie any more than we already are.”
All entirely noble points, but none of that was a no. And Zaf was the kind of man who knew how to say no when he wanted to.
Dani knew she should let this go. She was mere weeks away from the symposium and the accompanying terrifying panel discussion with Inez fucking Holly, for heaven’s sake! She didn’t have time to go gallivanting off on last-minute radio interviews with her fake boyfriend, even if it was for the good of the children and so on and so forth, and even if that fake boyfriend was her very real future fuck buddy. So, he was right. She shouldn’t come.
Except . . . Zaf clearly didn’t like being the center of attention. And when he was nervous, he became particularly, adorably intimidating, only no one else seemed to notice the adorable part. And, for fuck’s sake, he had anxiety. So, no, Dani wasn’t going to let him do this alone. That thought was so urgent, so vehement and intense, that it almost alarmed her—but this caring came from friendship, and friendship was just fine. Friendship was perfectly safe. It might hurt sometimes, but it had never crushed her heart and ruined her from the inside out.
For a moment, the slight hollow in her chest where laughing with Jo
had once lived felt unbearably dark and shadowed. But Dani pushed that ache away.
“I’ll come,” she said.
Zaf looked startled, probably because she’d been silent for a good few minutes. Long, thoughtful pauses were a socially unacceptable habit Dani struggled to break, one she knew from past experience and blunt feedback made her seem strange and/or boring. Zaf never seemed to mind, though. He simply waited for her, and when she spoke again, he always spoke back as if the silence had never happened.
Like right now. “You’ll come?” he echoed. “But—”
“But nothing. Let’s do this properly.”
“You’re sure?” His expression was unreadable.
“I’m sure,” she said, despite the tiny voice in her ear that was screeching, What is happening here? What are all these warm, glowing sparks and why are none of them centered around my genital area?
The slight tension in Zaf’s shoulders melted away, and he gave her a huge, heart-stopping smile—the pesky kind that always made Dani want to kiss his nose (against her conscious will, that is). Then he made things a thousand times worse by sliding a hand around the back of her neck, pulling her close until the desk between them was less innocent plank of wood and more evil cock-blocking barrier, and pressing a kiss to her lips.
It wasn’t a hot, hard, passionate sort of kiss. It was a slow, soft, tender kiss, a not-quite-but-almost-chaste kiss, his lips parted but his tongue behaving itself. Sweet, warm pressure, a faint, comforting nuzzle, and then he pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes. His were warm like caramel on the stove and cradled by smile lines.
“How many people,” he asked quietly, “know how kind you are?”
“I . . . um . . .” Dani swallowed befuddlement and willed away her blush. “I’m not.”
“Right,” he said dryly, and then he bumped their noses together, and her entire middle folded in half before melting everywhere like butter. We’re in public, she reminded herself harshly, which means this is all pretend.
Except, most days, Zaf couldn’t fake basic good cheer well enough to stop swearing while in uniform. He couldn’t even fake a smile. Which begged the question—
Don’t. Don’t ever beg that fucking question, or you might have to give up your first lay in months before you even get a ride. Security walls slammed up in a section of Dani’s mind, concrete thicker than Zaf’s thighs and higher than her heart rate every time he put his hands on her. Because feelings had wings, but Dani didn’t, and she wasn’t about to let herself chase a tiny bird clean off a cliff.
She didn’t even feel the urge. Not ever.
So she forced her focus back where it belonged and said, “Maybe after the interview we could . . .”
“I’ll come home with you,” Zaf said. No hesitation. Just hot, liquid lust.
Chapter Nine
@BASICJELLYBABY: No one:
Literally no one:
Not a single fucking soul:
#DrRugbae all over campus: WHAT’S IT LIKE BEING SO SINGLE? CAN’T RELATE!
That afternoon, Dani watered her plants, salt-watered her goddess, and hunted down a few online articles about Swedish literary criticism, just to be sure. She added a few pink sticky notes to her Wall of Doom, the mind map she’d created beside her desk that contained all her symposium research. Then she found a fascinating essay on race, gender, and the nineteenth-century new woman that she could include in her panel preparation, fell down a rabbit hole, and promptly forgot all her plans for the evening.
She was still playing with pink sticky notes when her grandmother Gigi called to complain about misbehaving grandchildren and difficult yoga poses. Time ticked firmly on but was, unfortunately, ignored by them both.
“Eve has been impossible since that little friend of hers became affianced,” Gigi drawled, having moved on from the treacherousness of the wounded peacock pose. “The bride is a nightmare by all accounts, and Eve, bless her heart, is bowing to every whim. I’m beginning to doubt the integrity of my granddaughter’s spine.”
“Eve’s spine is fine,” Dani murmured as she scrawled across a new sticky note A room of whose own? and slapped it onto the wall. “She simply places too much value on being nice.”
“I cannot fathom why.” Gigi sounded genuinely bamboozled. “Niceness is incredibly dull.”
“Mmm.” Zaf wasn’t nice. He was kind. It was a notable distinction. Rather like the distinction between misogyny and misogynoir. Dani snagged another sticky note.
“She came storming into my yoga studio just the other day—an interruption which quite distressed Shivani”—Shivani being Gigi’s live-in yoga instructor and girlfriend—“asking me to consider performing at the wedding reception! She told me, ‘I would be your eternal household savant and greatest fan,’ as though she isn’t already! That is, supposing she meant to say servant.”
“Probably,” Dani replied.
“Well, I said, ‘I hope you are referring to your wedding reception, darling, because the marriages of you girls are the only events that might ever inspire me to so exert myself.’”
“Quite right,” Dani muttered, switching her Zora Neale Hurston and Zadie Smith sticky notes around.
“Speaking of which, when is that gorgeous white man going to marry Chloe?”
“Promptly, I’m sure,” Dani replied soothingly. Gigi, having been abandoned as a pregnant teenager by her first love, and then kicked out in disgrace by her horrified family, had revealed a firm stance on marriage ever since Dani’s older sister had moved in with her starving-artist beau.
“And when are you going to find yourself a nice girl or boy or otherwise categorized individual to shower you with lifelong affection?” Gigi demanded, warming to her topic, which reminded Dani quite abruptly that—
“Oh, shit. I think I’m late.”
Gigi gasped in delight. “Late for what on a Tuesday evening, Danika Brown? Something other than working yourself into a husk, I hope?”
“Husk is a strong term, Gigi.” Dani felt mildly affronted. She touched an absent hand to her cheek to see if it was husklike, but it felt moisturized as ever by her Super Facialist hyaluronic day cream.
“Don’t tell me you have a date?” Gigi went on.
All right, I won’t. Since Chloe and Eve had apparently managed to keep their mouths shut on the topic of Zaf—clear evidence that magic really did move through the world—Dani certainly wouldn’t be the one to spill the beans. And anyway, this wasn’t a date; it was a favor. Or a professional engagement, if faking relationships with charity founders for publicity could be counted as a second profession. She’d better hope it wasn’t, or Her Majesty’s tax office would be all over her.
Not that Dani could see herself ever providing such a service for anyone other than Zaf.
“Danika,” Gigi nudged, “don’t think so loudly. Speak.”
Dani was saved from stammering more excuses by a sudden knock at the door. Of course, saved was a relative term, since that knock was almost certainly Zaf, and she’d already let him down by being in her pajamas and on the phone with Gigi when she should be ready to face the music-slash-radio-microphone.
Which, Dani supposed, was no surprise: there was a reason none of her past relationships had worked out, after all. They hadn’t all been like Mateo, but she’d always been herself.
“I don’t have a date,” Dani lied brightly to Gigi. “It’s just Sorcha. Must dash, love you, tell Eve to get ahold of herself.”
She put the phone down, abandoned her Wall of Doom, and went to the door. Before actually letting Zaf in, Dani took a moment to glance down at herself, just in case her outfit had magically transformed.
Sadly, it had not. She was still wearing enormous, ratty Minion slippers (one purple and one yellow), reindeer-print sleep shorts (Really, Danika, in March?), and an oversized T-shirt she’d originally worn to a final Chaucer exam, on which she’d scored a 98. Since Dani despised Chaucer and had no knack for Middle English, that grade had been an obviou
s miracle. Ever since, she’d worn her lucky T-shirt while working on especially difficult projects.
Unfortunately, said T-shirt was now a faded grayish white and mildly see-through. Wonderful. She kicked off the slippers and wondered if she should do something to hold up her tits—when left unattended, they sagged dramatically like twin grande dames. Then she reminded herself that if all went to plan, Zaf would eventually see the girls flopping around like drunk puppies anyway, so there was really no point.
Having dealt with that strangely nervous moment, she finally opened the door.
Zaf stood there with his hands in his pockets and his thick, dark hair falling over his brow. Seeing him in street clothes after months of nothing but that navy-blue security uniform was . . . something of a revelation. Dani bit her lip and reminded herself that sensible women didn’t swoon at the sight of a man in a Henley, even if that Henley was forest green and clung to every inch of him, from thick forearms to meaty biceps to that solid chest and torso.
Then he produced one of his small, cautious smiles, and Dani was forced to admit that she wasn’t a sensible woman after all, because she was definitely swooning. On the inside, anyway. Looking at Zaf was like walking out of an air-conditioned room into a wall of midsummer heat: lust slammed into her, surrounded her, and she proceeded to gently suffocate.
“About an hour ago,” he said, “I realized I don’t have a clue what you wear to a radio interview.”
Her heart melted, drip-drip-drip, like an ice pop on a scorching summer’s day. Oh dear. “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she told him, because if she said, You look so delicious I’m seriously fighting the urge to sink my teeth into your scandalously plump pectoral, he might be alarmed. “Come in! I’m afraid I’m not quite ready—”
“Really?” He followed her into the living room, looking around in open curiosity. “I thought the reindeer shorts were a statement.”
“Hilarious,” she said. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Take a Hint, Dani Brown Page 12