Mister O (10 page)

I pinch the bridge of my nose as the car swings up the avenue. I swear Harper can read my mind. I lick my lips and tighten my grip on the phone.

D
o you watch porn
?

Yes. What do you watch or like to look at?

No. It’s not. Try.

Yes. That would be awesome. In fact, it would make my day. It would make my day fucking amazing.

H
er answer will have
to wait, because I’ve arrived at the offices of Nichols & Nichols, where a well-coiffed young blonde receptionist rises from behind a sleek desk and greets me by name.

“Good to see you, Mister Hammer,” she says with a crisp, bright smile. “I’ll let Tyler know you’re here.”

“Thanks, Lily.”

Before I can even grab a seat on a plush cranberry-red couch in the lobby, the head of the firm opens the glass door. “Nick Hammer,” he says in his deep voice as he walks over and claps me on the back. I stand. The man is pure class. Clay Nichols wears a dark suit, a crisp white shirt, and a purple silk tie. “Tyler told me you were coming by. Couldn’t miss the chance to say hello and congratulate you on all your success.”

“And you as well. Love the new digs. And tell your wife she does not have to give me free liquor.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Let me give you a piece of advice. The wife takes orders from exactly no one.”

He guides me down the hall to Tyler’s office.

“My favorite client!” Tyler says as he greets me. I met Tyler back in the day when I was at RISD studying animation, and he was a history major at Brown. He’s risen up quickly in entertainment law, and it’s not only because he has a mentor in Clay. He’s just really fucking good.

“I bet you say that to all your clients.”

He shoots me a grin. “Only the ones who make me laugh.”

“Then I’ve got a funny story for you,” I say. Both men take seats on the couch. I grab the comfy chair, lean forward, take a breath, and give this the pregnant pause of ridiculousness it deserves. “Gino wants me to make the show more wholesome.”

Tyler raises an eyebrow. The guy is the spitting image of his cousin—dark hair, brown eyes, square jawline. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was his younger brother. He’s suited up, too. “That’s insane. You don’t ask Seth MacFarlane to make
American Dad
less fucked up,” Tyler says, stretching his long legs in front of him.

“Look, I’m not a prima donna. I’m all about giving the viewers what they want. But I just can’t wrap my head around what he wants from me.”

“Leave it to us. It’s our job to figure out what he wants, and if that aligns with what you want,” Tyler says, and for the next thirty minutes we dive into their plan for how they want to handle the renegotiation at the end of this month, less than two weeks away. It all sounds reasonable to me, and frankly, that’s why I work with these guys. When we’re done, I ask what they’re up to tonight.

Clay goes first. “I have a date with my two favorite girls. My wife and daughter are meeting me at the playground in a few hours. This man,” he says, patting his cousin’s shoulder. “He’s trying to win back an old flame.”

Clay gives me a quick download on Tyler’s romantic situation, and it’s a tough one.

“Ouch,” I say, shuddering and then meeting my lawyer’s eyes. “Good luck with that, buddy. Negotiating with Gino might be more fun.”

Tyler laughs and shakes his head. “Believe you me, I know. What would Mister Orgasm do to win her back?”

I stroke my stubbled jaw. “Aside from sending in your place a rich, hot, successful, well-endowed cartoonist to win her over?”

Tyler narrows his dark eyes and shoots me a look.

I flash him a smile. “He’d probably just let her know how much she means to him, then make her feel like a queen.”

“Truer words,” Clay says, then I say good-bye, leave their office, and head into the crisp air of a late fall afternoon in New York City.

But as I slide into the next train downtown, I’m not thinking about Tyler’s woman anymore. I’m thinking about the text Harper just sent me. Actually,
thinking
is the wrong word.
Feeling
is the only one that fits. As I open her new message and scroll through the pictures, I hit one thousand degrees Fahrenheit in seconds.

I sink onto the train’s plastic seat, and my eyes are hostage to these images. Someone says, “excuse me,” as he walks past, and I barely pay attention. I
can’t
look anyplace else. Not possible. Not feasible. There’s nothing else in the universe but these photos, and I can’t wipe the naughty grin off my face.

I’m cooked, roasted, and fried to a crisp. I’m seared all the way through. This text is the mother lode of Harper’s fantasies.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe that should be revised. A photo is worth a thousand heartbeats, because that’s what mine skipped looking at this insanely sexy series she sent me.

The first shot is of a woman in black panties, which are tied with a tiny pink polka dot bow at the top of her ass. Her legs are smooth and sculpted. In the next one, a woman wears stockings with a vintage ruffled thing on the top of the thighs, and she’s bending, unsnapping a garter belt, her rear in view. I rub my hand across the back of my neck, and breathe out hard as the train rattles underground.

It only gets hotter from there, and I’m already an inferno, baking in public transportation, surrounded by guys in suits and moms with toddlers, by hipsters and tourists, by anyone and everyone, and I don’t care.

Because these photos are all I see. The shot that follows has a woman on her back, spread out across the bed, naked, her lips in an
O
, while the guy she’s with devours her pussy with his mouth. His hands are curled around her ass, squeezing it, as he buries his face between her legs. She is in some kind of wild bliss.

But the next woman is in unholy heaven. She stands in nothing but heels, bent over a kitchen counter, and her lover kneels, spreading her cheeks open and licking her pussy, his fingers digging into the flesh of her rear as he laps her up.

I close the text and shut my eyes, soaking in what Harper has just told me without words.

In these pictures, I’ve just learned she has a total ass fixation.

This might be a new dividing line in my life. There’s no way I can go back to not knowing this insanely arousing penchant of hers. I can’t return to a time in my life when I didn’t think about what it would be like to do this to her. To this woman who’s bold enough to tell me she doesn’t know what men want and also bold enough to show me what
she
 wants.

And what I want. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

I barely know how I’m going to make it through dinner with Harper and her brother tomorrow.

Then, my heart sinks as the train arrives at my stop with a jolt. She’s seeing Jason this week. And she hasn’t asked me one question, or told me a single thing about how she’s feeling about him, if she’s starting to like him, or whether she’s sending him photos, too.

Or if I’m just the warm-up act to the date she really wants.

On that note, my fingers curl around the screen, and I nearly crush it.

H
arper is late
, and I’m not pissed.

I’m not irritated.

I’m not annoyed.

I’m just enjoying this India Pale Ale at Spencer and Charlotte’s favorite pub in the Village, not far from their home, and listening to Charlotte chatter about their wedding.

“And the florist, get this, his name is Bud Rose,” she says, her eyes all lit up and lively.

“And do his roses bud?” I ask, since I can’t resist.

“I’m not even having roses. I was going to have cornflower bouquets,” she says, then places a hand on Spencer’s arm. She tilts her head to look at him. “Did I ever tell you that, Snuffaluffagus?”

Every now and then they call each other that, and I’ve never asked why, nor do I want to know.

“No, you didn’t tell me. Tell me now,” Spencer says, his eyes totally fixed on her. Damn, he is hooked, lined, and sinkered with Charlotte. But then, he’s marrying her, so that’s how it should be.

“In medieval days, it was believed that a girl who placed a cornflower beneath her skirt could have any bachelor she desired,” she says, with a glint in her eyes just for Spencer. “And I got the one I desired.”

“Yes, you did,” he says, then moves in to kiss her.

The kiss goes on much longer than it should. I look at my watch; I check out the black-and-white photographs of old trucks on country roads on the walls; I study the menu. When I’m done their lips are still fused, and show no signs of separating.

“It’s started already?”

I straighten at the sound of Harper’s voice. She’s here finally, pulling out the chair next to me. This is the first time I’ve seen her in days, and she looks . . . edible. She’s wearing a red sweater with tiny black buttons down the front, and some kind of lacy black camisole thing under it. Her hair is down, long and silky, falling over her shoulders.

I haven’t talked to her since I sent my response to those photos yesterday. I told her my phone had exploded from the hotness, and that was the last I’d heard from her. I’d forced myself to go cold turkey after that.

I can’t keep rappelling down the cliff face of this untamed desire for her. I’ve got to reel it back in, stuff it into a trunk, lock it up, and then toss the motherfucker to the bottom of the ocean. That’s the only way I can make it through this dinner and the wedding events this weekend, let alone help her learn the ways of being single in the city without wanting to simultaneously jump on her and throttle every guy she likes.

I swallow and shrug casually. “Yeah, by all accounts it’ll be this way for the next”—I pause to stare at the ceiling—“five to ten years.”

She smiles back at me, and at last her brother and his fiancée break their lip-lock.

“Please, don’t stop on account of us,” Harper says. “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with Nick, so you two should continue competing for the Newlywed Smooch of the Year award.”

“Hey! We’ve got two more nights ’til we’re newlyweds,” Spencer points out, then he stands up and hugs his sister and in a softer voice says, “So good to see you.”

In the span of those five words, my chest pinches, and a knot of guilt burrows inside of me. Sure, technically I have the moral high ground, since I’ve never
officially
touched his sister. I’ve never crossed a real line. But the guy loves her like crazy, and I can’t be encouraging her to send me photos of stockings, and bows begging to be untied, and . . .
stop
. I just have to stop. Even if those bows can bring a grown man to his knees.

After Harper hugs Charlotte, she gives me the briefest friendly embrace. I catch the faint whiff of oranges in her hair, and the scent of citrus is a new form of torture because it stirs up the memory of that fifteen-second kiss outside her apartment. I’ve got to stay strong. Must fight off this lust. It’s pinning me to the ground, wrestling me, trying to make me succumb. I hate to do this, I truly fucking do, but I call up the image of Gino tracking me down in the hall, and yep, that solves the problem.

It’s like Lust Be Gone spray.

Harper settles back in the chair next to me. “Sorry I’m late,” she says to everyone. “I had a dinner tomorrow night that I rescheduled to drinks tonight, so I had to squeeze it in before this.”

I grit my teeth.

Fucking Jason.

But wait. I remind myself that I don’t care about Jason. He’s in the trunk at the bottom of the ocean.

I don’t ask why she moved the dinner to drinks. I don’t ask how it went. I’m not going to ask at all if she kissed him.

Because I. Don’t. Care.

“How was it?” Charlotte asks sweetly.

I want to reach across the table and stuff the question back into her mouth. She doesn’t care, either. No one cares.

“It was fine,” Harper answers with a sweet smile, and the waitress arrives, inquiring if she wants a drink.

After Harper orders a glass of wine, the women return to discussing wedding flowers, and Spencer and I get caught up in a debate about beer. Misplaced desire, the trunk in the ocean, and bows on panties have all vacated the premises.

Sometime after dinner arrives, Charlotte gets that excited look in her eyes, waves her hands, and points at me. “Oh my God, I saw that J’s book just came out this week. I have it on my Kindle.”

Harper’s eyes widen, and she looks at me. “J?”

Shit. I had no clue that book was coming out now. How the hell do women know these things?

Charlotte nods at Harper and explains helpfully. “J. Cameron. She writes these crazy-hot romance novels. She and Nick used to be together.”

“I would hardly say we were together.” I try to downplay it.

Spencer fake-coughs. “If by hardly together, you mean you were her muse and inspiration, then sure.” He stops to draw air quotes. “‘Hardly together’ works.”

“You were
J. Cameron’s
muse?” Harper asks, latching onto the name I’ve never revealed to her before. Her books are wildly popular.

I shake my head. “No. I was
not
her muse.”

Spencer guffaws under his breath. “Yeah right.”

Charlotte takes over the reins. “She’s so talented and so gorgeous. But you’re definitely not still with her, right?”

“No. It’s over. It’s been over for months,” I say, suddenly feeling backed into a corner.

“Good,” Charlotte says, smiling conspiratorially. “Because I can’t wait to introduce you officially to my sister this weekend. She’s going to adore you. How could she not? You’re so handsome, Nick. Isn’t he handsome, Spencer?” she asks, nudging Spencer.

He gags. “If by handsome you mean—”

Charlotte darts out her arm and covers his mouth with her hand. “Natalie will like Nick, don’t you think, Harper?”

Spencer pretends to chew on Charlotte’s palm.

“Sure,” Harper says, nonchalant.

“How could she not? He’s kind of insanely hot, isn’t he?” Charlotte asks, staring at Harper and waiting for an answer.

Harper parts her lips to speak, when Spencer bites down on Charlotte’s hand.

“Ouch!” She swats his shoulder and giggles, and the two of them kiss once more.

Harper never answers.

I don’t hear from her after dinner, either. Nor do I write to her.