by Cee Smith
In the time it took me to finish getting ready with the additional primping I decided to do, I almost expected Joel to try to attempt round two of barging in on me, but when I left the bathroom, I noticed he was back to sitting on the couch. This time appropriately dressed.
Candlelight flooded the room—bundles of wavering flames glowed in the depths, throwing shadows of Joel’s face across the walls. I couldn’t see those hypnotic emerald orbs, but I felt them. The shadows revealed how he watched me, tracing my faltered steps as I drew nearer. I wondered what he saw. Could he tell I freshened up with him in mind? A blush crept up my neck at the thought of him imagining me naked. He saw everything. And we weren’t both naked or drunk. Was he regretting being stuck here with Sarah Simpleton? I imagined he was used to landing nice, polished, expensive-looking women who didn’t leave the house without a fresh waxing and perfect hair and makeup. It was enough to make the most confident woman double-check her compact.
“At least you’re smart enough to put some clothes on,” I mumbled, taking a seat on the opposite side of the couch. It still felt too close, but I didn’t want him to think I was purposely avoiding him because of the bathroom situation. I dealt with all kinds of people at the law firm. I could handle a hot man and good sex. No problem.
“I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t. I wasn’t able to see much in there.”
“Yeah, about that. Do we need to go over simple manners while you’re here? I thought we established some ground rules, but I didn’t think I would have to cover the basics.”
“It was just a little nudity. Besides, it was an accident.”
“Nothing about that looked like an accident. You just barged in. Do you even know what you thought you left in there?”
His eyes bounced across the floor as if something would reveal itself—an answer that would offer itself up to my inquiry.
“My watch,” he said, his eyes finally landing on his wrist. I narrowed my eyes at him, and his eyebrows lifted innocently. I focused my attention on the large face and chunky gold band wrapped around his thick wrist. A watch I hadn’t noticed up until then, but was the equivalent of a five-carat diamond on a woman’s finger—it was kind of hard to miss. My eyes didn’t stay on the watch long, instead following the dusting of hair across smooth cream skin, up forearms thick-slabbed and pulsing with every breath he inhaled. Those arms could hold me up nicely. I wondered if I took advantage of those arms while I was with him. Did I notice them? Maybe not like I was noticing now because we obviously had other things on our minds at the time, but now that I saw them, I wanted to lick a trail from fingers to shoulder, and feel his muscles strain against my tongue.
“I’m going to try to get some work done. I’ll be in my office if you need me,” I said with rushed words before escaping the room.
Chapter Five
The walk from the living room to the kitchen felt lighter than it had the past two days. Work always had a way of calming my frenzied mind. Everything in my line of work was based on logic, facts, things that are irrefutable. Truths that couldn’t be denied. Every case was like a puzzle waiting to be put together. So, as I carried my laptop back to the dining room, no thoughts clouded my mind. Nothing aside from a perfectly blank slate to help me pull together the facts of the case I was helping with. There was no storm or hot-as-sin one-night stand sitting in my living room like a walking hard-on. There was just me searching for a truth.
There were a couple of cases I’d been working on, but only one I had any desire to look at. When Henderson & Fitz first took the case, everyone in the office was elated with possibilities of what this could do for our firm. Ordinarily, it would be a simple case of our client suing for damages in a domestic abuse/battery case, but the defendant was the heir of the Trevaunt fortune, and from what I’d heard of the pictures of our client, Trevaunt did quite a number on her face. I tried not to pay too much attention to tabloid gossip, but I read somewhere that he went missing after it all happened. No one had seen him in weeks, and the only contact my firm had had with him had been seldom, and only via phone.
My job as an associate with a prestigious law firm was very fulfilling, but I wanted more. There was something about being in a courtroom and presenting that gave me a rush like nothing else. The adrenaline called to me. I wasn’t usually in the courtroom with Henderson or Fitz, but occasionally I was needed. And when that happened, it was like front-row tickets at a Yankees game. Of course, I kept my composure, not showing how excited I was to be picked to assist in a court case, but really I could fall at their feet thanking them for the honor. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting my hands dirty with the nitty-gritty work, too, but nothing compared to the courtroom.
Up until then, I hadn’t spent too much time looking into the defendant, EJ Trevaunt. I’d been trying to get background information on his ex-girlfriend, our client, Lara Farrows. There wasn’t much to find on her because she seemed to have a relatively humble life. She was born in Wisconsin, moved to Vegas to attend a university on scholarship, and dropped out of school a few months after meeting Mr. Trevaunt.
I spent the better part of the afternoon going over the medical records after the incident involving the two. Mr. Trevaunt claimed they broke up on May 12th and on May 15th, Ms. Farrows was admitted to the hospital with a fractured cheekbone, some lacerations, and bruising along her face and arms. Kerri was able to give me a copy of the medical report, but it didn’t have the photos included, making it harder to work from a written copy of what she looked like. It’s true what they say about a picture: it is worth a thousand words. I just wished I had the photo, so I could use my own words instead of those of the doctor’s.
My eyes felt dry after hours spent staring at my laptop screen. I pushed away from the desk, resting my elbows on the glass as I rubbed my fists into my strained eyes. I’d been looking through notes of past cases to use as guidance, yet still felt no closer than I was when I opened my laptop.
“Now looks like a good time for a break. I made lunch,” Joel said, standing within the doorframe of my office. I seemed to always find him hanging out in the doorways, his distance making me more uncomfortable than when he was standing right next to me. It felt like he was able to see more of me that way, but there was also something that drew me to him. Perhaps, it was the same thing that had me staring at him at the club, just like all the other onlookers. He had a certain magnetism that couldn’t be ignored.
I didn’t know how long I stayed looking at him like that, but it must have been minutes because he finally broke away from the door, each step slow and graceful with a calculated approach. I felt like I was being stalked as my eyes watched his feet move closer. By the time my eyes landed on his face, he was wearing that shit-eating grin of his. If I was speechless before, I was practically comatose now. His hand reached over the expanse of my desk, his palm facing up, willing me to place my hand in his. That hand promised to take me places, to do things that I’d only ever fantasized about.
That hand was dangerous.
He was still wearing a smile, but this one was endearing. My lips twitched at the corners just from looking at him. I didn’t take his hand though. I couldn’t. There was too much temptation in touching him. All of the thoughts of that morning came flooding back—seeing a half-naked Joel in nothing but his boxer-briefs, his hand casually brushing his chest as if to coax me into partaking of his flesh.
“Well?”
He questioned with his hand still outstretched, breaking me from my thoughts. I stumbled out of my chair and he simply watched, his eyes crinkling a bit at the corners as he looked back at the hand I bypassed. Apparently, he was amused by my blatant refusal at touching him. I didn’t really want to give him the impression that I had a problem with touching him; in fact, I didn’t want him to think about us touching at all, but it was too late. I tried not to dwell too much on it as he led me back to the dining room where lunch was already set for us.
***
“Sit on the cou
ch while I grab something.”
While I continued to the couch, he hung a left to the kitchen. I took a seat uncertain of his intentions when I heard cupboards opening and closing in rapid succession as if he was looking for something in particular.
“You know, you really do have a way of making me feel like a guest in my own home,” I yelled over the clapping sound of the cabinets being shut. The clanking of glasses was my only response before he returned to the living room.
“Call it a talent of mine. I have a few other ones but you’ve already seen some of those.”
“Hardy-har-har. Now, why am I sitting here? The electricity is still out, so watching a movie is obviously out.”
He was still laughing to himself when I noticed the bottle in his hand. I couldn’t remember buying the bottle of whiskey or drinking it for that matter, but the way the liquid sloshed around the half-empty bottle like a lava lamp led me to believe that I bought it at some point in the past six months or so.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a survivalist or something?”
“Pfft. Ha! Now, who has jokes? Me, a survivalist? Why? Because I know a few things about food preservation?”
“Well, don’t they kind of go hand in hand?”
“I wouldn’t know. I saw this bottle when we were going through your kitchen. Figured we could use a little escape.”
“Isn’t that just going to leave us dehydrated? And we’re rationing water right now, so that doesn’t seem like the best idea.”
“It’ll be fine. Besides, if we run out of water, we can always recycle our piss.” My face soured at the thought. I hoped he was joking because there wasn’t a chance in hell that I would be drinking urine. Let’s hope this storm passes in a matter of days, not weeks, otherwise I don’t know how long I can hold out against that promise. “If drinking your own urine doesn’t seem to do it for you, I don’t mind sharing mine.”
He nearly choked himself with laughter at the suggestion, clutching the glass in his hand, holding it over his stomach as he keeled over. His whole body shook until he fell into the couch like a child. There was something admirable about how carefree he seemed to be, like he didn’t take things too seriously. That wasn’t the first time I’d wondered about his life outside of my house, but it was the first time I felt compelled to ask him. I knew I shouldn’t though. Nothing good would come from getting to know him. It was just supposed to be a one-night stand, and even though it turned out not to be, I was trying to treat it with the same premise.
No sex. No details.
“Blaire, you’re too stiff. Trust me. We’ll be fine. If it makes you feel better, I’ll make it an option. How does that sound?”
He sat across from me, one arm sprawled across the back of my couch and his ankle resting atop his opposite knee. His body, if not those eyes, tempted me to indulge in whatever he had in mind, regardless of his suggestion. I knew whatever words lingered on the tip of his tongue were ready to strike like poison, crippling me to whatever he desired. So far it’d been a struggle trying to resist him, but with alcohol entering the mix, I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to hold up my defenses.
“How does what sound? You still haven’t told me what I’m agreeing to.”
His eyes searched the room, roving over everything from the furniture to the little trinkets in the media console. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but when his eyes landed on mine again, he seemed to be satisfied by what he’d found there. I tried not to think of myself as one of those objects.
“Let’s play I Spy—”
“Aren’t we a little too old for that?”
“I wasn’t done. I was going to suggest we spice it up. What do you say? The loser has to either take a shot or remove an article of clothing.”
I looked down at my bare feet, for the first time wishing I didn’t like the feel of cool tiles beneath my toes. Maybe then I would have had more articles of clothing to part with. My disappointment must have been evident because he said, “And what you have on is what you play with. No changing.”
Something about him saying that made me wonder what exactly was beneath those shorts. He had said he liked to feel free. I might have a leg up after all.
There were so many things wrong about this I didn’t even know where to start, but time seemed to pass so slowly, and I convinced myself it wouldn’t hurt to look. I wasn’t acting on anything.
“Fine, but I go first.”
“Why, of course. I am a gentleman after all.”
“Hmm,” I grunted. He was a gentleman in some respects, but I wasn’t going to agree with him. He already seemed to have a big enough ego as it was. I would hate to contribute to it getting any bigger. Especially since I thought turning him down for sex had brought him down a peg or two. I would have hated to reverse any long-term good I’d done for women across Vegas. Although, I wasn’t so sure that all my hard work wouldn’t be evaporated at the first bimbo who bounced her cleavage his way.
Like a stranger, I looked at my house with fresh eyes. It was just a rental, so it wasn’t anything that I would want for myself, but seeing as how I was never really there, I hadn’t put much thought into the mostly sterile walls and dated tiles covering the living room floor.
Vegas homes are odd. The home was built in the 90s but was the equivalent of an 80s home anywhere else in the nation. A hexagonal light hung from the ceiling in faux crystal and gold above the front door. The fan above my head had blades of untreated pine covered with a light collection of dust bunnies, with a white dome of filtered light that usually shed little more light than a candelabra. On the wall behind the couch and just to the inside of the front door was a large painting I found at Homegoods that reminded me of the beach and summers spent at the lake with my family. The painting was abstract with swishes of blue and green, beige, and specks of red. If you looked hard enough, it almost looked like a creek surrounded by cattails and a field of poppies not far off in the distance.
I had already found my first “I Spy” object, but the purpose of the game was to not reveal the source. I’d spent one too many family road trips with an annoying little brother in the seat beside me. I found the only way to keep him busy was to play games—I Spy being the easiest one to play in a car going forty miles an hour and a small window to guess before the object could disappear into the rolling heat dancing above the paved road. Needless to say, I was a pro at this game.
“I spy something…brown.”
He spoke around a sly smile, containing the reason for his amusement, “I see how you want to play this.” Joel looked around the room, presumably taking in every piece of brown that could be found in over a dozen items littered about the room.
“Which one is your goal? To get me naked or get me drunk?”
His eyebrow lifted when he realized I wasn’t touching that question with a ten-foot pole. “A woman with secrets. I like my women with a bit of mystery.”
“Well I guess it doesn’t matter in my case because I’m not your woman.”
“That’s open to interpretation because there’s still a pair of panties in there that would disagree with that statement.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Look, are you playing or not?”
“So eager, pretty bird.” He shook his head, laughingly.
“I’m going to guess…” he looked at the media table holding the TV. It’s the largest bit of brown in the room and the most obvious, “the chair in the dining room.”
I don’t know how he guessed right, especially since I purposely avoided looking at the chairs for any real length of time. There was no giveaway in how long I looked at it, and I made sure to spend an equal amount of attention on all the other furniture around me.
“How did you know?” I asked sincerely.
“Uh-uh. I’m not telling, and I believe you owe me something.”
He looked me up and down, his eyes already peeling off the clothes he wanted removed first. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me naked so qu
ickly. Pace yourself.
“Bottle.”
I held my hand out to take the bottle resting against his thigh where he tossed it after he sat down. This is going to be a long game if I have to sit through what could be another hour of that smug smile. I’ll just have to use that as incentive not to lose. I could see he was the type of winner who liked to gloat, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
I took a swig from the bottle. The pungent liquid filled my mouth and splashed the outside of my lips, running down my chin while I threw back the contents burning my insides. My teeth couldn’t scratch off the bitter film still clinging to the top of my tongue, no matter how much I tried scraping the alcohol away. Holding the bottle by the neck, I set it down with a firm thud onto the wood of my coffee table, dead-center between where we both sat.
“My turn.”
In the darkness of the room, Joel’s eyes still sparkled like sun-soaked gems, filled with the excitement of a child. Five minutes before, I may not have wanted to play with him, but it wasn’t like there was anything better to do, and maybe in his real life he didn’t have anyone to play something as simple as I Spy with. Granted, we were both adults, and I couldn’t say that I’d played the game in fifteen years. If he wants to play, we’ll play.
“I spy something blue.” He stared into my eyes so intensely that if I had blue eyes I would be sure that he was referring to the color of my irises. Instead, I know there are only two things in the room that contain the color blue—the throw pillow to his left is a chevron pattern with varying shades of white, gray, and blue.