The Masseuse (20 page)

Beneath the table, his hand closed around my knee and squeezed. He knew it was one of my ticklish spots; I nearly jumped out of my seat. I tried to push him away, but his hand rose higher, fingers spanning over the inside of my thigh. My breath caught. Behind me, I could still hear my dad whistling while he washed the dishes.

“What if I’m the wrong guy?” he asked quietly. There was a difference in him now, a change in the energy between us. It made my head ring with warning bells just as it made my body ache for his touch.

“What if I’m the bad guy?” His fingers reached higher, still only mid-thigh but close enough to my center to trigger a memory of more, a promise for later. My eyelids grew heavy, and I found it hard to concentrate on the worry thickening in my lungs.

“You’re not the bad guy,” I said.

“How do you know?” He was whispering now, using the same voice he used when he came over me, slid inside me, told me how beautiful I was.

I clung to his gaze, to the desire I saw burning in his deep blue eyes.

“Because you brought me home,” I said. “Because you moved my car and bought me breakfast. Because you want to keep me safe, and you eat take-out pizza and drink cheap beer, and you’re funny, and you’re scared of flying, but you do it anyway because someone important to you asked you to.” I swallowed. “Because of the way you touch me and the things you say when we’re together.”

It came out like a confession, and maybe I was mesmerized by his strong, steady stare, but I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed. I was relieved. For once I was an open book, and he was free to see me for all of my insecurities, strengths, and faults.

He leaned back in his seat, releasing my hand.

“You give me too much credit,” he said.

There was a heaviness hovering just above my shoulders, threatening to drop down and flatten me. Did this mean he didn’t care for me as deeply as I did him? Or was he scared, as I was?

“You shouldn’t love me, Anna.”

“What did you think was going to happen?” I murmured, feeling the weight now, pound by pound, pressing me into the worn carpet beneath my socked feet.

And yet he had the nerve to look as though
I
was the one breaking
his
heart.

The water in the kitchen shut off. My dad appeared a moment later, carrying a square box in one hand and a stack of paper plates in the other.

“Who wants apple pie?”

T
hat night I stared at the ceiling, counting the glow-in-the-dark stars Amy and I had painstakingly placed in the shape of actual constellations across the plaster when we were fifteen. A few were missing now, leaving irritating gaps in an otherwise complete image.

There were pieces of Alec I didn’t know, crucial pieces, things I wouldn’t have minded taking time to learn but that he was deliberately holding back. He was the master of changing the subject, throwing up a brick wall, deflecting, deflecting, deflecting until you were so twisted around you didn’t remember what you’d asked in the first place.

Dammit. He was me, only ten times better.

So what was he hiding?

Fed up, I rolled off the inch of my bed I’d managed to steal from the giant beast of a dog and froze, waiting until Mug sighed and continued his efforts to soak my pillow in his sleep drool. When he was still, I tiptoed to the door and gently eased it back. The door to my dad’s room down the hall was wide open. No surprise there. It wasn’t enough that he’d relegated Alec to the couch; he had to keep watch on me as well. Luckily, soft, consistent snores were coming from the dark room, so I snuck by, avoiding the creaks in the floorboards, just as I’d done when I was sixteen.

My eyes were already adjusted to the dark, and as I stepped through the dining room into the living room I was surprised to see Alec sitting up on the couch. The blanket was still neatly folded next to him, the pillow atop it.

For one fearful moment I thought he might have planned on leaving, but it was two in the morning, and besides that, he’d changed into a white undershirt and boxer shorts. He held a framed picture in his hand—one of the many on the end table—and when he heard me, his chin shot up and his gaze locked on mine.

“I push people away because my birth mother was a junkie and a prostitute,” I said quietly. “What’s your excuse?”

He placed the picture back on the table. It was one of Amy and me at my high school graduation. I’d had terrible layers in my hair then, and she was wearing black lipstick, but we were smiling like we’d just won a lifetime supply of cupcakes.

“What?” He gave me a puzzled look, and then sat straight up. “Wait. Your dad made it very clear that if I touched you, he’d deprive me of some of my favorite parts.”

“So don’t touch me,” I challenged.

He grimaced. “It’s been over a day since I had you naked, Anna. You’re underestimating my will power.”

Deflection.

“Why do you think you’re the bad guy?”

I moved closer. His thumb began to tap on his thigh.

“We should leave. Get a hotel. We’ll be back before dawn, I promise.”

Deflection.

“Why won’t you let me in?”

My knees prodded his open. He glanced away, eyes glinting in reflection of a streetlight outside.

“I’m having very vivid memories of this morning’s plane ride.”

I kneeled before him, hands on his thighs. Though he was the one looking down on me, I was in control.

“That doesn’t help,” he added, voice deeper.

“I keep people at a comfortable distance, that’s what Amy says anyway. And if they get too close, I run.” I wrapped my hands around his calves, flexing beneath my grip. “You’re like me, Alec, you just don’t run.”

It was a bold move and I knew it. If someone had cornered me before I was ready, before I trusted them with my deepest secrets, I would have hit the road in five seconds flat. But Alec had become a statue. It was as if my words had locked him in place.

His hand ran down his throat, like the words were caught there. After a moment he slid down to the floor, so that we were face-to-face. Something was eating him up—his features tightened, then twisted, as if he were in pain.

“Some things are hard to talk about,” I said. “I get that . . .”

“The truth,” he said in a quiet voice. “That’s my excuse.”

His thumb grazed my lower lip, his eyes focusing there. The darkness settled around us, wrapping us in a cocoon far from my father and my childhood home.

“What truth?” I asked.

My knees made a hushing sound against the carpet as I scooted closer between his legs. His pride was growing thin; I could feel the vulnerability just beneath it. Gently, he tugged at the hem of my tank top.

He finally looked up at my eyes.

“That I’m not good enough for you,” he murmured. “Not by a long shot.”

A lump was growing in my throat. My brain said to push deeper, but my body wanted nothing more than to soothe him, take away his hurt.

“Why?” I asked. “How could you even say that?”

His lips were a breath away. It was like he wanted to kiss me but couldn’t, so I moved closer, crawling into his lap where I could straddle his hips. Too many clothes were between us, separating his chest from my heavy breasts, his hot, hard cock from its place inside me. It frightened me how acute our need was, and how powerless I was against it. Even now, with our fear just beneath the surface, I couldn’t help but press closer.

“I’ve done bad things,” he said.

“What kinds of things?”

He shook his head, hair falling forward over his eyes. “I’ve hurt people.”

“Who?”

“A better man would walk away.”

My insides were twisting, pulling everything too tight. And yet, despite our words, our bodies connected on a different level. It was as if they were having a conversation of their own. His hips lifted, mine pressed back. His breath grew rough, mine shallow. I rotated my pelvis, just to feel his erection grind against my soft parts, and he hissed in response.

“You promised you wouldn’t leave,” I said, reminding him of what he’d told me in his apartment before New York. “Not unless I told you to go.”

His arms wrapped around my waist, fingers spreading over my back. My hands threaded through his hair, pushing to the back of his skull and drawing his face to mine. He turned before giving me the kiss I craved, and ran the tip of his nose from the soft, sensitive skin below my ear down my neck. I rose up on my knees as his forehead came to rest on my heart.

“You will soon enough,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him.

My cheek nuzzled against his silky hair. “Please.”

I didn’t know which voice spoke louder, my mouth or my body, but his grip hardened on my hips and he crushed me back down against him so that nothing but some damp fabric existed between us. He held me against his chest, and I gasped at the strength in his arms and the relief in my tender breasts. He could feel my heart beat, I was sure of it. I knew I could feel his.

Still, he didn’t kiss me. His lips skimmed up the cords of my neck, and my arms and knees gripped him tightly.

“I’ll tell you everything soon,” he said in my hair. “I promise. Just give me a few more days.”

“Alec.”

“I need you, Anna. Just a few more days.”

He was asking for my trust, and though it scared me to think about learning the truth after the weight he’d put on it, I had to agree. Because I trusted him. Because I loved him.

“Okay,” I said.

Our bodies took over again, feeling each other, teasing each other. Showing that trust was there between us, we just needed to speak it. Our breath quickened, our movements became more rushed, and when his hips began their slow rhythm, I moaned softly. Even with our clothes on, I was losing my mind.

He clamped a hand over my mouth, muffling my sound of pleasure.

“Fuck me,” he muttered. “You need to go.”

I blinked.

“Go,” he said again, pushing me back. He winced as he adjusted his erection. “Go before I can’t stop.”

“Who said anything about stopping?”

“Your dad’s right down the hall.”

I bit my lip to hide the giggle. Oh yeah. Dad.

“So we’ll be quiet. I can be quiet.”

He swore again. “No, you can’t. And even if you could, I wouldn’t want you to be.”

He lifted me off his lap and then returned to the couch, bending over his knees and vigorously scratching his nails over his skull.

I stood, both shocked and endeared by him. And more than a little frustrated. My arms crossed over my chest, hiding my painfully hard nipples.

“You really are scared of him, aren’t you?”

“I respect him,” he grunted. “Now go.”

His cell phone buzzed, and we both looked over to the end table, where the white screen lit a straight beam to the ceiling. He snatched it quickly, reading the incoming text.

“Everything okay?”

“My balls feel like they might actually explode, so no.” He pointed down the hall. “Go.”

I turned, making sure he watched me walk away, but my insides were churning. What was Alec Flynn hiding?

*

My dad made breakfast in the morning. Pancakes and eggs he’d bought when he’d gone to the store with Alec. While he cooked, I sat on a stool next to the counter, spinning right, then left, then right again.

Alec was in the backyard, pacing beside the covered barbeque. The deck was covered with a thin sheet of frost that had yet to melt away, but he seemed not to have noticed the cold yet. I bit my lower lip, still thinking about what he’d meant last night—that he’d done bad things, hurt people. I didn’t know why he was making me wait before telling me what was going on, but I couldn’t believe he’d done something so terrible that I wouldn’t want to be with him.

“I miss you, Anna,” Dad said, grinning as my knees clunked against the cabinets. I spun the other way.
Clunk
. “I was thinking about taking a trip down to see you soon. Maybe this weekend.”

I snorted. “And this would have nothing to do with what Alec told you about the possible, though highly unlikely, stalker situation?”

“Of course not,” he said. “It has everything to do with my tan.”

“Or lack thereof.” My father’s skin was naturally pale, and five minutes in the sun practically gave him third-degree burns.

“Exactly,” he said. “I haven’t seen where you live yet. And I haven’t seen Amy in years.”

I smiled at this. He’d like Paisley. If anyone could make her talk, he could. He was good with troubled kids.

“And if you happen to pay a visit to your friend in the Tampa PD and ask him to poke around my business?”

“Then that would be a totally normal part of any cop vacation,” he finished. He tapped the spatula against the frying pan, following my gaze out the window to Alec. He rolled his shoulders back, as if to release some tension.

“How well do you know Alec, sweetheart?”

My shoulders tightened. “Dad . . .”

“I had my buddy run him through the system last night . . .”

“Dad!”

He pointed the spatula at me, comically serious in my mom’s red apron. “It’s my job to look out for you, Anna.”

I huffed. “It’s your job to teach me to look out for myself. Which you’ve done.”

“There are a lot of dangerous men out there. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t a known felon.”

“And?” I glared at him.

My father sighed, then wiped his nose, smearing dry pancake mix across his cheek. “He’s got a record.”

I tried not to let my surprise show.

“Mostly juvenile stuff,” he continued. “But it’s fairly serious. Assault. Possession. Trafficking. He was arrested a dozen times before he was fifteen.”

Cold, sharp claws unfurled inside of me. I’d avoided people who did drugs since my birth mother had left me for the last time. I could usually pick up when someone was using; if Alec was an addict, I’d know.

“And after fifteen?” I asked.

“A couple arrests over the years, but all charges dropped. That kind of pattern usually indicates a lot of money and a sleazy lawyer.”

Money like Maxim Stein could provide. A lawyer like the one Alec just supposedly visited in New York.

I focused on braiding my hair over my shoulder.

He took a long, slow breath. “One of the people who dropped the charges was a woman, Anna.”

I paused. Forced my fingers to continue braiding. Alec would never hit a woman. It wasn’t possible.

I’ve hurt people.

He returned to the pancakes, and I was reminded of Ben Rossi, the detective. The calm, cool-tempered man who never jumped to conclusions without a thorough investigation.

“I know money puts a target on your back. That’s the only reason why I haven’t kicked his ass out of my house,” he said. “That, and the fear that you might go with him.”

My heart clenched. He wasn’t going to make me choose.

“He told me everything,” I lied. “I trust him.”

My dad nodded slowly. “Just be careful. He cares about you, but that doesn’t necessarily make him a good guy.”

What if I’m the bad guy?

I shook my head. “You saying you don’t like him?”

My dad sighed, then clicked off the stove. “I’m withholding judgment.”

“Oh?” I faked a smile.

“This whole you-in-love thing is new to me. Go easy.”

I rose and crossed the kitchen to him. He folded me under his arm and I hugged him. It hadn’t always been easy to do this, but it was now.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Would you do it again? If you knew Mom was going to get sick. If you knew how it was going to be in the end.”
When she cried all the time, and then was so stoned on pain meds that she couldn’t even remember who you were.

He hugged me closer.

“I’d do it a hundred times over,” he said. “And then if I got another chance, I’d do it again. The things that are the hardest are usually the things most worth doing.”

*

Super-helpful Jennifer the flight attendant claimed that her safety belt in the pilot’s cabin was broken, so she spent the flight back to Tampa sitting in the front of our cabin. Which meant Alec managed his anxiety with alcohol, and I didn’t feel comfortable enough to bring up what my dad had told me.

I reminded myself that Alec had said he would tell me everything soon enough, but now I was dreading it. He was a good man, loyal and kind. Not the type to hit a woman, and not the type to avoid responsibility if he’d been at fault. Whatever charges had been brought against him as an adult had been dropped, that was what I needed to focus on.

That didn’t make me feel a whole lot better.