Brooklyn Flame (A Bridge & Tunnel Romance #1) (7 page)

When they couldn’t get any closer, standing chest to chest, he grazed his hands up her arms, yet to Greer, he felt so far away. Her sweater was too thick.

She gently rested her hands on his chest, angling her face up towards him. He smelled so good, no cologne, just clean skin, his natural scent that made her wish there was more of his skin to explore and drink in.

As he tilted his head down, closing the gap between their lips, he asked, “You smell like booze.”

“If you think it’s not justified, then I’ll never understand you.”

He smiled and she suddenly realized the particular shape of his mouth was gorgeous.

“It’s an observation, not a criticism.”

“Well if you feel like a drink,” she said, finishing the thought with a quick flick of her finger towards the whiskey bottle that was resting on the coffee table.

Indulging her, he glanced at it, but said, “No, I think I’m craving something else at the moment.”

“Oh yeah?” She whispered, gripping his arms, his muscles so defined despite the material of his jacket that separated them. She helped the garment down his shoulders and tossed it to the couch. “Let me guess-”

Suddenly serious, Hunter touched eyes with her. “I don’t have to know you well to know I’m into you.”

“You don’t know me at all,” she agreed.

“I sense you,” he countered. “That’s enough.”

She couldn’t suppress the quirked shape of her grin, as she traveled backwards, gripping the hem of his shirt and pulling him into her bedroom.

“What do you sense?”

“That you’d want to see me again, for one.”             

“I don’t need the complication.”

“No,” he challenged. “You don’t want the complication. You very much need it.”

His statement, the confidence he exuded delivering it, had her flushing with heat that fluttered and stirred between her legs. There was something about him. She wanted him. And having him in this moment was thrilling, strangely disarming in a way that both scared and excited her.              

If she was in the mood for anything, it wasn’t arguing further. She shoved him and he sat on the bed, gazing up at her, his green eyes widening with intrigue for what she might do next.

Taking a step back, Greer discarded her sweater, pulling it up and off then letting it fall to the floor. Her bra was black and lacy and did little to ward off the chill in the air. Her nipples hardened, but she knew the response was because of Hunter and not the falling temperature outside.

Slowly, he looked her up and down. “You look so fucking good right now.”

“Take off your clothes,” she ordered; hungry to see him like she had when he was reclining on her couch, erect and longing for her from across the studio.

Silently, he groaned out a heavy breath, his eyes softening, as he grabbed the hem of his shirt and lifted it. When he was free of the garment, he planted his palms on the bed behind him, leaning back and showcasing his abs, the musculature of his chest, his arms. Quickly, he flicked his eyes at the growing bulge beneath his jeans then met her gaze, encouragingly, as if he was interested in finding out what she was going to do about it.

She kicked her boots off and wriggled out of her black, skinny jeans.

Standing before him in nothing but her bra and matching lace panties, which cut up her ass in the shape of a thong, she drank in the sight of him.

“Have you ever done anything like that?” She asked in a breathy whisper dripping with genuine curiosity.

But Hunter seemed to startle, his face dropping long as if he’d been caught red handed.

“What’s that look on your face?” She asked with a laugh.

“What are you asking me?”

“If you ever showed up to model for an artist and ended up fucking them.” She cocked her head, trying to get a read on him. “What did you think I was asking?”

Relaxing, he was quick to say, “No. No, I haven’t.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. Her instincts were good and though she didn’t know what his expression had revealed, she sensed it had betrayed him of something he had planned to keep secret.

“Why?” He asked, acting suddenly off guard himself. “What did you think I thought you were asking about?”

Greer screwed her face up then laughed. “I’ve had a bit too much whiskey to understand. Take your pants off.” As he did, unbuttoning his jeans and pulling his fly down, all the while leaning back even further on her bed, she off-handedly mentioned, “I’ve never seen a guy touch himself. I thought you looked good.”

“Yeah?” He asked through a crooked smile. “You want to watch me for a minute?”

She nodded demurely, playing with the lacy strips of her panties where they hugged her hips.

He seemed to struggle getting his tight jeans off his ankles, but soon he popped up to his feet, wearing nothing but white boxer-briefs and a thick erection beneath. He made a point to touch eyes with her before stripping out of them and when he did, standing, muscles ripped with definition and his penis hard and arching up his stomach thanks to the way he was holding it in his left hand, Greer thought she might faint, her knees were weak enough at the sight of him. She heard moaning and realized it was her.

Glancing down at himself, he began stroking his erection.

Damned if he wasn’t the hottest thing she had ever seen.

When he sat on the bed again, leaning back and pleasuring himself, while touching eyes with her, he groaned like an invitation for her to join him, saying, “Ride me like you did the other day.”

Hearing the passion in his tone, the evidence of his lust for her, she felt a sudden rush of tingles building then swirling between her legs, and the sensation quickly swelled into an ache that only Hunter could sooth.

But as she neared him, craving his body so strongly she could practically feel him penetrating her, the studio buzzer blared and they both jumped, whipping their gazes towards the front door.

“Not fucking possible,” she said, her eyes widening in disbelief at the door.

The intercom blared again.

Quickly, she grabbed a thin robe that was hanging on a rack near her closet, pulled it on in a hurry, and told him, “I’m so sorry. I called a few people. Just give me a minute.”

When she crossed through the studio, it hit her hard who was downstairs, and realizing it caused her to double back for the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table. She chugged as much as she could as fast as she could, set it down again, and pressed the Talk button as soon as she reached the door.

“Who is it?”

His voice came soft and deep through the intercom.

“Seriously?”

Greer was beside herself that he was here, that he had listened to her message and felt compelled to take the subway from the Upper East Side - a forty-five minute train ride at this hour of the night. Snapping out of it, she pushed the Door button, allowing Brandon into the building, and prayed to God, as she waited a tense minute for him to climb the stairs, that this wouldn’t go as badly as she was sure it would.             

He was tall and lean and everything she had ever wanted during the past year when she didn't have him. As he neared her apartment door, Greer spied him through the door-jam.

Brandon had been the first person to give her an orgasm, and the last person was lying naked as sin in her bed right now.

She swallowed hard, forcing herself to meet his gaze and preparing to keep this brief and send him on his way.

But what flew out of his mouth the moment he stopped in front of her flushed the resolve right out of her.

“I fucking missed you.

Chapter Eight

Three torturous days elapsed.

He worked on his sculpture, shaping thin strips of clay around the female form he had been building.

But Greer didn’t call him.

He spent his nights drinking whiskey, lounging on the couch and staring vacantly at his work-in-progress, which looked ethereal and not at all grotesque like his signature pieces. He tried to find imperfections in the sculpture, areas he could improve, but there weren’t any. The clay woman perched across from him was flawless, just like Greer.

But she didn’t text, not to reach out and worst of all, not to respond to the many text messages he had sent, hoping to see her.

She had said she needed him to pose for her. She wasn’t giving up on the Phoenix and the glint of determination in her eye had told him nothing would stop her. It endeared him even more towards her than before, a feat he didn’t think possible. And yet she hadn’t followed through to schedule time. Had seeing him for five minutes, naked and erect, on her bed during those brief, teasing moments been enough for her to build a new sculpture from scratch? Ordinarily, he wouldn’t think so. No one had that good a memory. But maybe Greer did.

He stopped himself from going there, rising off the couch and once again changing the lighting to see if a dimmer atmosphere would by chance illuminate trouble areas on his sculpture he hadn’t noticed.

Killing the overhead lights and angling the tungsten bulb, which was set on a stand in the back of his studio, the truth of the matter reared its ugly head just as quickly as the light hit his sculpture. He didn’t need to model for her. This wasn’t about her art. That wasn’t the opportunity lost. He wanted to see her, to feel her soft, warm body pressing against his, to brush his lips across her mouth, her breasts, feeling her ass in his hands all the while. Correction: he didn’t just want it; he was aching for it.

And she wasn’t.

It had to be that guy.

She hadn’t introduced them when he emerged from the bedroom, zipping his fly and pulling his tee shirt on, a lump of confusion tightening his throat at the sight of another man in her doorway. She also hadn’t covered up, but stood without a shred of self-consciousness in his rival’s presence despite the thin robe barely covering her privates and leaving little to the imagination.

That’s who that guy was, right? Hunter’s rival?

When he had expected her to send the guy on his way, explaining perhaps that she was in the middle of something, instead she had asked Hunter if he could come back another time, essentially getting rid of him in favor of whoever the fuck had shown up unannounced in the middle of the night.

It had crushed him. And as he’d padded down the stairwell, hearing her invite the man inside, the likelihood that the guy hadn’t dropped in unannounced, but might have been asked to come was unshakable. So much so that Hunter had lain awake in bed, puzzling, until the dawning sun broke the cityscape horizon beyond his windows.

What had transpired between them that night?

And why the hell was Hunter drinking whiskey at two in the afternoon?

Glancing down at the glass in his hand and the amber liquor it contained, he neared the couch, plopped heavily down, and tried not to think about whether or not Greer had quickly dressed the moment her guest had stepped in.

Christ, this was agony.

And it wasn’t helping matters that whenever he managed not to obsess over the one woman who very well might have gotten away, his thoughts locked onto Aidan and Troy and the rest of his twisted gang of friends, who had obviously broken into her studio and did everything in their power to ruin her life.

Aidan had been muscling into his studio, dropping by and hanging out as if nothing had happened, but Hunter put a stop to it. He’d been avoiding his calls for the past few days then began going the extra mile, pretending he wasn’t even home when Aidan pounded on the door. He just couldn’t deal with him, but ignoring his so-called friend had only provoked him further.

You do what we say and we’re cool.

Hunter hadn’t done what Aidan said. They were supposed to trash Jennifer Okimoto’s studio, but Hunter hadn’t turned up on the street corner outside of the prolific painter’s apartment, and because of it the gang called it off. A day later, Greer had gotten hit instead.              

Aidan was still pushing him.

Hunter knew what he had to do.

But he wasn’t sure he could.

The only reason he was considering it was because destroying Greer Langley’s studio wasn’t the worst of Aidan’s capabilities and he couldn’t stomach the thought of what might happen next if he dodged another order.

Slugging the whiskey back then slapping the empty glass on the coffee table, he challenged himself to decide what to do with his day. Obsessing over the sewage that had become his life wasn’t even remotely productive.

It felt like his sculpture was calling to him, but he didn’t want to stroke and touch the likeness of Greer’s body. He wanted the real thing and felt powerless in terms of getting it.

As if in answer to his intense pining, his cell phone vibrated, inching across the coffee table and flashing Greer’s name and number.

He had never picked up a call so fast in his life.

“Hey,” he said, every cell in his body poised to hear her breathy voice.

“I know I dropped off there for a few days...”

Three. It had been three days, he thought, suddenly analyzing how her sense of passing time might reveal her true feelings towards him.

Trying to sound casual and not like the anxious mess he had become, he said, “I get it.”

“I’ve been swamped and distracted and...” she trailed off, letting out a long sigh, but all he heard was
distracted
.

Distracted by whom?

“You don’t have to explain,” he offered, hoping this call would result in an invitation to come over.

He leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees and pressing his cell to his ear so hard it felt hot. He didn’t want to miss a word.

When Greer spoke up again, she started to sound like the determined, sarcastic, and sultry woman he had come to know, but only by a fraction. “If you have any time today, I could use you.”

“I’d love for you to use me.”

“To get some work done,” she corrected him as if to troubleshoot misunderstandings.

The fact that she had was blindsiding.

He swallowed down the brief flare of disappointment that was threatening to choke him. “I’m pretty swamped myself.”

“Oh.”

Good, it was her turn to wonder. But he couldn’t keep it up. Instead, Hunter parlayed the statement with another that might benefit him.

“I can swing by now for an hour or two, then I’m straight out.”

“Until when?”

Don’t push this off
, he thought over and over again, as he told her, “Hard to say.”

She fell silent and he sensed tension, debating perhaps.

“If I can have you for a full two hours, I can make it work,” she said finally, but when she tacked on, “That’ll be four hundred, right?” he sank into a ravine of defeat.

Playing it cool and trying not to grumble, he said, “Ah, yeah. See you soon.”

Fantasies began forming, as Hunter rushed to get his boots and jacket on, and they didn’t let up, but blossomed into full-blown scenarios when he started along Humboldt Street, walking briskly against the wind.

Oh, the things he would like to do to her - kiss her inner thighs, while traveling towards her pink vagina, lick her there, make her wet, and hear her moan, breathy and melodic, penetrate her while feeling her clench around his erection, feeling her lips brush against his.

He didn’t see the street he was turning on, its pedestrians from all walks of life, didn’t hear cars honking or bums calling out for his spare change. His surroundings disappeared, as he envisioned both Greer writhing with pleasure beneath him and how he might coax her into such a position.

Could he inspire her to crave him as badly as he craved her? He had his ways. He’d be fine.

After pressing her apartment buzzer, hearing her voice blare through the speaker-box to confirm it was him, and bounding up the stairs two at a time, he knocked on her door, praying that if there were any surprises, it would be Greer wearing nothing but a kittenish smirk, and not the other guy sitting on her couch.

When the door drew inward, half of his wish came true. She was alone, but all bundled up.

“My radiator broke.” Rolling her eyes and turning, she led him into her studio, which he realized was downright freezing. “The super keeps coming by with a clipboard, feigning due diligence, but hasn’t actually done anything about it. He just tinkers like I’m an idiot."

She approached her new sculpture and seemed to get a bit lost, examining its torso. She also seemed to be avoiding him. Their eye contact had been brief at the door, as if she didn’t dare hold his gaze for more than a second.

“I have a few space heaters,” she pointed out, indicating the little whirling machines near the couch.

“It’s fine. I’m usually hot.” He neared the sculpture and noticed her florally scent. “Looks like you’re bouncing back.”

“Told you I can work from memory as long as it’s fresh.”

Calculating quickly in his head, he guessed, “So after about three days it’s gone.”

“Not gone, but too fussy to be useful,” she said, angling her stark hazel eyes up at him.

“Every two days,” he concluded. “I can live with that.”

“It wasn’t an invitation,” she said, cracking the faintest smile.

In response, he neared her, losing his cool.

“I feel like we started something we didn’t get to finish.”

Her curled mouth straightened, as she sank into her hip, accentuating soft curves her sweater couldn’t hide. She looked suddenly apologetic, casting her gaze down at her sculpture.

Gradually, she admitted, “We did start something we didn’t finish. You’re right. It was a bad night.”

“But your friend took your mind off it?”

Her eyes snapped up, as her brow knit together. “I called a few people. He showed up and he knows me really well. Look,” she said, covering her mouth with her hands to compose herself. “It was rude of me to send you off...”

“In the middle of...”

Correcting him, she said, “At the start of... all that.” Airily, she turned on her heel for the coffee table, adding, “I’m sorry and I have your money for today and-”

But he stopped her before she could reach for the wad of cash on its surface. “I don’t need your money.”

“You don’t want my money. You very much need it.”

It wasn’t lost on him that she was quoting his very argument, albeit he had made it in the spirit of convincing her to see wherever their chemistry might take them.

“I don’t need money,” he said, curious why she would think otherwise.

When she stated, “An Interview with Hunter Black: Why Starving Artists Stay Starving,” implying she had read the article in Vice Magazine online, he knew he didn’t necessarily have a leg to stand on, but that wasn’t what concerned him. The way she was looking at him, he knew she felt lied to.

“Is that why you haven’t returned any of my texts?” He asked.

“I find it strange you never mentioned you're also a sculptor, a well known one, and that you’re also going to be in the Phoenix.”

“I don’t like to bring it up with artists I don’t know,” he shrugged, angling for a way to get past this conversation. “People can be really competitive and I have a few feathers in my cap. I didn’t want to intimidate you.”

“Right,” she said with a sarcastic smirk, staring him down. “I asked around. You haven’t modeled for anyone else.”

“I saw you at The Haven and I was interested. Jennifer hooked me up. What are you getting at?”

“I have trust issues,” she stated frankly.

“Yeah, I’m catching on.” He wanted to tell her she could trust him, but until he worked out whatever diabolical plan Aidan was gearing up for, he wouldn’t feel right about making such a statement. “I’m going to take my clothes off now.”

Turning for the stool, he shed his jacket then his shirt and set them down. His boots came next with his socks, followed by his jeans, all the while he could feel her gaze burning into the back of his head.

She was right. It was fucking freezing in here. He almost whimpered stripping out of his boxer-briefs and laying them on the pile.

Cupping his genitals, he faced her.

Hesitating, she twirled her finger around a lock of hair. When she spoke, it wasn’t laced with subtext addressing their hot tryst, like he expected.

“So,” she began, working up the nerve. “I need to make things... anatomical.”

His brows shot up to his forehead.

“So... I’m going to need to see... all of you.” When he widened his eyes, thinking there was no worse time for her radiator to have been broken, she added, “Right now he’s kind of androgynous.”

“I get it.”