"When did you first start following me?" I asked, and then promptly frowned. Distracting him did not involve reminding him of why he shouldn't take me to his bed.
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel and he stretched his neck.
"The day you tried a Raspberry Mocha for the first time at Sweet Seduction."
There were so many things to take in from that short sentence. The fact that I tried that drink three weeks ago. The fact that he knew I hadn't tried it before. The fact that he remembered such details. The fact that I couldn't remember feeling that itch between my shoulder blades that day at all. He'd been shadowing me for several days before I cottoned on.
"It was a nice drink, but too sweet," I said, to cover my increased respirations.
He made a soft grunting sound and nodded his head.
"You prefer a Zebra Mocha," he announced, as though my strange drinking fetishes were common knowledge.
"How do you know Gen?" I asked the one question blaring in my mind right now.
His eyes flicked across the car to me. He held my gaze for a second, maybe two, then looked back at the road again.
He didn't answer the question though.
I let a long breath of air out in frustration. Now he had me thinking twice about going to his bed.
"There are things I'm not gonna tell you," Ben suddenly said into the strained silence. "That doesn't mean I don't want you stayin' at my place. In my bed. I'll break some rules for you, red, but not all of 'em."
He didn't trust me. It was what I had only just been thinking; that he shouldn't. That I don't trust him. So, why did it make my chest hurt?
"OK," I said quietly.
Silence reigned for several long seconds.
"No one's ever been to my place before. Not even those I call friends." His statement stunned me and I realised he was trying to give me something, maybe something he considered special, to make me feel better about not getting answers to everything I asked.
My eyes flicked up to his face, it was set in hard angles, his eyes staring steadily out the front of the car.
"You're a strange man, Ben Tamati," I said quietly.
"And you're a curious woman, Abi Merchant." I wasn't sure if he was saying I was too curious for my own good, or if he thought I was curious, as in a puzzle he wanted to solve.
I shook my head and huffed out a laugh. "What you see is what you get, Ben. Just not necessarily what I am."
"See, that there is curious," he shot back, but I heard the smile in his voice.
"Glad I can entertain," I offered, my own smile tipping my lips up at the edges.
Ben laughed, it was deep and resonant. It filled the car. And I decided I liked it very much, probably because the Ben I think he really was, the person he showed the outside world, didn't laugh much at all.
Suddenly I wanted to know more about this man. "What do you do when you're not hanging out in the shadows?" I asked.
"Work out, run, hit the ring."
"Hit the ring?"
"Boxing ring. I keep fit. What about you? When you're not runnin', what do you do?"
"I'm never not running," I said and turned my head to look out the window.
"Never?" he asked, and he sounded genuinely interested to know.
"As soon as I arrive at a new place, I plan my next destination."
"Your escape?" he guessed. I just nodded, still staring out the window. He didn't say anything for a while, I welcomed the silence. Then, "Ever found a spot you wanted to stick around in for longer than just a few months?"
How much did I let him in? How much did I expose myself to this man, who could be my downfall? How much did he need to know, in order to be my giant for just three days? How much did I risk?
Everything.
"Here. Auckland. I like Abi," I said, shifting in my seat to see his reaction. His eyes were on me, I don't know how long they'd been off the road. I didn't scold him, I felt trapped by his gaze, by the way he was trying to see past the disguise, to get right down to the truth. Little did he know, I'd just been more honest with him than I had ever been with anyone since my father.
"You like the tight skirts and stiff hairdo?"
I smiled. "The heels are kind of cool."
"Makes your legs look good," he said gruffly.
"I hate the contacts," I suddenly admitted.
His eyes came back to mine. "Switch the light on, I wanna see."
"You're driving," I pointed out.
"I can multi-task," he replied, nodding towards the overhead light switch.
"I'm not sure I want you to."
"You'll think differently when we get to bed," he shot back, deadpan.
I huffed, but switched the light on as instructed, then leaned over so he wouldn't have to move too far to see. I told myself it was to make his driving safer, but it could have been to feel that heat I'd felt before, when he'd been flush against my breasts.
"Green," he stated, once he'd got a good look. "I'd like to see the blue."
I stayed leant over, almost on top of the centre console, and just looked at his face. His eyes flicked back to the road briefly, then returned to me.
"Well?" he said.
"How did you know they were blue?" I breathed the words out, watching as his eyes dipped down to my lips, then back to the road, and then finally rested again on me.
Then he reached into his back pocket of his jeans, making me return to my side of the car as his body had almost collided with mine, and pulled out a well worn photo. It was of me. When I was eighteen. The day before I left the Compound.
It was my father's.
I sat stunned, staring at the photo, unable to wrap my head around why Ben Tamati, my shadow man, would have that particular one. I wanted to ask, but my mind was frozen, my blood thundering in my veins, my breath stolen. That was my Dad's. He'd taken it, developed it, and shown me. Then he'd placed it in his wallet.
My eyes flicked up from the photo - young Sarah Monaghan with short, spiky, punked platinum blonde hair, almost translucent cream skin, and the palest of baby blue eyes - and landed on Ben. He was alternating his gaze between the road ahead and my face. He also looked concerned, his brow furrowed, his lips pressed in a thin line.
"Did my Dad hire you?" I asked abruptly.
"No," he replied, just as succinctly.
"Then why do you have his photo?"
"It was attached to the file I was given when hired to shadow you."
"Who hired you?"
"Can't say, red."
I sat back in my seat and hugged myself. What did this mean? Was Dad OK? Had he given the photo to whoever hired Ben? Or had the photo been taken from him, and he'd been in no fit state to stop it from happening?
The interior of the car swirled before my eyes. As though I was suddenly in the vortex of a tornado. Everything spinning out of my control. I wanted answers. No, I needed them. And Ben Tamati knew, even if he wasn't saying; doing that holier than thou, not-gonna-tell,-red thing. He knew.
And suddenly, keeping Ben Tamati, my possible enemy, close, had never been as important as it was now.
My hands shook as I reached up to remove the contacts. I felt Ben stiffen at my side. I fumbled in my satchel for the liquid-filled containers to hold them in, and sloshed a little solution on my hand as I did up the first lid.
"You don't have to do this," Ben said softly.
"You've already seen them," I stated in a slightly flat voice. "You might as well see them for real."
"Red," he murmured, but I ignored him, removing the second contact and storing it safely away.
I blinked a few times, savouring the feeling of having nothing between my eyeballs and the air. I'd certainly got used to wearing contact lenses over the years, but nothing beats going bare.
The overhead light was still on, so I took a deep breath in and turned in my seat. My eyes remained staring unseeing at Ben's jeans-clad thigh. After several seconds, his hand came over and his forefinger and thumb cupped
my chin. He gently tugged my head upwards.
I hadn't even realised we'd made it to the city itself and left the motorway. Ben had pulled the car over on the side of an inner city street. We were stationary and there was no need for him to look out the front of the car anymore.
I felt naked and way too exposed.
My eyes closed before my head tipped right back. It's not that I hadn't had identities where contacts were not worn. But there was something very intimate about this moment. In a way, more revealing than any tidbit I'd divulged to Ben to date. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Mine are, nine times out of ten, covered, shuttered. Protected. Ben has only ever seen my eyes when they were artificially green. Sure, he'd seen what they looked like in a five-year-old photo. But he hadn't seen me.
"Open up, red," he urged gently. "There's nothing to be scared of here."
I shook my head, feeling his fingers tighten ever so slightly, in response, on my chin.
Then from nowhere, the soft brush of lips against first one eyelid, then the next. So gentle, it was like a feather, a wash of heat and smooth skin. Tender. Caring. Encouraging. My eyes fluttered open and met the dark chocolate brown of Ben's.
"Beautiful," he breathed against my mouth. "Stunning," he added, his eyes never leaving mine, even as his tongue gently lapped at my bottom lip. "Abi keeps them, yeah?" he whispered huskily, then pressed his lips to mine.
I let him kiss me, I don't know for how long. I even let myself believe that Abi Merchant could wear blue eyes and it wouldn't change a thing. I'd still be disguised, I'd still be hidden. Deep down I knew it was all a lie. Deep down I knew that the more I let Ben Tamati strip me of my defences, the more danger I was in.
But right in that second, as his strong arms wrapped around my frame, with the heat of his body fuelling mine, as his tongue melded with my own, and his scent filled my nose and head, I believed. I believed I was free and I could be me.
For this brief moment in time I let Ben take me flying, my heart happy, my body and my world open. Ben's acceptance of the real me made the rest of my life disappear. The heartache of leaving my father behind. The trial of constantly looking over my shoulder. The pressure of planning my next move. The loneliness of never letting anyone close enough to be a true friend.
Right in the moment that Ben Tamati saw through my pale blue eyes into me, I felt the world burst open, brightness and warmth stream in, and the darkness of the shadows that tormented me, fade away to nothing.
I was as close to me as I had ever been. Not the Sarah Monaghan that I had once been, not the Abi Merchant I was currently playing at being, but the person I really wanted to be. The person I thought I could never be. The person who now, having tasted her, felt her, worn her skin for the briefest of moments, I never wanted to give up again for any reason at all.
I was calling her Abi Monaghan. And I hoped that one day she would truly exist...
...and not just in my dreams.
Chapter 9
And Then I Felt Myself Letting Go
Ben's home was a garage. Well, at least, it looked like a garage from the road. Just a plain black single roller door. No doorway to the side, no slot for mail, the only way in was through that garage style door. The street was quite steep, near the motorway off-ramp, the gradient of the road making the door angled. Either side were shops and the odd loading bay, covered by another garage door. I could see a paint shop, a heat pump sales store, a commercial printers. Everything looked worn and a little dirty. The pathway outside was a utilitarian black asphalt, edged along the gutter by large sized pale grey chipped blocks. The odd bit of grass grew up between bricks, making the whole area look uncared for. It wasn't in a particularly bad area of town, it was just well used. And lacked any greenery, other than weeds sprouting through the cracks on the path.
The motorway was just across the road, hidden from sight by a raised concrete wall. I could make out the green and white reflective signs, further down the street, saying, Cook Street, Port/Helensvillle and Hamilton. I could also hear the cars roaring past, even though the clock on the dashboard read half past three. Auckland never slept.
Ben hit a button on his visor and the door clanked upward, rolling from sight. A simple concrete loading bay became visible in the headlights of the car. Concrete steps, off to the side, led up to the loading area and a doorway at the back. The loading area held the normal contents of a person's garage; tools, rags, oil cans. Very perfunctory. Very male.
He hit the button for the garage door to close again and stepped out of his side of the car. I followed suit and rounded the front bumper, in order to reach the side with the stairs. On closer inspection, the door that led, to what I was hoping was a liveable space, was reinforced steel, with multiple deadlocks. I watched, mesmerised, as he undid the locks and forced the heavy looking door inward. He crossed the threshold first and worked on disarming an alarm system, while I glanced around the first true insight into this man.
I wasn't counting the garage, that was his mask. The face he showed the world. Not who he really was.
To one side was an impressive gym, workbenches, weights, treadmill, boxing bag hanging from a beam in the ceiling. Straight ahead was another set of stairs leading upward. My heart began to ratchet up, the higher up the stairs we went. Ben still hadn't said a word since we arrived. I was thinking that was because, right now, he felt a little exposed too.
The floor we came out on was open and airy, and although decked out in very dark masculine colours; browns, rusty reds, deep forest greens, it was also very nice. A large sectional couch sat in front of a huge plasma TV screen, dark oiled wooden cupboards along one entire wall hid day to day necessities from sight, at a guess. The other end of the room housed a sleek, stainless steel and granite topped bench, two tall stools on this side of the divide. Thin windows edged the upper walls at both ends, there were none on the sides - where the stairs came out and the wooden cupboards stood. The windows were bare, and looked like they could be opened if air flow was needed.
Behind me, above where the stairs were on the floor below, was a small utility or powder room, filling in the corner next to the large TV on the wall. I took a small step and glanced inside. A toilet. I suddenly felt the need to go.
"It's all yours, red," Ben encouraged.
I took the opportunity to alleviate myself, feeling nerves slowly getting the better of me. My face appeared more flushed than usual when I glanced in the mirror above the sink. I took a deep breath in, and then another and another. And finally found the courage to walk back out into Ben's living area, before I could think too much more and change my mind.
Ben was walking toward the kitchen from the one last door, that stood at the end of the room. Probably having refreshed in there as the door had to lead to a full bathroom - the powder room out here just had a toilet and sink - and his bedroom. And because of the latter, I couldn't take my eyes of it. I stood a few feet inside Ben's home and simply stared at that door. It was one thing to dream about a faceless man who smelled like Ben in my bed. It was an entirely different thing to have him stand before me and the door to his bed be right there. Ben stopped halfway across the room, toward the kitchen, and looked back at me.
"It's just a door, red," he said in that low, rough rumble.
"Yeah, I know," I said back, still looking at the door.
"Not gonna bite ya," he added and I just nodded agreement, because my throat and mouth had gone dry.
"The couch is good too," he said, and I picked up a note of amusement in his tone.
"I'm sure it is," I managed to get out in a semi-croak.
"Or the kitchen bench," he added and I closed my eyes briefly and willed myself not to react. "Not so sure about the cupboards, but if you wanna be creative..."
"OK," I said quickly, licking my lips. "It's just a door."
Suddenly Ben burst out laughing, a full body laugh that involves the belly. My eyes flicked to him; a moth drawn to a flame. He had one hand bracin
g on the kitchen bench for support, the other pressed into his stomach. His eyes were closed and his face was set wide in a smile. He looked gorgeous.
I grinned despite my embarrassment. His eyes, filled with laughing tears, came up to my face and he smiled some more, his laugh became more of chuckle and then slowly petered out.
"Come here," he said, with a lift of his chin.
I held his gaze for a few seconds, drawing the moment out. If I went to him it would be crossing the line. Not that coming into his home wasn't a line of sorts, but to go to him now, with that look in his eyes; that hunger that told me what was coming. Well, that was a great big neon flashing line. And I was about to cross it. Who knew if I could ever walk back.
One foot in front of the other. One breath in and out after the other. And before I knew it, I was standing before him. My chest to his chest. My heat mixed with his.
He reached up and behind my head and gently tugged my hair tie out, letting my hair fall about my shoulders. He fingered the shortened strands for a bit, rattling the beads off to the side.
"Will you dye it red again?" he asked, voice so very low.
"Abi Merchant has red hair," I replied and he nodded agreement, still fingering the strands thoughtfully.
"Can't call you red, if your hair isn't," he remarked.
"You've been doing it all night," I pointed out.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Kinda stuck." My lips itched to grin. "Blue eyes, red hair," he commented, still fingering the ends of the strands. "I can see why you chose green."
"You don't think blue would go with red?" I asked, wondering how the conversation had come to this.
His eyes flicked up from the hair in his fingers to mine. "I'm still deciding what's the real you."
I blinked at him. How could he know, if I didn't.
"What you see is what you get," I said, a semi repeat of my earlier statement from tonight.
"Not so sure," he replied, then let his hand slip down my arm until his fingers entwined with mine. One last look in my blue eyes, and he turned and tugged me towards that door.
It was a simple door. One of those boring white internal doors. Nothing to indicate what would be on the other side. Nothing worthy of this moment. I felt like it should have been painted a raunchy red, or maybe surrounded by blinking lights that matched the beat of my heart. But it just stood there, and then when Ben turned the handle it didn't even squeak.
Sweet Seduction Shadow Page 9