Elements of Chemistry: Capture

by Penny Reid

  This exchange hurt, and the rush of dismay bubbling to the surface of my psyche made my throat feel tight. And yet I couldn’t help the desperate desire twisting in my lower belly at the idea of just one kiss, just one more time. I wanted him so badly.

  Martin leaned forward, his eyes capturing mine, though they were sullen, verging on hostile. He placed his hand on my thigh as he advanced, his thumb rubbing back and forth drawing all my awareness to the heat of his palm.

  “What if we kissed, and I touched you? What if we fucked? Would you remember tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I would remember. But I don’t understand why you’re doing this.” A hint of pleading had entered my voice and my eyes stung. Martin paused his forward momentum, now just ten inches separating us, his eyes searching mine.

  “Would it mean anything to you?” he questioned softly, then his voice grew a bit rough as he asked, “or would it be sex between friends? No strings? Could we just make each other feel good for one night?” Martin’s hand inched higher on my thigh, taking the heat of his fingers closer to my center. It was obvious he was very angry with me, as his touch felt vindictive, punishing in its gentleness.

  I shook my head, though my body—and especially the vicinity of my pants—was on fire for him, for his touch, for his attention. The ache was physical, and made forming words difficult.

  “I’m not built that way,” I admitted clumsily, my voice unsteady as I balled my hands into fists because they were beginning to shake. “I think one more night together, just for the purpose of making each other feel good, would be the end of our relationship.”

  By the time I finished speaking my whole body was trembling with the effort to hold myself away from him.

  I read hunger in his eyes, but I also saw resentment and malice. His fingers on my upper thigh drew away, and I captured his hand before he could retreat completely. I cradled it in both of mine and he let me.

  My voice was wobbly, and my vision blurred as I gathered my remaining courage and said, “Martin, I am sorry for what I said. I can see you’re mad at me and I hurt you and I’m sorry. But I don’t want to lose you completely. Not again.”

  The rancor in his glare softened, but didn’t quite disappear. He nodded and ground his jaw, his eyes falling away.

  He used my grip on him to tug me forward but I resisted, feeling raw. I didn’t trust him, and I certainly didn’t trust myself to resist him.

  His gaze lifted back to mine at my reluctance. He studied my face, likely saw my confusion, hurt, and apprehension, because his eyes filled at once with what looked like a rush of remorse.

  “I’m sorry, Kaitlyn. I’m…God, I’m such a fucking asshole. I’m sorry.” As he said this, Martin raised the hand not holding mine and wiped two tumbling tears away from my cheeks with his thumb, his palm moving back to my jaw and cradling my face.

  “Come here.” He swallowed, and I saw he did so with effort. He tugged on my hand again and this time I let him bring me to his chest. He moved both of us down the couch until he was laying horizontal and I was half on top of him, snuggled between his body and the couch.

  I was so confused.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”

  I sniffled. “Me too. I’m sorry too. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  His arm squeezed me. “You’re forgiven and obviously you were right, I’m still an asshole.”

  Something about the way he said, I’m still an asshole made me laugh lightly, but uncertainty and the lingering ache in my chest kept me from relaxing against the length of him. His suggestion that we use each other’s bodies felt like an assault, like an affront against the sacredness of what we’d shared—at least on my side—and the tentative friendship and trust we’d been building.

  And yet…

  I felt him stroke my hair lovingly, his other hand held mine and he toyed with it. He lifted my fingers to his mouth and brushed feathery, cherishing kisses on the tips and knuckles. Eventually I forced myself to relax, and turmoil gave away to melancholy, and finally to exhaustion.

  My cheek rested against his chest where his heart beat, and I listened to it slow then even, lulling me to sleep.

  CHAPTER 10

  Chemical Equilibrium

  I woke up in my bed with a Martin mattress.

  Meaning, we were in my bed and I was sprawled on top of Martin. I frowned, searching my memory, getting ready to stone myself if we’d had wild monkey sex and I’d blacked out in the middle of it. But then I remembered everything from last night/early morning, and I sighed—both in lusty disappointment and levelheaded relief. He must’ve carried me into my room and decided to stay with me until I woke up; and I’d been so exhausted I didn’t wake up.

  A very Martin-esque move. He was smart, so he knew—after last night’s awkwardness—I would avoid him this morning. But I couldn’t avoid a Martin in my bed.

  “Are you awake?”

  I nodded against my pillow, turning my face toward his. I cracked open my eyes and studied him. It was obvious he’d been up for a while. I took stock of where my hands were, where his hands were, etc. None of our touching was technically friend-inappropriate, but I took the opportunity to stretch and shift my leg so it wasn’t quite as insinuated between his.

  “Yes. But barely,” I mumbled, yawning.

  “Good. I’m starving.”

  He lightly pinched my rib, making me jump and squeak. Taking advantage of my involuntary spasm, he rolled above me, planking, and captured my gaze with his, reminding me of the moment right before I’d lost my virginity nine months ago. My throat was Sahara desert dry. I blushed scarlet, but couldn’t look away.

  He was sexy. Epic, unlawful levels of sexy. I was suddenly very awake and quite incapable of moving.

  “Parker, what happened earlier this morning—and I’m not talking about the Hobbit soap dispenser—it doesn’t change anything.” His tone was stern, as though he were commanding me to not feel awkward. “I was a jerk-face and I am really sorry. You made it clear that you don’t want to risk our friendship and I’m going to try to respect that.”

  I blinked at him and nodded, giving him my best brave smile.

  “Me too,” I croaked.

  A momentary frown pinched his features, and he faltered, studying me, his gaze straying to my lips. But then he gathered a large inhale, rolled off and away, and then strolled out of the room.

  He called over his shoulder, his voice tight, “You make music, I’ll make breakfast.”

  ***

  Breakfast was some sort of delicious egg casserole with onions, bacon, spinach, and more bacon. The smell of it cooking filled the apartment causing my mouth to water.

  While he was in the kitchen I eyeballed the piano, found myself caught in its gravitational pull. It was so pretty, so magnificently alluring. The keys were real ivory—which meant the antique upright was over fifty years old—and were warm to the touch. I pressed middle C and found the sound rich, full, and beautiful.

  “Play it.”

  I glanced at him.

  He must’ve visited the muffin man and the danish man yesterday, because he brought me a very fresh-looking cherry and cheese danish, a banana nut muffin, as well as a lovely cup of black coffee. Martin placed his offerings on a table beside the piano then straightened, giving me a stern look, but his words were gentle.

  “Please, play it.”

  I saw it meant something to him, so I sat, gathered a breath for courage, and teased out a tentative melody. Meanwhile Martin hesitated next to the bench. Then, as though abruptly making up his mind, he bent down and kissed my cheek, his morning stubble scratching my face and leaving a warm mark on my skin.

  “You need to visit me all the time.” He lifted his voice as he disappeared back into the kitchen, “Think about moving in. I was serious about accepting cookies as payment.”

  I smirked reflexively, my tune becoming light and silly, and thought about becoming Martin’s roommate. As long as we both dated no
one else, were celibate, and never drank sangria around each other, it sounded like a winning idea.

  I allowed myself to get lost in an improvisation, though it was mostly based on a song I’d written over the summer after drinking a Red Bull and being unable to sleep for forty-eight hours. The composition was originally manic, but I slowed it down, added a few bass clef-only stanzas, and closed my eyes.

  When it felt finished, I released the keys, pressing down on the sustain pedal with my last chord, allowing the notes to go on and on until they faded and reverberated like the memory of an echo. It really was a magnificent instrument.

  When I opened my eyes I realized Martin was sitting in one of the nearby club chairs, his elbow on the arm rest, his thumb brushing back and forth against his bottom lip, and his eyes watching me intently.

  I straightened, blinking at him and the room as I came out of my daze. “Sorry…how long was I playing?”

  He didn’t respond right away and I noticed he was also lost in a bit of a daydream.

  “Martin?”

  He shook himself, his gaze focusing sharply on me. “Yes?”

  “How long was I playing?”

  His eyes flickered to a spot behind me on the wall. I turned and followed his gaze, found a wall clock that told me I’d been at it for over forty-five minutes.

  “Gah! Is the casserole ready?” I reached for my coffee, found the tumbler tepid and I pouted. “Cold coffee.”

  “Don’t worry, I have more coffee.” His voice was stiff as he plucked the cup from my grip and disappeared into the kitchen. “And breakfast is ready.”

  I followed him, loitered at the entrance, and appreciated the sight of a fine man moving around the kitchen like he knew what he was doing.

  “How and where did you learn to cook?” I asked, as he opened the oven set to warm and withdrew a casserole dish.

  “Mother had a cook. Her name was Esmerelda. She taught me.”

  “Hmm…” I grabbed my coffee cup from where he’d left it on the counter and dumped the cold coffee into the sink. “Can we play forty questions while we eat breakfast?”

  “Forty questions?”

  “Yes.” I rinsed the cup then moved to refill it with fresh coffee. “Emma stopped by yesterday, and—”

  “Emma was here yesterday?” His tone told me he wasn’t happy.

  “Yes, no big deal.” I sipped the hot beverage, placed it on the small kitchen table, then turned to the cabinets to seek out dishes for breakfast. “We talked. It’s all good. But she deposited a lot of information in my brain and I think it’s going to take at least forty questions for me to gain the answers I seek.”

  “What kind of information did she deposit?” In my peripheral vision I saw he was grabbing knives and forks.

  “Well now, you can play forty questions too. I ask you a question, you ask me a question. There’s no need to keep tally of how many, it’s just that I’d like to clear up as many unknowns as possible before heading home this evening.”

  He was quiet for a beat as we set the table, then said, “That’s right. I forgot you’re leaving today.”

  I took stock of our progress, found everything to be satisfactory, and sat next to him as he served the casserole.

  “I’ll start—I’ll answer your question about what kind of information Emma shared.”

  He nodded, glanced at me warily, then grabbed a muffin and tore it in half. By the time I was finished relating the story of Emma’s visit the day before, he’d eaten three servings of casserole, two danishes, and a muffin. As well, he was on his second cup of coffee and third glass of orange juice.

  I stripped the conversation of all my emotions, tried to relate just facts, but he interrupted me a few times and asked for clarifications, making my tale longer. I decided to leave out the part where Emma and I discussed his last girlfriend as I felt like her existence wasn’t really pertinent to the issue at hand.

  At last I was able to question him. “So my question is, why did you set up a foundation as the controlling shareholder in the venture capitalist company instead of keeping the profits for yourself?”

  He shifted in his seat and I saw he was considering how best to answer this question.

  “You can tell me the truth, Martin, whatever that might be.”

  “I know.” He drank some more coffee, examining me over the rim of his cup. “There were actually several reasons.”

  “Okay, what was the biggest reason?”

  “How about I start with the most important business reason?”

  “Fine.”

  He cleared his throat and set the coffee cup on the table, leaning forward. “After what my father did—with your mother, trying to use us to control her—I realized that if I invested directly into SAT Systems, the venture capitalist company launching the satellites, then there was a small chance—but a chance nevertheless—that he’d be able to take legal action against my investment. So I established the foundation. Its non-profit status cleaned the money, basically, and meant he had no claim to it. I didn’t want to put the project in jeopardy.”

  “But you gave up sixty million dollars and subsequently billions of dollars in revenue.”

  “But that didn’t matter to me as much as following through with SAT Systems. I mean, I’m the head of the foundation. I have the same voting power at SAT Systems that I had before. Only the profit doesn’t come to me, it comes to the foundation.”

  “So,” I tried to understand his motivations, “launching the satellites was more important than the money part of your revenge plan? Sorry to use the term, but I thought the main ambition of your revenge against your father was to eventually ruin him and make yourself three times as wealthy in the process.”

  He stared at me, gritting his teeth, his jaw ticking for a long moment, as though debating with himself. But then abruptly stated, “When you walked out, the revenge plan, as you call it, didn’t hold much meaning anymore. It took me a while, but I figured that out by June, three weeks before my birthday, before I had access to the trust. You were right. Focusing my energy on fucking over Denver Sandeke was a waste. And you would have known all this if you’d read any of my interviews.”

  I sat up straighter, surprised, feeling like I’d been slapped—but not in a violent way, more so in a reprimanding, wake-the-fuck-up kind of way.

  Before I could stop myself—riding a rising wave of resentment—I said, “Listen, I would have read the interviews, but when I did a google search all that came up were pictures of you with your girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend.”

  Martin frowned at me, his face scrunching in a way that told me he had no idea what I was talking about; in fact, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Red hair? Petite? Pretty? Ring any bells? Emma also mentioned that you two were dating.”

  His lips parted and he blinked at me as though seeing me in a completely new light.

  I couldn’t hold his gaze any longer because I felt an abrupt spike of fear that his eyes would soon be clouded with pity. Instead I stabbed at my casserole and tried to fight the swelling distress that I’d just exposed myself.

  I mumbled, “Like I told you last week when you came to the coffee shop, I avoided news about you for a reason.”

  He didn’t respond right away, but I felt his eyes on me, considering me. Peripherally I was aware that he’d placed his fork on his plate and was leaning his elbows on the table.

  “I’m considering Dr. Patterson as my replacement at the foundation for operations. Rose Patterson, the girl in the pictures, is his daughter.” His voice and words sounded careful.

  I took a bite of the delicious casserole that no longer tasted delicious, careful to keep my eyes averted. “Oh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” I was determined not to cry. I would not be that stupid girl who cries when she talks to her ex-boyfriend about his current exploits. Therefore—to ensure that I did not cry—I distanced myself from him, his words, and my feel
ings.

  He was silent for a beat, still watching me. “I told you last week, I’m not dating anyone.”

  I shrugged. “It’s really none of my business.”

  “Rose was a way to meet Dr. Patterson.”

  I nodded, cleared my throat, found that I really, really didn’t want to talk about this. After ensuring that the buttresses around my heart were completely fortified, I lifted my eyes back to his and tried to bring the conversation back to its original focus.

  “So, you were saying about the interviews?”

  “Kaityln—”

  “You decided revenge wasn’t worth it?”

  “Damnit, just listen for a second.”

  “Fine. I’m listening.” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest, giving him absolutely nothing.

  “I wasn’t ever really with Rose. I needed to meet her father. She was…” Martin looked frustrated and seemed to be searching the kitchen table for the right way to explain.

  Watching him struggle I suddenly understood the situation, and I supplied for him. “She was a means to an end? You used her because of who her father is?”

  For some reason this thought made me feel both better and worse.

  Martin gritted his teeth. “Maybe it will make more sense once I explain more about the foundation.”

  “Okay, tell me about the foundation.”

  I watched his chest expand with a large breath and his eyes settle back on mine; but now they looked as guarded as I felt.

  “The actual plan—alternate source of Internet delivery for rural areas—still made sense, even without the ultimate goal of revenge on my father. So rather than focus my energy on Denver Sandeke, I turned my attention to how I could work with the team I’d assembled to make this venture meaningful and profitable. We’re not doing this to drive my father out of business—although that may eventually happen, and at the very least, Sandeke Telecom and the rest of the big monopolies will have to cut their prices drastically—we’re doing this because it makes sense. It’s a unique opportunity, and, yes, it will make a difference.”