by Reiss, CD
“I’ll change it. You go to bed.”
She didn’t move. “I wonder if there’s a way to get it down the drain. Reroute it to the tub, or whatever.”
“There’s too much debris. It’ll clog the lines.”
The debris had lessened significantly, but my point stood.
“Hm.” Her hip shot to one side as if she were settling into the problem. “It’s just that I saw this fountain in Selena Houston’s place. It was like an umbrella here.” She raised her hand, cupped upward. “And the fountain part? The bowl or whatever? All the way over here.” She made a bowl of her other hand. “And the water came from, like, there, landed in the umbrella thing, and flowed into the fountain.”
“Hm,” I said, my posture of nude seriousness now mirroring hers.
“So, you have an umbrella, but I think the junk in this water might clog it.”
“We could use one of the window screens over the drain.”
“I like that.”
“It’s not permanent,” I said.
“Just for tonight.”
“Just for tonight.”
* * *
Once we agreed to set up the temporary fix, everything happened quickly and took a long fucking time. She snapped up a towel, dried off, and went to get dressed. I did the same. We met in the kitchen, where I’d left a shitstorm of broken glass and porcelain on the floor.
I eyed her feet, which I expected to find in shoes inappropriate for the shards, much less the rain outside.
“Where did you get those?” I pointed at the blue Wellies she’d jammed her yellow jeans into. “They’re my mother’s.”
“They were in the mud room. Will she mind?”
“No. It’s fine.”
“Let’s go, then!”
She seemed eager to work, not put-upon at all, and though we had to get moving before the water soaked out into the bedrooms, I also didn’t know if I was asking too much from her.
“I can do this myself if you want to sleep on the couch.”
She rolled her eyes like an adolescent and slid open the back door.
* * *
In all of the previous night’s chaos, I’d forgotten to shut the living room curtains, so I woke on the couch to the golden warmth of the morning sun on my face, and the first thing I thought with my eyes still closed was that it was yellow, and yellow was the most elevating color.
God, I must have been sleeping like a dead man to think that.
Amanda and I had been up late, fashioning the umbrella into a leak diverter. So late, in fact, that we could have just gone to bed in the first place and woken up early to fix the ceiling.
But working with her had been—in its way—fun.
She was helpful and competent. She listened. She offered suggestions. She remembered every single thing she’d seen around the house and in the garage— not qualities I ever assumed she’d have.
When the leak water was properly diverted to the screen-filtered tub, we’d cleaned up the kitchen, and I fucked her from behind against the counter, denying her an orgasm until the casserole dish was spotless.
Eyes still closed against the morning sun, I remembered her looking over her shoulder when I pushed my thumb into her ass—the tremulous, open expression that told me she could take the thumb but no more and how it felt to know I didn’t have time to fuck her ass like I’d promised.
Nothing I could do about that.
Except, her gasp when I pushed my cock into her for the first time, how it had felt to have her at my mercy at last, tied up and obedient. She’d do it all again when I tied her down again and took her ass the way I should have last night after we crawled on the couch and did it one last time under the fur blankets.
She wasn’t gone yet. I could still own her everywhere.
I opened my eyes.
Everyone looks innocent and helpless when they sleep, but that didn’t change the pain and fury I felt when I remembered what awaited her at home. The last man in her life had made her so unwelcome that she was determined to become steely and cold to survive.
I could be hard-edged, but if I was cruel to women, it was part of an agreement; ultimately, the point was our mutual, physical pleasure. Renaldo had been sadistic for his own satisfaction, and she didn’t deserve a single moment of the suffering he’d caused her.
Now her curls were splayed across the pillow, and the soft curve of her lower lip was chased with sunlit gold. Her body was warm and soft next to mine. It felt as right to have her here as it had to fuck her on the kitchen table last night.
The rightness was new. I hadn’t felt it with Veronica or anyone since. Not like this.
It was Amanda Bettencourt’s. She owned it, and it scared the fuck out of me.
She had to leave and take the rightness with her.
But later. We had a few hours.
She was turned on her side, the hand she’d burned last night on top of the fur blanket. She’d worn gloves when we worked in the bathroom, and the dishwater had been cool. I examined the blistered skin. It looked good, but I was going to tend the burns anyway. It was an awkward spot for a Band-Aid, but a ten percent chance of infection was still too high.
She stirred slightly, so I put her hand down again and slipped off the couch.
Hadn’t the plan all along been to bring her to a series of rude awakenings? And yet I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her.
Outside, the rainstorms had cleared the air, and the sky was a brilliant, crystalline blue. I got dressed and checked our upside-down-umbrella-and-pool-noodle contraption. It wasn’t bad.
I climbed up to the roof and found another possible spot for the leak and sealed it. It was too small to account for a puddle heavy enough to break the ceiling unless there were a hundred just like it.
The house needed a new roof. Obviously. But it had to get past the rainstorms first.
The ceiling in the room Amanda had been sleeping in could fall in as well, so it was a good thing she was leaving.
Unless she stayed in bed with me.
Fucking her was clearly messing with my head. She had to go. There was no more time for messing around and playing secretary. It was time to deal with my adult life like a man.
I climbed down from the roof. I’d surprise her with coffee on the couch, fuck her ass so gently she’d beg for it again. Refuse. Send her on her way.
But when I walked in, the pile of blankets was empty. Amanda was in her room—the typewriter room, because it was never really hers—packing.
“Morning,” I said, then didn’t say anything else because there was nothing else to say. I’d told her she had to leave, and for once, here she was—doing as she’d been told.
Leaving.
My dick was disappointed, except it wasn’t my dick.
“I was going to make coffee,” I offered.
“I made it already,” she said, rolling up a mustard something and stuffing it into her bag.
A drop plinked into the bucket. The leak had slowed in some kind of deference to the bigger problem in the bathroom.
“I’m sorry I can’t stay to fix the whole thing.” She heaved a sigh, looking up at the same spot I was. She didn’t linger close to me, and I wasn’t sure if I was glad or annoyed.
“I can’t even fix the whole thing.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “thanks for last night. Always good to get a rebound in sooner rather than later.” The smile she offered me was polite, and despite everything I’d thought and said holding her in my arms, I couldn’t read more into it than the flat, unlayered truth.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Goodbye, Amanda.”
She rolled her eyes at my use of her name, but she didn’t say anything, just snapped her suitcase closed and started toward the door. Then she stopped, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was because I was blocking her way.
I stepped aside, watching her awkwardly navigate her suitcase with her left hand.
“Let me help you,” I said.
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“No,” she snapped, then softened. “Thanks. I have it.”
How was this possible?
We were a puzzle with a piece missing, and she didn’t even want to check under the table or between the cushions. She was going to leave this unfinished, with me here, on the floor next to the chair leg, because I was the missing piece, panicking at the thought of being left behind.
I hadn’t panicked about that in a long time.
“We should bandage that burn. Before you go.”
“It’s fine.”
She’d already refused help, but I took her bag off her shoulder anyway. “You’re going to break a blister on the steering wheel.” I sounded sterner than I felt. “Then it’ll be infected.”
She gave in.
The first aid kit was in the mud room. I bandaged her hand as if she had third-degree burns, not second-degree blisters without even a red ring around them anymore. They’d be gone by nightfall, but as long as she was in this house, her hand was mine.
She leaned silently against the cabinet while I worked, watching me with those big, soft green eyes.
“You sure you don’t want breakfast before you go?” I asked. “The food between here and LA is crap. Trust me, I’ve spent years trying to find something decent—there’s nothing. Anyway, you already have to lie to Logan about enough. At least you can tell him I was hospitable while you were here.”
I didn’t realize I’d been hoping for her to smirk when I said hospitable, give me some little innuendo we could build on, until she didn’t.
So, I made her toast and eggs and watched while she ate them.
I was about to offer to make her lunch for the road—the food along the Cabrillo really was dogshit—when she pushed her plate away and stood firmly. “All right. I really have to go if I want to beat traffic.”
“I’ll help you carry your bag.”
“I’ll be all right.”
Just take the bag.
I almost did. When she snapped open the telescoping handle, I was in arm’s reach. I was in charge here, and if I decided to help her with her things, that was my decision to make. Period.
“Drive safely,” I said.
“I will.”
“It’s going to start raining again this afternoon.”
“I’ll be home by then.”
The wheels of the suitcase rattled on the floor, then whooshed on the rug. She stopped at the front door, and I rushed to open it for her as if I’d gotten confused between the idea of making her stay and the idea of helping her out. My hand just lay on the doorknob like a movie my brain had paused.
“Don’t make any stops. You know how they drive when it rains.”
She laid her hand on my forearm, not to move it off the knob or hurry it up, but to convey a kind of sincerity I wasn’t offering her. “Thank you. Again. For everything. For letting me stay. For last night. And especially…” Her eyes scanned the house, then she squeezed my arm. “Thanks for kicking me out.”
I’m not kicking you out.
The sentence stopped in my throat, right behind the first one.
Please stay.
But she wasn’t looking for permission to give me her body.
She wasn’t looking for permission to stay or go.
She knew what she wanted to do, and she wanted to leave.
I opened the door for her. She smiled and kissed my cheek. I was an awkward teenager again in the months before our game of hoodat. Long before Veronica and her instruction, I was a man who wanted more and didn’t know how to get it.
She left, and I closed the door.
The door click felt like a slam echoing in the hollows of my chest. The house was silent for the first time in days—no plink of rain outside or plunk of the leak in Amanda’s room, no sound of her typing or clattering around the kitchen. Just me and this half-broken space and the tapes full of memories I couldn’t bear to relive but had to.
Alone with myself and a miserable sense of ache and loss, I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that I’d made a mistake, given up too soon.
And after all, hadn’t I? When I’d said she had to leave today, I hadn’t necessarily meant this morning. We could get another twelve hours in before getting too attached. I still had a few things I wanted to do to her, and I just… I wasn’t…
Before I could stop myself, I ran out the door after her, jogged down the hill, following the path of her footsteps, cursing myself, praying I wasn’t too late.
Her car was where we’d left it a few days ago, when she had gotten down on her knees and begged me to let her stay. Now the wipers were on and she was sitting in the driver’s seat, hands on the steering wheel, her bandaged palm wrapped tightly around the leather. She must have heard me skidding along the stones and looked up.
Behind her windshield, I saw her mouth shape my name. “Dante?”
I stood there, looking at her through the heavy, misted air, and found myself unable to speak.
I couldn’t tell her I’d changed my mind. We’d made a deal, and she’d stuck to the terms. What would she think of me if I tried to change them at the last minute? That wasn’t fair, and even when I’d decided to be a dick to her, I’d never wanted to trick her into anything.
I couldn’t ask her to stay. And yet, I had to.
She opened the window and eyed me warily.
From outside my body, I heard myself say, “I need a favor.”
“Oh?”
“I just realized. There’s a crawlspace between the ceiling and the roof. I won’t fit up there, but you will.”
She looked uncertain, and who could blame her? In my eagerness to spit out my excuse, I’d skipped steps.
“I just need you to take pictures of the damage,” I said. “And to figure out what direction the leak is coming from. Then I’ll call a roofer with a full scope of work.”
“Don’t they make their own?”
“It’s my work. I decide the scope.”
“That’s really controlling, even for you.”
I had to get her back on the subject before she talked me out of my own reasoning. “It won’t take too long. You’ll be back before the rain starts again.”
She smirked, probably deciding between asking why she suddenly had enough time to check the crawlspace when—not five minutes before—she didn’t have a moment to make a pit stop between Cambria and Los Angeles.
Or maybe I wasn’t regulating my expression enough and she saw right through me.
“What do I get for doing you this favor?”
She was being transactional, but I appreciated having something to haggle over.
“I’ll fuck you again,” I growled, my voice a rumbling surprise even to me.
She raised one eyebrow, a perfectly arched question mark. Didn’t we do that already?
“This time,” I said, “you get to make the rules.”
“What if I want you to beg?”
She didn’t, and we both knew it.
“I’m not going to sub for you,” I said. “But you get to set the scene. Tell me how you want it. Since I’ll owe you one, I’ll fuck you however you want.”
Her smile was as blinding as the sunshine-lemon daymare of her jacket. “Deal.”
Chapter 20
MANDY
Dante Crowne was going to give it to me however I wanted. Everything was looking a whole hell of a lot better than it had on my way up to Cambria.
“Well?” I said when I was right in front of him. “Go. What are you waiting for?”
“Don’t you need your suitcase?”
I looked back at my car. The clear sideways B on my windshield was getting dotted with drizzle. “For what?”
He gave his head a quick shake, as if loosening something that was stuck. “Nothing.”
I followed him up the stone path to the house for the second time.
Good sex was just good sex, but the way our bodies had moved together last night, it had been hard not to feel as if something else was going on th
ere, something primal and undeniable and big enough to scare the shit out of me. Couture Mandy was getting what she wanted, but Discount Mandy was screaming to get out. I couldn’t risk letting my feelings get the better of me when my plans were starting to work out for the first time in forever.
Once we were inside, Dante closed the door behind us, and I had to laugh. Just ten minutes ago, I’d been steeling myself against a final goodbye, trying to look forward to Los Angeles and seeing Ella again. Now I was back. This place wasn’t my thing. It was too orderly and too rickety. It was unbecoming and unwelcoming, and yet I was developing an unreasonable crush on it.
That was when I realized what I’d signed up for. A trip to a small dark place that was probably full of multilegged creatures with stingers.
“What happened?” Dante asked, obviously concerned. “You look like someone just drained the blood out of you.”
“I’m sure there are spiders. Not that I’m scared of them,” I lied. “But are there are any super-poisonous kinds I should avoid?”
He laughed. “Nothing exotic. It’s the same as LA. I promise.”
Great. Same as LA was not the same as cuddly little mosquito-eating spiders.
What he didn’t know was that as a teenager, I’d spent weekends with Ella and Millie combing gross thrift stores for old designer clothes to alter and redesign for fun. We’d gotten tight with the manager at the Goodwill on Broadway, and he let us see the super-old shit in the basement. It wasn’t dark, and I wasn’t alone, so I didn’t have the sense to be scared until I was deep in the bottom of a box and I saw all these little brown spiders getting out of the way of the light and air. One fell out of a pant leg.
Millie looked over my shoulder, identified them as a recluse species called laeta, which had a bite that literally made your skin fall off, just as Ella told her to watch out for another one, and that was it. Millie noped out, and Ella and I were right behind. I left two vintage Chanel jackets and a leather Brando behind.
I decided to do it anyway because Couture Mandy did New and Exciting Things even if she was scared.