Chapter Twenty-Seven

Reid

I enter the living room with the take-out bag in my hand and Carrie meets me by the couch, my T-shirt swallowing her whole, but damn I like her in it a little too much for comfort. And yet, I pull back from where we’re headed tonight. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Her eyes meet mine. “As in, to your bedroom?”

“Yes,” I say, sensing the tentativeness in her over my room and not sure where that is coming from. “To my bedroom. My favorite place to eat is up there.”

“Now you have me curious,” she says, the tentativeness fading quickly.

Pleased that we jumped that hurdle quickly, I motion her forward. “Then onward to the man cave.”

She laughs as we head to the stairs. “That sounds dangerous considering this is you we’re talking about,” she teases.

Dangerous.

That word hits about ten nerves, all connected to my past that I don’t intend to think about tonight, not with this woman, with Carrie, in my bed. We climb the steel stairs that lead directly into my master bedroom through an archway. “No door?” Carrie asks as we approach.

“It’s just me,” I say. “And I like to be able to see and hear everything at all times.”

“Talk about a control freak,” she teases as she passes under the archway directly in front of me, to halt a few steps inside the room.

I step to her side, taking it in with her as if I’ve seen it for the first time. The room is a V-shape with a fireplace to the right, and dark gray flooring throughout. Directly in front of the fireplace and several feet away, there’s a step up to the master bed, which has a gray leather headboard beneath which I plan to fuck Carrie until we can fuck no more.

“It’s very you,” Carrie says, glancing over at me. “Very powerful and masculine.”

I’d like to see that as a compliment, but it also tells me that despite all her pushing back against my every demand, the power thing is on her mind, it’s between us, and it’s a problem I need to deal with now rather than later. I motion to the pillars framing another archway just beyond the bed. “That’s our dinner location.”

She moves ahead of me to enter the round room wrapped in windows, with a gray sectional in the center, and a tree trunk-style gray coffee table set in front of it. “This is my favorite place in the apartment,” I say, as I sit down on the couch and pat the cushion next to me.

“I can see why,” she says, claiming the spot I’ve patted. “It’s like a little escape.” She indicates the bookshelves to our left and right. “What would I find if I explored?”

“A collection of law reference manuals, as well as fiction, and non-fiction pleasure reads. I come here to relax but also to think through big decisions.” I set two bottles of water on the table and then remove our sandwiches, setting hers in front of her. “I ordered our regulars.” I rest my elbows and glance over at her. “What’s yours?”

“Egg salad. What’s yours?”

“Egg salad,” I say, surprised at how many things I really do have in common with Carrie.

She smiles, and damn I love her smile. “They must have thought it was odd that two regulars ordered together tonight. How long have you been here and ordering?”

“Five years,” I say, opening my sandwich as she does the same. “You?”

“Six years for me. I can’t believe we haven’t run into each other, as in literally, while jogging. I mean, we’re on opposite sides of the plaza, but the running thing. We must have run right by each other for years.”

“It wasn’t our time to meet,” I say softly, thinking about the different place we’d be in had we met before I read that letter from my mother, and even before that debt with our parents was paid. “Eat,” I say, winking. “You’re going to need your energy.”

She gives me a shy smile and slides onto the floor before she takes a bite. Shy. This woman who cuffed me and left me in a hotel room is such a perfect contradiction. I dig in as well and for a few minutes, we eat in comfortable silence. That’s something I don’t remember having with another woman but then I never wanted to try. “In darkness there is light,” she says of the dark sea and starless night, illuminated only by the Statue of Liberty.

“Exactly what this room is to me.”

She tips back her water and sets it down before abandoning the rest of her sandwich to join me on the couch again. “Your father retired?” she asks, curling her legs on the couch, turning to face me.

I finish off my sandwich and settle back on the couch next to her, angling toward her. “Semi-retired. He has a hard time letting go.”

I expect her to push on my father, but she doesn’t. “And your mother?” she asks instead.

“Died four years ago, going on five that feels like ten.”

“You had her growing up and then you lost her. I’m both envious and heartbroken for you. Were you close to her?”

Most people say they’re sorry for my loss, but not Carrie. She dives into the heart of the matter and dives deep, and yet, when I would normally pull back, I find myself answering her without hesitation. “I thought I was.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I found out that I didn’t know what was going on in her life. There was a side of my mother I didn’t understand, but I should have.”

“Like me and my father, it seems.”

“I don’t think so,” I say, wanting to avoid her father at all costs and that cost is me making confessions I never make. “I idolized my father. I chose to be blind to my mother’s pain because he created it.”

“I’m not sure if I should ask what that means.”

“My mother wrote my sister a letter that detailed her miserable life with my father. He cheated often, with many, and treated her like shit. I had no idea. I knew he was a bastard in the boardroom, so to speak, but I thought she was the person that kept him human. I was wrong.” I meet her stare. “My mother also wrote of her fears that I was so close to him that I would become him.”

“But you’re not,” she says. “You know that, right?”

“Says the woman who is always calling me an asshole.”

“You are an asshole,” she says. “But we both know that’s a choice, or rather a persona. I don’t believe you’re him. Not the way you describe him. Not from what I know of you.”

To allow her to believe that I’m not that asshole she’s called me would be a selfish mistake. That’s how she gets hurt. That “persona” as she calls it, is what keeps people at a distance, it’s how I keep from actually getting close enough to anyone to hurt them the way he hurts people. And yet, what do I do? I reach for her and pull her closer. “I don’t talk about my family, Carrie. I don’t bring women to my apartment. I have never brought anyone to this room.”

Shock flickers over her face. “Then why am I here, Reid?”

I drag her onto my lap. “Because I want you here. Because I can’t seem to stop breaking my own fucking rules with you.”

Her hands plant on my shoulders. “And you’re mad at me again? You’re blaming me.”

“Yes. Stop making me break my rules.” I cup her head and kiss her, my tongue pressing past her lips, stroking us both into a needier place, where rules don’t matter.

She moans and sinks into the kiss, and damn it, I love those moans, I’m addicted to those moans. I’m addicted to this woman, and all my good intentions to sate that addiction, fail. I pull my T-shirt over her head and toss it, and my gaze raking over her breasts, her nipples puckering under the inspection. My hand slides between her shoulder blades, and I mold her close. “This is definitely your fault.”

“Is this where you decide to kick me out again?”

“No,” I say. “This is where we fuck.” I drag her mouth to mine, and kiss her, telling myself that fucking is all this can be, reminding myself of the debt and the secret I legally cannot share. The secret that she’d never stay silent over if she knew.

I tell myself to get lost in the taste of her, defiant and yet submissive at the same time, in that way that defines this woman. I tell myself to just enjoy the moment, and I do. I waste no time getting naked and pulling her down the throbbing length of my cock. I waste no time driving into her. I waste no time getting lost in her touch, her kisses, her moans. And later, much later, when I’ve laid us down and pulled her next to me on the couch, I hold her, listening to her breathing slow and even out. I’m acutely aware that she is a woman caught in the middle of a debt that has to be paid, destined to hate me. It’s why this has to stay just sex. It’s why no matter how deep I go with her, I cannot get too close.