by Holley Trent
It was pointless to worry about, but he would probably rehash the disaster in his mind until the day he died. Raleigh was the sort of man Bruce had always thought he should grow up to be, but he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. He wasn’t wired right and they would never view the world the same way, but for a while, Bruce had thought that they’d forged a bridge. That they could meet halfway and enjoy what the other had to offer.
The bridge had been a shaky one, as it turned out, because he hadn’t been the right kind of honest.
Everley’s phone vibrated on top of the dresser. She snatched it up and answered with barely a glance. “Hey, Lisa.”
Rubbing his chin, Bruce wondered where his newest phone had gone. There was probably a way to check his messages remotely if he needed to, but he didn’t want to. He understood that was irresponsible of him—what if there was an emergency?—but he’d found that people rarely bothered him with emergencies. They only bothered him when they needed his signature or his money. Never his company.
“We can meet downstairs for breakfast in the morning before you head out.” She chuckled and fidgeted with the zipper pull at the side of her dress. “Quite fascinating, actually. We were just discussing lyrics. Uh-huh. Yeah. Eight o’clock. See you then.”
She slid the pad of her thumb across the screen and set the device atop her makeup kit. “My friend Lisa.” She pointed to the wall behind her. “She’s over there. Checking on me. We’ll meet for breakfast.”
“So, I can be your friend until breakfast?” He figured he may as well ask. She’d hinted that he was fascinating. He liked that word.
She laughed. “Friendships don’t have arbitrary expiration times.” Still laughing, she headed into the bathroom.
“Yes, well.” He popped the cap off a cold bottle of water. “We’ll see.”
Chapter Eleven
“Okay. I’m trying not to think about how humiliating this is, but could you help me?”
Everley stood in the bathroom doorway, gesturing to the snug zipper at the side of her dress. She didn’t mind Bruce hanging out. In fact, she was developing a minor obsession with his particular brand of irreverent repartee, but if she didn’t get out of her support garments soon, she worried she was going to pop blood vessels.
Unfolding his long body from the sofa, he set down the baubles of costume jewelry she’d piled on the coffee table earlier. He’d been commenting on how real they’d looked. “What’d you do to it?”
She groaned. “I might have been a little negligent when I zipped it. I think the zipper is caught in the fabric of my shaper.”
“What’s a shaper?”
“A torture device designed to make people look like they have an artist’s ideal of a waist.”
“Why do you wear it?”
“Because.” She pointed to the zipper again. “Please. The elastic in the fabric is starting to chafe me.”
“Nan always told me that because wasn’t an answer. It’s a conjunction.”
“Ugh. Foiled by grammar. I wear it because I’m vain enough that I want to. Is that a good answer?”
He shrugged. “Suits me.”
She lifted her arm.
He squatted a bit and pinched the tiny zipper between thumb and forefinger. Careful as a surgeon, he held down the fabric at either side while he wriggled the little piece of metal. “The last time I was this intimate with a woman, I had a paternity scare.”
She wasn’t sure if she should laugh, so she turned her head, coughed to let her amusement out on whatever sound she could, and then asked in a warbling tone, “I take it the child wasn’t yours.”
“Oh, there was no child. Ah!” He managed to unstick the zipper bottom from whatever it’d caught on. “Happens a lot in the business, unfortunately, but that was my first time. There should be some kind of bingo card of all the ways people try to use you. Did you know that the earliest known versions of bingo originated in around the sixteenth century in Europe? I learned that while following Nan around. She liked playing with her friends.”
Imagining the scene, Everley couldn’t suppress her giggle. “The Scottish gray-hairs.”
“Aye.” He smiled warmly. “They liked chatting with me. If their grandkids hadn’t come see them in a while, I’d get all the special attention. They didn’t care if I was a little precocious in some ways. I think that made them feel less bad about prattling on.” He tapped the bottom of her zipper and stood back, hands on hips, wearing a triumphant look. “Mastered that.”
“If you ever give up music, you can lend yourself out as a zipper knight.”
“But then I’d have to touch people I might not like as much.” He shrugged. “One damsel in genuine distress is all I have room for in my life right now.”
She barked with laughter as she stepped into the bathroom. “Is that what I am? A princess in need of rescue?” The pictures he painted with his words could have endeared a grizzly bear, and she wasn’t nearly as fierce as that. She was absolutely charmed.
“That doesn’t sound quite right, does it? You rescued me first tonight, and perhaps the zipper was step one of me repaying the favor.”
“You’re repaying the favor just by keeping me company. Lisa has already heard all my complaints. It’s nice to tell them to someone new. Feels like less of a burden that way.”
Everley breathed out a hearty halleluiah as she rolled down her girdling undergarments and let them hit the floor. Hose next. She kicked it all out into the corridor toward her bag and reached for the bathrobe on the hook. “I just need a few more minutes.” One false eyelash unit peeled, then the other. “I’m reverting to my larval state.”
“What do you use to facilitate such a miracle?”
“Petroleum jelly and store-brand micellar water. Don’t tell anyone. I can imagine the scolding looks they’d give me. My mother uses thirty-dollar cold cream that could probably strip off a layer of fur if left on too long. Lisa uses this Korean stuff she special orders. I just can’t justify spending that kind of cash.”
“I can get you the really good stuff for cheap. I’ve got cousins who work in the import biz.”
He didn’t sound like he was joking. Still, she laughed, because no man she knew would readily admit such a thing.
“Are you going to be my dealer? Do I have to make furtive calls to you and whisper about that special under-eye cream that no other guy can get for me?”
He leaned in the doorway, smiling. “You can call me if you want. I usually don’t know where my phone is.”
“How the hell do you entertain yourself when you’re waiting or bored or commercials are playing between television shows?”
“Really not an issue. I don’t do boredom the way most people do.”
“You must be some kind of demigod.”
“If only. That would explain so much, wouldn’t it?” He skated the pad of his thumb gently beneath the sensitive lobe of her ear. “You missed a spot.”
The unexpected touch sent a shudder of awareness through her, as though his hand had been someplace else. Someplace lower.
His proximity alone was enough to set her body on edge. It wasn’t just the way he was built—elegant leanness and beautiful movements—but the way he stared. Staring might have been rude to some, but in that moment, it meant she was being noticed. Regarded. Assessed.
Bruce didn’t make assumptions. He asked questions. That was refreshing.
Maybe she’d been barking up the wrong sorts of trees all along. She’d set her sights on slick buttoned-up types like Raleigh because she was supposed to want men like him, but she was coming to understand that many of the things she was supposed to do simply weren’t for her. She was limiting herself to the expectations other people had established for her, and she was miserable.
She grabbed a pristine white washcloth out of the basket on the counter, wet it, and dabbed at the bit
of foundation left behind her ear.
“There. Now you have it.” He nodded in approval.
She turned her head this way and that, showing him all her angles. “Any more?”
“No. You’re perfect.”
“Whatever. Instead of being a zipper knight, you can hire yourself out giving compliments to vulnerable women. You’d make a killing, especially if you wear your shirt like that.”
He looked down at the rumpled gray-striped button-up. “Like what?”
“Half unbuttoned. Rock star chest is an aphrodisiac.”
Playfully, he pulled back the plackets and lasciviously massaged his sternum. “Really? That’s doing it for you?”
“No. Silly.” She stuck her tongue out at him as she passed.
His humor did far more for her than his body did.
“I used to button all the way up to the collar,” he said, following her back into the greater room. “My nan told me I looked like a square.”
“Your nan did?” she asked with shock. Everley’s grandmothers were the sorts who’d reach for smelling salts if she dared to so much as wear skinny jeans.
He shrugged again. “She was better at those things than I was. She knew what was what. Helped me loosen up my style a bit. Steered me away from the matchy-matchy stuff my parents tried to put me in.” He plopped on the foot of her bed and lay back like a reclining sultan.
She found herself joining him. The space he’d left in front of him was the perfect shape for a conversation.
“What do your parents think of your style now?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. My mother doesn’t mail me cardigans anymore, though.”
“I can’t imagine you in a cardigan.”
“I can imagine you in one and nothing else.”
It took a few extra seconds for that quip to completely land in Everley’s head. He’d gone from bell pepper to scotch bonnet in five seconds flat, and his inflections hadn’t changed one bit.
“Too bold?” he asked cheerily.
“N-no,” she stammered. “Just unexpected.”
“My conversational skills are unenviable. I know this.”
In her estimation, he was doing just fine, but she knew she wasn’t typical. She tended to listen for the things people weren’t saying rather than what they were.
“Not a hard stretch. You in that robe. You in a sweater. Belted, maybe.” He danced his fingertip down her arm from her shoulder, pausing at her waist. “Not white, though. Brown like your eyes. Sultry. Reminds me of warm things.”
No one had ever made brown sound sexy before. She almost believed him.
“Size too small,” he mused, hand drifting down to her wrist and toying with the bones there. “So you have to pull it tighter at the front, and so there’s no chance your bottom is covered.”
Everley suspected that the expression she wore was trite. Her eyes felt wide. Her face felt unhealthily hot. Her nostrils had flared.
Being a New Yorker, she’d thought she’d known what candor was. She got it in heaps every day passing construction sites, but apparently she really hadn’t gotten such raw opinions before.
“And...who exactly would be enjoying that particular spectacle?” she croaked.
“I certainly would.”
He’d sounded like he meant it. His gentle, but possessive, grip on her wrist felt like he did, too.
“Ah,” she said weakly. “There you go, building up that CV for your rock star compliments business. You don’t need to convince me. I already know you can put words together prettily when you want to.”
“I mean it. I don’t lie to my friends.” He toyed with the ends of her robe belt, tawny gaze slowly dragging up her body and landing finally on her mouth. “You said we could be friends.”
“My friends don’t generally want to see my ass.”
“Shame.” He shifted up to his elbow, eying her body again with what seemed to be resolute consideration.
In Everley’s experience, that wasn’t good attention. That was the kind of stare her trainer had given her when she’d signed up for a six-month package before breaking her ankle.
She was about to sit up and move to discourage Bruce’s assessment, but something about the way his teeth notched into his lower lip gave her pause. That was a hungry look, not a I-could-fix-you look.
That wasn’t a look she was ready to chase away so soon.
“We agreed there’s a spectrum of friendships, hmm?” he murmured. “Can I not plant myself firmly in the zone where I could appreciate what your cardigan doesn’t cover?”
Please do.
“What sort of appreciation?” she asked with scrounged confidence. “Are you going to send me cards or write songs about it?”
“No, I’d touch it. That’s how I appreciate pianos and guitars. I put my hands on them and make beautiful sounds come out.”
She sucked in a startled breath put her hand over her suddenly thrashing heart.
Dear Lord.
“I...suppose friendship affords those sorts of benefits at times,” she said in a creaky rasp.
“How about now?”
“Now?”
He gave her one of those long “Is your head working?” blinks. “When else?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Can I see?” He nodded toward her, but pointed more specifically to the tie of her robe.
“I’m naked beneath this.”
“You could put on some clothes, but that would certainly defeat the point.”
“I just wanted to be sure we both understood.”
“I appreciate that. No misconceptions, hmm? Tired of those.” He picked up her hand and placed it over the topmost fastened button of his shirt. “Look at me, too. Tell me what you think.”
“Are you serious?”
“I like attention.” Bruce shrugged in that Bruce way that was becoming so familiar.
Oh.
Simple. Reasonable. Human.
She sat up cross-legged and unfastened his shirt as he’d invited. As she nudged the sleeves down his arms, he played with the tie of her robe. Not tugging or unknotting. Just teasing it.
“You can unwrap me, if you want,” she told him. He was honest about his need for attention. She could be open about her need for affection.
“Yeah?”
She nodded.
He gave the tie an enthusiastic tug then, baring her chest and belly in one deft movement. He drew in some air between his teeth and let it back out on a whispered “Fuck.”
Instincts had her reaching for the edges of the robe so she could cover up, but his were quicker. “Stop,” he said, fast and soft. Still staring. “Let me.”
She let him, but she couldn’t look. Not at his face. Not at where his hands were. Not at herself.
She looked at the ceiling and awaited some clue that he’d finished.
“Look at you,” he said. “Striped red from the seams. Runnels dug into your flesh.”
“They’ll go away within an hour or two.”
“Can I trace them?”
She looked down then, too curious to ignore the things his expressions might have told her.
He was staring with that same interest as before, but with parted lips and fast breath escaping.
“You can touch me,” she said simply. The permission seemed to cover all necessary bases for the moment, but she was coming to understand a bit the way Bruce thought so she appended, “Go ahead. I’ll tell you if I don’t like something. I’m not shy about that.”
“So I can touch you here?” He dragged his index finger along the red welts beneath her breasts where the top of her shapewear had rested.
Those marks seemed to have forged direct pathways to her diaphragm. As his calloused touch alighted from one red streak to the next, her lu
ngs seized, chest tightened, breath waned.
“Yes,” she choked out.
“And here?” Nudging aside the edge of the robe, he followed the line around her waist to her side and then down to midthigh where the next ridge tattled on her vanity.
That ridge was connected to her toes. They curled as he traced.
“Yes,” she whimpered.
“Where else?” His tone was full of awe and reverence—a sound she was unaccustomed to, though she hadn’t really been listening before. From Bruce, it was as unmistakable as the color of his eyes or the opening chords of his band’s debut. It couldn’t be anything but that.
I deserve it. I do.
Gone was the confident voice of the woman who’d fought to make a department of mathematicians respect her. In its place was a half-murmured warble of need. “Anywhere you want as long as you tell me you like it.”
“I do.” Palms covered more territory than fingertips, and he was using both to massage away the streaks and also experimentally press to witness how gravity affected flesh. “All of you.”
He said all the right things, and had the audacity to seem like he didn’t know.
She’d never encountered a man before so in awe of the way a heavy breast reshaped in his hand.
“I never get to touch,” he murmured, pushing her breasts together and tracing along the edges of her areola with his thumbs. “I never get to look and touch. Just fuck and then everyone moves on.” He put his face between her breasts suddenly, and as lips and tongue tickled along the center path, her head fell back and a moan escaped.
She swallowed thickly and forced much-needed air into her chest. “I...guess it’s a good thing you have me as a friend.”
She threaded her fingers into his hair, which he must have loosened during her dinner run, and urged his face—his mouth—toward one tender peak. “Be creative,” she whispered. “Hands touch. So do mouths and other things.”
“I could touch all of you with all of me?” he asked before drawing her into his hot mouth and flicking his powerful tongue against her nipple.
She bit down hard into her lip to hold in the whimper of stimulation. She nodded, though, so he wouldn’t stop licking, touching.