by Ember Leigh
She wrapped a towel around her torso and headed toward the front of her apartment. On tiptoes to look through the peephole, she saw the side of a man’s face. A flash of recognition seared through her. Good God. It was Josh. He was here. She was naked. He couldn’t come in.
“Hello?”
“Paige. It’s me, Josh. Can I come in?”
She hesitated. “Well I was just getting in the shower…”
“That’s okay, I can wait inside. I won’t look, I promise.”
She paused, struggling to find some infallible excuse as to why he couldn’t come in until seven. “Uh…I would prefer if you didn’t…”
“Why?” He laughed. “I brought us food, so you kinda have to let me in.”
Dammit. Not only would it be excessively rude to keep him out, she was actually hungry and he’d been thoughtful. She sighed and unlatched the door.
Josh beamed back at her with open arms. “Good evening, you sexy thing.” He walked in, gave her a quick hug and continued deeper into the apartment. She shut the door and turned to watch him, curious to see where he’d be going for the first time setting foot in her house. He strolled the front room checking out her wall hangings.
Paige humored him a moment, biting back a smile as he dragged a finger down the side of her oak dining room table. His unexpected presence overshadowed the fact that he’d called her sexy. “How did you get up here? The doorman never lets anyone in.”
“I know, you said so on your show. So I sweet-talked him, said we’ve been dating since Hawaii, and I came to surprise you with Chinese food. He loved it. He’s glad you’re happy, by the way. Said he’s been hoping you’d find a nice man.” He tossed a bright smile over his shoulder.
Her breath shriveled. Her doorman thought she was dating Josh now? This was absurd. She opened her mouth to respond but nothing was waiting.
“Where do you want to eat? The kitchen? Or the bathroom while you shower?”
She narrowed her eyes, finding words again. “What, are you going to feed me pieces while I shampoo?”
He shrugged. “Why not?” His eyes traveled up and down her body, leaving goose bumps in their wake.
Paige, be strong. Be very, very strong at this particular moment.
“What did you bring?”
“Chinese. Just a snack, really. I know this shindig will have food but I was starving. Thought you might like something too.”
“That’s nice of you. As for me, it can wait until I’m done showering. The water is still running.”
She turned to go but he stopped her. “Do you need help or anything?”
The blaze between her legs that had ignited upon his unexpected arrival now roared even stronger.
“With showering?”
A blush crept up to her cheek.
“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” Josh said, voice softer. “But you should know I’m dying to spend any amount of time with you and near you, whenever possible, however possible.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and she wasn’t sure how to respond. The steady hum of the running water beyond was all she could hear. God, she’d love to have him in there with her, would love to run her hands all over his body liked she’d done before. To have those strong arms pick her up, wrap her legs around him, have him pin her against the wall…
He squeezed her hand, interrupting her lightning-fast reverie. “I’m not doing this because you’re naked right now, which, I admit, is a nice element I wasn’t expecting.” He cracked a grin. “This isn’t about sex. It’s mostly because the doorman thinks we’re together and, well, we better act the part.”
When there was no response, he added, “Seriously, Paige, I can’t ignore these thoughts anymore. I’ve spent weeks trying to talk myself out of it.”
Paige struggled to latch onto one cohesive thought in her head. She hated how he uprooted and completely overturned every vestige of coherency within her. She couldn’t stand it—nobody knocked Paige off her game and that’s all he had done since day one.
“I’ve already explained this to you,” she choked out. She’d drifted closer to him, and wasn’t sure who had moved toward who, or if space had shrunk between them due to so many repressed sexual urges.
“You have. At the risk of being a bully, or disgusting, or aggressive, or whatever else you want to call it, I have to try one more time.”
She groaned and snapped her hand away. “What’s the point? It’s fucked up already. You know it and I know it. You blew it. Let’s just pretend it never happened and be work partners and move on.”
Once the words had left her mouth and hung in the open air between them, the echo of them hammered in her skull. Josh’s face fell, and he looked like he’d been slapped.
“Maybe you can move on,” he said. “Or ignore it, or pretend it doesn’t exist, or whatever you do inside your head. But I can’t. You are something else, Paige. I have never met a woman like you in my entire life. I don’t say that lightly. You are a fucking pistol and I want you in my life.”
He paused, swallowing. “I want to make things right, and I want to try at…something. Please give me a chance.” His voice was quieter now, less urgent. “I made a really bad decision before—several of them, actually—but I finally made the right one.”
They’d stepped closer during his words and her chest was a hair’s width away from his. His fingertips trailed up the side of her arm, palm grazing bare shoulder. Shivers erupted everywhere. A million different things tried to escape her mouth, but none could make the leap.
“I understand if you need time to think about it. Or maybe you want time for me to prove it. I know you have a lot of walls you’ve put up, some of them specifically for me.”
“You do know me pretty well, huh?”
“Better than you think. Because you and I are way more similar than you give us credit for.” He squeezed her hip and her knees weakened. “Can I kiss you?”
Her breath caught in her throat. Yes. She searched his face for some visible sign she shouldn’t. Who was she kidding? The kiss needed to happen, and if that’s all she knew for now, so be it.
She leaned into him, his fragrant, musky heat sinking deliciously into her skin, a familiar smell so potent that both relief and fear spread roots in her belly. Josh’s fingertips traced her cheekbones as their lips met, tentatively at first, as though the time apart had made them new lovers.
Their lips connected, and emotions snapped like popcorn throughout the caverns of her body. It was as though no time had passed at all. A frightening, exhilarating sensation. She stumbled backward, lightheaded. He wrapped his arms around the small of her back.
“Careful, now.” His breath grazed the tip of her nose. Her eyes fluttered shut but she forced them open, to stare into the literal face of the situation and figure it out, once and for all.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Surprise registered in his eyes.
“Anytime, babe. I’ve got your back, for now and ever. Because you had mine when I didn’t expect it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You had the balls to stand up to me.”
Their lips were close enough to feel the humid bite of his breath on her tongue. She couldn’t focus on his words.
“You made me think about my life, where I was going, how I was living. Not too many people do that. At least, not when money isn’t in it for them.”
The view of him inches away, looking at his pores, his eyelashes, the flecks of brown in his eyes—things she might never tire of admiring. There was a tiny scar on his upper lip, the unevenness of his hairline, the youthful sparkle in his eyes that she supposed would be there until he was old and gray.
Tears pressed at the back of her throat. Josh was forging into a territory she’d fought to keep tightly controlled, like the perimeter of a prison where any intruder was shot on sight. But somehow he’d made it through and try as she might, she couldn’t remove herself from him.
“I’m happy I could help,”
she said. “I have to say the same about you, though I’m not sure I appreciate the service as much.”
His eyes darkened. The heaviness on her chest spread to her limbs. The ground beneath her thinned and crumbled; suddenly desperate, she wondered where to go next—run into the shower and lather until he disappeared on his own? Flee the apartment and leave Josh by himself here while she roamed the hallways of her building in a towel? She opened her mouth to speak, but clamped it shut.
His curiosity scorched over her but she avoided his gaze. “Paige—”
“I just…” How could she begin to explain? How could she make him understand that it was a choice—a huge, firm, unchangeable choice—to keep this romance bull crap out of her life? Furthermore, how could she explain the fact that it had entered her life and rendered her the most vulnerable, insecure, and unsure she’d been in perhaps her entire existence?
“Talk to me.”
Instead of confusion or hesitancy, she found compassion in his face. Maybe he understood—and whether or not it was true, it pushed the words from the cliff of her lips. “I didn’t want my life to change,” she whispered. “You’ve done nothing but shake things up since I met you.”
A mixture of emotions softened his face. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
She sighed again, unable to continue the train of thought. These were difficult emotions, ones she’d perfected avoiding for many years. She could teach classes on the subject matter—and the fact she’d been able to address it now was huge. She needed to rest her mind.
“Listen, can you help me now?” She locked eyes with him. He’d caught the edgy, playful tone in her voice.
He cracked a grin. “How may I be of service?”
She darted into the bathroom and turned off the shower. In the bedroom, Josh welcomed her back into his arms with one eyebrow raised.
“Kiss me again, like a hundred times.”
His mouth was against hers without hesitation, his hands palmed flat against her low back, urging her nearer. Their mouths connected desperately, sloppily, an unchecked passion tempered with disbelief.
His hand ventured lower, slid hot over the curve of her ass cheek until it was firm in his grip, a handful that stoked the fire between her legs to new heights. God, she’d been desperate for this man and these kisses. Convincing herself otherwise had been a Herculean effort, and one that had ultimately been a miserable failure.
When they broke for air, they looked at each other with wild eyes, chests heaving.
The next words spoken shocked the hell out of Paige, but mostly because they came from her mouth. “Wanna ditch the radio show party?”
The next few moments were a blur—there was gasping, groping, grabbing, and then a not-so-graceful fall onto the bed. Josh was actually beneath her, in her own freaking apartment, his sexiness and heat sinking into her with the weight of all the passions left unexplored throughout her career and adult life.
“You drive me fucking nuts, Paige. Do you know that?”
“I do,” she whispered, “because you make me feel the same way.” Her words spun in circles between her ears, like a funnel of loose bits on the street in a sudden gust of wind.
“I knew it,” he said, grinning wide.
“What do you want, a prize?”
He grabbed her wrists tighter beside his head. “Actually, yes. I want you to give me a chance.”
She clamped her mouth shut, but it was habitual, the automatic email reply of her database. “I was thinking we could just have sex and be done with it.”
What the hell is wrong with you? Hurt slashed across his face, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Either a filter or a time machine would help, anything to avoid seeing that look on his face again.
When she opened her eyes, Josh was ready to say something but she spoke first. “I didn’t mean that.” Something tightened in her chest and began to spread. “I’m sorry, Josh.”
His face softened. “I’m not asking for your hand in marriage or anything, but you need to know I’m not looking at you as a fuck buddy.”
It made too much sense. The man was a genius and beautiful and just the right ratio of tender and firm. After so many years content with the status quo, life sent Josh like a bullet into her thigh, painful enough to topple her, bleed a little and hurt like a bitch, but mild enough to recover completely and reorganize.
She gnawed her lip. “I don’t normally…do this.”
“What? Have sex?”
“Open up.”
His eyes softened, and he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, rubbing the tresses between two fingers as he watched her. He could look into her eyes for the next year, and she’d still want more of it.
“Yeah, believe me, it’s been a chore getting this far.”
She cracked a smile and shifted on top of him, noting the way his cock was still mostly hard between her legs despite the serious tone of their conversation.
“I think you’re the only man who’s ever…gotten this far.”
He lifted a brow. “Oh?”
“You’ve heard the show—I married my job. I sleep with that, not men.”
“So are you cheating right now?”
“Technically, I suppose so.”
“But Paige, maybe it’s time you had a relationship with a human being.”
The comment was a spear in her gut. She squeezed her eyes shut again, wishing for the time machine but for a different reason this time. Where, throughout the years, had she lost contact with basic human emotions, the need for companionship and romance? How had she gotten to this point, to where she could find herself in the same room as her probable soul mate and still scramble to maintain the walls?
“I’m not saying, you know, go meet my parents type relationship,” he added. “But like, a relationship in the sense of two people getting to know each other and spending time together and having something more than…fucking.
“I mean, I know you didn’t want things to change before. Hell, I didn’t either. But look at this—seriously, we can’t deny this. This keeps happening. It’ll keep happening.”
Tears stung her eyes. Something huge churned inside of her—probably all those years of petrified emotions being stirred to life. He was right; she knew it all the way down to the core of her bones and inside the most tender flesh of her muscles. It’s so right. No matter the outcome, she had to try. Just once. Just to see.
“Okay.”
He blinked a few times. “What?”
“I said okay.”
A smile crept across his face, but he didn’t look totally convinced yet. “Do you mean, like, okay you want to have a relationship with a human being?” He paused. “That human being me?”
“Yes. You had a point…a really good point.” She cast her gaze away from his, and in a quieter voice added, “Besides, I’d be lying to you if I said I hadn’t thought about this before.”
He whooped. “What? Can I believe my ears right now? Paige, you’re sober right now, right? You didn’t take any sleeping pills before I came over or anything? I want to make sure this is happening.”
“Enough. That was hard as it is, I don’t need your constant smartass mouth on top of it.”
“Oh, that’s just what you’re gonna get.” He tugged at her towel, and it crumpled around her, leaving her skin goose-bumpy and alert in the cool room. He let out a low whistle, not moving his eyes from the tops of her breasts.
She sat up on top him, grinning as his face made the transition between mostly-collected Josh to a man on the brink of hedonism. He smoothed his hand over her knee, inching it up the warm skin of her thigh, making a languorous trail up to the soft flesh of her hip.
“Am I dreaming?” The words came out softly. He dragged his fingertips over her belly, up to the heavy curve of her right breast and pinched a nipple.
“There’s a chance we both are,” she murmured, gaze on his drifting hand. “But there’s only one way to know if we’re dreaming—we have to have
sex.”
“Fine by me.” He grabbed her at the hips and guided her beside him.
Paige propped herself up on an elbow as he undressed, thrilled and giddy like she was watching her favorite celebrity on television as a girl.
“Don’t ogle me,” he said, feigning displeasure. “I’m not an object, you know.”
“Excuse me.” She covered her eyes. “But know what I’ve seen in my time with you has been burned into my memory.”
“I suppose it’s not easy to forget such a god among men.” He slid out of his pants. “I’ll forgive you this once.”
Clad in underwear only, she couldn’t remove her eyes from the thick bulge in his black boxer briefs. She swallowed, scared to make a noise and somehow find out this was actually a dream.
Maybe she’d fallen into that steam-induced coma in the sauna back on the island, and she’d never even made it back to New York. Maybe she’d desired this moment so intensely with such repression that this was simply a dream occurring in the last moments of her meditation class. Whatever the truth was, fucking would finalize it. They lay there a moment, quiet and observing. He dragged his fingertips over her shoulder and down the side of her arm.
“I think you should know something, Josh,” she said quietly. “I’m agreeing to this…thing, this whatever, because you’re right, this will keep happening.” She gestured at the inches between them, which meant physical space, but also the explosive connection, the irresistible force continually drawing them together despite both attempting otherwise. Despite logic and career and all common sense attempting otherwise.
“Even though that makes me angry—well, made me angry—I’m not dumb. I can’t ignore that there is something here. Whatever it might be. We should see it through. No matter how it ends up.”
He watched her for a moment. The quietness of the room settled around them once more, making her words seem loud and harsh as the moment receded. She wanted to look away, to pick at the comforter, anything to pretend as if this moment weren’t really happening and she hadn’t extracted those thoughts from the depths of her being like coal from a mine, but she kept his gaze.