Chapter Twenty-Three
Ross stared up at the ugly brick building that matched the address Elisa had programmed into his phone, then glanced at the two liters of beer he’d brought—both of his own homebrewed recipes—as his contribution to the meal. They sat on the passenger’s seat of the boring sedan he’d been renting, alongside the obnoxious bouquet of red roses. The smell of the flowers nearly overpowered the fake-new-car spray they used in these pieces of shit rentals.
His head spun. He felt nauseated. His pulse raced, then slowed, then raced again, galloping along and making him breathless. The tingling sensations he’d been having all day that started in his scalp and raced down his spine, settling in his lower back, then gradually working around to his dick were distracting in the extreme. And now that he was within shouting distance of her, they were ten times worse.
He, Ross Hoffman, master of any immediate female universe, was as nervous as a sixteen-year-old boy on his first date. Which was a one-hundred percent new feeling, since he’d lost his virginity at fifteen and a half to one of his mother’s colleagues and had spent an entire summer in a sex-soaked haze of worship at her feet. He’d hardly looked at girls his own age after that. And a ‘date’ to him meant fucking some girl’s ever loving brains out, bestowing the skills that the lovely Frau Schmidt had spent many hours teaching him, then getting off and getting the hell out of Dodge.
He sat very still, coming to terms with this honest-to-God nervousness. He hadn’t even been nervous at any point around the one woman he had allowed himself to love. His relationship with Evelyn Benedict Fitzgerald had started a natural progression in his life as a double-team expert with Austin, at least at first. Purely sexual. And incredibly sexual at that.
Then, he’d gone and fallen for her, like the mouth-breathing fool Elisa claimed he was.
And now here he was—a shaky, half-puking, half-horny, anxiety-riddled mess.
Something he had no frame of reference for—and did not like one bit. “Get a grip, man,” he said under his breath, forcing himself to take long, deep breaths. “It’s just a girl—a woman. She has all the same parts as every other woman you’ve experienced. Sure, it’s cool because she’s a brewer. And she’s the most intriguing female you’ve ever encountered. And your need to protect her is so strong it almost chokes you most days… Oh fuck, just get out of the car already.”
He grabbed the bottles and the flowers and climbed out of the nondescript Oldsmo-buick, squared his shoulders, checked the crooked sign indicating the direction of the various apartment units, then headed upstairs. It took him thirty seconds to catch his breath, not from the stairs but from the refreshed, sickening surge of anxiety that slammed into him at the sight of her door. “Get a grip,” he repeated to himself. “Get a—oh, hello.” He took a step back, trying like hell not to gape, mouth-breathing style, at the sight of Elisa in the now-open doorway.
She wore the tiniest scrap of silky black fabric, held up by thin straps at her shoulders. That wild-ass tangle of dreadlocked hair was pulled back and up, with a single strand of it hanging down to one shoulder. The god-awful ink at her throat glowed at him, seeming to taunt him, until he forced his gaze away from it. He stared at her upper arms, from the thorny vines, down to the small hops, not unlike those that ran across his upper back and down his arms.
Woozy, he focused on her other adornments, the ones that turned him on more than anything he’d ever experienced with a woman. Tiny black dots sparkled in her impossibly small earlobes. The diamond in her nose and the matching jewel in her eyebrow plus that small silver ball in her lip made his mouth dry out. The memory of the hard ball of metal against his teeth and tongue nearly blinded him.
He gulped, and turned his horn-dog thoughts away from the other places she’d likely be similarly adorned. He had never seen an actual woman with a hood piercing but he’d heard about them, seen plenty of photos in his time. Ross licked his lips, already tasting her there.
The dress, he noted, was not terribly revealing. The dip in front was modest. The skirt length about mid-thigh. But it clung to her perfectly, highlighting her small waist, contrasting with her slim, but womanly hips. When she held out her right arm, indicating he should enter and stop gawking from the hall, he spotted the series of stylized star tattoos again, running up the pale white skin of her inner arm, from wrist to near her armpit.
She was, hands down, the oddest female he’d ever been attracted to. But the attraction was so powerful, it was painful—a dryness in his throat, heat behind his eyes, and a distinct tightness in his trousers that embarrassed him.
He entered the main room, his eyes adjusting to the low, candlelit ambiance. A cacophony of delicious odors hit his nose and brain all at once. He turned slowly to face her. She’d shut the door and now stood there, hands on her hips, her head tilted slightly to one side, regarding him. Her feet were bare. Her toenails painted black. He gulped, trying not to keel over from lust and terror.
She held out one hand. Ross stared at it, hearing soft strains of music—Django Reinhart if he weren’t mistaken and he didn’t think he was—and completely unable to move. She crooked her fingers at him. He looked at them, down at her feet, then back up at her bemused expression. Before he knew it, she was in front of him, filling his nose with her unique scent—a waft of vanilla with distinct undertones of something spicier and exotic—like cardamom, or cloves. She peeled his petrified fingers from around the wrapped stems of the roses, then plucked both plain brown bottles from his arm and hand.
“I wish I had my camera,” she said, her voice low and soft.
“Um, huh?” He winced. “I’m sorry. I don’t normally act like—”
“A befuddled caveman?” She smiled. She’d put a touch of something shiny on her lips. He wanted to kiss them so badly he had to clench his fists at his sides to stop himself. “I’ll put these in water,” she said, brandishing the roses. “Thank you.”
He nodded, shoved his shaking hands into his jeans pockets and cursed his lameness. She moved around the tiniest kitchen he’d ever seen—which matched her in a way that seemed just right, to his mind. After grabbing two glasses and a plate of something, she returned to where he still stood, frozen, feeling like a lumbering elephant in the middle of English high tea.
She put the glasses and plate down on a table in front of a futon, then sat, tucking one leg under her. “Pour one of those,” she said, pointing to the two bottles sitting on the small kitchen table next to something that made him do a double take.
“Is that…?” He approached the kitchen. “Dear Lord in heaven, it is.” He gazed down at a Black Forest cake worthy of a photo shoot.
“Don’t touch it yet, pig,” she called from behind him. “Pour us a beer.”
He grabbed the bottle with the red stopper, turned, took a deep breath and smiled. She smiled back. This was going to be all right. He could handle it. He would have to exercise caution and he knew it. No rushing straight in, picking her up and dumping her onto wherever her bed was so he could prove to her how he felt about her.
No. This was different. And a scene he was determined to master, somehow. Maybe.
He opened the bottle and poured them each a measure of liquid. The rich, smoky odor filled his nose as he handed her a glass. “Prost,” he said, holding his up. She touched hers to it, sipped once, then took a longer drink. The soft groaning noise she made, along with the sight of her exposed skin pebbling with goosebumps made Ross’ eager dick so hard he had to bite back a grunt of surprise. He leaned forward and plucked a bite of cheese from the plate to cover his discomfort.
She leaned forward then as well, which draped her across his lap in a way that did not help his condition in any way whatsoever. He closed his eyes so as not to fixate on the back of her long, porcelain neck. She retrieved the bottle and poured herself more of the Rauchbier, a special German style, whose distinctive smoke flavor was imparted by using malted barley dried over an open flame.
“Rye? Seriously, Hoffman? You smoked rye for this…you…crazy asshole.”
For lack of anything better, he held up his glass to her. She rolled her eyes, sipped more, made that horrifyingly sexy noise again, then set the bottle on the table. Ross tried to smile but he sensed it faltering.
Keeping her gaze on his, she took a small piece of cheese and put it to her lips. He watched, utterly mesmerized by her fingers, by their black-glazed nails, the hop flowers on her knuckles, as she took another morsel of cheese and what he thought was prosciutto. The flash of metal inside her mouth forced him to stifle a groan. To his surprise, she stretched her fingers across to him, bringing the food to his lips. He blinked, like an oaf, he knew.
She raised the pale eyebrow that had the diamond in it, her blue-gray eyes shining with amusement. He opened his mouth, grazing her fingers when she placed the food on his tongue. He saw her shiver at that connection but before he could comment, she pushed his elbow, bringing his glass of beer up to his mouth. “Go on, combine these. It’s incredible.”
He did. And she was right. He took another bite, another sip and felt himself slowly but surely unclench.
“So,” she said, leaning back and tucking her other leg underneath her so she sat like a little kid on her knees. “Tell me about your child.”
He choked on the beer, spluttering and drooling and shocked to his core. “My…uh…what?”
“Rose Fitzgerald. The baby you had with our mutual boss.”
“I’m… You… How did you…? Shit.” He looked down at the bottle. “It’s a complicated story.”
“I can handle it,” she said. “I mean, if you want to tell me about it.”
Ross had never once revealed this fact to anyone. As far as he was concerned, the only ones who knew were himself, Evelyn and Austin. But it was completely stupid of him to think that. Everyone at Fitzgerald knew he and Evelyn had been together for almost a year. Austin and Evelyn had broken up and he’d had to run his newly deceased father’s food supply business, leaving Evelyn and Ross in charge of the brewery.
Then, all of a sudden, Evelyn and Austin were back together, then married, and Evelyn had waltzed down the aisle visibly pregnant—but with his child. His throat closed up. His face burned. Something strange was going on with his eyes. He frowned at her, unwilling to let her do this to him. During his seemingly eons-long reflection over this bizarre conversational gambit, she’d remained silent, sipping her beer, curled up in her corner of the futon.
“Do you love her?” she asked, rocking him back even further on his emotional heels.
“Of course I do.” Without thinking about it, he lifted the front of his carefully pressed white dress shirt. Her eyes flickered from his face to the small heart he’d had inked on his ribcage with the word Rose inside it in simple script. He let the shirt drop, embarrassed all over again.
“I meant Evelyn,” Elisa said. Her voice was calm, non-confrontational. It soothed him in an odd way. He’d never quite felt the precise combination of emotions churning through him. She sipped. He stared at her, willing himself to talk.
“I…don’t. Not anymore. I mean, I did. Who wouldn’t?”
“Yes, Evelyn is an amazing woman. I can see how you would.”
“It drove me away,” he said, sipping without tasting. “I let it. I know that. It’s not her fault, or Austin’s. I still consider them my very best friends.”
“I can tell.”
“We agreed that…” His throat clicked, betraying the sort of emotion he hated—despised—to feel, much less to reveal to anyone. “That Austin would be Rose’s father. I suggested he legally adopt her, making no questions down the road, no complications. You know?”
“But he didn’t, of course,” Elisa said, matter-of-factly.
“No. Stubborn fool.” He shook his head and poured himself more beer, letting the high alcohol bite calm him.
“She is a beautiful child. Looks like her father.”
“Her mother isn’t hard to look at, either.” He lifted his glass. “Since we’re being honest.” He let a beat of time pass. “Are you jealous of her?”
She sipped, keeping her gaze on him, then put her glass on the table. Ross hoped she might crawl into his lap. How he’d hide his raging erection then, he had no idea. But she stayed in her corner, making herself even smaller by wrapping her bare arms around her knees. He caught a flash of hot pink underwear. A bead of sweat popped on his temple, rolled down his face and made a wet spot on his shirt.
“Ask me something else,” she said. “I’m not ready to answer that one.”
He leaned back, musing on this revelation. “What was his name?” he asked.
He’d done his research after talking with Melody and still didn’t understand the appeal of the BDSM thing at all. He got it that everyone had their own level of kink. But trying to imagine the super feisty, smart, strong-willed Melody Rodriguez on her knees in front of some guy—even if it was Trent Hettinger, the super-cool gazillionaire owner of bars and liquor stores—to picture her bound, gagged, nipple-clamped, red-assed from being spanked, eating glass or licking piss or any number of other horrific things he’d read about online, was outside the realm of his understanding.
It was Elisa’s turn to blink. Keeping his gaze as neutral as possible, he asked again. “What was his name, Elisa?”
She gulped and pressed her forehead on her knees. She muttered something.
“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.”
“Nolan,” she said, clear as day. “His name is Nolan.”
“And how did you meet him?”
“He was my instructor at L’ecole Cordon Bleu.”
“Your instructor.” He sipped, noting that his hand was shaking like mad.
“Yes. He was the head chef, as a matter of fact. He seduced me, flat out. I was a child, of course. Barely nineteen. A silly virgin.”
Ross’ hand shook so badly he had to set his glass down at that little bombshell. “And you were with him how long?”
“Almost five years. He took my virginity three months after I started at L’ecole. A rather clinical experience. We had some…nice months together. But it was, all in all, pretty awful.” Her eyes were blazing. She’d unfolded herself from her crouched over position. As she slowly rose, sinuously, like a dancer, Ross had to suppress the compulsion to pant like a dog. She stood over him, filling all his senses, making him dizzy. “Let’s eat,” she said, before heading into the kitchen.
He sat for a few seconds, pondering the goddamned chaos he was about to jump straight into, then he rose, grabbed the empty bottle and followed her.