Her eyebrows crept up as I let my gaze linger on her lips. I wondered what she thought I was going to say I wanted. Her. A kiss. A night with her alone. Another chance. I wanted all of those things, but I couldn’t make myself say it, not yet.
“The banana split,” I said. “I want the last bite.”
I almost laughed out loud when I saw how much she deflated.
“What?” I asked. “Were you hoping I was going to say something else?”
“Nope. I just wanted that last bite, too.” She was lying out of her teeth, but so was I, so I let it slide. This wasn’t the kind of lying that shook the foundations of a relationship. It was the kind of lying that hid happy secrets.
I scooped it up on my spoon and then leaned forward so I could reach across the table to hold it at her lips. “Open up, intern,” I said.
She gave me a wicked little smile and parted her lips to take the bite. I couldn't help remembering the way her lips had looked just as good when they were wrapped around my cock, and my heart rate quickened at the memory. What was it about dessert that got me so goddamn horny?
“You know,” she said when she swallowed the last of the bite. “They say you know a guy is the one when he gives you the last bite of his favorite meal.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s what they say. But I say you know he’s the one when you want him so badly you’ll embarrass yourself for weeks on end just for the slightest chance of winning him back.”
“Winning me, now, are you? Make no mistake about it, Natasha. You’re the prize here. You always were. The only question was whether the price of taking you for myself was too high or not.”
“So you’re saying you only wanted me if I was cheap?”
“I only wanted you if I thought you wouldn’t make a fool out of me. Over the last few weeks, I think I’ve come to realize I want you either way. Whether you make me into a fool or not. I just want you.”
“That sounded dangerously close to something a sweet, thoughtful man would say. What have you done with the cold, calculating Bruce I know?”
“Maybe I’m only saying nice things so that you’ll go to bed with me.” I felt my own breath catch a little after I had time to digest my own words. Then I felt my heartbeat race when a slow, seductive smile spread across her lips. So much for happy secrets.
“Maybe it’s working. But you made me wait weeks for this little date, I think the least you could do is show me a good time before you try to get me to bed.”
“What, like a date night?” I asked.
“Exactly like a date night.”
“Remind me when the tables turned again? Just yesterday, you were the one waiting outside my apartment, now you’re making demands?”
She pressed her lips together, looked up, and then nodded. “Hmm. Yep. That sounds right.”
17
Natasha
Bruce took me to an abandoned theater near the edge of downtown. From outside, it looked like a huge concrete shell. We walked past the front doors, which were covered by chains, and headed around the side of the building.
“You’re sure we’re allowed to do this?” I asked for the fifth time.
“Stop being a worrier,” he said.
“That means we’re breaking in, doesn’t it? When I asked for a date night I was thinking more like ice skating or ice cream cones.”
“We just had a banana split, and you’re already thinking of ice cream?” he laughed.
“You had a banana split. I think that last bite you gave me might’ve been the only bite I got.”
He stopped and turned to grin at me, and God was he handsome. His hair was neat and pushed away from his face, but the hard, masculine lines of his jaw and fullness of his lips made a perfect fit to the buttoned-up look he wore so well. He just looked like success in his crisp white button-down and navy blue tie. He wore matching blue slacks that fit him deliciously snug around the ass and thighs. I still couldn’t quite believe he was interested in me, even if I had done my best to screw it up.
“Maybe I wanted to make sure you were still hungry for my banana later.”
I gave a wry smile. “If your goal was to get me to bite you down there because I’m ravenously hungry, then you’re on the right track.”
He winced a little. “Point taken. We can include a little ice cream on our date night, as soon as we’re done with the creepy abandoned theater.”
“Right. About that,” I said. “Mind taking me behind the brain of the genius here? Is this just another way to punish me, or is there something I’m missing here?”
“Yeah. This was one of my favorite places when I was a kid. Before they closed it down, at least.”
He yanked on a side door. To my surprise, it opened up. Sections of the ceiling were missing, which let dusty rays of sunlight stream inside to light the rows of cushioned seats and the damaged stage. A patch of the seats in the back corner were overgrown with moss and weeds, but some of the building was surprisingly well preserved.
I looked around at the faded murals on the walls and the shocking amount of decor that was left behind to rot until someone would eventually come to demolish the building.
He wiped off a seat near where we came in and motioned for me to sit. He sat down beside me and kicked up his feet.
“I’m surprised you can stand it in here,” I said. “I’d think it would trigger all your compulsive need to organize and clean.”
“Dirty things never really bothered me too much. I just like everything to be in order.”
“You said this was your favorite place when you were a kid? I’m not sure I can picture you enjoying plays. No offense.”
“None taken. I enjoyed it because we could never afford to see a show. My parents would use that door over there during intermission and we’d sneak in to watch the second half of the performance. Never the first half. I always enjoyed trying to piece together what had happened before. It was like a mystery.
“In some convoluted way,” he continued. “I think the experience was part of the basis for my marketing philosophy. So many marketers want to tell you what a product can do. And me? I’ve always thought it was more effective to trick people into imagining what the product can do. The things we make up are so much better than the truth. I learned that here.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I feel like you’re trying to send me some deeply coded message and…” I waved a hand over the top of my head. “Woosh.”
He smiled down at his lap in a rare moment of vulnerability. “No deep messages. I just thought of this place when I tried to figure out where to take you. It was always important to me, and it feels like a piece of who I am, I guess. I wanted you to see that.”
I sucked my lower lip into my mouth and smiled. “I like that you wanted to bring me here.” I leaned over to him and planted a kiss on his lips. He seemed surprised, but that didn’t stop him from threading his fingers through my hair and kissing me back in a way that made me curl my toes.
I pulled back. “What if we go somewhere important to me next?”
“I’d like that.”
We sat on a bench in the subway while people waited for the next train. Bruce gave me a curious look when he saw I was wanting to sit instead of taking a train to go somewhere.
“Here?” he asked.
“What? You’re the only one who gets to have some kind of edgy special place?”
He laughed. “No. Though I wasn’t trying to be edgy.”
I gave a crooked smile. “Yeah. Me neither. This was just where I fell in love with New York City. My parents always lived in New York, but not in the city. We’d come every couple years for a daycation, but never more than that, because the crowds always stressed my parents.
“One year, I got separated from them while we were taking the subway. They didn’t realize I wasn’t watching them and they got off the train without me. I ended up getting off once I realized they were gone and this was where I waited. It was before cell p
hones were so common, and they had no way to get in touch with me. I think they spent like eight hours trying to find me, and I just sat here the whole time.
"I remember watching everyone coming and going. I spent forever playing the game of guessing what they did for a living and what their lives were like. That was when I decided I wanted to be a reporter and that I wanted to do it while living here. It felt exotic and exciting. Like something out of a movie. Of course, ten-year-old me didn't know that a closet in New York City cost as much to rent as a four-bedroom house just about anywhere else. Still, I'm going to miss it here if I have to leave."
“Why would you need to leave?” he asked.
“Well, the money you gave me helped, but right now I’m waiting tables at night and trying to find another job during the day. After I make my morning visit outside your apartment, that is,” I added with a growing heat in my cheeks. I still couldn’t believe I’d taken my brother’s advice on that, of all people, but he had been right to some extent. Whether Bruce was going to forgive me or not, it had felt good to make some kind of grand gesture of apology, like a kind of penance.
“Let me take a wild guess. I’m not allowed to give you enough money to help you stay?”
“Correct. Being a charity case never factored into my dream of making it in New York City. It’s a prize I want to earn for myself, even if I do appreciate the offer.”
He nodded, like he already knew as much.
“I know you paid some of my rent, by the way,” I said.
He gave me a grudging nod.
“It was really sweet of you. It doesn’t matter if my rent is probably pocket change to you. You were considerate when you thought I wasn’t paying attention, even when you supposedly hated me and wanted me to quit.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell my brother. He’ll never let me hear the end of it if he figures out he was right all along.”
Our night ended at a rooftop restaurant. String lights were strapped to the balconies and dangling overhead while heating lamps kept most of the chill out of the air. Bruce wouldn’t admit it, but I was fairly sure he somehow managed to buy out the entire roof’s seating, because we were completely alone while the interior section of the restaurant was packed.
The waiter came to take our drink orders, and I tried to order water because I knew there was no way I could afford anything here.
“She’ll take your best wine,” said Bruce. He held up a hand to stop my protest before I could mouth a word of it. “The most expensive, delicious thing you can find,” he added with a grin.
“Is there a word for someone who’s nice but is an asshole about it?” I asked once the waiter had left.
“A nicehole?” suggested Bruce.
“Yes. You’re a nicehole.”
“Well, you can be stubborn about not accepting handouts, but I’m old-fashioned. You come on a date with me, and I get to pay. It makes me happy to do it, so I won’t accept any complaints.”
I could’ve definitely felt guilty for accepting the offer if he had proposed it any differently, but Bruce had a way of making me feel like he really did enjoy treating me to the meal. It didn’t feel like a handout. It just felt kind.
“Well, thank you, even if you’re an ass about it, you’re a nice ass.”
“Did you just say I have a nice ass?” he asked.
“I actually never got a clear look at it when I had you naked, so I’m not positive yet. Why do you think I tried so hard to get you to forgive me?”
He barked a laugh. His smiles came so much easier now than when we first met, and I found myself wanting more of them every time I saw how good they looked on him. “It makes more sense now. First I thought you were after my money. Then my career. Now I realize you just wanted my ass the whole time.”
“Precisely,” I said.
The waiter came with a large, fluted glass the size of a vase and started uncorking and pouring the wine into it. The fluted tip of the glass made the wine spread evenly across the mouth of the bottle and cover almost the entirety of the glass as it filtered down to the bottom.
“Why is he pouring it into that thing?” I asked, quietly leaning forward so the waiter wouldn’t hear my question.
“It’s a decanter,” explained Bruce. “It’s how you know you ordered a fancy wine. Supposedly it helps with the taste. Something about aerating the wine. Bubbles and all that. To tell the truth, it all tastes the same to me. I’d usually prefer lemon water, but sometimes, when you’re trying to get a girl into bed, you have to bring out the decanter.”
“Is that right?” I asked.
“Definitely.”
“And is that something you regularly do? Try to get girls into bed?”
The smile on his face melted away. “No. Not for a long time now, to tell the truth. I wasn’t lying when I said I pride myself on only making mistakes one time. Valerie taught me how big a mistake it could be to give any part of myself to a woman. After her, I just kind of stopped. William would occasionally try to play wingman and set me up with somebody, but it never went anywhere. I felt too cold and distant, like the real me was watching and controlling my body from far away.”
“Sex robot,” I said. “Minus the sex, I guess.”
“Yeah, like a robot. And definitely minus the sex part. Until you, at least.”
“What about after me?” I asked. It was a nosy, needy question, and I hated that I felt compelled to ask, but it came out before I could stop it.
“After you? There was you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So you used me as a rebound girl for… me?”
“As of today, yes. You could say that.”
“Hmm. I approve of that. If you’re going to bang anyone to forget about me, I guess you couldn’t do much better than me.”
“So the whole ‘banging’ thing is confirmed then, is it?”
“You did bring out the decanter.”
He eyed the decanter. “Yes I did. Hopefully this is the kind of expensive wine that costs a lot of money because it tastes good and not because some collector somewhere would blow his load to know how old it is and what vineyard it came from.”
“I can see how that would be a common problem with ultra-expensive wines.”
“It really is.”
“So,” I asked. “Is this a fish eggs and snail eyes kind of place, or do they have food I’d recognize?”
“It’s the kind of place that probably puts an entire stick of butter in every step of the cooking process, but can make a bite of broccoli taste like heaven. Order this,” he said, tapping a menu item I could barely read, let alone pronounce. “It’s just a fancy word for super expensive steak that tastes really good.”
“I'll trust you on that.”
Whether I could pronounce it or not, the steak was so good I actually wondered for a moment if whatever the rest of the night had in store could possibly top it. It was that good. I’d spent weeks waking up in a hot sweat after dreaming about the things I wished I’d done with Bruce when I had the chance and now? I was pretty sure I’d be dreaming about vegan cows who lived a pampered lifestyle and probably got facials in the morning to make sure their meat was so tender it melted like butter in your mouth.
“I’m sure this cow had a great personality,” I said once I swallowed a bite of the steak. “But wow. If you taste this good, there’s no way you’re not going to end up getting eaten.”
“Maybe they died of natural causes,” said Bruce.
“Or at the very least, I hope they got to watch Pride and Prejudice and Terminator 2.”
Bruce screwed up his face and then laughed. “Uh, that’s a pretty strange combination.”
“Sometimes you’re in the mood to gush and sometimes you’re in the mood to watch someone get their ass handed to them. I think these cows deserved to have the best of both of those worlds before they died.”
“I’m sorry to say it, but something tells me they died without ever seeing either movie.”
I sighed
, then took another bite and couldn't help making a soft moaning noise of enjoyment. "Well then I'm going to just have to settle for enjoying this and not thinking about it." I took a sip of the wine, which, by my amateur opinion, must've been the expensive kind that was expensive because it tasted good. "At least I don't have to feel bad about the grapes that died to make this taste so amazing."
“Cheers to that,” he said, eyes twinkling as he raised his glass and gently tapped mine. I liked the way he looked at me. I could get addicted to it, in fact. It was the way men were supposed to look at women they cared about, but it was more than that. Yes, there was the almost adoring glint in his eyes, but there was something fun and dirty there, too. I could feel his want practically radiating across the table.
I didn’t know if it was the wine or the food or the atmosphere. Maybe it was just Bruce. Whatever it was, a pleasant heat was swirling around in my lower stomach, and I was pretty sure my body was sending me about as clear a signal as a body can send with one message: Sleep with him.
There was only one hangup. One little checkbox that still didn’t have a green mark through it.
“Bruce,” I said quietly. “I need you to know that once I got to know you, I was never going to go through with writing the story.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“No,” I said firmly. “It does. I may not have been planning to write the story, but I let the lie go on way longer than I should have. I should’ve told you the moment I knew I liked you, but I was scared the ride would come to a stop. The security guards would come out and drag me out of the theme park, kicking and screaming, and I’d spend the rest of my life wishing I could’ve stayed even another minute.”
One of his eyebrows flicked up. “Unfortunately, we never technically got to the whole ‘riding’ part,” he said.
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