by S. L. Naeole
Holly: I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the sexual harassment stuff
Holly: I don’t know what they want me to say or what they wanted you to say
Holly: I know you told them the truth in your statement though so that’s all that matters.
Holly: We’ll talk more tonight. I need a drink. Let’s go to Flannagan’s. Don’t tell Vonne!
Holly: Love you!
I wanted to text her and tell her that I was pissed off at her and that I didn’t even fill out that stupid form, but decided to wait until later. If she was already worried then telling her that I hadn’t given a statement in support of her would only make things worse. “Shit, Ria,” I groaned, hitting the back button so that I could go through the rest of my messages.
There was one from Kara with the address of the bar where she was throwing Roy’s party, and another from Lara, a picture of her latest project attached showing a pair of identical dining tables that she would be joining together. She’d just received the job that day and was extremely excited about it.
Lara: I’ve been wanting to try this new type of join I’ve designed, like a French cleat and dovetail join had a baby and named it “Lara’s Awesome Join”. I think it’ll work great here.
I texted her back that I couldn’t wait to see the finished product and then moved on to the next message, my heart fluttering in my chest at the sight of Michael’s name even as loyalty to Holly punched me in my gut. Repeatedly.
Michael: Hungry?
Staring at the screen, I knew that I was. My stomach gurgled in agreement. But I didn’t know what telling him so meant. Would it mean he’d come down to my office again and leave me unable to ask how he was able to do so without getting caught? Would it mean that I’d be unable to ask him about the sexual harassment accusation? Would it mean that we’d get through half our lunch before he stole my ability to speak and think and react with a look, a taste, and a kiss?
The excited tumble in my heart told me what the answer was to all those questions. Unable to say yes, my fingers tapped at the keys on the screen in reply.
Me: Already ate.
When no response came, I sighed with relief and then returned my focus on my work. The next time I looked up from my computer it was late and my phone had died. Cursing at myself for not plugging my phone in to charge, I grabbed my things and shut down the computer before leaving my office. I ran upstairs and out of the gate into the lobby.
“Bye Philippa,” I called out as I raced to the entrance. It had been ten past six when I’d shut off the computer, and I was almost forty-five minutes late to meet Holly out front. An empty hope welled up inside me as I walked toward the visitor parking lot, the hope that Holly was so upset at blindsiding me that she would wait however long it took me to come outside and meet her. My hope fell away at the sight of the empty lot, her shiny Honda nowhere to be seen.
Turning around, I returned to the lobby, waving sheepishly at Philippa before heading back to my office to use my office phone. I called Holly first, and upon the first ring found myself listening to her voicemail intro. Knowing that that was never a good sign, I dialed Vonne next.
“Sorry, hun. I’ve got this thing in the city tonight with Tobias and some of the other department heads. Did you call Holly?”
“Yeah. She’s not picking up. I think she’s pissed at me.”
Concerned tinging her voice, Vonne told me to brush it off and call Lara. “Holly’s always moody. Just give Lara a call and you can talk to Holly when you get home.”
Thanking her, I dialed Lara’s number but when she answered I could tell there was no way she’d be able to come and get me. “You’re on a date, huh?”
“How’d you guess?” she laughed as the sound of loud music thumped all around her. “Call Kara, babe. She’s got the Blue Betty since Shawn picked me up and she’s staying in tonight.”
“I will. Have fun!”
“I will! Don’t wait up!”
By the time Kara answered I was completely annoyed and exhausted with playing phone tag and just ready to go home, take a bath, and climb into bed. “I’ll talk to Holly in the morning,” I told myself as I asked in a slightly whiny voice if Kara could come and pick me up.
“Oh hun, I wish I could!” she said in a conciliatory tone. “Roy came over and picked me up for a last minute date night. I’m at his place and he just left to go pick up dinner. Do you want me to call him and see if he’ll swing by?”
Groaning at the thought of a forty-minute wait for Roy, I shook my head in the darkness of my office and declined. “I’ll just call a cab. You two have fun. Give Roy my love.”
Hanging up, I searched the internet for a reputable cab company and then dialed the number. After being given a ten-minute pick-up time, I hung up and shut down my computer once more. Philippa gave me a worried look as I passed her again on my way out of the lobby and I stopped to explain. She nodded and told me that she’d been there.
As I stepped out into the cool night, I heard the buzz of the door locking behind me; the museum was officially closed. I made a vow right then and there to buy a car this weekend. If it looked newer than I wanted, well I’d deal with the consequences later. Anything was better than being dependent upon the availability of someone else. I also decided that, since the car was still sitting in my parking stall, that I’d drive the rental Michael had had delivered tomorrow and every single day thereafter until I replaced the clam. It wasn’t mine, after all. No one could accuse me of making large purchases and think that I had money they could claim. It was on loan and being paid for by someone else because the clam had been totaled.
“Done deal,” I told myself in a self-satisfied tone.
That was when I noticed him. He was speaking to Greg at the end of the portico, his silhouette unmistakable. I moved into the shadow of one of the columns fronting the entrance so that he wouldn’t see me and prayed for the taxi to hurry up; the last thing I wanted to do was deal with him after what happened today.
And yet, even as I pressed myself up against the column in an attempt to disappear, I wanted to step out and ask him why he’d done it, why he’d filed a claim against Holly. I wanted to ask him why he was here so late if he was just a benefactor. I wanted to ask him what he wanted from me, if he wanted to use me and then toss me aside like he had Holly.
I wanted to ask him so many things, but my mouth stayed clamped shut and even my breathing halted as I heard footsteps approaching. Determined and heavy, shoes padded on the terracotta tiled entrance, growing louder as they the owner of those steps came closer.
Don’t be Michael. Don’t be Michael. Don’t be Michael.
Large and imposing, the figure of Greg the security guard walked past me and around the corner toward the visitor’s parking lot, disappearing behind a rose bush. Relief was sweet and crisp in my lungs as I inhaled. The sound of tires crunching behind me told me that my taxi was here and I bolted, spinning around the column to run toward the car and dive in. If I had to go through the window and ride the whole way home with my feet sticking out, I would. I just needed to get out of here and get home.
Get away from Michael.
Which is why when I saw him bent over, talking to the driver, my heart staggered to a halt, followed swiftly by my feet. My mouth opened to ask what the hell he thought he was doing when he stood and the taxi left, the cabbie driving off without even looking my way once.
“That was my cab!”
Michael’s lids lowered, turning his eyes into tight, scrutinizing slits. “Why are you ordering a cab? I had my car dropped off at your apartment over two weeks ago. Why aren’t you driving it?”
His car? That was his car in my parking stall? My head pulled back at that revelation. “I can’t,” I answered simply, immediately changing my mind about driving it tomorrow. There was no way I’d drive his car. No way I’d even sit in his car.
“Why not? It’s insured. I own it. And it’s much nicer than that rust can you were driving before.�
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“The Clam was not a rust can,” I argued, offended. “For the past eight years, that car was the most reliable thing in my life. I worked my ass off to pay for that car, so keep your comments to yourself.”
“You also broke your arm and suffered a concussion in that car,” he pointed out, his eyes flicking to my cast before lifting back to mine.
“Yeah, because you rear-ended me!”
“After I was rear-ended first!”
Was I really having this argument with him here? Were we really having this argument in the portico of MOAT? “My car is reliable, comfortable, and most importantly, has airbags which could have prevented you from breaking your arm and getting that concussion in the first place.”
My patience thinning, I made one last attempt at being calm, my breath coming out in a long, slow draft. “Those are all excellent points, and they might work on someone else but not me. I’m not driving it so there’s no point in insisting otherwise. Also, you should have someone come and pick it up so that you can use it again and so that my stall will be free when I go and purchase a newer Clam—er…car.”
I turned around to head back into the lobby, Philippa seeing me through the glass doors, her hand poised near the switch to unlock them. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to call the cab company back and tell them that some homeless vagrant told the previous car to drive on, and then have them send me another car so that I can get home.”
I reached the doors and waited for the familiar buzz letting me know that they’d been unlocked, only nothing came. I tugged on the handle but the door didn’t budge. My knuckles rapped on the glass, Philippa looking at me—no, not looking at me. She was looking past me. I twisted around, choking at the air in my throat at how close he was.
“I’ll drive you home.”
It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t said in a tone that evoked shivery emotions. It was a statement of fact that offered no rebuke or refusal. It was him, handling me.
Fuck that.
“Get out of my way, Michael,” I hissed. When he didn’t move, I brought my left hand up to shove him out of the way. Two things happened at that moment. The first was the realization that he was immovable. It was as if his feet had grown roots and pushing him would be as successful as pushing the Empire State Building with my bare hands. I don’t think I even shifted the material of his jacket.
The second thing that happened was my body’s instant and overwhelming reaction at feeling his heat directly against the full plane of my hand. For anyone else it wouldn’t have made sense. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, as if on his way to some formal event, which meant three layers of fabric separated the palm of my skin and the skin on his shoulder. No one should have felt anything but the smooth fabric of his jacket.
But I wasn’t anyone else. I didn’t touch men and if I could help it, they didn’t touch me. The feel of a man beneath my palm wasn’t normal, wasn’t wanted. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d willingly touched a man in the last year. And…
And the majority of those times had been when I’d touched him.
Reeling from the heat still pulsing beneath my skin radiating throughout me, I stepped to the side, a sob slipping out of me as he followed effortlessly, his hands coming up on either side of me, framing my body with muscular arms, thick, corded legs, and his wide, brawny chest. My back pressed up against the glass door, my hands flattened behind me.
“That wasn’t nice, Victoria,” Michael said in a voice that was both menacing and seductive, the tingle running down my spine in delicious waves of sensation.
“Neither is scaring me,” I told him, hating the way it came out in a pant.
“Am I scaring you?” he asked, every vibration of his voice creating sparks beneath my skin.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I inhaled and, as if he was waiting for that very moment, anticipating it, he leaned forward, exhaling at my lips. “B-because I don’t like the things you make me feel when you’re near me.”
Gasping at my own candidness, I licked my lips, tasting his breath and feeling a craving I didn’t understand flower within me. His eyes flicked down to my mouth and took a deep breath in, his chest expanding and grazing against my belly and over the curve of my breasts. They were so heavy, so sensitive beneath the layers of cotton that just that fraction of contact was enough to ignite that craving and turn it into an unnatural and unwavering hunger.
“Have dinner with me,” he breathed, the hitch in his voice a crack in that mask of impassivity of his.
Disbelieving laughter left me with the same ease as breathing. “I’m not falling for that twice, Michael.”
“Have dinner with me now. Come with me right now.”
It was a plea as much as it was a command, need so evident in his voice that my knees began to shake. Without speaking, he brought his hand to my mouth, his thumb smoothing over my bottom lip, tugging it down and exposing my lower teeth and gums. I couldn’t breathe as he lowered his mouth to mine and licked the inside of my lip, tracing the curve of it from one corner to the other.
“Victoria.”
There was a voluptuousness to the way he said my name, and I felt myself almost melt against the door. He licked my lip again before releasing it and letting it slide back against my teeth, trapping the moisture he’d gifted me with his tongue.
Without thinking, I pulled my bottom lip in over my teeth, clamping down on it and biting. A groan of pleasure slithered up my throat at the first taste of him and the awareness that he had been in my mouth, that a part of him was still in my mouth.
This isn’t me. I’m not this girl that wants.
“You’re tasting me now, aren’t you? You’re tasting me in your mouth. Tell me, Victoria.”
Oh, God. “Yes,” I admitted, hating myself for being so weak. Hating him for making me.
And he smiled. He smiled that slow, sexy smile that had infuriated and charmed me, and I didn’t know which one to be right then because he was touching me again, touching my mouth. “Open,” he coaxed, and like a wilting flower I bent to his will, opening my mouth and fighting back another groan as he pushing his thumb inside.
“Suck on my thumb, Victoria.”
It was an order that my body would not disobey as my lips closed around his finger, my tongue feeling the crease behind the first knuckle of his thumb. He growled.
He fucking growled.
“Suck,” he commanded.
And I did. My tongue wrapped around the digit and my cheeks pulled in as I created a vacuum against skin and teeth and mouth. His finger was salty, and my body almost sang in response, as if it had never tasted salt before, never tasted him before. I liked sucking his thumb, I realized as my tongue flicked over the curve of his cuticle and around the dull edge of his nail. I liked having this part of him inside me, so innocuous and yet its very presence in my mouth was sending ribbons of lust straight to the apex of my thighs. And, judging by the way his eyes had grown dark, his pupils as wide as blackened moons, he liked me doing it, too.
“Oh God, sweetheart, your tongue feels so good.”
He called me sweetheart. I had his thumb in my mouth, his skin against my tongue, his breath on my lips. And he called me sweetheart.
Every inch of me was on fire, ignited by that single word. I felt powerful. Emboldened. Precious.
Acting purely on instinct, I brought my hand to his mouth and rubbed his lips with my index and middle fingers. Without warning his jaw hinged open and closed around the digits, sucking them inside the hot cavern of his mouth and causing my knees to go weak and a strange, yet welcome pulling sensation to tug at my core. I sweet, low sound vibrated in my mouth, and then I grunted in pleasure when he pressed down on my fingers with his teeth.
He bit my fingers.
Pulling his thumb out of my mouth and taking a hold of my fingers and slipping them out of his, he gazed at me through heavy lids. “Did yo
u like that, sweetheart?”
Again. He called me “sweetheart” again. Of course I liked that. “Yes,” I told him in a voice that was so sultry, I doubted it came from my lips.
He licked his thumb, taking the wetness I’d created there into his mouth. “You taste so good. I almost don’t want to go to dinner so I don’t spoil the taste of you in my mouth.”
Who was this man who said such decadent things to me? Why was he saying them at all? And why say them to me?
“Come to dinner with me, Victoria. Spend some time with me. Talk to me. I want to get to know you better. I want you to get to know me.”
Immediately, a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t go with him popped into my head. Who was this Michael Alan Lachlan? I didn’t know this man. He’d slept with Holly. He’d probably slept with half of the eastern coastline. He’d stood me up for dinner. He’d had me kicked out of a bar simply because I was there. He’d filed a complaint of sexual harassment against my friend.
He made me feel things I’d never wanted to feel before.
That was the most terrifying. What did I know about this man besides his name and the comments thrown my way by my friends? He was rich. So what? He was powerful. So what? He’d saved my life. So what? None of those things made me want to feel his hands on my body when the thought of anyone else doing it sent me cowering in the darkness. None of them made me want to taste more of him in my mouth, feel him kiss more than just my fingers and empty spaces at the corner of my lips.
No. What made me want all those things was the fact that, for a blissful moment in time he’d made me feel safe, something I hadn’t felt in over eight years. And despite what I knew about him, despite the things he’d done, I still felt safe with him. My body was pressed up against the cold, hard glass of the museum’s front entrance. I couldn’t move, trapped beneath his large presence as I was. And I felt safe.