Her Perfect Gift (8 page)

And that was all she had time to think before he unexpectedly let her go, dropping her into the tub, fully clothed.

She came up from underneath the water sputtering, but then she saw what he saw in the bathroom mirror. Her heavy breasts were now completely on display through the wet material of her t-shirt, down to her dark aureoles.

She gasped and looked up at Suro, who was already in the process of taking off his pants and underwear.

“I can’t believe you—“ she started.

“We’re done talking,” he said.

“But—“

He sheathed himself in a condom and climbed into the tub. “We’re done talking,” he said again, pulling her into his arms.

And this time when she opened her mouth to protest her dunking, his was right there to swallow her words in a long kiss that blazed hotter than the water in the tub.

He was right, she thought, as she helplessly kissed him back. They were done talking.

He took off her shorts, but not her panties. Then he moved them to a nearby ledge, where he sat down before positioning her to face him with one leg on each side of his hips, so she could feel his erection against her drenched, panty covered slit.

But he wasn’t done with her t-shirt. He pushed it up from the bottom, until the front half rested above her now soaked breasts, exposing them in a way that felt impossibly erotic with hot water swirling around their bottom halves. She could actually feel his erection swell larger against her womanhood, and she groaned when he once again took her breast into his mouth, sucking on it so hard it blurred the line between pleasure and pain.

And then just when she thought it couldn’t get any more intense, he moved the crotch of her panties and he was inside of her, long and hard and completely embedded, so her clit rubbed against the top of his shaft every time he surged into her.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stay in control. But there were too many sensations happening at once. The moving water, his hands on her breasts, his manhood all the way up to her womb.

She let out a helpless moan, trying to hold on, but then he stopped kissing her and said, “Let go.”

And she came apart, slamming her hand down on the edge of the tub several times, as the orgasm rocked through her. And he must have been waiting for her to submit to her climax, because he came soon after with an explosion of words she couldn’t understand as he throbbed to completion inside of her.

CHAPTER 9

THE
next morning, Suro woke up late for only the second time that year. But this time, he wasn’t alone. When he rolled over, he found the woman who had been haunting his dreams for over three months, her pretty face covered in a curtain of long dreadlocks.

For a moment his heart lifted, thinking she had actually stayed on purpose. But then he remembered. She still hadn’t received her money. It had been the only thing that had brought her to his hotel room the night before and probably was the only thing keeping her there now.

As if to confirm his suspicions, she came awake with a start. “What? Where am I?”

She fully sat up in bed when she saw Suro. “Oh, no,” she said, covering herself up with the white sheet.

And though he had a reputation for maintaining his cool no matter what, Suro suddenly found himself saying, his voice tight with anger, “Don’t hide yourself from me.”

She drew the sheet up further as if his words only made her want to hide from him more. “I know I work at a strip club, but I’m not a stripper. I’m not all that great at sitting around naked in broad daylight.”

Somehow her soft words calmed his angry heart. He reached out and lowered the hand she had clenched around the sheet. “I want to see you,” he said.

The sheet fell away from her plump breasts and Suro felt himself getting hard again. She angered him like no other woman he had ever known, not even his ex-wife. But the sight of her pleased him, made him want things he’d taught himself to go without, like companionship, and a woman waiting for him when he got home from a job.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. Mostly because he didn’t know himself. Every day he wondered what he was doing here in Chicago, obsessing over this woman.

She studied him with real worry in her eyes. “Sometimes you get this look, like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. Do you want to talk about it?”

His nickname in the world of assassins was “The Silence.” And it was well earned. For as long as he could remember, he’d never wanted to talk to anyone about anything, except for this one black woman who had somehow slipped under his skin.

He abruptly got out of bed. “I’ll order us breakfast.”

“I’m sorry,” she said behind him. He could hear her scrambling out of bed to gather her clothing, which they’d hung across two chairs to dry the night before. “My father always said I was too nosy. I shouldn’t have asked. You don’t have to order breakfast. I can make myself some when I get home.”

“I’m leaving town on business tonight and won’t be back until the Friday after next,” he told her.

He watched her carefully, but couldn’t tell if she was happy or merely surprised when she said, “Oh.”

“Have breakfast with me. Then I’ll give you your money and you can go.”

He didn’t wait for her answer before picking up the phone and putting in a breakfast order big enough for two people.

TWO WEEKS LATER, Lacey was still trying to figure out why Suro had insisted on having breakfast with her. Dinner, she could understand. He was trying to get into her pants, and she’d once again made it ridiculously easy for him to do so despite her claim she couldn’t be bought for a plate of pasta. But still, he’d insisted on her having yet another meal with him, which she spent telling him all there was to do for fun in Chicago.

He hadn’t touched her after breakfast, or asked her to help with the dishes, or even said goodbye when he walked her to the door and handed her an envelope filled with money. And though she’d earned her paycheck fair and square, she’d felt like a hooker when she’d taken the money from him and thanked him for breakfast.

Then nothing. No calls, no emails, no texts. Not a word from Suro, even though his presence seemed to follow her around throughout the day. She woke up in the morning thinking about him and no matter how much she tried to resist fantasizing about him, her dependence on her pocket rocket only increased after their second encounter.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, my butt
. In her case, Suro’s absence made her treacherous body that much hornier. But she couldn’t afford to go there, she kept reminding herself. It was fine to fantasize about him, but she couldn’t let it go beyond that ever again. The stakes were too high for her to risk involving anyone else in her mess of a life.

By the time she woke up Friday morning, she’d made up her mind. Suro would be back in the office today, no more tiptoeing around him. She’d stand up for herself and let him know there would be no more dinners in his hotel room. From now on, they’d have a professional relationship only. She couldn’t afford to let herself become embroiled with a man again, not even one who set her on fire like Suro did.

But when she stormed down to his office before the club opened, she found the door still locked. He wasn’t there. He also wasn’t there when she tried back a few hours later, and then again during her dinner break.

Maybe he wasn’t coming back, she thought. Maybe he had gotten what he wanted and decided he didn’t want her anymore. The thought should have elated her, but instead it made her lose her appetite. She ended up only eating two bites of the sandwich she’d made herself for dinner, and a black cloud dogged her during the rest of her shift.

This is what you wanted
, she reminded herself as she trudged up the stairs to her apartment. The only reason she was alive today was because she had learned to lay low at all costs and keep her life as simple as possible. No more kids, no men, no close friends, just work and Sparkle.

Another wave of loneliness stole over her. But now she only had work since Sparkle was away at boarding school.

She shoved the loneliness away. She was, despite everything, a happy person. She was lucky to be alive, lucky to have a job that paid her well. She didn’t need anything else, she told herself. And by the time she got to her apartment door, she was at least halfway to believing it.

But then she opened the door and found Suro Nakamura in the middle of her living room, doing some kind of flowing but lethal-looking martial arts routine with a long wooden staff, dressed in nothing but a pair of black silk pants.

“What are you doing in my apartment?” she asked, stopping short in the doorway.

He came out of Kung Fu mode and faced her, standing the staff in front of him. “Have you eaten yet?”

“What are you doing in my apartment?!” she repeated, louder and angrier this time.

He grabbed a glass of water from a nearby table and pointed to a sleek suitcase standing near the couch. “I’ve decided to move in.”

CHAPTER 10

AFTER
dropping that bombshell, Suro set aside his staff. He then went into her tiny open plan kitchen and dug around her cabinets until he found a large plastic tumbler. Lacey watched in horror as he poured himself a glass of tap water as if he actually lived there.

“You
cannot
stay here,” she informed him, coming to stand on the other side of the counter. She tried to ignore the sight of how good his upper body looked, roped with sinewy muscle and covered with a light sheen of sweat that showed just how hard he had been working out.

He answered by pulling open drawers until he found her stash of takeout menus. “How do you feel about Indian food?” he asked, holding up one menu.

“You can’t just barge in here and tell me you’re staying,” she said, ignoring the answering rumble of her tummy, which hadn’t been provided an adequate dinner. “It’s my apartment.”

“In the apartment building I own,” he said, perusing the menu.

“Yeah, but just because you own the place doesn’t mean you can squat here. Tenants have rights!”

He put the menu down and came over to face her across the counter. “You’re right, Lacey. My being here does violate several tenant laws. You should call the police.”

She stood there frozen with frustration, because she knew, and was fairly sure he’d correctly guessed, there was no way a woman in her position would ever call the police for anything.

“You know the line between aggressive and insane stalker guy?” she asked. “You’ve totally crossed it. I mean
totally
crossed it. You’re like a football field over where that line should be!”

She had hoped calling him on his crazy behavior would shame him into leaving but he just picked up his phone and ordered them a chicken curry for dinner. Which was how Lacey came to find herself, forty minutes later, sitting across the rickety old wooden table in her living room, sharing a meal with a man who apparently did not understand the definition of a one night stand. And to make it even worse, he had showered and redressed in dark jeans and a long-sleeved black Henley shirt, and outfit that both showed off his lean build, and made her want to remove his shirt, like he had removed hers two weeks before.

She was so angry and frustrated, she didn’t even attempt to make conversation and let the whole meal progress in silence. But if he noticed the eye daggers she was throwing across the table at him, he didn’t acknowledge it.

And when she turned on the television and switched it to a reality show about brides picking out wedding dresses at a fancy New York boutique—the girliest, most off-putting thing she could think of—he simply sat down beside her, spreading his arms across the back of the couch. And he smelled so good, like soap and whatever expensive shampoo he had used to wash his hair, it put her in mind of a crisp Arctic tundra. She couldn’t believe he was here, in her home, acting like he had nothing better to do with his Friday night than watch bridal shows until it was time to go to bed.

Speaking of which, when he went to use the bathroom after the fourth bridal episode, she hastily got up, pulled out the bumpy sofa bed Sparkle used to sleep on, and dressed it in the Dora the Explorer sheets Sparkle still insisted on even though she was twelve. She threw the matching comforter on top, then scrambled into her bedroom, locking the door behind her.

Usually she washed her face and brushed her teeth before bed, but if it meant putting some distance between her and Suro, she could go without this one time, she thought as she changed into her pajamas. But no sooner had she settled into bed, in waltzed Suro, letting himself into her bedroom as if she had issued him an invitation and hadn’t locked the door.

She switched on her bedside lamp, glaring at him angrily with her arms folded tightly across her chest. “You’re not sleeping here,” she told him. “I made up the couch outside for you. If you don’t like it, you can move back to your hotel. Or better yet, get an apartment of your own if you’re really serious about staying in Chicago.”

Suro casually took off his clothes, giving her a glimpse of his fully erect penis, before he climbed in on the other side of her very small bed.

Lacey moved as close to the edge as she could, but it wasn’t far enough to avoid the heat coming off his body or the sexual tension crackling in the space between them.

This would usually be the time when she “let off some steam” with her pocket rocket, but she couldn’t do that with the off-limits subject of her fantasies lying right beside her, now could she? Her traitorous body swelled underneath the oversized t-shirt and flannel pants she’d worn to bed, imploring her to take advantage of the fact that Suro, the man she had been getting off to for the last two weeks, was lying close enough to touch, and to kiss, and to…

She pushed those thoughts away. Suro had guessed correctly that she was powerless to kick him out of her apartment or even her bed. But she’d be damned if she let him also take control of her body. She crossed her arms over her pebbled nipples. No sir, she was staying right where she was. It would be a cold day in hell before she let Suro claim her again, no matter what kind of protest her body put forth.