Torn: (#12 The Beat and The Pulse)

by Amity Cross

  Why did I even bother comparing myself to her? Talk about a psycho. I mean, game on? Who says game on?

  Sighing, I turned my attention back to my own repetitions. The problem with training was the fact my mind wandered. Maybe I should get some earphones and play some music. Give me something else to focus on other than unrequited desire. Well, I wasn’t sure if it was unrequited. Maybe it was just misunderstood desire.

  “Hey. I thought I’d find you here.”

  Looking up, I was surprised to see Hudson lingering beside me. It was a strange sight considering I’d only really seen him at Indigo. That was our place, and without the bar and better lighting, he was a sight for sore eyes.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  “Don’t look so surprised. I go to gyms.”

  I laughed, glad to see him, gym or no gym. “How did you get in?”

  “A customer at the bar comes here. He loaned me his pass.” He leaned closer and winked. “Don’t tell on me, okay?”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.” I looked him over, surprised to see him wearing shorts. I was so used to seeing him in his band tees and skinny jeans that the sight of his legs was a hilarious abnormality.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nice legs.”

  “You’re changing,” he said with a laugh. “I like it.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yeah, when I first met you, you were this shy little thing. Now you’ve got muscles.” He wrapped his fingers around my bicep and squeezed.

  Giggling, I shoved him away.

  “Own it,” he added.

  “Yeah, you know what? I’m kinda badass.” I put down the dumbbells. “So, what are you really doing here?”

  “My membership is almost up at my usual place, and this is just across the street from the bar, so I figured I’d check it out. Convenience is a plus and so is having a mate who works here.”

  “I can’t give you a discount,” I said with a laugh.

  “Dammit.”

  “The rate is pretty competitive,” I offered.

  “I was joking,” he stated with a chuckle, picking up a set of dumbbells from the rack.

  “Oh.” I scratched my head. “I’ve really got to work on that, huh?”

  “Don’t worry kid, you’ll get there.”

  “Smart-arse.” I laughed, forgetting I was at work and Lawson was lurking with Sera dry humping his leg somewhere in the distance.

  Hudson grinned and began lifting his dumbbells of choice. “Who’s that?” he asked, peering into the mirror.

  “Who’s who?”

  He nodded toward the far side of the gym, and I followed his line of sight through the mirror. My heart leaped as I caught sight of Lawson lingering by the weight machines, talking with Simon. The moment my boss walked away, Lawson turned his glare onto Hudson and me.

  “That’s Lawson,” I replied with a shrug.

  “That’s him?” Hudson made a face.

  “I’ve gotten used to those looks,” I added. “It’s his ‘thing.’” I air quoted the word thing.

  “Uh…” he trailed off and looked away, busying himself with his lifting.

  I frowned. “Uh, what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Spit it out, Huddy,” I demanded, rolling my eyes.

  “Okay, okay.” He sighed, then put down the dumbbells and leaned closer. “A guy doesn’t look at someone like that if there’s not anything there.”

  “Like what?” I squeaked, not wanting to get my hopes up. No one had ever looked at me like anything—well, except a mental case—so what did I know?

  “Like he’d die for you.”

  “What?” I shook my head, not wanting to get sucked into the trap of obsession again. Not this time. “That’s stupid.”

  “Why? It’s not a foreign concept.”

  I snorted and made a face. In my world? Yeah, it was.

  Hudson sighed and glanced across the gym. “Amber, don’t sell yourself short.”

  “I’m not selling anything,” I complained. “It’s just… We haven’t really talked much. I don’t see how anyone could die for anyone when all he knows about me is the fact I hate the colour pink.”

  “That’s a pretty specific thing to know about somebody.”

  “Hudson.”

  He grasped my shoulders and shook me gently. “Look, I’m smart enough to know something happened to you in your past. You don’t have to tell me about it, but whatever it was is holding you back from seeing what everyone else does. Stop being so closed off about yourself and just be open.”

  I stared at him, doing my best deer in headlights impersonation. It wasn’t like I wanted to be so closed off. I just didn’t know how to let anyone in. That was a fear thing, right? I hadn’t had any guy interested in more, so experience told me they all wanted one thing.

  Hudson was the exception to the rule. He’d shown me that friendship was the only thing on his mind, and I was grateful.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” he grumbled. “You know I’m right.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I know. I’ve just gotta find the path through the bullshit I’ve conditioned myself with. I’m getting lost more than I thought I would.”

  “You’ll find your way,” Hudson said. “I know you will.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled and turned back to the mirror.

  “You’re welcome.” Hudson met my gaze in the reflection and grinned. “If anything, I think we proved a theory tonight. In T-minus five minutes, too.”

  “What theory?” I frowned.

  “The theory of arm’s length.”

  The next day, I stood in the kitchen at the Phoenix, pulling decorations out of a cardboard box, my mind swirling over the things Hudson had told me.

  Be open. Everyone kept saying it, but I wasn’t sure how it was supposed to go. Did I say yes to more things? Give people the benefit of the doubt? I’d done those things my entire life, but I’d only been hurt in return for my trouble.

  Whatever.

  I laid out a pile of flat, felt flowers and focused on making this place look less like a muscle-bound man cave and more like a fresh field of wildflowers.

  Tomorrow was the first Saturday cooking class. After all the work I’d done to put this thing together, it was finally here.

  There wasn’t enough space for everyone to cook, so it was going to be a demonstration with audience participation. Everyone would have a go at assisting the chef while she cooked a variety of easy meals and snacks. Healthy food for a busy life.

  “What exploded in here?”

  I glanced over my shoulder and scowled. Lawson. I so wasn’t in the mood to talk to him today, especially since his arsehole mode was switched on. Be open? Thanks for the advice, Huddy.

  “It’s a spring theme,” I retorted. “Fresh, easy meal prep for beginners.”

  “Simon okayed this?” Lawson picked up a felt flag that had the word fresh stitched on it and curled his lip.

  “You don’t have to like it—the clients do.”

  “Fair enough.” He leaned against the table and crossed his arms over his chest, signalling he was here for the long haul.

  “Did you need something?” I asked. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

  He shrugged and watched me as I busied my hands with a blue felt daisy. He didn’t say anything, and his silence amped up my annoyance level.

  I narrowed my eyes, the crease in my forehead deepening. “What?”

  “Who was the guy you were with yesterday?”

  I snorted and turned back to the pile of decorations. The kitchen might look like Pinterest and Etsy exploded and coated the wall with their viscera, but the twenty-five women who were due in at nine a.m. would love it and call it kitsch and probably Instagram the hell out of it. The same went for the free sample packs sitting in the office.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Just wondering. Kind of like how you were wondering who I was with.”
<
br />   I tensed, my heart flip-flopping. Hudson’s words echoed in my mind. A guy doesn’t look at someone like that if there’s not anything there.

  “Hudson,” I said carefully. “He’s a friend.”

  “Really? He was a little close, don’t you think?”

  “What’s your game?” I demanded. “Are you trying to hurt me? Is that what this is?”

  Lawson shrugged, his expression giving nothing away.

  Hudson had it all wrong. Lawson wasn’t capable of dying for anyone but himself. Did he want me to hate him? Could he see the way I reacted to… Shit, I couldn’t even admit it to myself in the privacy of my own fucking thoughts.

  “What’s happening here, Amber?” he asked, his voice low.

  “Fucked if I know,” I shot back, my sass-meter running at maximum. “All I’m trying to do is hang up a bunch of felt decorations without the running commentary.”

  “Well, this escalated fast,” he drawled.

  “Maybe you should go work things out with your girlfriend,” I declared, resisting the urge to hurl the box at his head. “She made her ownership of you pretty fucking clear.”

  “We’re not together,” he snarled, pushing off the edge of the table. “No one can own a person. That’s fucked up.”

  I snorted and turned my back on him, busying myself with a string of pennant banners.

  “Simon banned her.”

  I hesitated, my heart skipping a beat before I pinned the end of the banner onto the wall. I rammed the drawing pin into the plaster with my fist, the violent motion extremely satisfying.

  “She won’t bother you again,” Lawson added.

  “Good.”

  “Amber…”

  I let the end of the banner fall to the floor and looked at him. “I don’t understand you.”

  “I don’t get you, either.” His eyes flashed, and I was glad the table separated us.

  “Well, at least we agree on something.”

  “I know I’m messed up,” he said, the statement feeling like the first true thing he’d told me about himself. “But…”

  I waited, but he’d shut down again.

  “Shit, it’s like you have this switch inside you,” I muttered. “I never know if you’re in arsehole mode, or in…” I sighed and shook my head. I’d hoped the motion would clear the fog that had appeared along with Lawson, but it didn’t help at all. I was still confused and majorly turned on.

  Hot, complicated… I could pin all the adjectives I wanted onto his muscled body, but it wouldn’t erase the fact that together, we would be an epic disaster. Probably.

  “Or what?” he asked, rounding the table.

  I froze, his closeness screwing with my impulse control.

  “Or what, Amber?”

  Fuck, the sound of my name on his tongue... My thighs clenched, and I looked up at him. He’d break my heart. I could see it in his eyes.

  My gaze dropped to his lips, and everything began to ache. From the tips of my fingers to my toes and from my nipples to my core, I throbbed.

  “Lawson,” I whispered. It was a plea, a command, a question. Kiss me, or kill me.

  He came alive, his body colliding with mine. I gasped as my back hit the wall and he pinned me in place, his hands burying in my hair. The moment his mouth met mine, I snapped. I broke apart as his tongue dove deep, my clit aching, my breasts pulsing, and my fingers tightened around his T-shirt.

  He forced his thigh between my legs as his lips commanded mine, and I moved, grinding my clit on his leg. What was happening to me? I never… His taste was overwhelming, and his scent was male sweat and spice.

  I was trapped, drowning in pure desire, and I didn’t care. Hold me under.

  Lawson moaned, the sound swallowed by our embrace, and his hips rolled forward. He was hard. His cock was pressing against my lower stomach, a few layers of cotton separating me from taking it in my hand and… The awareness jarred through my body, and I tore my lips from his.

  His fingers tightened in my hair as his mouth brushed against my cheek, over my jaw, and along my neck. Shit, I was a hair’s breadth away from letting him have me on the kitchen table.

  “Lawson,” I whispered, completely breathless.

  He kissed a trail of fire along the curve of my neck, his tongue teasing a path for his lips to follow. I’d never been kissed like this before. Like… Like… Fuck. Lawson kissed me like I was his lifeline, and still, a tiny part of me wanted to ask, why me?

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked huskily, tearing himself away.

  I shrugged. His touch had short-circuited my brain, and I’d lost the ability to speak.

  He smiled, then lowered his lips toward mine. He kissed me again but gentler this time, his tongue teasing the tip of mine. I was like putty in his hands, and the thought began to scare the shit out of me. I needed to be in control.

  “Lawson.”

  “Yeah?” His breath was warm on my skin.

  I gazed into his eyes, the look I saw in them only adding to my fear. I saw desire. Sexual desire. If sex was the only thing he wanted from me, then I couldn’t help him. I wouldn’t fall into the same trap that had led me here in the first place. This life was supposed to be my make or break.

  “Please,” Lawson said, reading my expression. “Give me a chance, Amber. I know I’ve been a dick. I…” He cupped my face in his hands and stroked his thumbs across my cheeks. “Please.”

  All the things Montana and Hudson had been telling me these past months came rushing at me. I couldn’t let in the good without risking the bad, but if I didn’t try…

  “You know how to say please?” I smiled and tugged at the hem of his T-shirt.

  His lips curved upward, and the tension eased in his shoulders. Smoothing his fingers through my hair, he sucked in a deep breath.

  “I finish up at five, but you already know that,” I added.

  He grinned and let me go. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Okay.”

  Lawson backed away, his gaze raking over my body, and then he was gone. He’d left his energy all over the kitchen, and all over me, and I trembled in his wake. That man was a force all unto himself.

  I ran my fingertips over my lips and slumped against the table, my heart beating a million miles an hour. His cock was hard. A man who could have any woman he wanted was hard for me. I seriously needed to go masturbate in the shower to relieve some of the pressure. What was I going to do tonight? Holy shit.

  And just like that, I felt myself falling. Into what, I wasn’t sure.

  12

  Amber

  I stared at the computer screen, the images and words blurring together.

  All day, I’d felt Lawson’s touch all over me. My lips tingled, my body trembled, and between my legs… Well, let’s not go there.

  I didn’t know what to do. This was the part where I stumbled—the bit after the perfect first kiss and where I turned into a stage-five clinger.

  “Hellooo?”

  I blinked, my heart skipping a beat as Simon waved his hand in front of my face. “Huh?”

  “Are you okay?” he asked, looking me over. “You were majorly spaced out just then.”

  “Yeah, I’m…” Think of a good excuse, Amber.

  “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Simon offered, sitting on the edge of the desk.

  There was no way he would know about Lawson and me kissing in the kitchen. Unless he’d been watching, which was a weird thing to think and creepy. Man, I was spacing out. What had Lawson done to my mind? Fried it, that’s what.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said after a moment. “I was just thinking over everything. Seeing if I dotted all my i’s and crossed all my t’s.” Yeah, that.

  “It’s going to be fine,” my boss said, taking the bait. “Everyone knows what they’re doing. Now they’ve just gotta show up and do it. You’ve planned this thing down to the last detail. You can take a break. We’ve got it from here.”

  I smiled, glad things w
ere going great with the cooking classes. I should be proud of my work, but I was far too amped up over my imminent rendezvous with Lawson. Was it a date? Or were we just hanging out? He’d kissed me, so… Ugh, I was overanalysing again.

  Should I tell Simon? Better not. I’d seen Simon rip shreds off Lawson more than once, and I didn’t want to add to any trouble he already seemed to be in. I made a mental note to ask Lawson about it later. If he was open to that level of talking, that was.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I blinked and straightened up. “Yeah. I’m cool. Just tired, I guess. It’s been a busy week.”

  “Okay, well, I’m out of here, and I’ll be back tomorrow to help Grace set up.” He stood and backed away. “She’s promised to show me her set of spatulas.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down.

  “Simon.”

  “Okay, okay.” He waved and disappeared. A second later, he poked his head back through the door. “The kitchen looks amazing, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” It was my turn to wave him away. “Get outta here.”

  I looked at the clock and watched the minute hand move closer to the twelve. Five minutes to five p.m. Four, three, two, one…

  “Hey.”

  I looked at the office door and found Lawson prowling through it. Rising to my feet, my heart started to jackhammer, and my body came alive with electricity. It seriously felt like I’d shoved a knife into a power point.

  “Don’t overthink it,” Lawson murmured, standing before me.

  I nodded and couldn’t help it when my gaze fell to his lips. “So, what do you want to do?”

  “Are you going to train tonight?”

  I felt my eyebrows rise slightly. Training didn’t really give us a chance to sit and talk. Ogle, yes, talk, no.

  “Or we can do something else,” Lawson said, sensing my hesitation.

  “We can go out someplace quiet.”

  “I’m not really dressed for going out,” he said, scratching his head. “I kind of didn’t expect…” he trailed off, his gaze lowering to my mouth. “Amber…”