Damage Control

Displeased in about a hundred ways, I turn her to face the door, her back to my front, her lush backside nestled intimately against me. I arch around her, my lips at her ear, my hand flattening on her belly. “Much has already changed, Emily,” I assure her. The floral scent of her perfume teases my nostrils with bittersweet memories of me wrapped in that smell, in this woman, whoever she is. “And so much more is about to.”

“I was weak,” she murmurs. “I should have ended this before you could feel the way you do right now.”

“But you didn’t,” I say, not bothering to ask why. That answer is in the secrets she thinks she isn’t going to tell me tonight.

She leans back into me, a subtle sway before she melts against me. “I tried,” she whispers, her hands sliding to my thighs, and holy fuck, her touch is too damn right for her to be wrong. The idea jolts me and I step back, taking her with me to open the door, before I then set her away from me, and into the hallway. “It’s time for that dinner and conversation.”

She stumbles slightly and damn it, I want to right her footing. I want to save her, when I might be the one I need to be saved after this, after her. I watch her catch her balance and start walking, her pace even, when I have a feeling she wants to run; and even knowing Seth will have her followed, I don’t want her to run. Reaching behind me, I shut the door, and in a few long strides, I catch up with her, but she doesn’t look at me. I think it’s fairly clear that she doesn’t want to see the distrust in my eyes any more than I want to see the lies in hers. Once again, we’re well matched, but for all of the wrong reasons.

We fall into step as we so often do, which is something I have never experienced with any other woman. But when I would normally reach for her, I do not, for the same reason I got us the hell out of the apartment. I don’t need to fog my senses with the feelings this woman obviously delivers, when I didn’t even believe that was possible. She wants to protect me? I’m protecting myself, and I’m not sure what bothers me more: The idea that she doesn’t want my protection because she doesn’t trust me or because she’s my enemy.

In all of sixty seconds, we round the corner and stop at the elevator bank, neither of us looking at each other. I punch the call button while she hugs herself, a defensive stance that means little that I don’t already know. She’s guarded. She’s always been guarded. I knew this. I knew she had some ghosts in her closet, but I thought they were things she wasn’t ready to tell, not things she completely erased. The elevator dings almost instantly and I hold the door for her, not just because it’s the gentlemanly thing to do but because I want to control every moment I’m with her tonight.

She steps inside the car, and while she is often bold and even confrontational, tonight she walks to the opposite side of the car, leaning on the wall, arms folded in front of her chest still. I join her inside, punching the lobby button, I rotate to face her, my hands on the railing of the wall behind me. Her long brown hair is sleek, her navy skirt and blouse simple but professional, though now I find myself wondering if her limitations are choice or circumstance. I wonder a lot of things I should have wondered sooner.

The elevator doors shut, sealing us inside a steel box with her lies and my questions. The car starts to move, and our gazes collide, the connection a punch in my chest I don’t want her to have the power to deliver. But she does. I am vulnerable in ways I swore I never would be with a woman, or anyone for that matter, and I’d actually forgotten the lessons my family taught me years ago. What my mother warned me about with Emily. The people closest to you can hurt you the most. My jaw sets hard, my stare now sharp glass shards of accusation.

Apparently far from oblivious to that fact, Emily lifts her chin and declares, “I am not going to sit through dinner with you looking at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like I’m one of the many people who you can’t trust and who have betrayed you.”

“Change my mind.”

“So I’m right,” she says, her voice cracking. “You do think I’m one of them.”

“There are many things going on in my mind right now.”

“I told you—”

“Don’t tell me anything in this elevator.”

“Right,” she says tightly. “Because everyone in your family is watching everyone else, so it has cameras.”

“You know me and my family well,” I say dryly. “And yet I know far less about you than I want to know.”

“I thought we weren’t talking in the elevator?”

“I want to know more of you,” I say, putting a double entendre to use. “And that’s not something I mind anyone knowing.”

“You know more than you think,” she replied, thinking on her feet, and choosing her words to play to the same audience I am.

“And yet you still feel like a mystery to me,” I reply, and it’s in that moment the elevator slows and dings. Her gaze jerks toward the doors and I glance up and register that we are now on the fourth floor, rather than our destination. Not about to let a wall of human bodies give Emily a chance to escape, I close the distance between us, and by the time her gaze returns to me, I’m standing in front of her. She looks up at me, her lips parting in surprise, her gaze meeting mine, and there is no mistaking the flash of torment in her eyes that I want to understand.

The doors open and male voices sound, moving closer to us as they enter the car, crowding Emily and me, and in turn, forcing me to remove the step I’ve left between us, my hands bracketing her waist. She sucks in air with the contact, her hands wrapping my wrist, and I’m not sure if she’s holding me in place, or wishing she could move me and escape. The doors shut to my right and the car jolts into action, while Emily sways forward, catching herself with a palm on my chest. Seeming to be stunned by what she’s done, she tries to pull it away, but I cover her hand with mine, holding it to me. Her gaze seems to instinctively jerk from those spellbinding buttons to my face, offering me a glimpse of the confusion etched all over hers. She doesn’t know if she wants to hold on to me or push me away. In that, we are one, but I am not comforted by her conflicting emotions. She’s trapped by her own lies; what she does with the freedom I’m about to give her will speak volumes about who she is, and who we are together.