by Multiple
“So…why are you in here? Why don’t you want me to turn on the light?”
“I don’t…” He cleared his throat. It was the first time she had heard him hesitate. “I don’t want you to see me.”
Annie sat back on her heels, unmindful of her skirt. There was no reason to worry about him glimpsing her panties in the dark! She let out her breath, feeling unsure and a little ambivalent about her sudden desire to reach out to him, this strange guy sitting alone in her sister’s kitchen. Empathic by nature, she knew what it was like to want to get away from a party like this.
“Can I join you?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure, come on.” He patted the tile floor and she crawled under, leaning against the wall next to him. It wasn’t a big table, pressed into a little breakfast nook. It only sported two chairs since only Chloe and David lived in the huge old Victorian house, but Annie and the stranger both fit comfortably enough underneath.
“So… you just wanted a break from all of that?” She waved her hand toward the door.
“Something like that.”
“Me, too.” Annie sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. She had forgotten about the bump and winced when she made contact. She brought her hand up to rub the sore spot—at least it was something to feel.
“I noticed.” He chuckled.
She flushed. “You didn’t hear what I said out there, did you?” That thought made her cringe with embarrassment.
“Yeah.” He sounded sad, but she didn’t sense a lot of judgment or a big guilt trip coming.
“Whoops. I was hoping you didn’t know what a bitch I can be,” she admitted. “First impressions and all…”
“Maybe it’s better if we all start out knowing who we really are. Wouldn’t that be a great change? Instead of just looking at people and assuming you know who they are…”
Annie waited for him to finish, but he didn’t, so she went on. “Actually, I’m not really like that. Most of the time. I mean, sometimes, sure, aren’t we all? But tonight, well, let’s just say there were extenuating circumstances.” Annie remembered John crawling across the circle, his eyes flickering between the hemline of her skirt and the V of her blouse. She couldn’t recall if he was licking his lips, but she could have sworn he was. It was always the same—even with her own brother-in-law.
“Were there?” He sounded interested, but Annie didn’t want to go there.
“Something like that.” They sat in silence for a moment, but it was a comfortable one. “I know what it’s like, not wanting people to judge you on appearances.”
“Do you?”
Whenever he asked a question like that, he seemed to want to know more. A man with a genuine interest in what she had to say was something Annie was unfamiliar with. Perhaps it was just that she found it hard to believe a man when he was looking at her. “Maybe not like you,” she said. “I mean, maybe it’s not the same, but I’ve spent my whole life being the beautiful one, and it’s just as hard as being unattractive. At least, you know, by society’s standards, or whatever…” Her voice trailed off and she wondered how that had sounded out loud.
“So I shouldn’t hate you because you’re beautiful?”
She laughed, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have made that comparison. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but maybe I am, a little. Maybe you can’t help it when everyone looks at you a certain way.”
“So, how is it the same?” Again, there was that interest.
Annie glanced once more at his hands. She loved a man’s hands—large, strong, yet capable of being so soft, so caring. His long legs were stretched out beyond the table’s edge, and she could see he was wearing boots. Darkness was funny. The way your mind used shapes and lines to fill in the blanks, how you could see some things and not others.
“Well,” she began, “it doesn’t matter, attractive or unattractive, really. At either end of the spectrum, people still judge you. They make assumptions about you based on how you look. They treat you differently. Do you know what I mean?” She found herself eager for him to understand. Her heart raced with the wanting.
Relief flooded her chest when he said, “Yeah, I do.” His fingers brushed hers in the darkness. “You have beautiful hands, Annie. So delicate.”
She flushed at the compliment, but didn’t respond, wondering if he had been looking at her hands with the same ulterior motive. Compliments often felt more like sharp barbs to her than anything else, but this particular arrow landed softly, with precision.
“What about that girl out there, the one sitting next to you?” he went on. His words jarred her, and she turned to look at him even though she could only see the outline of his profile in the darkness. “A little overweight, not conventionally pretty…”
“I…do you know her?” Annie asked, slinking down the wall a little.
“No, not really.”
Annie felt that flood of relief again. “I didn’t really mean it, you know. I wasn’t trying to be cruel.”
“No one tries to be cruel.”
“Well, that’s an unbelievably rosy view of the world, isn’t it?” Regretting the words immediately, she admonished herself and wished she could take them back. She certainly wasn’t succeeding in making a good first impression. She found it harder in the dark, and the irony didn’t escape her.
He sighed. “Maybe I’m too much of an idealist.”
“Or a romantic at heart. I can understand that.”
The silence grew uncomfortable, and Annie tried to think of a way to say she was going to get up and leave. This was just too strange. Besides, she needed an aspirin. Her head was beginning to ache. She surprised herself when she asked, “What’s your name?”
“Eric. You?”
“Annie.”
“Well, Annie, since we’re on the superficial questions, what do you do for a living?”
She laughed, nudging him with her hip. She could almost hear him grinning. “I’m a psychologist.” She enjoyed telling people that for the varied responses she received, ranging from fear to curiosity. People were either afraid she was trying to analyze them, or they asked her to.
“Should I pull up a couch?”
She laughed again, giving him another nudge.
“Hey, I bruise easy, watch it.”
This time she was sure she could hear the smile in his voice. She found herself genuinely wondering for the first time what he really did look like. “What about you?” she asked. She knew this was always the big question for guys, as if everyone of the masculine persuasion was defined by his profession.
“Me? I’m a matchmaker.” He said it without a hint of hesitation or pride, just a simple matter of fact.
Annie gasped out loud, covering her mouth with her hands in shock. “Oh, you’re kidding!”
“Nope.”
“Oh my god. Just my luck to be under the table with a matchmaker at a matchmaking party. Did my sister hire you?” she asked suspiciously.
“No. Which one is your sister?”
“I have two. Chloe and Rebecca. In that order.”
“And you’re the pretty one. Where do you fall?”
“At the end, the baby. And I’m really not that pretty.”
“Don’t lie. How’s your head?” There was that genuine concern again. In her playfulness, she had nudged herself quite close to him in the dark, and she was enjoying the warmth of his thigh, hip and arm touching hers.
“It hurts,” she admitted. “I think I need an aspirin.”
“I bet I can help. Do you want me to rub it?”
Annie hesitated. That was a fairly intimate thing to be doing anywhere, let alone in a dark kitchen under a table. Remembering how good his hands had felt when he’d checked to see if she was bleeding and then had continued to rub the growing knot, she relented. “Sure.” She suddenly didn’t care if it was sending him the wrong message. Then again, maybe it wasn’t the wrong message at all.
“Come he
re, then. Just put your head in my lap.”
Annie lay down on the tile, resting her cheek against his denim-clad thigh. His fingers slid through her hair, first finding then caressing the throbbing knot. The sensation seemed to lift and change as he touched her.
“This is cozy,” she murmured.
“Mmm.” His concentration seemed too focused for him to say much more.
His hands worked over her like magic. She closed her eyes and sighed happily. Eventually the silence stretched too taut for her. “You know, it was appearances that caused that whole scene out there in the first place.”
“Yeah?”
How could he show so much feeling in just one simple word, one genuine expression of interest? Feelings were the domain of her profession, for the most part, and she was well-attuned to them. This man could emote without any effort at all. That intrigued and disarmed her.
She sighed. “My sister’s husband, John. He came on to me for the first time at their engagement party, drunk off his ass and feeling me up on their own bed while I was looking for my coat. He’s never stopped. Sometimes I think my sisters got what they settled for in men, you know?”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of men, do you?” His fingers slipped lower, digging into the soft curve of her neck. She sighed, letting out a soft moan as he worked out the kinks. “Like that?”
Annie nodded. “Anyway, tonight isn’t the first time he’s pulled something like this. He made that huge scene out there because he wanted to kiss me instead of that sweet little redheaded girl,” Annie sighed, listening to the sounds of the party still going strong just outside the kitchen door.
“Now she’s sweet, not fat?”
The sound of his chuckle delighted her, but his comment made curl inward. “I was making a point. Let me tell you, it was for his sake, not hers.”
“It was quite a point. Game. Set. Match. But I think you may have missed your target. That’s the thing about going for the win like that. You need to have good aim.” His fingers worked their way down her spine, his other hand fanning her hair out over his thighs.
“Ouch.”
Eric’s hands paused. “Am I hurting your head?”
“No…my heart.”
He continued to rub her head in the silence, and slowly she found that the pain, at least the pain in her head, seemed to dissipate.
This time it was Eric who broke the quiet. “So, do you get along with your sisters?”
“I love them. Sometimes I can’t stand them, but I love them. They both set up this whole Valentine’s party to try to get me a man.” Annie giggled at the irony. She was now secreted in the kitchen with a matchmaker, despite her sisters’ Herculean efforts to line up all the single surgeons, tax attorneys and actuaries they could find—courtesy of Rebecca’s once-famous little black book.
“Sounds like you can get your own.”
“It’s not as easy as it sounds, actually,” she told him. “Ow, ow, too hard.” His touch became lighter, almost feather-light, and it made her shiver. “Most men just want one thing.”
“What’s that?” He sounded distracted as his hand stroked her shoulder.
“Um…”
“Oh, that. Right.”
Again, she could hear his smile. She had never noticed how much one could tell about someone’s expression even in the dark. That would make therapy interesting.
“And if I’m being honest, it’s not even that. I’m not averse to sex,” she admitted.
“Good to know.” It was a veritable grin now.
She smiled, too, letting that one slide. “If we could get to the sex that would be great, actually. Most men are, well…intimidated by me.”
“Is it your gracious charm?” He stroked her cheek with his fingertip.
She couldn’t even pretend to be angry at him with his hands doing such kind and generous things to her body. “Don’t be mean. I’m really not like that.”
“I know,” he said, and she believed him.
“Still, it’s funny how sometimes the prettiest girl in the room never gets hit on. Both of my sisters are married, and I’m by far better looking—at least that’s what everyone says.”
“You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were conceited. Who is everyone?” He traced the shape of her jaw, trailing his fingertip down her throat.
“I’m not conceited. Maybe I do sound it…to someone…like you…” she hesitated. “I just mean, you know, someone who feels like he wants to hide under a table…”
“Who is everyone?” he asked again.
“Oh, everyone.” She sighed. “You name it—my parents, my sisters, teachers, friends, family. The thing people say most often about me is: ‘Annie is the pretty one.’ It’s always followed by that silent assumption that I’m an idiot.”
“Hence the degree in psychology,” he mused. “Let me guess, you’ve got a doctorate?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Law of compensation.”
“Very funny. So, do you have a degree in matchmaking, then?” Annie rested her hand on his thigh and snuggled up a little closer. The tile was getting cold under her hip and his warmth was comforting.
“They didn’t offer it where I went.”
“And where is that?”
“Olympia.”
Annie snorted, letting her Ivy League pretension show. “Are you kidding? Did you really go to Olympia? Which degree, medical transcription or vet tech?”
“Massage therapist.”
“Oh…” Annie tried to cover yet another unintentional, but clear, insult. “Well, that explains why my head feels so much better.”
“Does it? Would you like me to do your shoulders? You’re pretty tight.”
“Eric, that’s gotta be the oldest line in the book for you massage therapists.” She laughed. Looking up at him, she could see the outline of his face—and yes, there were glasses—but she still couldn’t really make out his features.
“Perhaps.” This time she saw the flash of his teeth.
She smiled back. “Well, it’s working.”
“Then come here and sit between my legs.” His voice was warm and inviting and she flushed like a school girl as she delicately felt her way over his thigh, sensing him adjust to her shape as she settled herself.
“I haven’t been between a man’s legs…”
“In too long, I’d gather.” He chuckled.
The sound of his short laugh was rich and deep and it thrilled her again. She wondered what he would sound like if he really laughed out loud and she longed to hear him do so. His hands massaged her shoulder blades open as if they were wings she was just beginning to spread. She sighed, rolling her neck and inching back toward him. She heard his sharp intake of breath as she clutched his thighs.
“I take back what I said about Olympia,” she murmured. “Great school.”
“Is that a compliment?” He brushed her hair from her shoulders for better access.
“If I was a religious kinda girl, I’d say I’d died and gone to heaven,” she breathed, feeling both of his hands spreading over the entire expanse of her back from spine to ribs. “Ahhhh god, Eric, that…feels…incredible…”
“How about this?” His breath tickled the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck before he kissed her there, his lips full and warm. Annie shivered, her nails digging into his thighs, making him jump. She had forgotten they were sitting under her sister’s kitchen table in the dark, with a party going on in the other room. She had forgotten she didn’t know this man, that she had never seen his face. There was nothing but his hands, his mouth, and the soft velvet darkness all around them.
Chapter Two
“Can we stop talking?” she whispered, leaning back and turning her face so her cheek rested against his. “I don’t remember ever feeling this good.”
“Do you want to just see what happens?” he asked, his fingers trailing down her chin, her throat.
“No. I want to be what happens.”
His mouth found hers in the darkness, a slow journey from a mislaid kiss against her ear, a wet trail over her cheek leading to her open and anticipating lips. He kissed her like she was a secret he was keeping—something precious and tender and worth protecting.
Annie hesitated, waiting for him to stop her as her hand curled back to touch his cheek, expecting to find thick scars or warped flesh. To her surprise, his skin was smooth and unmarred. She slithered her arm around his neck, slanting her mouth across his and teasing his lips with her tongue.
His fingers fumbled with her buttons and she helped him, exposing her skin to the cool kitchen air. Kitchens were always so damned cold when there was no cooking going on. She suspected it was the tile, but regardless, her nipples responded immediately to the temperature change. The angle of the kiss was awkward, but she was afraid to move and break their connection. His hand drifted over the soft material of her bra, and she was glad she had worn something with a definite texture, silky and light.
Annie believed she heard voices coming closer to the door and she pulled quickly away, listening intently. The conversation was muffled and unintelligible, but after a few moments, she clearly heard her sister say, “In the kitchen.” She looked at Eric, trying to keep her breath from being fast and audible. “Maybe we should go somewhere?” she whispered, ducking her head and moving to her hands and knees to crawl out from under the table. He grabbed her hips and she gasped, looking back at him as he held fast.
“No, we can stay here,” he insisted, sliding his hands up her bare thighs.
“Are you sure?”
“Live dangerously.” His hands roamed over her ass as he lifted her skirt. “What color are these panties?” He probed her crevice through the thin material and she wiggled and sighed, arching her back.
“Black,” she whispered as he pushed her panties aside.
“Mm, shaved.” He sounded delighted as his fingers investigated her moistness.