by S. Ann Cole
I came up with nothing, so I crawled up onto the bed and balled up next to him, my head at his hip, eyes peeking at his computer screen.
Still, he didn’t acknowledge me, sifting through a stream of emails forwarded by Kayla M., his gangly ginger assistant. Some looked like proposals, some were schedules stretching into months ahead. Boring, boring, boring.
Resigned to him not speaking to me out of vexation, I closed my eyes and inhaled his scent. Fresh. Water and bar soap. No bike exhaust, cologne or raisins, his usual scent.
I began drifting off into a light sleep to the sound of his fingers as they tapped against the keyboard. The tapping stopped, and I heard the laptop close with a soft click.
Soon, I felt him slide down next to me.
I wasn’t sure if he thought I was asleep or not, but his arms came around me and pulled me closer into him.
As he swept a lock of hair over my shoulders, his fingertips brushed my bare skin and he kissed the spot his fingertips touched.
In a voice laced with a mixture of disbelief and relief, he whispered, “Somehow, you have the power to hurt me.”
At his words, my eyes opened and locked with his stare. He knew I was awake. “JK, I didn’t—”
“Shh,” he hushed.
Now I felt bad. Did I feel this awful when I broke my ex-boyfriends’ hearts because I couldn’t commit to anyone except fantasies of the man who now held me? No. I’d felt nothing because I didn’t care and I’d warned them not to get attached. Now I felt like crap for saying something I knew I didn’t mean even as I said it.
“I’m sorr—”
“Shh,” he hushed again. “Just be with me tonight.”
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered.
“Me, too.”
No more words were exchanged, just our hot breaths mingling, slowing, syncing.
Right there in his arms, the way they held me, I felt something. Somehow, I got the impression those arms had been waiting for me to enter them for years. Waiting to curl around the form and curves of the one woman they longed to hold. Me.
But then again, I’ve always been delusional.
I awoke to the distant sound of a door handle turning. My eyelids lazily lifted in time to see Jahleel as he entered the bedroom. Dressed.
By ‘dressed’ I mean cut-off, hem-raveled jeans, simple grey tee, white sneakers and a red Nike sack-bag on his back, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail bundle with an elastic band.
Yum. I’d give the world to wake up to this grungy hotness every morning.
“You must be really tired,” he commented as he moved across the room towards me, sliding the sack-bag off his shoulders.
“Huh?”
My voice was hoarse and unwilling to speak, just as unwilling as I was to get out of bed. All I desired at that point was to roll over and sleep for a decade—if Jahleel would get in with me.
Setting the bag down on the bed, he sat down beside me, explaining, “It’s afternoon.”
Wow. I slept past noon. Good thing it was a free day.
“You went out,” I noted.
“Yeah.”
When he offered nothing more, I sat up and leaned back against the headboard, studying his attire again. “Work?”
“Yeah.”
Did I have a right to question his whereabouts? Maybe not, but he was too reticent at times. I wanted him to open up to me more. “On a Sunday?”
“It’s the only day that’s clear on Zeff’s schedule.”
“You’re choreographing Zeff?”
“More like training,” he offered. “He sucks at live performances, we all know. So he wants to do somethin’ different for his upcoming awards performance.”
“Jesus, who aren’t you working with?”
His signature crooked grin appeared. “You?”
“I have better advantages.”
When he raised a brow, I shrugged, saying, “Dude, I just woke up in your bed.”
That made him chuckle.
“You got more clients today?”
“Nah. On Sundays it’s just Zeff in the a.m. Why?”
Hearing movements coming from the top floor, I glanced up at the ceiling. “Krissy’s here?”
“She lives here, you know,” he said, sounding irritated all of a sudden.
Dragging my eyes from the ceiling, I narrowed them at his unreadable face for a second then flipped back the covers and slipped out of bed. “Okay….I guess I’ll just go, then.”
“Why?” he asked, pushing up to his feet.
“Because…”
I didn’t have a rational reason, except I didn’t want to see Krissy because she was suddenly my rival. “Because I wouldn’t want her to see us…you and me…”
Realizing I sounded like an idiot brimming with the low self-esteem of a woman who didn’t know her worth, I spun and made a beeline for the bathroom.
The unexpected sight of my toothbrush still in the holder next to his startled me for a second. Wow.
Grateful for a teeth cleaning device, I snatched it up, squirted on some toothpaste and commenced the simple mechanic of cleaning my teeth.
Jahleel materialized in the bathroom doorway a second later. “Sassy, Krissy’s my…” he trailed off and I knew why.
He couldn’t say the word ‘sister’. Krissy herself told me he loathed referring to them as brother and sister. Of course he did, because he desired to rip her knickers off in a manner that would make him feel incestuous.
“You’re actin’ like she’s my wife and you’re my mistress. It’s one building, but two homes. Her place is upstairs, and mine is down here. What goes on down here has nothing to do with her.”
“She uses your front door instead of hers,” I reminded him while I looked at myself in the mirror.
“Because I’ve never asked her not to.”
“Or because she wants to keep tabs on you,” I pointed out, then posted a question, “Or is it you on her?”
Silence stretched between us, with just the sound of toothbrush bristles scouring my teeth and the tap water running. From the corner of my eye, I saw his shoulder slump as he leaned to the doorjamb and propped against it.
“Stay,” he said after a while.
Leaning over the sink, I spat toothpaste suds out of my mouth. “I can’t. Honestly.”
“Why?”
Deciding he should wait for my answer, I rinsed out my mouth and purposely tossed my toothbrush on the vanity. I proceeded to sloppily wash my face and made sure water droplets splashed everywhere, especially the mirror. After I used a hand-towel to pat-dry my face, I flung it down on the vanity.
When I turned to Jahleel, he was focused on the mess I created. He jammed his hands in his front pockets, and I laughed to myself, knowing he was itching to clean up the mess.
“Why?” I repeated his question. “Because if I see your sister, I probably won’t be able to stop myself from punching her in the throat. Why? Because she’s in my fucking way.”
He looked away from the untidy vanity to me and said quietly, “She’s not.”
“Not what? Your sister, or in my way?”
As he tried to respond, his eyes drifted back to the vanity. I almost drew blood biting my lip to keep from laughing, but I had mercy on him and stepped to the side.
Blockage out of his way, he moved to the vanity and wasted no time in cleaning up the mess.
When the vanity was all clean, I let my laugh manifest. “How can you dress like that and be this person?” I laughed harder. “It doesn’t make any sense!”
Jahleel turned to me, a frown on his face as if he’d never considered it before. His eyes roamed around the impossibly spotless space: not a towel out of place, no water stains in the shower or on the floor, all clean and arranged.
Leaning back on the vanity, he stuffed his hands back inside his pockets and shook his head, laughing at himself. “I was raised in a perfect home. My parents were perfect in everything they did. I hated it. It wasn’t for show, it wa
sn’t for appearance; they were naturally perfect. I know this because I wasn’t trained by them to be this way. The mannerisms just came through.
“Because I hated it so much as a child, when I went out on my own, I did everything differently. I rebuilt myself, from my speech to my style. I rebelled against who I was and how I was raised, trying to shake the perfectionist ingrained in me. I didn’t want to embrace my parents’ life. I wanted to be who I wanted, not who they thought their so-called God wanted me to be.”
With a pensive frown between his brows, he bit his lip and looked down at his carelessly thrown together attire. “I’ve managed to change about eighty percent of who I was. But,” he waved a hand in acknowledgement around the bathroom, “as you can see, some things can’t be changed. You are who you are.”
I blinked at him. Unsure of what to say. Sure as hell did not expect so much insight from him—sincere words, that would ultimately make me more knowledgeable about who he was. Truly was.
I must have been quiet for a long time, because he moved in close to me and circled his arms around my waist. “Stay. The house feels different when you’re here. I can’t explain it.”
“I don’t want to run in—”
“You won’t. She’s getting ready to go out with her billionaire. Probably even gone by now.”
My skin tingled with warmth where his hands rested on my waist, and I swallowed hard.
Fact was, Asshole JK was gone, and right now, in front of me, I had the man asking earnestly for me to stay with him. Something I never thought would happen with him. So, should I let my jealousy of Krissy chase me off? Heck no.
I was Saskia Day.
“Okay,” I whispered, looking at his lips, wishing he would lean in the few inches it would take to kiss me. His kisses were usually impulsive, and I never knew when they were coming. “So, we’re just gonna stay in?”
“Well, with you being you, there’s not much we can do in public without it being reported everywhere.”
Moving in closer to his embrace, I picked at an imaginary lint on his tee. “You were with Tiara and I’ve never seen anything about you two in the magazines or on the net. What did you do?”
“Fuck.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And I wasn’t with Tiara. I just fucked her because she wanted to be fucked.”
“She wanted more than that and you know it, JK.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have more to give.”
“I want to be fucked.”
“I want more than that.”
Gaze fixed on him, I searched his face for sarcasm or jocularity, but he was dead serious. Once again, I was thrown in a ring of confusion.
I had no idea where we stood, what our relationship was, what the hell was going on between us. But, the good thing, we were getting somewhere. Slowly. But we were moving forward. And I was clinging on to that with hopeful claws.
“Well,” I whispered, “I have more to give.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jahleel grinned, as if he just won some great gamble. “Now, can we make use of the few hours we have left in this day before Monday creeps in and it takes another week or two before we see each other again?”
“Okay.”
In an entirely new mood, he seized my hand and pulled me out of the room. “There’s something I’ve wanted to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Draw you.”
I frowned. “Draw me?”
“Yeah.”
Making a right out of his bedroom, he walked to a door at the end of the hall, one I’d assumed to be a storage closet. But when he turned the knob and opened the door, it revealed a stairway leading down to a dark basement.
“This is my secret,” he whispered conspiratorially before he entered.
“Is this the part where you start telling me you’re into kinky BDSM whips and chains?” I asked, letting him tug me down the stairs. “Because I’m most definitely not interested in even trying that. Nope. Nope. Nope.”
Jahleel gave a low, deep chuckle. “Sorry, but I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination for that kind of lifestyle. I prefer vanilla, thank you very much.”
“Glad we agree on that,” I said, then I scoffed and rolled my eyes, and Jahleel chuckled harder, because knew what was coming next. “But then again, I’m not even getting vanilla from you, so—”
Jahleel’s full-on laughter cut me off. Yep, he definitely anticipated that response.
At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and kissed my nose. “Could you, for once, stop thinkin’ about sex and just enjoy being with me? You’ve seen what my dick looks like. There’s no mystery left.”
“It’s hard not to when you look the way you do.” And the way it feels when you touch me, stare at me, breathe on me, kiss me, ask me to stay… It’s hard to even concentrate when you’re near. “And yes, I’ve seen what your dick looks like. It’s fucking beautiful. A work of art. But I wanna know what it feels like. Inside me. Inside my mouth. I want to taste your c—”
“Sassy!” he stopped me, his expression a mixture of restraint and pleasure. “Fuck’s sake…I already have a hard time controlling my dick around you. Stop.”
Giving me no chance to respond, he let go of me and moved off into the darkness. At the sound of a click, the room lit up from a bright hanging bulb.
Bewildered, I glanced around the room. A large portion of the wooden floor was covered with white bed sheets, and on top of them were scattered sheets of sketches. Sketches of pointless, random things. Flawlessly done, might I add. Some were half-finished, some placed in frames and propped against the wall.
The entire room was in white, like an asylum—save for a massive oak desk stretching along the wall on the left, with a group of large pencil cups holding paintbrushes, scissors and all different shapes and sizes of pencils. Little jars of bright colour paints were stacked up on each other.
Next to the desk was a wooden high stool and an easel. To the right of where I stood, was an antique ornate chaise lounge, ivory, with intricate gold finishes—certainly not a piece of furniture one would expect to see in this guy’s possession. The room held nothing else, and was spotless, the statement chaise lounge being the focal point of the room.
“You’re an artist?”
“I’m not qualified to be called that,” he replied. “I just like to sketch when time permits.”
“Crap?”
He laughed. “Things I find interesting. Things that pull me to draw them.”
Sliding my gaze to the sketches on the floor, I pointed to one of an ordinary coffee mug, a little dove in the middle. Nothing special about it. “That’s just a mug, JK.”
Following the length of my tattooed hand to where it pointed, his smile faded, something sad replacing it. He toed off his sneakers and stepped on the sheet to pick up the sketching.
“When I was ten, my parents used to take us regularly to see this girl they supported in the hospital. She was dying of cancer, our age. During one of our usual visits, while we were there talkin’ to her, she passed away. In front of us, in the middle of our conversation. I’d never seen anything like it. She just closed her eyes and never opened them again….”
Holding up the mug sketch, he went on, “She was holdin’ this mug when she died. Not with coffee, but with green Jell-O—she loved that. The mug fell from her fingers and broke into four pieces instead of shattering. Krissy cried. I picked up the pieces and brought them home with me. Kept them in a box for years. Don’t ask me why.
“When I started sketching, I glued the pieces back together and sketched it with the cracks. A year later, whenever I looked at it, I would get sad and angry. Angry about that little girl not having had a chance to live. So I got rid of the cracked sketching and re-sketched it without the cracks. Made it perfect. As everything should have been for her.”
And there I was feeling like a load of crap for criticizing. “I’m sorry.”
He s
hrugged it off as no big deal. But it was.
“Do all your sketches tell a story?”
“Nah. Some are just crap as you say.”
Scanning the sketches again, I pointed at one with a headless girl.
She stood on what looked like a stage, a mike in her hand. Out of the pencil-shaded darkness beneath her, came crafted hands, raving for her. No faces, just hands in the darkness. Her headless figure above them, held the mike at her side in a confident stance, owning the world.
Had it been in a gallery, viewers of the sketch would wish to know more about the girl, as her posture was so strong, sure, undaunted. They would use their imaginations to envision her face, placing it on women with similar body types. Some might get pissed at the artist for drawing such a powerful sketch, yet leaving the one person with the power, headless. Faceless, though with so much power.
“What about that one?”
Setting down the mug sketch, Jahleel turned to look at the one I indicated. Something flashed across his face, too fleeting to recognize, but I noticed a difference in his breathing, his eyes narrowing. After staring at the sketch for a long while, he shook his head. “It’s crap.”
“Bullocks,” I retorted. “Anyone can see it tells a story.”
“An incomplete story,” he admitted. “That’s why she’s headless.”
“What is it?” I prodded.
Sighing in reluctance, he took up the sketch and looked at it as if he were reading from the traces of his pencil. “I saw her some time ago. I committed her face to memory and sketched her. I saw her some time after that; her face was different, but the rest was the same. Committed her to memory and re-sketched her with her new face. Saw her again. Her face was different and this time, she was different. Committed her to memory and re-sketched her: new face, new person. But, as soon as I was finished with that sketch, I looked at it and knew when I saw her again, something about her would be different. So I immediately re-sketched her. Headless.”
“Do you think you’ll complete it whenever she’s constant in your eyes?”