I felt his lips skim ever so softly over my ear and shivered.
“Only if we’re agreed to hand holding, some kissing and you acting like you might actually like me.”
I inhaled, trying to clear my head. “Do I have to do any of that without witnesses?”
“No, but you’ll want to.”
I rolled my eyes. “Keep thinking that. Never going to happen.”
“Never say never. You just let me know when you want to explore.”
My body may have felt an attraction to him but my mind was suddenly irritated. “Contrary to what you believe Holden, I’m not a slut.”
He purposely breathed against my ear sending shivers up my spine. “Never thought you were.”
My eyes flashed angrily. “Bullshit. That night at the club last year, when I took Liv out to dance, you called me a slut. In fact, you threatened to deck the guy I was dancing with, then told me to stop acting like a slut. Then, to top it all off, you carried me over your shoulder all the way to the car. I had friends in there and that was totally embarrassing!”
He leaned back and looked at me, then laughed. The vibration of his chest shook me.
“So that’s what blew up your skirt? I dragged your ass out of there because you hopped out of a car while under protective detail and managed to block our entrance with some lame-ass bouncer. Who, by the way, went down with one punch. Amateur. Then, you danced with ten guys who didn’t give a shit about you but were watching your ass in that ridiculously tight dress. You’re lucky I didn’t beat that last guy to death for grabbing your ass. So yeah, you were acting slutty when you didn’t tell him to stop.”
What the hell?
That was new to me. I was just having fun that night, not entirely sober, and dancing with everyone. I hadn’t felt anyone grab my ass.
“I danced, so what? That’s what people do when they’re S. I. N. G. L. E. You should try it sometime. You can meet nice people. Unlike the street walkers you probably pick up.”
He growled. “Or you can meet some asshole stalker, rapist, or hell knows what else. Speaking of which, while you’re here, no dancing or drinking, or flirting.”
Holden was crazy.
Like certifiable, needed drugs, kind of crazy. That’s the only thing I could come up with to explain his weird requests. Maybe if I treated him like a dangerous mental patient, he would back off and I could get out of this situation.
I blinked at him. “Um no, those requests were not in the original agreement. And since we don’t have any current witnesses, fuck off about what I do in my private life! I’m not a slut. I was just having fun.”
He adjusted his weight off me, sat back and removed the handcuffs. He didn’t go far though. He grabbed me around my waist and pulled me back against him.
“Right, like all the other times you’ve had fun. Protests, drunken behavior, hippie-hanging at the lake with a bunch of unemployed potheads.”
I elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re not my dad!”
His arms went around mine in a giant bear hug and held me immobile. “Angel, I’m so glad I’m not right now, believe me, but if your dad has said the same things I commend him and agree. My respect level for him has just gone up a few levels. I’m surprised he hasn’t locked you up yet.”
He loosened his grip and rubbed my wrists.
“We’re going to my house. You can get changed for Muse there. Don’t make me handcuff you to the backseat. Deal or no deal?”
I sighed. “Fine. Deal. Under protest.”
He slid out of the backseat and smiled like we hadn’t just had an entire conversation with me handcuffed beneath him.
“Great, glad you’re seeing it my way,” he said, then shut the door.
He was whistling when he got in the driver’s seat. His eyes were on me when he adjusted the rearview mirror. He gave me a demented smirk.
Mental patient. I wondered if Aiden could have him committed.
Chapter Three
Holden’s house was nice, I had to admit. I wasn’t sure what I had expected when we had pulled up in the middle-class neighborhood.
My first impression was that it smelled like lemon and bleach when I had walked through the door. We were drenched from our dash up the sidewalk from the truck. Water had pooled around me at the entrance while I looked in to the devil’s lair.
He had grabbed a towel out of the bathroom and had brought it to me. While I patted it across my face he had leaned in and tried to help with my hair. He had suggested a long hot, naked shower. That had resulted in a lot of smacking against his shoulder to stop.
The house was laid out very simply. Living room from the front door followed by a large dining room. To the right, a galley kitchen with an island bar. Two bedrooms in the rear with a shared bathroom according to him.
Not that I was interested at all in the bedrooms. I would snag the couch if I honestly had to follow through with this ridiculous deal.
There wasn’t a lot of overly crowded space filled with furniture. He had a giant TV in the living room with a large leather couch and matching arm chair. A small glass coffee table was strewn with sports magazines and TV controllers. He had an entertainment center that also doubled as a desk with a computer monitor sitting on top. The shelves were filled with books, games and DVDs. He had a stereo, receiver and player hooked up in what looked like the most complicated mess of wires the world had ever seen. There was a PlayStation gaming system on one of the shelves with four controllers.
He had very little art on the walls. One poster of a hockey team I had never heard of and a painted landscape on a canvass that looked professionally done. A few pictures hung in photo frames that held images of places he either liked or had visited.
I liked the simplicity of it. It was uncluttered and was clean despite the jumbled rat’s nest of wires in the corner. It was clearly a fire hazard but I wasn’t going to tell him.
However, when I finally did walk into the house, fully intent on using the bathroom, I discovered his arsenal laid out on the dining room floor.
It was like walking into an armory.
I knew what he did for a living, but it was still pretty shocking looking at all the weapons he had. Of all the rooms that I had seen so far in the house, this one was meticulously organized. He had everything placed in such particular order, that I surmised if I nudged one out of place he would probably break down in a fit of OCD weirdness and start twitching.
I moved what looked like the barrel of a disassembled shotgun half of an inch out of place with the toe of my shoe. Fuck it.
The bathroom was even clean. Towels orderly and lined up. Deep red shower curtain and a matching red bathroom set on the counter.
I did my thing and looked in the mirror. It was confirmed, what little makeup I had put on today, specifically to cover my scar, had washed off in the rain. My hair was sticking out in several places. The pink streaks had luckily started to fade over the last few weeks, but they were still noticeable in the light.
It made me nervous to have him see me like this. I wasn’t at my best. Although he had once seen me in my pajamas the day I had met him, it was different being in his house and at this point in our quasi friendship. Or whatever the hell we were calling it.
I walked back by the small arms factory in the dining room and noticed the shotgun barrel was moved back in place.
I smirked and moved it back out of place again. I may not have much control of the current situation but it didn’t mean I couldn’t drive him nuts in the meantime.
Around the corner, I found Holden in a pair of sweats and nothing else. He was bent over in front of the fridge moving things around in a search for something. I had never seen his back before. In shirts, yes, but not in the flesh.
He had an interesting back to say the least. His muscles rippled as he reached for something. There were several scars in various patterns and in various places all over his back. No two scars were the same, which suggested different wounds at different tim
es. I understood this because I had once worked at a physical rehab center for military vets and had seen a lot of different healed injuries.
The other interesting items were two tattoos. There was an American flag tattoo across his shoulder and down over a shoulder blade. It was well done with some incredibly vibrant colors. The artist had made it look old in a way, because the edges of the design looked like they were tattered. The other shoulder had an eagle, globe and anchor tattoo that I recognized because my father had one on his arm. It was a Marine emblem.
That explained a lot about him. It also cemented in my mind why I should never consider getting involved with him.
Unlike some other women I had known, I didn’t have some hellbent obsession with dating men in the military. My dad had been a military man before he was a cop. He was a hard man just like Holden in a way. Which had caused a lot of heartache for my mother until the day she had committed suicide. It wasn’t a pretty story and it didn’t have a happy ending. It just was.
I was definitely attracted to Holden. Hell, just looking at his ass in a pair of sweats was enough to make me wet, but I really didn’t need the nutcase to make me any crazier.
He stood up and turned around with two packages of lunch meat and a pickle jar.
My eyes quickly darted to several different things around his kitchen in an effort to hide what I had been looking at with his back turned. The fact that he had turned around was even worse. He had a nice sculpted chest with a six pack. It was obvious he worked out on a regular basis because pecks like those only came from hard work and a lot of lifting.
One of his eyebrows raised and he smirked at my burning face. “Pickle?”
“Uhm, no. I hate pickles. Allergic. I’ll go into spasms and might die.”
He grabbed the bottle of pickles and started reading the back label. “Die. Really, from what? Water? Vinegar? The fact that your mouth around a pickle might be construed as a sexual innuendo?”
“Wow, you’re learning big words. Did you get it on your word-a-day app?”
He set the meat on the counter and got out the mustard and lettuce. He opened the jar, stuck a giant pickle in his mouth and crunched down so hard that pickle juice sprayed everywhere.
He looked at me innocently while chewing. “Nah, I just like the way some words roll off the tongue. A pickle is just a pickle, angel. There was nothing behind the offer. I mean, if you want me to offer something else to put in your mouth we can talk about that instead.”
My cheeks burned hotter. I wanted nothing to do with pickles or anything else he wanted to suggest or talk about regarding my mouth.
I found myself biting my lip and immediately jerked out of my trance.
“You need a napkin. You’ve got stuff on your chin.” I pointed in a circle with a finger around my own face trying to demonstrate.
“Can you grab me one? It’s in the cabinet above the stove.”
I went around the island into the galley kitchen. It was wide enough that two bodies should have easily been able to pass by each other without even a hint of proximity. I went to the cabinet and felt him brush by my hip.
“Sorry. Cramped kitchen,” he said, as he reached around me toward a drawer near my crotch.
I jerked back and came into contact with his naked chest. My back stiffened as he grabbed my hip with one of his hands. I shivered and my nostrils flared from the scent rolling off of him. I caught a brief whiff of his cologne or body wash mixed with pickle smell and my neck twitched.
Don’t think about the pickle. No pickles. Especially not his pickle.
He moved back to the counter he was working on and started whistling. I stood there for a second, my eyes on the cabinet above the stove and tried to breath.
I reached up, found the napkins in an extremely tidy arrangement between two cookbooks and a spice rack. All the spice labels were facing out perfectly. I knocked one over just for the hell of it and several fell off. I turned back around without cleaning it up, as much as I wanted to.
He walked over, looking at the spices. I backed up against the stove as he pressed me into it and reached above me to rearrange the bottles.
He was at least a foot taller than I was. I was a tall girl but this man was massive in terms of both width and height. All I saw in my vision were two pecks and they were crowding my face.
He stepped back and winked. “All fixed.”
I thought I felt my eye twitch.
The napkins were now balled in my fist. I handed them over.
He smiled openly, like I hadn’t just become acquainted intimately with rock hard peck number one and rock hard peck number two on his chest.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Napkins, chin, wipe.”
“A woman of few words. Best kind in my book.”
I scowled at him. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Making a sandwich. Want one? Figured you might be hungry. I have some other stuff but wasn’t in the mood to cook right now. Since we’re going to Muse in a bit I thought it might hold us over.”
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”
He took the napkins from my hand and began wiping his face off. “What’s that angel?”
“You know what.”
He shook his head. “No clue.”
“Getting in my space, touching me. You know.”
He grinned so subtly. Not many people would have caught it, but I was starting to recognize his little facial movements. The slight crease at the corner of his eyes gave it away.
He came forward and pressed me back against the stove again. “Hmm, like this?”
I put my hands against his chest and pushed a little. “Holden cut it out.”
“Well I’m just trying to be clear. Because this is close but not exactly touching you. In fact, you’re the one touching me.”
I pushed again. “We’re not dating for real so back up.”
A devious smile spread across his face and there was a twinkling in his eyes. “I was just fixing my spice rack. You can’t just touch a man’s rack and not expect us to clean it up if it happens to explode.”
“You’re so vulgar.”
“You like it,” he said, and suddenly went back to the other counter.
I peeled myself off the stove and skirted around him, trying to avoid another peck encounter. He was just flat out dangerous without a shirt on and I was trapped in his house for the time being.
Just me and my wacko, dangerous, killer, date.
Shit.
When I looked down at my clothes, I could see two very perky hard nipples poking out from underneath my shirt. My clothes were still damp and apparently they weren’t going to help with hiding the fact that he affected me.
Great. Tit hard-on in front of the most frustrating man on the planet.
“Do you know when Jake or John will be by with my clothing?” I asked over my shoulder. I refused to turn around with these beams, although he had probably already seen them.
“Ahh, no, but I can check. I have some shirts in the closet if you want to borrow one. Shorts are in the top drawer in the dresser. My bedroom is the second door on your left. Do you want everything on your sandwich?”
Confirmed. He’d already seen them.
Walking down the hall I yelled back, “Yeah sure.”
Opening the door to his bedroom, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Whips, chains, a pallet of ammunition or animals staked to the walls. Who knew what he had to hide.
I flipped the switch on the light and found he had a very clean, organized room. There was a platform bed to the right, with matching nightstands and two lamps. The black blanket on the bed was perfectly tucked in to the mattress. The closet stood open beside it. A dresser stood against the other wall with a large, matching mirror. He had a holster and a gun sitting on top of the wooden surface. A book lay open on the edge that looked like it had seen better days. The pages were worn and ready to fall off the binding.
The first drawer I opened had a v
ariety of boxers in it. I closed it quickly, not wanting to imagine Holden in anything but full clothing. Definitely not in boxers. The other drawer to the right held socks and a box of condoms. I slammed that drawer shut as well.
I stopped and wondered if I should venture any further. Those were the top drawers and there were six drawers in total.
“Don’t look Jules. Resist the curiosity,” I mumbled to myself.
I couldn’t help myself. It was like some sort of Pandora’s box effect where I felt a compulsion to finish looking. It was like losing the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It would bother me if I didn’t finish looking.
I quickly opened the last drawers and shut them. One held an assortment of receipts, miscellaneous pens, scratch pads, notes, and a couple more books. The others held sweats, jeans, pants, ties. No shorts. All of the clothing was folded very neatly and in an organized manner.
Hmm, obsessive much?
I imagined him at home on his days off folding clothes with a ruler.
Sighing, I went to the closet. Maybe he had meant there were shorts in a different drawer.
I turned on the light and wondered if I really had stepped into a mental patient’s house. Leaning back on the doorframe, I just took it all in.
He had a walk-in closet roughly ten foot long. What made it slightly disturbing in a way was that, his shirts hung in an exact way on the hanger, tag to the door. To top that off, they were color coordinated starting from green all the way to black. Then the long-sleeved variety preceded short sleeves. Sweaters folded on the top shelf. The real kicker was the spacing of the hangers. They were, what I would estimate, as half an inch apart from each other all the way down the rack.
Earlier when he had been grabby, slightly sexual, happy and joking I was surprised deep down. It wasn’t the man I had known a year ago. In fact, he seemed relaxed, jovial and friendly. Which really didn’t fit into my understanding of who he was.
It was strange. Good in a way. Very good in a way.
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