The Other Man (10 page)

That phase had ended a few weeks prior, and I was back to my favorite genre of all.
 
Old faithful, guaranteed to get me out of a funk.
 

Romance.
 

Who didn’t enjoy a good love story?
 
I’d been devouring them lately, one after another, sleep being sacrificed, work being neglected, but somehow it always felt worth it for a good book.
 

I was just getting to a good part, mid-sip of wine, when I heard a noise somewhere in the house, around the kitchen, I thought.
 
Something very commonplace, like a door creaking open.
   

My brows drew together.
 
One of my boys, maybe, or ‘Tato being just too big to move around quietly.
 

I had a brief regret about leaving both my bedroom and bathroom doors open.
 
I’d done it because otherwise, ‘Tato whined at the closed door, no matter which side I put him on.
 

If he was closed in with me, he invariably needed to go out and do his doggy business.
 
If he was locked out, he felt deprived of my company.
 
With the door open, he usually just parked himself somewhere close by, happy as a clam.
   

I was pretty sure both my boys knew better than to charge into my bedroom or bathroom unannounced, but I decided that it would be a good idea for me to still make my dripping way across the big bathroom to close the door, just to be safe.
   

My tub had a big ledge around it, perfect for candles and decorative items.
 
I had a dry hand towel folded in a corner of it for my phone, and I set it there.
 
My wine glass was going next, but as a big, quiet body filled my bathroom doorway, I miscalculated, and crashed it just perfectly wrong into the edge of the bath.
 

It shattered on contact, raining big chunks of glass and a healthy serving of deep red liquid, right onto my chest.
 

Even so, I was still more distracted by the familiar figure in the door than I was by the mess I’d just made.
 

How the hell had he gotten in?
 

“How the
hell
did you get into my house?” I asked Heath, not sure if I was more alarmed at the sight of him invading my privacy, or relieved that he’d come back, yet again.
   

Relieved
, I thought, eyes running over his body.
 
He looked amazing, as always, in his usual jeans/T-shirt combo.
 

His eyes were on my hand with the now broken glass.

Dammit
, I thought, looking down at myself.
 
I really needed to invest in some of those non-shatter wine glasses I’d heard about.
 
My friend Bev, the one who hosted the girls’ night, had some, and they seemed to do the trick.
 
I’d been meaning to get some myself, but this definitely tipped me over the edge from a side-note into action.

“I tried ringing the doorbell, but you didn’t answer, so I checked the back door.
 
It was unlocked.”

That I couldn’t credit.
 
I’d left the back door
unlocked
?
 
I lived in Vegas.
 
I knew better.
 
What a silly, out of character thing that was for me to do.

My naive self just believed it because he’d said it.
 

“Don’t move,” he added, voice rough, not his normal rough, but like he was
pissed
.
 

His authoritative tone brooked no argument, and so I just sat there and watched him approach, holding perfectly still.
 

He crouched by the tub, reaching over me to take the stem, which was still intact, out of my hand.
 
He set it on the ledge next to my phone.
 

That same hand moved to my chest where wine and a few large chunks of the jagged glass were clinging to my skin.
 

Very gently, he plucked the glass away.

“Fuck,” he growled.

I glanced down.
 
It was the tiniest cut, but one of the sharp pieces had drawn blood.
 

Without warning, he suddenly grabbed me under the arms, lifting me clean out of the bath.
 

My eyes flew to his face as he sat me down on the plush rug just in front of my vanity.
 

I was dripping a small flood onto the floor, some of it red wine, and I glanced to where I’d had my towel hung on a rack, reachable from the tub.
 
But it wasn’t reachable now.

“Could you hand me a towel?” I asked him, pointing.

It was like he didn’t hear, eyes trained on my chest.
 
It was wet and red, both with wine and a touch of blood.
 

He didn’t hand me a towel.
 
Instead, he leaned down and started sucking on a wine covered nipple.
 

“Oh,” escaped my lips.
 
It was a high pitched, needy utterance.

My hands went to his head, fingers running through his hair to grip him to me.
 

He didn’t let that go for one second, covering my knuckles with his, pushing my hands away and behind me, turning my wrists until I was holding the counter in my palms.
   

He just kept sucking, lapping the wine away, the sound of it driving me wild, the way it told of his hunger for the simple act of licking me clean.
 

And he was thorough.
 
Even after no trace of the wine remained, he just kept going, feasting at my breasts like they were the main course, instead of the appetizer.

His hands stayed on mine while he worked, keeping them were they were.
 
I squirmed, needing more, needing his hands, and my hands, and just more.

Finally, he let me tug them free, and I used them to cup my breasts together, holding them for him, pushing them into his face.
 

He groaned, hands going to my hips, though he held his body away.

“I think there’s still some wine on my belly,” I told him breathlessly.
 

He got down on his knees, eyes aimed up at mine.
 

He put his mouth to my navel, lapping there for a time.
 

I watched him, still fondling myself.
 
I wanted to throw a leg over his shoulder, but I restrained the urge, barely.
 

He lifted his head, looking up at me.
 
“Did I get it?”
 

I nodded, but said, “I think it dripped lower.”
 

That earned me a wicked smile.
 
His eyes darted to my breasts, which were still held in my kneading hands.
 

“Keep your hands there,” he said, and went back to work, licking lower and being thorough about it.
 

When he delved between my thighs, he seemed to still be on his mission to ferret out every last drop of spilled wine.
 

I was pretty certain he’d gotten it all, but I wasn’t going to hold him back.
 

The thought never even crossed my mind.
 

His scruff scraped against my inner thighs, his nose pushing insistently against my clit as his tongue curled into my sex, lapping in slow, deliberate scrapes like he was still on that determined hunt for any errant wine.
 

I had to lean back on the counter, than perch there, throwing my hands back to brace as he just kept going.

He pulled my legs over his shoulders and went to work, my heels digging hard into his back.

I came twice before he pulled back and looked up at me.
 

I bit my lip, trying not to blush at how wet the lower half of his face was.
 

“Did I get it all?” he asked.
 

I nodded, still catching my breath.
 

I only noticed that the tiny cut on my chest was still bleeding when he stood up and started tending to it.
 
It was really quite sweet, the way he took care of that minor cut like it was utterly important, holding a tissue to it until the bleeding stopped.
   

“I’m going to clean that glass out of your tub,” he told me.
 
“Why don’t you go fix yourself another helping of wine.”

On trembling legs, I grabbed my robe and headed for the kitchen.
 
“Would you like a glass?” I asked, an afterthought, glancing back at him.

“Um, no.
 
Do I look like a man that drinks
wine
?” he asked.
 

I laughed and he smiled.
     

I was sitting in my little dining room just off the kitchen when he joined me, though he didn’t sit.
 

“Anything I need to do to make this work for you?” he asked suddenly.

I just stared at him.
 
He was constantly unexpected.
 
Nearly everything that came out of him was a surprise to me.
   

“Anything that I’m not doing . . . correctly,” he clarified.
   

I smiled at him, my chest warming in a very cozy way, almost like this thing between us was something normal—something romantic, even.
 

“Say something sweet to me,” I told him, feeling playful.
 

He studied me very seriously, like it hadn’t even occurred to him that I wasn’t being entirely serious just then.
 

Flirting was a foreign concept to him.
   

“You’re a peaceful woman,” he said, each word uttered very carefully.
 
Like they had some special meaning.
 

I blinked, long and slow, lashes peeling apart liked they’d been coated with honey.
 

I was trying to decide what to make of that pronouncement.
 

Peaceful sounded just a touch too close to boring,
I was thinking.
 

“What I mean is, you make me want peace . . . you bring me peace.
 
Believe it or not, this is a very mellow version of me.

I eyed him.
 
“Are you serious?”
 
I sincerely did not think he was.

“Yeah.
 
Scary, huh?”
 

To be honest, it was a bit scary, because I’d never seen him approaching anything close to mellow.
 
Never seen him at anything less than intense.
 

I’d hate to see him at full speed.
 

Yikes.
 

And then my mind wandered back to what he’d just said and how it pertained to me.
 

Wow.
 
He really had come up with something sweet.
 

He with the deeply cold eyes, always so intensely frigid had somehow found the words to warm me, head to toe.
 

I thought he might have stayed the night that time when he was finished with me in the wee hours of the morning, but I wasn’t sure, because I was certain that he didn’t sleep in my bed with me.
 
I’d have noticed a thing like that.

Instead, I suspected he camped out in another room, on my couch maybe.
 
I couldn’t have said why I suspected that, looking at the thing.
 
Not a cushion was out of place, but that was no matter.
 
He was the type to leave things just how he’d found them.
   

I’d never seen him relax, not for a second.
 
Even when I was sitting, drinking my wine, he had remained standing, pacing, waiting.
 
Never just holding still, and only lying down for activities that did not involve anything remotely close to sleeping or resting.

Either way, he was gone in the morning when I woke up.

It should be noted that casual sex might have suited me just fine.
 
I’ll never know.
 
Heath was simply not the man to try it with.
 
He hit every single one of my hot buttons.
   

CHAPTER
 

ELEVEN

I shut and locked the door, lingering there for a moment.
 

What a strange night that had been.
 
What a strange kiss.
     

It was the oddest thing.
 

I’d just been on a date with my friend Dair.
 
We’d been flirting for quite some time, but we were both so busy, and hesitant, that it never went anywhere.
 
And then he’d called me out of the blue, wanting to go out on an actual date.
 
I couldn’t think of one good reason to turn him down, and so I went.

I really liked Dair, knew he was the kind of man I should want, but my heart just wasn’t in it.
 

Perhaps I wasn’t ready to move on yet.
 
The divorce had happened over a year ago, but it had been a long, ugly marriage.
 

Oh, and there was the small matter of my sometimes lover.
 
But that situation was less about moving on, and more about getting off, or so I told myself.
     

“What was
that
?” a deep, biting voice barked at me from the darkness of my living room.
   

Of course I knew who it was instantly, but still, I jumped about a foot.
 

Think of the devil.
 

“You,” I said, breathless now, heart rate accelerated with more than fear with those three rough words.
 

“Me,” he agreed.
 
“Come here.”
 

I shouldn’t have listened.
 

I should have turned on a light and demanded to know why he’d broken into my home.
 
I should have asked him ‘
Was the door unlocked
this
time?’
 
Because of course it hadn’t been.