“Kate.” Just a single syllable, but I can hear so much in it. He turns away from the window and rests his back against the glass, his face hanging, as if he is a child being punished.
“Tell me Trey.” I wait. “I need to know.” I have to know how bad it is. He won’t lie to me. He won’t sugarcoat it.
“I enjoy pleasing women.” His eyes lift and meet mine. “So that’s what I do. With my hands and my mouth, and my cock. Sometimes the guy joins in, sometimes he doesn’t.”
“’Joins in.’ Define it.” My mouth is cottony. I swallow. It doesn’t help.
“Sometimes double-penetration. Sometimes she sucks him while I fuck her. Or she jacks us both off at the same time.”
“But you’re not gay.”
“No.” He holds my eyes. “I’m definitely not gay.”
Little difference that makes right now. I want to close my eyes, to look away, to yank at my hair and scream at him. I don’t. I wait, and it’s almost painful to do so.
“The woman is always the focus. That’s the extent of my interaction with the men.”
“Oh, that’s it?” I laugh, a hard hack of a sound, one I’ve never heard from myself before, one that I instantly hate. His eyes harden, but he says nothing.
In that silence, I almost hear our future crackle and burn.
Chapter 38
HIM
I’ve lost her. I can see it in her eyes, in the tremble of her voice, in the questions that she asks. Maybe I should have lied. Maybe I should have muted the truth. Maybe then, she wouldn’t be looking at me as if I am a monster, as if we don’t have years between us, as if she doesn’t love me at all.
I can’t be surprised, not after that conversation so long ago, over beers and burgers, the disgusted look on her face when she told me about the threesome that her boyfriend had tried to have.
“Just because you don’t understand it,” I say, “don’t judge me for it. We are all aroused in different ways. This is something I’ve done, something I liked.”
She looks down, as if searching for a response. When she finally lifts her head, she blinks quickly, her face growing red. This stupid thing of mine is bringing her to tears. “You should have told me,” she says tightly. “This changes everything between us.”
The words are a hammer to the center of my chest. In them, there is everything that we’ve never said aloud, never put anywhere close to words. Is there an “us”? Us is more than I’ve ever hoped for. Between the risk to the company, and my sexual past, I’ve spent years avoiding any thought of Us. I always understood that we would, at some point, come to this. Her glaring at me, distrust thick in her eyes. Her flinching when I reach out to touch her.
Us. In a way, the word is almost freeing. The crack of the protective wall. Our rules gone, the battlefield wide open. “Us?” I tilt my head at her. “What us?” I step forward, ignoring her start, the way she peels away from me. “There is no us.”
“You know what I mean,” she whispers. “Our friendship.”
“No, I don’t think that’s what you meant.” I watch her mouth, the nervous way she licks her lips, her eyes darting from my mouth to my eyes. She’s done it a hundred times before, the tensing for my kiss, the kiss that I have never delivered, but this time it is all wrong. It isn’t breathless or hopeful. It is panicked and frustrated. It is … I straighten, stepping back, away from her. It is filled with disgust.
Incredible how quickly a world can change. How my entire person, our friendship, can be reduced to nothing, with just one confession. I’ve worried for years about her judging me for this. And now that it’s happening, I’m as disappointed in her as I am mad at myself.
Is this who I fell in love with? A woman who would toss me aside so easily? Is she that judgmental, that close-minded? She isn’t even asking the right questions. She isn’t even giving me, giving us, a chance.
I turn away, my words tight and controlled when I allow them out.
“I love you, Kate. I am in love with you. I’m sorry that you don’t like this. Or that you don’t understand it. But it doesn’t change who I am.”
Her words stop me, their edges as sharp as broken glass. “Don’t do that. Don’t use those words right now, as you are walking away, you fucking coward.”
I turn and regard her. My beautiful woman, the smartest woman I’ve ever known, the only person on Earth with the capacity to hurt me like this. “You’re right, I should have told you a long time ago. But that wouldn’t have changed this.”
She swallows, her eyes wet, and says nothing. And this time, when I turn and walk away, she doesn’t say anything to stop me.
I step into my bedroom and shut the door with a trembling hand. When she leaves, slamming the front door behind her, I can almost feel the vibration in my soul.
Chapter 39
HER
We’ve fought before. We’ve screamed, we’ve sworn, we’ve said things that neither of us meant. But it’s never been like this. It’s never been this somber, this quiet. When he looks at me, all I see is sadness and disappointment in his eyes. When I look at him, all I can hear are his words.
Sometimes they just like to watch.
It doesn’t change who I am.
He walks by, and I wait for him to turn his head, to glance in my office, but he doesn’t.
* * *
“Harrods placed a new order.”
“I saw it in your email this morning. It looks good.”
“Trey, it’s better than good. It’s twice what they sold last month.”
“I can do the math. I’m happy about it. Do you want a fucking gold star?”
“Don’t be an asshole about it. I just thought it was worth mentioning.”
“Is there anything else we need to discuss?”
Yeah. This. Us. Why we’re suddenly strangers. I swallow. “No. That’s it.”
He stands, leaving his chair out, and pushes through the conference room door.
I don’t understand why he is mad at me. I’m the one who is supposed to be mad, I’m the one who has been lied to for almost three years. I’m the one who fell in love with an unattainable man. I’m the one whose heart is breaking.
Part of me believes that. Part of me feels that I’m being a bitch right now.
* * *
Me: I’m sorry. I’m sorry for judging you.
Trey: I’m not accepting your apology via text. That’s beneath us.
Me: well I’m not accepting your lack of apology at all.
Trey: that doesn’t even make sense.
Me: you know what I mean.
Trey: come over.
Come over. It’s been eight days since I walked out of his house. I stare at the phone for a long moment, then stand up and grab my purse.
Fifteen minutes later, when he opens his front door, I launch myself into his arms.
His chest is stiff, his body wooden, and I wrap my arms him, hugging my face to his chest, willing his stance to soften, his arms to move. When they do, when one hand settles gently on my hair, his other on my back, I almost cry in relief. He exhales, his breath warm against my neck, and he squeezes me tightly. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Me too.” He pulls me inside and shuts the door.
* * *
It’s barely cold enough outside, but he still builds a fire, and I make hot chocolate. We both finish and sit on the couch, our shoulders touching as we watch the fire. Trey peers into his coffee cup. “No marshmallows?”
“You were out.” I rest my head on his shoulder. “I don’t ever want to fight like that again.”
“Deal.” He holds out his mug and I clink my own against it. There is a moment of silence, his body shifting on the couch, before he speaks. “Talk to me.”
“What do you want? Another apology?”
“I’m assuming you have questions.”
“Some.” Some is a bit of an understatement. I have piles, a list that is growing the more that I think about it, the more that I try to ma
tch the man I know with the fetish I don’t.
“So ask.” He sets his mug on the side table and reaches down, pulling my legs onto his lap, his fingers working at the laces of my boots. There is an unnatural tightness to his body, and as nervous as I am about discussing this, he seems worse.
“We don’t have to talk about it. I know it’s personal.” I flex my toes as he pulls off the first boot, his chest brushing against my socked foot as he leans down and sets it on the floor.
He sits back up and moves to the next boot. “I want you to feel comfortable with it. I want us to be less…” He grimaces. “Less awkward about it.”
“Okay.” I watch as he frees my second foot. “Tell me about your first time. Like … did you always like that kind of thing?”
“My first time was when I was twenty-six. A bunch of us from work were out drinking. We drank too much, and my coworker offered for some of us to crash at her place.” He glances at me. “It was Mira. And me.” He pauses. “And this guy from the New York office.”
“Mira?” I sit up straighter, and some of my hot chocolate almost sloshes over the rim.
He chuckles. “Yes. Mira. She all but stripped us both naked and dragged us into her bedroom. And when I saw him there, when I saw him touch her…” He pauses, looks at me. “There was just this moment of possessiveness. Like he was touching someone of mine. It was like I was suddenly in high school again, with my hormones raging and my need—like a ravenous need to compete, to win.” He runs a hand slowly up my jeans, to my knee, and then back down again. “The guy didn’t understand. He didn’t get it. But Mira did. I remember her smiling at me as I fucked her. As he sat there with his dick in his hand. And at the end, she told me that she and I were going to have so much fun.”
A piece of the puzzle fits together. “Wait. That night, in Vegas…”
“I met her and Edward,” he confirmed.
“So Edward knew? She wasn’t cheating on him?”
He nods, and I try to picture dignified Edward in a threesome with Mira and Trey. I shake my head. “You’re full of shit.”
His hand stills along the top of my wool socks. “Excuse me?”
“There’s no way Edward would do anything like that.”
His eyes darken. “Because it’s disgusting.”
Yeah. Disgusting is a great word for it. But probably not the best time to say that. “It’s not disgusting,” I hedge. “It’s just … kinky. And Edward wasn’t like that.” He wasn’t. He was refined, and polite, and certainly wouldn’t have had Trey fuck his wife, much less join in on it.
“I assure you, Edward is very much like that.”
“But doesn’t he get jealous?”
“He’s a realist. He can’t fuck Mira and go down on her at the same time. And he can’t create the energy of two people, the attention of two people at once. With both of us, she has four hands, two mouths, two cocks.” He slides his hands down, under my socks, and pulls them off. “I’m not an emotional player in their life. I come in, we have fun, and I leave. It’s not messy. I get to please a woman, I release some sexual tension, and then I go back to life.”
He runs pressure along the bottom of my soles, and I almost close my eyes from the feeling. “I don’t understand.” He sighs, and I look toward him. “I’m serious. Are you doing this for the testosterone-fueled rush or for no-strings sex? Because you know you can hire a woman for that, right?”
“Paying a woman to have sex with me doesn’t turn me on in any way. And I don’t know exactly why I did it. All I know is that the idea of it, the buildup, the unknown of a new woman, the forbidden-ness … it all turned me on. The secondary piece to it is that I love to please women. And this lifestyle allowed me to do it without requiring me to have a relationship of my own.”
He’s talking in past tense, and I register that, yet still forge on. “Except for Chelsea.” God, I still dislike that woman. Even now, I can barely say her name without snarling.
“Ahh … Chelsea.” He frowns. “Chelsea was an experiment of sorts.”
“In monogamy?” So glad to know he failed that one.
“Actually, the opposite.” He doesn’t look at me, focusing on my feet, the gentle work of the muscles. God, if the lingerie business goes to shit, he could earn a million with just his hands. “I first met Chelsea in a threesome. I didn’t see her again until her interview. Things didn’t seem to have worked out with her last boyfriend. I thought that I would try the lifestyle from the other end. As a host, instead of a guest.”
“And?”
He pulls a blanket over my feet and tucks in the fabric underneath them. “I didn’t like it.” He looks at me. “And it made me realize how I’d feel if it was someone I really cared about.”
He’s not talking about me. I know he’s not talking about me but still, somewhere inside, a warm little flame lights. “Meaning what?” I say, in the most casual way a woman can ask a question.
He wraps his hands around my feet and brings them close to his chest, almost in the way that you would covet a tiny baby. “Meaning, if you and I ever date, I won’t want to do anything like that with you.”
Everything sort of stops. The crackle of the fire, the tightening of his hands, the movement of breath in my lungs.
“Ever?” I ask.
“Ever,” he confirms.
“But wouldn’t you miss it?”
“I can’t watch you walk into a room without getting hard. I wouldn’t need anything else.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Honestly, if I had any additional stimulation, it’d probably be an embarrassingly short experience.”
“That’s a common problem, you know. That men have with me.” I lift my mug to cover my smile. “It happens all the time.”
He scowls. “Put down that mug.”
“What?”
“Put it down.”
I carefully set it on the side table. “What’s wrong—” My question is cut off when he pulls me onto his lap, his hands firm on my hips, his eyes fierce with possession.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. About Mira. About Chelsea. About my sex life. I didn’t tell you the truth because I was worried I would lose any chance of us ever being together. And if I could go back to that first night, with Mira, I would. I would go back and never have stepped down that path. But I need to know if there is still a chance for us. If, knowing what you now know—and damn any risk to the company—if you will ever date me.”
Date. It sounds so trivial compared to everything we’ve been through. Would I date him? God, I’ve been in love with him for years. I’ve—
“Jesus Christ, Kate. You’re killing me.”
I look down, into his face, my eyes traveling over the edge of his jaw, the tensing of his lips as he swallows, the lines of worry that mark his forehead and gather at the corners of his eyes. Our gaze meets, and everything I know is there. “I want more than that,” I whisper.
I was going to continue, but I lose the words when he leans forward and captures my mouth with his.
Chapter 40
HIM
When a kiss waits for a thousand days, it erupts like a cyclone—a slow unfurling of lips, of tongues, hands ripping, clothes flying, hot swirls of breath met with a clash of frantic desire. I had always envisioned that I would take my time, that I would carefully taste her, my tongue sampling, a gentle moment that I would savor every second of. But in this kiss, we take a hundred seconds in every ten. I groan against her mouth and push her down onto my lap. Her knee moves, our hands fight to reconnect, then she is straddling me, and her hips grind down on me, and I break from her mouth just long enough to swear her name.
I’ve both feared and anticipated this moment for so long. I’ve wondered if we’d have chemistry or whether our tension was all a myth, the promise of the unattainable only hot because of its impossibility.
It wasn’t a myth. I’ve never experienced chemistry like this, each taste of her tongue, each shift of her body, the yank of her hand in m
y hair—each one fans the flame, my cock pushing painfully against my zipper, my skin burning to have more of her, everywhere against me. I slide my hands down the back of her pants and grip her ass, rolling with her, until she falls back on the leather couch, her hair loose and wild, her eyes burning in a way I have never seen. I pause.
“What? What’s wrong?” she asks, her chest heaving, cheeks flushed.
“Don’t move,” I whisper.
“You’re not coming, are you?” Her eyes widen and God, I fucking love this woman.
“No.” I grin. “I am definitely not coming. I just…” I just want to savor this moment. I just want to remember, forever, how she looks right now, the way she reaches for me, pants for me. I want to remember how her lips are swollen from my kiss, her heart is pounding, the glow of her skin. I swallow. “I just want to tell you that I love you.”
She slides her hand under the waist of my jeans and grips my belt, pulling me down to her. “I love you too,” she whispers, her mouth lifting to mine. “But right now, I really need you to get naked.”
I can’t argue with that. I steal another kiss as her fingers pull at my shirt, our mouths breaking apart as she pulls the cotton henley over my head. I stand and yank at my belt, nodding at her jeans. “Take those off.”
I should take her to my bedroom, but that’s too far away, and this moment feels like a mirage, one that could dissolve at any moment, her head in play, her doubts kicking, my past too much for her mind to overcome. I unbutton my jeans and push them to the floor, dropping to my knees as I move to the edge of the couch, my hands pulling on the waist of her jeans, helping to slide them down her legs, her back settling into the couch cushion as she watches me through heavy eyes.
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