by Kat Bastion
She must’ve sensed my focused attention on her, because she pulled her binoculars away and stared back at me a beat. Then her brows furrowed. Disappointment flashed across her face.
And then it hit me like a wrecking ball to the chest; every bit of what we were doing held great importance to her. She wasn’t just sharing equipment from some guy’s house where she happened to be staying. At her special house, in her favorite spot, she’d chosen to share an intimate piece of herself with me.
Warmth spread through me as I smiled at her.
Her expression instantly brightened, whatever fleeting worry she’d had vanishing.
And my heart stuttered, like she’d zapped me and I’d short-circuited.
I gripped my monocular and held it up to my eye, dedicated to experiencing the moment together, her way. “Ever catch anything good out here?”
I refocused my lens toward the near trees.
A couple of low clunks sounded on the metal desk, her elbows settling. “All the time. Usually I stand guard right before sunrise. Sometimes I sit here for hours. Over the summer, I saw pileated woodpeckers for a few weeks.”
“And that’s rare?” I had no idea what a pileated woodpecker was. But if she was into it, so was I.
“Not rare, I don’t think. But cool. Been hunting an ivory-billed too. That would be rare; they’re supposedly extinct. Both look like little prehistoric pterodactyls. Pretty sure mine were a mated pair with a nest nearby. Totally cool to watch them peck and investigate their way up a tree trunk. My wakeup call one time? One of ’em jackhammering something metal at the top of the neighbor’s chimney.”
The neighbors. The house sitter. I pulled down my monocular. “Don’t you ever worry about the ‘official’ homecare person coming by when you’re here?” I did. Maybe she’d lived on the edge for years before me, but I saw the risk in how she lived. And I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.
“Nope.” She put down her binocs, then leaned back in the chair. “Henrietta sticks to her schedule. Begins at 4:30 a.m. All the dogs come first. Cats are next. Fish and plants are low on the totem pole, only need to be fed or watered every few days. For this one, she only does a daily home-check immediately after her lunch, before her second-round dog visits and afternoon jobs.”
She’d had me wait to come over at 4:00 p.m., well after lunch-check. “What about the owner? How often does this guy go out of town?”
“My guy’s name is Stephan Bergdorf. He’s a National Geographic photographer and filmmaker. Does at least two documentaries a year, sometimes three. For those trips, he’s gone six to eight weeks at a time. Plus, he adds different working photography vacations that last ten to twelve days or more.”
My adrenaline spiked at her my guy’s reference. I hated the idea of her having any kind of ownership with some other guy. But I worked on controlling my breaths. No more bursting into clubs, no more reacting without thinking. “Wow. That’s a lot of information.” There. Tone neutral.
She gave an easy shrug. “No big. Comes with the territory. I need a place to stay? I’m gonna know everything I can about where I sleep.” She paused and an unsettled expression flashed across her face. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable at night unless I knew for sure the owner wasn’t coming home.”
I wondered about her fleeting discomfort. Had a close call ever happened? “Henrietta hasn’t ever planned to stay the night?”
“Not here. She comes in, does a once-over, waters the plants if it’s a Thursday, then leaves within the fifteen-minute time slot she’s got scheduled for the place.”
“And the fish?” I stared back at the giant saltwater tank in the wall that seemed like it should’ve been the main event.
“Left to the professionals. The people who installed the tank maintain it, even when Stephan’s in town.”
“Understood.” And perfect. She’d done her research. I’d done my due diligence too. The place was ours for the night. No interruptions.
She stared at me with an expression of happiness and relief.
And I realized I’d passed the test. I’d broken the law. I accepted her for who she was. And I’d stuck around, wanting more.
Good. Because I itched to sprint toward the next hurdle.
I took her hand, and eased her up out of the chair. “Where’s your backpack? The phone?” Yep. The phone. Not giving her a reason for even the smallest argument.
She didn’t resist as I kept drawing her toward me. But when she collided into my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her, her eyes widened. She swallowed hard. “Under the bed.”
“Well, that was easy.”
“It was?” Her hands traveled up my chest until her fingertips landed over my heart. “Wait. What was?”
“I guessed you’d say bedroom. You dove straight for the bed. See how I did that?”
“Tricky.”
“Well after last night’s porn talk, I figured you’d be the one to bring up the sex again.”
“The sex.”
“Our sex. Sound better?”
“Yeah.” Her eyes searched mine as she drew in a slow breath.
But her body began to tense.
Two steps forward, one step back. So, I did the only thing that worked with her. I fired out a curveball. “Just like that?”
She blinked. “What do you mean ‘just like that’?”
I grabbed her hips, turned her, and hauled her off her feet with a hard yank. She gasped and collapsed onto my lap as we both landed on the corner of the desk.
Off-balance, she threw her arms around my neck. Her soft breath feathered over my lips. Those emerald eyes had darkened, pupils wide with excitement.
I touched my forehead to hers. “No romance? No days and weeks of courting?” My hands slid over her hips until they anchored onto the upper part of her ass. I tightened my fingers possessively.
She didn’t laugh at my teasing, at the mock outrage in my voice. Instead she turned to reason, debating my challenge at face value. “Haven’t we been courting since we met?”
“Hmmm...” I wanted to kiss her so damn bad. But I didn’t want to rush her. I needed her to want it as bad as I did. I dragged my lips along the silken skin of her jaw. “Guess we have.”
She shivered when I paused at her neck and exhaled below her earlobe. My body reacted with a growing ache as my cock began to harden against the fly of my jeans—under the untried but far from innocent woman curled in my lap.
She swallowed hard. “And there’s romance,” she whispered. “I did break into a house for you.”
I chuckled low and nipped her earlobe with my teeth. “Trespass. Nothing broken except the law.”
At the last word, her body tensed and she held her breath. Then she exhaled and eased back with enough distance between us to stare hard at me. “Is that so bad? Me breaking the law?”
“No.” Not for her. Somehow the black and white that I’d lived my life by had blurred into murky gray. “You do what you need to do to survive.” In my head, the need justified the means.
All of a sudden, the reasons she’d been so upset when I’d fired her made more sense. She’d fought to go legit. And without probable cause, I’d burned her to the ground.
Had nothing to do with you. Everything to do with me and my shit.
Good thing I’d had half a brain and a conscience. And enough humility to do an ego-check and chase her down.
The color in the back room shifted into dusk’s purple tones. Shadows darkened her features. But after our conversation, with her in my arms and growing braver about opening up to me, I’d never found her more beautiful.
She stared into my eyes as her chest rose and fell.
My head lowered, the urge to kiss her damn near overwhelming.
Her gaze dropped to my lips.
Without warning, her hands jerked wide to grip my shoulders as she leaned back. “Dinner!”
I blinked. “Dinner.”
“Pizza.” She gave a decisive nod, then lurched away
and broke the hold I had on her as she jumped from my lap.
She moved just out of my reach, breathing heavily.
Like you don’t trust...
Gut instinct dealt me a solid: Her uncertainty had nothing to do with me.
“Shay,” I whispered. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
Shay…
“What’s to be afraid of?”
Ben gave me an intense stare and took a slow breath. He’d gotten all deep on me.
And I’d gone all no big.
I dove headlong into a safe zone. “You’ve seen me eat pizza before.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Like an animal.”
“Why hold back? It’s a greasy, salty mouthful of goodness.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “You’re a peculiar and intriguing woman.”
Because I’d launched the convo straight from sex to food? Both basic needs.
Not that I knew anything about the first. Only studied, analyzed, never experienced. And until last week, I hadn’t ever imagined I would. Not one fantasy.
Until you.
But I could only handle so much at once. If we happened at all, we needed to at my speed.
I dialed a nearby pizza place. They didn’t question my bizarre directions for delivery.
Thirty-five minutes later, when nightfall had transformed the outdoors into a wonderland of shadow play and insect song, Ben stood behind the neighbor’s tall street-side hedge with a large pizza box balanced on his hand.
He shot me a dubious look. “I feel like we just did a drug deal.”
“Don’t exchange cash for goods much?”
“Not from behind a Japanese boxwood.”
“Cape honeysuckle’s more your thing?”
“A doorbell is usually involved. And a porch light.”
I tugged on a front belt loop of his jeans and led us back across the neighbor’s front lawn, careful to keep the trees and an elaborate rose garden between us and view from any windows. “Welcome to my world. Clandestine-R-Us.”
When I pulled back a section of overgrown vine and nodded him through, he shook his head, then ducked under a woody branch.
“More like Domino’s-N-D-Amazon,” he grumbled as he shouldered past a mass of green leaves and lilac-blue flowers. He trudged through to the other side, kept walking a few paces, then stopped.
The last of the branches rustled as I released them.
I caught up with him, then nudged his shoulder as we walked around the back of the house. “You know, you should try breaking the law more often. Might do you some good.”
When he gripped the back door’s handle, I put a hand on his forearm and nodded over toward a grassy mound near a tree. Moonglow backlit a light cloud layer, highlighting our shadowy world in a wash of pale silver, and I wasn’t ready to leave my outside world just yet.
He diverted toward the patch of grass, settled onto the ground, then flicked open the pizza-box lid. “Orrr...you could become a good little law-abiding citizen.”
I plonked down beside him, grabbed a pepperoni slice, and took a couple of napkins from the stash he’d pocketed from the delivery guy. “I did. At your bar. We saw how well that went.”
“I was wrong. And I promised not to fire you again.”
A leaf spiraled down toward our pizza, but I snatched it with my fist. I polished off my first piece, then grabbed one from the side with mushrooms and olives. “You can’t fire me. Independent contractor, remember?”
“I could terminate your contract.” He grabbed a double slice.
“But you won’t. I work my ass off and you know it. Unfireable and irreplaceable.”
His left brow arched. “Not far from law-abiding.”
“Ahhh...but that’s only when I’m working for you.”
He finished chewing, then wiped his mouth with a crumpled napkin. He stared at me for a couple of seconds. “Would it be so hard to ditch a life of crime?”
I frowned. His instincts had already begun to slide toward wanting to change me.
I’m fine just the way I am. And I thought he knew that, saw the real me, down deep.
I need you to understand.
We chewed as I thought about what to say. He finished his pizza right as I finished mine.
After tossing my napkin into the box lid, I leaned up on my knees, moving closer to him. “Not hard. Just...different. When you have to find a way to survive, and no one’s got your back but yourself, you bend every rule. And maybe you decide someone selfish made the stupid rules in the first place. A neat little black-and-white package to fit their specific life. One size does not fit all.”
He pegged me with his classic trying-to-figure-Shay-out stare.
I pressed my lips together, fighting a smile, and dropped him a I’m not that easy silent reply. “Seriously. You should try a little more danger. It’ll rough up those perfect straight edges of yours—make your seriousness less fatal.”
His expression changed, as if he began to contemplate the possibility.
“You want to. I can see it.” For the first time, I made a move, twisting in toward him to land on his lap. I slid my hands around his neck, then dragged my fingertips up the back of his scalp before tousling his hair. “Come over to the dark side. It’ll be fun.”
“Said the spider to the fly.”
“Not a spider, a dragonfly. We eat mosquitoes.” My blurted statement reminded me of things Trin and I exclaimed, without one care, in the middle of our sacred clubhouse forest.
He glanced at my lips, then stared into my eyes. “You continue to amaze me.”
Says the man with me now, in my private forest.
“Birdwatcher and insect expert,” I added as I tugged at the ends of his hair. He groaned low and put his hands on my hips, adjusting my position on his lap. I began to smile, charged a little with the power I had over him. “Well?”
He grunted softly and touched his forehead to mine. “Well, you keep sitting on my lap,” he murmured, “I’m gonna agree to anything.”
“To make me stop?” I whispered.
His warm breath feathered over my lips. “Hoping you’ll never stop.”
I turned my face, brushing my cheek along the soft hairs of his beard. “Sooo...you’ll do it? Become a lawbreaker with me.”
He squeezed his hold on my hips and let out a hard exhale. “You’re on.” His tone lowered. “But no felonies. I have to draw some kind of line, keep us both out of jail.”
My smile widened. “Give me one week. You’ll see.”
He toppled us backward onto the grass with a growl, dragging us to lay side by side with his arm secured under my neck and around my shoulder. “I already sense I’m gonna regret this.”
I settled against him, but frowned at his concern and rested my chin on his chest. “I won’t let anything bad happen. I never do.”
He tucked his other arm under his head and stared up into the darkness. “Okay, fine. But not a week each. A week total. And no one gets two days in a row; we alternate.”
“Works for me. Since today is Sunday, I get Tuesday.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “No way. I get Saturday.”
“Why do you need Saturday?”
“Because of the tournament. There will be no lawbreaking at the tournament.” He gave me a pointed look. Then his brows twitched down for a split second. “Why do you need Tuesday?”
“Because I do. I need every Tuesday. But I’m not gonna tell you why. You’ll see.”
He glanced back up at a clearing night sky. I relaxed into the crook of his arm and stared up there too, as if the illuminated wispy clouds held the mysteries of our universe. His head moved with a slight nod. “Today doesn’t count, then. You get Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. I get Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.”
“What about Friday?”
“Let’s make Friday open game. Whoever’s winning after four days gets to decide.”
“Winning?” I fanned my open hand over his broad chest.
“It’s a competition?”
“You bet your sexy little ass it is.” His warm hand slid over mine. “We’re each trying to prove a point. Your days, we break the law. My days, we follow it. To the letter. When we’re having the most fun, whosever day it happens to be...wins that day.”
“And who decides who’s having fun?” I stifled a yawn. Then I blinked, surprised at how easily I’d sidled up next to him. And how right it felt to be there, safe—protected, even. Then I ignored the implications of that, the inherent danger of trusting in it.
It’s Ben. And it’s one night. The first in a week of adventure.
He rubbed my arm with his thumb. “Why don’t we aim for a mutual decision...”
A full-blown yawn finally took hold. “Okay...”
My eyes drifted shut. Out of an inherent self-defense habit, I forced them open.
But on my next exhale, the strangest thing happened. I let go, closed them on a sigh, and relaxed every part of me, body and mind. For the first time in eight years, I trusted someone else to be on for me.
And as I drifted down into a rare blissful space of safety and peace, my last thought was that we hadn’t hammered out the rules of a tiebreaker.
Guess we’ll have to leave that up to the Friday.
Earthquake. Shaking. Head vibrating. Shoulders...squeezed.
“...to get up.” A deep male voice echoed in my brain.
Ben’s voice.
But no alarm bells sounded when I realized he’d invaded my personal space.
“What is happening?” I groaned and cracked my eyes open.
Black night filled my vision. Cool air kissed the skin of my arms. Hard hot man lay alongside me, touching me—from my head nestled in the crook of his shoulder to my bare toes pressed against the rough denim of his jeans.
My eyes closed on a contented sigh as I settled back down.
“Time to get going.” He squeezed my shoulder and gently shook me again.
“Why? Got somewhere to be?” The dead-sleep wakeup muddled my brain. A spark of curiosity took hold though. I pushed off of the side of his warm body and sat up, even as every part of me ached to curl back up against him.