Fool Me Forever (Confidence Game)

by Ainslie Paton

  “You want to dance with me.” She leaned into his chest, winding her arms around his neck. They weren’t going to be covering much distance.

  “Ever since I made sure to attend the Heroes League gala to keep you out of harm’s way and saw you in your stunning white dress.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He winced. “I didn’t want Cookie Jar getting his claws into you.”

  She stopped swaying. “You thought I needed a babysitter?”

  “No. Yes. I was already feeling protective of you, and I knew more than you did about what was shaking out.”

  She went stiff in his arms. “I don’t need a protector. Although having one for those instances where muggings and knives are involved is a plus. The last man who was supposed to protect me and my family turned our lives upside down.”

  He needed words of explanation, apology, and they weren’t queuing in his head. “I—”

  Her finger across his lips. “Wait. I’m not finished. You, of all people, can’t protect me.” She came close; their bodies bumped again. Keeping his hands off her made them twitch at his sides. “But I know you now, spy cameras and alicorns, and I don’t think you had anything but the best intentions.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “You romanced it out of me.”

  A great gust of air left his lungs, stirring her hair. Had to be the best sleight of hand he’d ever pulled off. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  She went to her toes and kissed him, and while her words where only a whisper, her “Except be you,” was a rudely honked horn, an aircraft breaking the sound barrier overhead—they took the stiffening out of his knees.

  Everything about the rest of the evening was saturated in sweetness and longing. The way they clung to each other, dancing barefoot until glancing and sliding and holding their bodies wasn’t enough touch, enough of each other’s skin and smell and movement, but was all the foreplay they needed to hit the bedroom with the lights blazing. To want from each other, make and satisfy demands with no fear of rejection. Lenny had him willingly on his knees; he had her thrillingly on hers, her hands braced on the headboard while he took her from behind.

  She traced the ink of his tattoo with her fingers and her lips, and he felt each line stinging anew, before she soothed it. He made her gasp and squeal, and together they demolished the bed, exhausting themselves to sleep as each other’s pillows and sheets.

  Add conversation and a little experimentation with the spy camera he’d had hooked up to work that gave them naughty pictures that would never be leaked anywhere.

  It was the same the next day. The clock had it in for them, though. It was relentless in wanting to pull them apart, and late afternoon they both got agitated. His distress came out in silent brooding, hers in being extra bright; it threatened to give him a headache.

  She made a last pot of coffee and called it that. Packed what she wasn’t wearing in the red shopping bag and fixed her hair, so it didn’t look like he’d had his hands in it. “You’ll let me know about the return of the money? You’ll let me know when you think Cookie Jar is going down?”

  The former was his only excuse for contacting her again, and the latter she’d read in the press.

  She wanted to wrap them up neatly and pack this weekend away like the awful Christmas sweaters Mom gave him that he couldn’t wear, and he couldn’t give away. He understood, because it was exactly what he did with emotions that made him uncomfortable.

  They tried to watch a movie, but Lenny couldn’t sit still. He didn’t know what to do to make this easier for her.

  Instead of letting his ringing phone take a message, he excused himself and picked up. By the time he’d finished listening to his sister Tresna’s woes and came back to the living room, Lenny had her shoes on and was ready to go.

  “I should,” she said, eyeing the door, her expression tense.

  “I could make an early dinner.”

  She shifted uneasily. The length of the suede sectional separated them. It was effectively the length of the state, the expanse of time and the universe.

  “I had a wonderful time. You were the perfect vacation love affair.”

  That was the fucking problem here. Vacations were supposed to leave you refreshed and ready. Affairs were meant to go on, or they were simple hookups. There was nothing simple in what they had here. “Lenny, we—”

  “Don’t.” She came across the room to him. “It will just get harder.” He opened his arms and she stepped into him. “Go take Cookie Jar down for me.”

  “I’ll do that.” Feeling wretchedly shitty, he kissed the top of her head and held on to her. They stood there a long time for two people who’d agreed separation was the best outcome.

  Lenny’s hands traced wings on his back, and she laid her cheek against his chest.

  “One last kiss, then?” he asked, and as she lifted her face, the distress etched on it made him groan. He kissed her as softly as he was able, as if she were glass and he might shatter her, as if she were steel and he might break himself on her, and then he let her go, moving to the door to open it for her.

  It was all mechanics, then. Thank you for the clothes and good luck with the con. No, she didn’t need a cab. It would be better if he didn’t come down with her. And a muttered, “I’m sorry,” that made Halsey nearly rip the handle he was holding off the door.

  “Lenny.”

  She wiped a hand over her eyes. “I’m being dramatic. I’m fine. You’re going to stand here and watch me walk down the corridor and get in that elevator, and I’m not going to turn around and look at you.”

  “Okay.”

  She took a step back and then another. “God. You are so fine.”

  “Right back at you.”

  She put the red bag down. “Something’s not right.”

  He kicked a cast-iron squirrel doorstop into place and was ready for her when she tumbled into his arms. “It wasn’t a proper kiss goodbye,” she said.

  What they did wasn’t what you’d call proper. It was a glorious, clutching mess of grabs and squeezes and biting fingertips. It was an outlaw kiss to damage and repair and win and lose and start and finish and when Lenny pulled away, he reeled back against the door, the blood rush to the head making him dizzy.

  “Why do you have to be a crook?”

  “Why do you have to be a good girl?

  “I’m going.”

  “I’m watching.”

  He didn’t want to take his eyes off her. He watched her walk the corridor to the elevator. She kept her face lowered as she called it, and without looking back, she stepped inside, the doors closed, and she was gone. If it weren’t for the doorstop, he’d be left standing in the middle of the corridor locked out of his apartment, barefoot and emotionally devastated.

  That’s how he spent the next few days, fully dressed and feeling oddly naked, shut out of the comfort of his treasured routines and struck with a kind of fever, a worm in his heart that kept burrowing, turning, and wouldn’t let him sleep. He’d known something like this was waiting for him, but not that it would feel so disorienting.

  Zeke groused at him when he drifted off during a meeting. Sherin asked if he was coming down with something. He lost interest in food and the gym. His concentration was shot.

  At 6:00 p.m. on Friday night, he set off from the office, walking in the rain like a sinner looking for redemption, no clear idea where he was going until he was in front of Lenny’s building.

  His world was on fire; he rang her buzzer.

  He didn’t want her to answer. If she did, he wanted her to send him away. He wanted to lean into the impossible misery of her absence and feel like an utter fool, hit the bottom of whatever was wrong with him, then go home and sort himself out.

  “Yes.” Lenny’s voice. It made his chest get tight.

  “It’s Halsey. I shouldn’t be here.”

  The door clicked. He could have her in his arms in less than five minutes. He should bu
zz her back and apologize for disturbing her. He was still thinking that when she opened the door to her apartment.

  Her hair was pulled back haphazardly from her face in a clip. She wore a splotched, oversize sweatshirt and torn yoga pants. She smelled of bleach, and she looked at him as if he’d been keeping her waiting.

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  She barely nodded before he stepped inside, kicked the door closed, took a fistful of her shirt, and hauled her close. “I’m going insane. I need to kiss you. I need to kiss you till I stop going out of my mind thinking about you.”

  She half climbed his body to get to his mouth, and then all the righteous insanity boiled over and spilled out into everything that was good and glorious and right.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Halsey was desperate and dangerous, and Lenny’s body pulsed with the knowledge she’d made him that way. He was drenched, but his eyes were on fire, and he grabbed at her like he was one step away from crumbling.

  It was the madness she needed, puncturing the zombie calm she’d walked around in all week—the determined blue note that was all she could hear.

  He needed her, and she clung to him, her desire roaring to the surface, a whole symphony of soaring emotions and song lines that made her insensible to caution.

  The first kiss was like the sky cracking, a storm of their own making, and she wanted to be saturated by it and swept away.

  Halsey backed her up against the door and groaned into her mouth. He tore the sweatshirt over her head to get his hands on her, but he was all wet wool and too many layers, and she didn’t have enough hands to touch his face and get his coat off his shoulders.

  “Bedroom. Now,” she ordered, curling around him as he grasped under her thighs and carried her down the hallway. “We don’t have long.” Mom and Mal would be back, and she didn’t want to have to explain this. Wouldn’t have the courage to try.

  It wouldn’t take long. This fever burned bright and hot. There was no slowing its rampage, just falling, falling into its thrall and the craving need it kicked off in her body. He placed her on the bed, his mouth on hers, his hands working on his clothes, growling when his buttons frustrated him and wrenching away.

  His shirt made a wet slap when he tossed it over a chair. His shoes squelched when he toed them off. She couldn’t move except to watch him furiously wanting her, but she’d been cleaning. She glanced toward her bathroom. “I should—”

  “Don’t you leave that bed.” He was down to underwear and out of patience, and she’d never felt more desired.

  “If you hadn’t come for me, I was coming for you.” That’s a truth her body knew, even if it was a spectacular shock for her mind to recalibrate around the thought. He was sublimely, addictively, criminally wrong for her. And the only thing she wanted more than her next breath.

  She’d come close to having a panic attack in the elevator when she’d left his apartment. It’d felt like she was willfully sabotaging herself. Strangling her future. She’d had to grip a handrail and talk herself into hitting the G button, trick herself into believing leaving him was the only smart thing to do.

  He stripped off her pants, the sound of tearing on the existing rip made her gasp. He got rid of their underwear, took the clip from her hair, tossed it over his shoulder, and came for her mouth, pushing her down on the bed. His hands were warm, but his skin was chilled, and that was a thrill all of its own.

  Braced above her, she could feel the fine tremor in his body. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and tucked her face into his neck, ready to be in the heart of the frenzy and waiting for lightning to strike.

  It burned beautifully when it did. Twice. Once for each of them in quick succession. A coiling electric zap that started low inside Lenny and sizzled over her hips and along her spine to zing inside her head. It might’ve fried her brain, lit it up with white lights. The same fire and ice hit Halsey seconds later and he stilled, breath stalled and body rigid, before he rolled them, holding her tight to his chest.

  “Are you okay?” His lips at her hairline, his voice so low and gravelly it hooked leftover currents inside her and made them spark again.

  She wanted to sail in the complex elements of her high, and talking was too much real-world effort. She told him how she felt wordlessly with her lips and her tongue and her hands. They kissed while the storm cleared their heads and left them satisfied and sleepy.

  “Don’t overthink this,” she said, when she came back to herself enough to see his furrowed brow.

  He grunted an acknowledgement. “I didn’t plan it.”

  She’d known that instinctively. She’d heard the urgency, the warning and devil in his voice over the intercom, and she’d had a choice. And then he’d looked wrecked when he arrived, a wild blend of certain and remorseful she’d been unable to resist. “It was a flash flood.”

  “I’m not sorry.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I was a little possessed.”

  “I didn’t have to let you up, and I’m not sorry I did.” Any minute now the front door would open, and she’d have to hide her lover in her room till it was safe to sneak him out.

  He traced a hand down her spine. “I’m not ready to give you up, Lenny. I like myself so much more when I’m with you.”

  She put her lips to his. She was a little possessed, too, by the soft awe in his voice, by the gentleness of his touch, and the absolute belief he cared for her and had been showing it right from the moment he showed up at her office and refused to leave because of Easton. What else was there that could account for the blinding sense of ease and happiness she felt with him? Hooked on the inappropriate rightness of them and unwilling to step away, she had to have more.

  “I don’t want us to be over, yet. I want to go to the gala with you,” she whispered into his neck.

  He pushed her back onto the pillow, searching her face. “The story about the Kandinsky being a forgery will hit the papers tomorrow. Cookie Jar will be wounded. Baiba says they will be baying for his blood at home. That makes him more dangerous.”

  “To you, because he’ll think you set him up.”

  “To you, if you’re with me.” He brushed his knuckles gently over her cheek. “He will have it in for me. I need to convince him I was duped, too. I know you don’t like me telling you what to do, but this is the heart of the con and it’s risky. This isn’t like standing behind one-way glass; it’s being in the spotlight. It’s safer for you to stay away. Last thing you want is to be anywhere near the breaking scandal.”

  It wasn’t easy to think about anything else except the fact she had Halsey in her bed, and if she let him go to the gala alone, she’d be leaving him without the subtle protection she offered right when he might need it most. Excel Boy shouldn’t need to be without PowerPoint Girl until the job was finished. They could be sensible and break up later. Shake hands over a job well done and part as friends. It was the best outcome. She’d have plenty of time to take up knitting.

  “We started this together, and I want to see it through. There’ll be hundreds of couples at the performance. And no one throws punches at a gala.”

  He kissed her cheekbone, right over the little scar she’d gotten from a toy car Easton had thrown at her when they were kids. He’d kissed it a dozen times since she’d told him how she got it. “You’re changing the rules,” he said.

  “I finish what I start, and I don’t want you to have to face this alone.” She could be sensible about breaking up. She would. She just wanted one more night at his side.

  “Lenny, I’m not without support if I need it. I can’t let”—he stopped, rubbed his eyes—“I can’t tell you what to do, but I don’t like this.”

  “Nothing bad has happened so far. How is this one event any different?”

  Halsey shook his head, unconvinced, so she hit him with the last of her ammunition.

  “It’s an opportunity to make the connections I need, and that was part of our deal, too.”

  It wa
sn’t untrue. She’d work that gala hard, and all was fair in love and war, but she had to shove down the notion that she was unfairly manipulating him. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.

  He sighed. “As if I’m capable of denying you anything you need.” He reached for her, but stilled when they heard the front door, voices.

  “Oh my God, if it’s not here, I’ve lost it!” Mal shouted.

  Oh, no. Mallory being a drama queen.

  Halsey swore softly and sat up, and Lenny put her hand on his back, over the tail of his alicorn to still him and whispered, “Wait.”

  More noise from outside. Mom’s voice, indistinct. Mal yelling, “It’s here. I’ve got it.” Footsteps. Mal again, “I’ll call her.”

  Lenny lurched across the bed to grab for her phone to silence it.

  Mal outside the closed bedroom door. “Where are you? We’re going for pizza at Speedy Romeo.”

  Lenny had pushed her face into Halsey’s arm to stop from laughing. She could feel him shaking from trying not to do the same. More indistinct talking, then the sound of the front door closing and blessed silence.

  Halsey said, “Speedy Romeo,” and flopped back on the bed with a groan. He dragged her body over his. “It’s like they knew what we just did.”

  They were lucky Mom and Mal were going anywhere.

  He took a handful of her hair to draw it back from her face. His was creased in concern. “Was this a mistake?”

  Not a mistake, and she was neither stunned nor sorry they ended up in bed. She knew the hollowed-out feeling, the gut wrench of mistakes that could change your life. It was what she’d felt all week after quitting on him.

  “We don’t have a future.” It caused a sharp little pain in her chest to say that. “My father is in jail for exactly the same thing you do, and he gave to charity, too.” He’d provided the initial seed funding for D4D, and all of Lenny’s issues keeping it going were the result of that funding going bust. She rubbed a thumb over the wrinkle in Halsey’s brow, erasing it. “But there’s nothing stopping us having a little bit more now.”