Start Me Up

by Kenner, J.

  “You’re an idiot because it was a good-bye kiss. A very chaste good-bye kiss that seemed appropriate since I’d just broken up with him.”

  “You—” He tried to continue the sentence, but his thoughts were too muddled.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, tilted her head, and waited.

  “You broke up with him?”

  “I figured I had to. I can hardly keep going out with him when I feel this way about you. But he’s a sweet man who never did anything wrong except not be you. So don’t you dare give me shit.”

  “Ah,” he said, shoving his hand into the pockets of his jeans. “And how exactly do you feel about me?”

  She flashed a crooked smile then stepped closer until she could wrap her arms around him. “Like you’re the kind of guy my vagina keeps sneaking up on.”

  He couldn’t help it; he barked out a laugh.

  “You’re not too bright though, are you? I mean, falling for an idiot like me.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Not very bright at all.” She brushed a kiss over his lips. “You want to keep fighting or would you like some coffee?”

  “Got any Scotch?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I think I can hook you up. Hang on.”

  As she went to the kitchen to get the drink, he settled in on the couch. And the first thing he noticed was that there was a new book on the coffee table—Watchmen

  “You’re reading this?” he asked when she brought him the drink.

  “Barely started,” she said. “I called and got the folks at Dragon’s Lair to put aside a copy for me,” she added, referring to his favorite store for gaming and graphic novels. “You said it was good,” she added, as if daring him to contradict her.

  “It is,” he said, feeling ridiculously, stupidly flattered that she’d shelved some thick classic tome in favor of his favorite graphic novel.

  “In that case, I have an idea for the rest of the evening. Wanna snuggle on the couch, read Watchmen together, and later on we can see if any of our body parts tumble into each other?”

  “Yeah,” he said, hooking one arm around her shoulder as he reached for the book. “I think that sounds like a stellar idea.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So you two are getting serious,” Kayla said as she and Hannah and Shelby roamed the aisles of Toy Joy—Austin’s go-to place for silly, wacky, and unusual toys for kids and adults. It was lunch hour on Tuesday and they were on a quest for the perfect gift for Kayla’s eight-year-old niece.

  “I guess we are,” Shelby said, unable to hold back her grin. It had been almost a week since Nolan had lost his shit over her kissing Alan, and things between them had upticked during the intervening days. They spent most evenings together at either her house or his condo; they’d driven out to the Hill Country to shop and taste wine—an outing that her friends all considered a “relationship checkmark”—and though they never ran out of things to talk about, they could just as easily enjoy each other’s silence without the pressure of having to fill the space with small talk.

  None of that—with the exception of the Hill Country—would be on Kayla’s radar. Which meant that she was judging the state of their relationship by the content of Nolan’s radio show. And, he’d asked Shelby’s permission before he said a single word.

  “You’re sure?” he’d double-checked when she’d told him it was fine. And when she’d assured him it was, he’d asked her to tell him why. Apparently he wasn’t taking any chances on pissing her off again,

  “Honestly, I’m not sure I can explain it. But listening to you—even back when I was mad at you that time—it was like seeing a different side of myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You make everything fun. Traffic. The weather. Sex.”

  “Sex is fun.”

  “True,” she’d said. “But before you, I never thought of it that way. Nice, yes. Mind-blowing, sometimes. But fun? Like actually laughing while you’re naked?“ She shook her head. “A billion times no.”

  His brow furrowed. “Really?”

  She just kissed him. “Don’t get any ideas. No going off and starting a new career as a sex guru, okay? And if you’re talking about me, then it damn well better be anonymous.”

  “Got it,” he said, and from then on, anytime he referred to his “partner in crime and in bed,” he called her his Paradox.

  She’d asked him why, and he’d told her that was how he’d thought of her the very first night they met. Shy and quiet, but with an inferno inside. “And it’s still the same,” he’d added, unbuttoning her plain white blouse and then lifting her skirt to tug down her pantyhose.

  “I should buy you a garter and thong, but I’ve come to like unwrapping the package,” he’d said, then dropped to his knees and used his tongue to make her come so hard and so fast she thought she might die right then.

  All in all, that had been a fabulous way to end the workday.

  “You should call in to his show sometime,” Hannah said. “That would be a hoot.”

  She shook her head. “You guys know it’s me. And I’m sure some of his friends do, too. But what if my clients were listening? Or my mother?”

  “So? It’s not like he’s talking about robbing banks,” Kayla said. “You’re dating. It’s all good.”

  “Good, yes. Public, no.” In theory, she had to admit it would be fun to call in to tease him. Or to suggest all sorts of decadent things they could do together. But of course she’d never do it. No way was she risking the world knowing that she was the woman on the other side of those racy, bawdy stories he told.

  And her dirty little secret? She kind of liked it. Being anonymous. Being a mystery woman. And then hearing about their lives through the unique filter of a man who’d come to mean so much to her.

  “I bought you something,” Hannah said, her eyes twinkling as they left Toy Joy with all sorts of silly gizmos and gadgets for themselves, along with an awesome pretend veterinarian kit.

  “Yeah?” Shelby said as Hannah passed her a small wrapped box about five inches cubed. “What is it?”

  “Open it tonight. Use it in the morning.”

  “Hannah!”

  “I’m serious. You’ll thank me.”

  Shelby looked dubiously at the small gift. “If you say so.”

  She did as Hannah had told her, and waited until the evening to open it—then laughed like a loon when she saw it.

  Yeah, this was good.

  Not only was the present brilliant, but she was glad to have it on this night, because she’d needed the laugh. She hadn’t spent a night without Nolan in about a week, and she was feeling a little lonely and out of sorts. But he was doing some sort of broadcaster’s event downtown that would run late, and since he had to be up before dawn, he’d told her he would just crash at his condo and then see her Wednesday evening when they went to The Fix together to watch The Man of the Month contest and tape a few snippets for Nolan to promote on his show.

  The night was rough, and when the alarm startled her awake at six, she realized how quickly she’d grown accustomed to sleeping with Nolan’s warmth beside her.

  She scrubbed her hands over her face, then reached for Hannah’s present—an electronic voice changer that could be used to talk anonymously on a phone. It undoubtedly wouldn’t fool the CIA, but under the circumstances, it was absolutely perfect.

  Armed with her toy, she sat up in bed, dialed the KIKX request line, crossing her fingers that Nolan would answer and not Connor, his producer. Thankfully, fate was on her side. “Hey, caller. Welcome to Mornings With Wood. What’s your request?”

  “More of you, for a start,” she said in her weirdly electronic voice. “I missed you last night.”

  There was a pause—and since Nolan never left dead air, she knew she’d flummoxed him and did a little mental happy dance. The pause was barely noticeable, though. And since no one ad-libbed better than Nolan, he was soon with the program.

  “I think I’m the one th
at missed you,” he said. “And to you listeners out there, this is one hell of a rare treat. Because you are listening to a real live paradox. And now the question is—did she call to chat, to make a request, or for something wicked and naughty? Personally, I’m hoping for option three. But I’m not holding my breath. I know her, remember, and she’s really not a morning person.”

  Despite herself, Shelby laughed. “A request,” she said, her heart pounding foolishly from nerves. “For a song … and for later.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “The Veronicas. Take Me On The Floor.”

  She heard the raw sound he made through the phone, and then heard it continue into a growl when she turned the volume up on the radio. She’d hung up abruptly, and even though that was lame, she could already feel her underarms sweating and her heart pounding and all she did was call in to the show.

  How on earth did Nolan do that every day? And unscripted? It was a freaking feat of genius as far as she was concerned.

  She turned up the volume on her radio, then listened as Nolan riffed about her call, then upped the ante by playing a snippet from the Starlight Vocal Band’s Afternoon Delight.

  And as that song faded out and her requested song faded in, he spoke firmly and clearly during the transition. “Be home at noon, Paradox,” he ordered. “And be naked.”

  * * *

  Shelby broke every traffic law on the books racing to get home for lunch. She had to; she was running ridiculously late.

  Frank had pulled her aside in the elevator bank to let her know that the firm had bought a table at an upcoming benefit for some charity, and that he wanted her to go so that she could mingle with prospective clients.

  But the benefit was more than two weeks away, and she really didn’t need to be talking about it now. Not when floor sex was waiting for her at home—and she desperately had to run an errand before hand.

  She’d finally taken the brochure he shoved into her hands, promised she’d read it carefully, then crammed it into her briefcase once she was alone on the elevator.

  Honestly. Did the man have no respect for the sanctity of the long lunch?

  Thankfully, she made it to her place with five minutes to spare, and she raced inside, stripped off her clothes, then flopped naked onto her couch just as she heard the key she’d given Nolan jiggle in the lock.

  “Oh, no, baby,” he said, his eyes raking over her as he entered. “That’s a lovely picture, but the game was on the floor, remember?”

  “So take me there,” she teased, making him laugh and come to her side.

  “You think I’m going to toss you over my shoulder and then lay you out on the floor? No way, baby. Way too predictable.”

  He turned around, then pushed the coffee table all the way into the center of the room, making her wonder what deliciously seductive activity he had planned. But when he crept up on her and started tickling her, she laughed and screamed and kicked until she fell onto the floor cursing his name and his family and all his descendants until the end of time.

  His end game became clear when he had her pinned down, his body straddling hers, his hands holding hers above her head. She was breathing hard, they both were, and there was a vulnerability to being naked while he was clothed that turned her on.

  She bit her lower lip, and met his eyes. “Do it,” she said. “Take me right here on the floor.”

  He almost laughed, but the humor died soon as he slid down her body, spreading her wide before he hustled out of his jeans, then kissed his way up her body, forcing her legs to stay wide apart despite the way she squirmed, searching for maximum friction.

  And when he’d kissed and teased ever inch of her body—when she was wet and limp and needy—that’s when he positioned himself over her, his cock at her core. “Are you ready?”

  “For you? Always.”

  He took her then. Wild and deep, with his eyes locked on hers the entire time, never looking away even when they both came together in an orgasm that shook the house, and fused him tightly to her heart.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shelby squared the corners of the books stacked on her coffee table, then fluffed the cushions on the couch. She liked the house tidy, and she’d gotten into the habit of spending a few hours every Saturday making sure the place was in shape.

  What she hadn’t done lately was clean out her briefcase, and even though that was a job that made more sense to tackle at work, she’d already conquered the kitchen, the bathroom and the living room, and she was still in the mood to kick some organizational butt.

  Since her house was too tiny for a full-size dining table to spread out on, she moved to the bedroom and dumped the contents of her cherished Louis Vuitton briefcase onto the fluffy white spread. The case had been a present to herself after she passed her CPA exam, and she loved it because it held so much stuff, traveled everywhere with her, and still looked great.

  She was sorting all the papers into piles when she heard footsteps on her front porch and then the sound of a key in the lock. She was just about to abandon her project and go meet Nolan in the living room when she caught sight of the benefit brochure that Frank had pressed on her days ago.

  The cover said only DTRR with a stylized graphic of letters and words in odd shapes and sizes. Since that gave her no clue as to what cause the sponsoring organization supported, she started to flip the pages, wanting at least a little information to throw at Nolan before she asked if he wanted to join her.

  “Hey,” he said, coming into the bedroom and leaning on the dresser about the time that she realized that DTRR was the Dyslexia Training and Resource Room, an organization devoted to helping children with dyslexia.

  “Hey, back.” She glanced up at him, greeting his smile with one of her own before looking back down, more interested in the benefit now that she knew it was for a good cause. “I was just trying to figure out what this benefit Frank has me going to is about. I think I may need a date,” she teased, and was surprised to see that the bright humor in his face had faded.

  “Something the mat—”

  She didn’t finish the question, because while she was speaking, she glanced down at the brochure. And there—on the center spread—was one of Nolan’s publicity shots and the large font announcement that the longtime DTRR supporter would be this year’s keynote speaker at the gala dinner, talking for the first time publicly about his lifetime struggle with dyslexia.

  With a frown, she looked back up at him. “You’re the keynote speaker? The guest of honor?”

  He nodded, and she pushed off the bed, then started to pace. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  She whipped around to face him. He had his arms crossed over his chest, his posture defensive, and for some reason, that irritated her all the more.

  “Don’t play games, Nolan. You didn’t tell me you were headlining a gala benefit. You didn’t invite me to be your date even though we’ve been sleeping together for quite a while now.”

  “Is that what we’re doing? Sleeping together?”

  She ignored him. “And you somehow failed to mention that you’re dyslexic.”

  His jaw tightened. “It didn’t exactly come up in the conversation.”

  Cold anger bubbled inside her. But anger she could handle. It was the hurt that was making her legs shaky and tears gather in her throat. “You kept a huge part of yourself from me. You didn’t let me in at all.”

  Some of the tension left his body, and his expression turned soft and earnest. “It was private. Intensely personal. And not something that’s easy to talk about. I debated for months before I agreed to speak at the benefit.”

  “Intensely personal,” she repeated. “Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to wrap my head around the idea that you turned our sex life into fodder for your show? Or to ask you to tie my wrists when you made love to me? That’s not me—doing it or asking it. But I managed it—hell, I wanted it—because it was you. Because I thought t
hat we were a couple.”

  A tear trickled down the side of her nose, and she brusquely wiped it away.

  “Baby, we are…”

  “Are we? Because it doesn’t feel that way right now. It feels like all I’ve seen is the celebrity. Have you ever shown me the man?”

  “Okay, wait a second,” he said. “That’s harsh.”

  “Is it? You make your whole life public for ratings, but I always thought you held some of it back. That there was a part of you—an intimate part—that you let the people close to you see. And maybe it was my fault for thinking I fell into that group. But I don’t, Nolan. As far as you’re concerned, I’m just another woman in your audience getting the watered-down, sexed-up version of you.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  She blinked, her body tired, her head hurting. “Isn’t it? It feels fair. Hell, it feels like the truth. Because, dammit, Nolan, it hurts. Here,” she said with her hand over her heart. “And I’m not sure how to make it feel better.”

  * * *

  She curled up on the bed after he left, and she was still there hours later when her mom called around dinnertime. “I spoke with Alan,” she said without preamble. “Is it true that you broke up with him?”

  Shelby rubbed her face and forced herself to sit up. She needed blood to be circulating to her brain if she was going to have this conversation with her mother. “A while back, yeah. He’s a great guy,” Shelby said. “But not someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

  She thought of Nolan. Of a guy she could see in her future, and wondered if she’d over-reacted earlier. If maybe the fact that she could see a future with him was making her so terrified of losing him that she was seeing cracks in the relationship where there weren’t any cracks at all.

  “Shelby. You know I’m not going to criticize your choices, but we both know that Alan adored you.”

  “I guess so,” she said. “But I didn’t adore him.”