Текст книги "Revealed to Him"

Автор книги: Jen Frederick

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

NATALIE

The smell of coffee and fried batter lures me off the third floor, down the stairs to the bright kitchen with its huge marble counters. Off-white rustic cabinets run the entire length of one side of the long room, with a long counter space breaking up the storage on top and the bottom. In the middle is a center island large enough to hold five barstools. Across are more cabinets and all the fancy chrome appliances that a person would need and then some. At the back of the long slim room, a small nook overlooks the postage-stamp-sized backyard—which, by Manhattan standards, is actually sizable. Jake is ensconced in one of the chairs with the Times spread out in front of him and a plate empty of anything but a few traces of syrup.

A girl is standing in front of a large six-burner stovetop pouring batter into an ancient-looking cast iron pan, which is a perfect snapshot of the townhouse—a blend of new and old but all sturdy, workable items. She must be Sabrina. The similarity in their features is unmistakable.

There are no delicate vases or strange pieces of art that you often see in these more expensive townhouses. I’ve lived in New York for going on six years so I’m well aware of the price tag attached to a place like this. It is in the millions, could even be eight-figure millions.

Oliver and I came from a solid Midwestern background, and while we have both achieved some form of financial success, there is an air of almost disregarded wealth here, as if Jake and his family have been surrounded by this environment for generations.

Jake lifts his head from his paper. His super-soldier hearing, as I put it, must have alerted him to my arrival. He tilts his head in invitation and I trot over to his side without another thought.

“There you are,” he says, stroking the back of my legging-clad thigh under the overlong T-shirt that I’m wearing. It’s his. I found it folded on the top of the tufted dark brown leather chair situated in the corner of the room. It’s mine now, but I haven’t told him that yet. “Like your shirt.”

I lift the collar to my nose and inhale Jake’s scent—a mix of sandalwood aftershave, fresh soap, and clean sweat. My favorite new cologne. “It smells good too.”

His full lips spread into a wide smile. He fists the shirt and drags me down for a long, wet kiss. It’s almost too long and too wet to be having in front of his sister, but I’ve found I’m pretty much unable to resist anything Jake wants. Who am I fooling? I want this too. In fact, I’d like the hand that is now gripping the back of my thigh to be down my leggings. I break away from the kiss before I climb onto his lap and start grinding like a shameless wanton.

At least he’s breathing a little heavily too. “Get some dinner,” he says and squeezes me hard on the ass.

I wander over to Sabrina. She’s taller than I had guessed from her picture, with a willowy body that probably makes everything she buys look amazing. She’s the type who can literally wear a potato sack and still look elegant. Today she’s chosen a pair of skinny jeans and a slouchy knit shirt. Her caramel brown hair is caught up in a high ponytail, and when she turns to greet me good morning, I almost stumble back at the beauty of her unusual blue-gray eyes.

She raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow and I give myself an internal slap on the face. Of course she’s beautiful, because Jake is beautiful. Their beauty is different but still the same. They have the same high cheekbones, but where Jake’s jaw is more chiseled, hers is softer. His eyes are a deeper blue and hers are light. But the slope of the cheeks and the full lips mark them clearly as related.

“Hi, I’m Sabrina.” She holds out the hand that’s not gripped around her spatula. “We’re having breakfast for dinner. Is that okay?”

I wipe my sweaty hands on my pants, grateful that I’ve taken diazepam, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be able to do this. Maybe I should be giving the drugs a little more credit.

“It smells amazing and who doesn’t like breakfast?” A familiar uneasiness washes over me and this time my anxiety has nothing to do with my surroundings and everything to do with wanting Jake’s little sister to like me.

“Exactly.”

“Sorry I didn’t come down earlier.” I search for an adequate excuse. I was busy having sex with your brother, and then I got caught up in writing, so in addition to my phobias, I’ll never act like a normal person.

She waves her spatula to indicate she didn’t mind. “Jake told me you were going to be out of it. It’s no big deal. Want a pancake?”

I nod enthusiastically and try not to panic about what Jake might have told his sister. Oh by the way, I’m bringing a fruitcake to stay here. She might break down and start crying if the doorbell rings. Pay no attention to her.

“Jake tells me you’re at Columbia. What’s your major?”

“Business.” She sounds unenthused. “My mom was a lawyer and my dad was a banker. Megan, our sister, took the lawyer position and Jake was supposed to be the banker, except he joined the army. But he owns his own business, so it’s all good now. So I guess I’m going into investment banking.”

She sounds unenthused and resentful.

I glance over my shoulder at the table, where Jake’s head is buried in the newspaper. His left hand is curled around a hot cup of coffee and I watch distractedly as the left arm moves up slowly to his mouth and then down again. I notice then that the markings of this prosthetic are different than he ordinarily wears. The fairings are a dark gray, and the area near the elbow bulges out.

“That’s his DARPA arm,” Sabrina informs me quietly when she notices where my attention is pinned. A quick twist of her wrist and three more perfectly shaped silver-dollar pancakes are poured into the cast iron pan. “It’s more advanced, but it has a lot of bugs, so he wears it only at home where he can shut it down and change it out.”

DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I remember doing research on robotics during my first series and coming across a lot of DARPA-related papers. They were mostly focused on creating super soldiers, but one step toward a super soldier was having amputees test out various devices. Jake would be the perfect subject. He’s very fit and active. Plus if super soldiers looked like him, all they’d have to do to win would be send in a few advance scouts to ladies’ night at the local bar. The women would fall in love and then fight to keep their new lovers in their beds—

“You’re drooling.”

Sabrina’s whisper catches me off guard. Turning away from Jake, I wipe a hand across my mouth. Dry. I give her a mock scowl and she winks back at me.

“I never thought I’d say this, but it’s nice to see you perving over my brother. Some girls are turned off.”

“By what?” I can’t imagine that there’s anything about Jake that’s objectionable. Although Sabrina has known him longer, so maybe she’s privy to some terrible personality flaws. Lowering my voice, I say conspiratorially, “Does he squeeze the toothpaste from the middle of the tube? I would hate that.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh no, Jake is precise. He squeezes from the bottom and he’ll go into your bathroom and straighten out your tube from time to time.”

“Oh, so he is constantly invading your privacy?” I nod. “That would really be bothersome for me.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “He doesn’t do that either. And he doesn’t send people to follow me all over town or watch me, like his friend Ian does with his wife, Tiny.” The side of her mouth quirks up as she flips the pancakes.

“Ian? Oh, Ian Kerr?” I’d read about him in the Observer. Everyone in the city knew who he was, and supposedly we were all supposed to mourn that he’d been taken off the market by some down-market girl who rode a bike for a living. I was more intrigued by his bike-messenger girlfriend, or wife, I guess, than I was by some Wall Street billionaire who bought and sold half the city. I didn’t realize that Jake ran with that crowd. I wrinkle my nose.

“Don’t worry. Ian’s not like that. He’s down to earth.” She jerks her head at Jake. “He has a low tolerance for bullshit.” Then she sighs. “All his friends are amazing.”

The wistful tone makes me wonder which one of Jake’s friends she has a crush on. I’ll ask him later. For now, there’s just something amazing in being able to sit down in a new place with a new person and not be totally freaked out.

I’m a little anxious. My heart rate is definitely up, and one loud noise may have me scurrying upstairs, but overall? I’m pretty damn jubilant.

Life at Jake’s is so much easier than I thought it would be. The house is bigger and while I don’t go outside, ever, the different floors give me a sense of openness and freedom that I hadn’t experienced before. I feel like I accomplish something by going from my set of rooms down to the kitchen and back up again.

Sabrina flits in and out, going to classes and coming home to study. The only downside is that they have a lot of people ring the doorbell. Most of the activity is downstairs, but Sabrina gets deliveries to the house regularly. I hide upstairs and watch the delivery trucks on the computer monitor Jake has set up, and I don’t come out until they leave.

Other than that, the transition is a lot smoother than I imagined.

Four days after I’ve moved in, a blonde woman, slim and lovely, appears at the door. I take a break from writing and am sitting on the sofa contemplating my next scene when I hear the doorbell. From my vantage point, I watch as Sabrina goes to answer it. My office door is closed, but my heart picks up, just a bit.

Sabrina opens the door and allows the woman in. The woman gives her a warm embrace that Sabrina returns half-heartedly. They talk and Sabrina disappears. The woman removes her jacket and looks around. She smooths her hand over the iron-and-marble console table in the entryway and then moves toward the living room, out of view.

My breathing starts to escalate and I reach for my breathing bag, but my action is arrested when Jake shows up. I hear footsteps racing up the stairs and then a knock at my door.

“It’s Sabrina, can I come in?” she asks.

“Yes, it’s open,” I answer, but I can’t take my eyes off the camera. The woman, back in view, has her hand on Jake’s right arm and she’s standing really close to him. Too close for my comfort. She says something and strokes his arm. That’s my arm, bitch!

“Who is it?” I ask sharply when Sabrina settles into my desk chair. She double clicks on the video feed and it fills the big monitor screen. I’m not sure I’m happy about this new, improved vision because I see now she’s beautiful, and even in the grainy footage, her skin looks impeccable.

She has that very wealthy, very polished look of a woman who’s successful and well off. Her jeans are skintight and her tight top is short enough that a flash of skin shows between the tops of her jeans and the bottom of her shirt. She takes another step closer to Jake.

“It’s Laura,” she answers, as if I know what that name means.

“Who’s Laura?” I ask Sabrina.

“His ex. He was going to marry her before he joined the army and then broke it off. She got married, while he was deployed, to an old friend of his. Then like a few months ago, I heard she got divorced and was wondering if Jake was single. That’s what Megan told me, at least.”

“His ex?” The word tastes sour and bitter. “What do you think they’re talking about?”

“She’s probably wanting to know when she can get back into his pants and he’s telling her to go away—I hope.”

Me too, Sabrina.

The fear that’s spiking in my blood isn’t anxiety based.

It’s that I just found Jake and I’m not prepared to lose him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

JAKE

“Laura, this is a surprise.” When Sabrina came downstairs to tell me I had a visitor, the name Laura didn’t immediately ring any bells.

“Really? You told me that we needed to get together again sometime, and I was just in the neighborhood and thought I would stop by.” She holds out her coat and I take it. In the neighborhood, I think dubiously. Laura lives on the East Side and I can’t think of a thing that would bring her over here. It’s not like she’s taking the bus. I don’t think Laura has ever put her ass on a public transport vehicle ever.

“Do you need some help?” I ask. “My offices are downstairs.”

She laughs and presses a hand against my right arm. When she leans in, she looks like she wants a hug, or worse, a kiss. I step back slightly and turn to disguise the rebuff by draping her coat over the console table. She frowns and looks at the closet door.

Oh no, I’m not hanging her coat up. That would imply I wanted her to stay. Today’s been a frustrating day—I’m not getting any closer to finding Natalie’s tormenter. Whoever ordered the clown hasn’t reused the email address, and the note is a dead end. Anyone could have written it, including myself or even, hell, Oliver. We’ve followed her ex-boyfriend around—the most boring asshole on the planet. He’s not agoraphobic as far as we can tell; he just never leaves the house. He’s glued to his gaming console. Two of her former coworkers are living overseas, another couple are in San Francisco. The others are living normal lives. No one appears to be a threat there. We’ve even investigated Oliver to see if there were any credible threats against him. Right now any connection to him is tenuous. The notes, the clown, are all personal to Natalie.

The bright side is that she and Sabrina are bonding and that she’s happy here.

She’s even been up to my bedroom. I used sex in the elevator to lure her upstairs and now she associates the small box with good things like pressing her face against the glass walls and both of us coming like freight trains.

I want to broach the idea of her meeting with Isaiah instead of Dr. Terrance, but I don’t want to spring a hundred new things on her at once, or make her think that I feel she’s defective and I’m trying to fix her.

The last thing I want to deal with is Laura, a woman I’ve seen once in about six years and thought of even less. Unfortunately for me¸ I’m going to have to deal with this myself instead of hiding behind Natalie.

“I’m here to see you, Jake,” Laura trills. “Your place is lovely. Who decorated for you?”

While it’d be great to feign ignorance, her flirtatious smile and the touching are signals that are hard to miss. “My mom and sisters,” I answer as repressively as possible and shift so her hand falls away.

Belatedly I realize that my answer implied I had no woman in my life. Her eyes light up and she advances into the living room. I have no choice but to follow. “Well, I might have used a little less of a lemon yellow accent, but it’s still nice. Was it renovated when you bought it?”

I nod curtly, refusing to sit even as she settles into one of the brown leather chairs. “I’m working, Laura. If you need help with something, why don’t we go down to my office?”

She shakes her head. “Surely you can take a coffee break. Or donuts? Cops like donuts, right?”

I sigh and scrub a hand down my face. Where’s Sabrina? At least she could come and help me. “I’m not a cop. I run an investigative and personal protection service firm.”

“That sounds naughty.” She raises an eyebrow and licks the corner of her lip. Laura is attractive and I’ve had sex with her many times before, but none of her antics move me. But I cared for her once; hell, I might have even married her had my life not made such a dramatic turn, and I don’t feel right about placing my boot in her ass and kicking her out.

On the other hand, it doesn’t feel right having her in the same house as Natalie. I glance at the entry, where just a few days ago, I’d taken Natalie. I still feel the soreness in my abs from the long bout of predawn sex we’d had this morning.

I curl my fingers into my palm. No, it wasn’t right that Laura was sitting here without Natalie knowing.

“I’m seeing someone,” I say baldly. “My donut breaks are saved for her.”

“Oh.” Laura looks down at her hands and then at the fireplace. Anywhere but me. “When did this happen? Because when I saw you in Rockefeller Plaza, you implied you were single.”

I didn’t remember saying anything like that, yet it’s possible I might have told her that I wasn’t too busy to have a drink with her. I see now Laura took that to mean I was open to getting back together. “A few weeks ago.”

“Then it can’t be serious.” She rises from the chair and sways over to me. I step aside, adroitly but obviously. A frown creases her forehead.

“It’s serious.”

“It can’t be that serious. You said you just started seeing her a few weeks ago. Don’t you remember what we had together?”

“It was a long time ago.” And I never asked you to marry me. It was just something that both our families thought would happen. I never needed you, not like I need Natalie, I think.

“We have a long history and had some really good times, Jake. During my divorce I couldn’t stop thinking about you. When I saw you at Rockefeller Plaza, I knew that we’d made a mistake all those years ago.” She places her hand on my chest. Her eyes dart to my left side. “Even that doesn’t bother me.”

I raise my left hand and make a fist. “This? My stump or my prosthetic?”

She grimaces at the word. “I can get used to it.”

I walk over to the entry and pick up her coat. “You’re a nice woman, Laura, but so long as Natalie wants me, she’s going to have me. Hell, even if she doesn’t want me anymore, I’ll probably spend the rest of my days trying to convince her to give me a second chance. There’s nothing for you here.”

Hurt mars her pretty face and I can see the spiteful words form before she opens her mouth. But then her good manners take over and she manages to sniff haughtily. “Your loss.”

Silently I hand her the coat, which she practically rips out of my hands. She spins and jerks open the door and then runs out. Behind me I hear a shuffle on the stairs.

“You should go upstairs,” Sabrina says.

I nod. “Thanks.”

As I pass she says, “You made the right choice.”

“There’s no choice to be made,” I tell her. “It’s Natalie or no one for me.”

“Same.”

The one word strikes me hard. Does she really feel that way about Kaga? I push that worry aside and hurry up the stairs to reassure Natalie.

“Can I come in?”

Natalie turns away from her desk. The computer monitor that shows all the exterior feeds is asleep and her manuscript is up on the main screen. “How am I supposed to finish with all these interruptions,” she teases while gesturing me forward.

“It’s a conspiracy,” I quip. “Did you see we had a visitor?”

“We?” she says with a raised eyebrow. “That lady looked like she was here to see one person only.”

I pluck her from her chair and then sit down, settling her on my lap. Talking about exes necessitates a closeness. I want Natalie to know she’s it for me, and I can’t fully express that with her across the room. “That was Laura. I dated her when I was in college and then for a couple years after. I hadn’t seen her once in eight years, and then about six months ago I ran into her at Rockefeller Plaza. She said we should get together and catch up and I told her to call me because it seemed like the social, polite thing to do. I put it out of my mind and didn’t give it another thought.”

“But because you took a long time she showed up at your doorstep.”

“The hazards of working out of one’s home, I suppose.” She buries her nose in my neck. “We okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Do I need to worry about your exes showing up?”

“No, Adam and I didn’t have that kind of relationship, and in the end, he was mad that the game was taking so much flak and I was mad he didn’t defend me more. I think we were glad to see the back of each other.”

“Speaking of exes, did you have a chance to look through your emails?”

She stills in my embrace and then shudders. “I can’t. Oliver told me I should go through my old emails, make a list of potential perps, but I can’t, Jake. I just can’t go through all the horrible stuff again. I’m afraid they’ll eradicate every tiny little bit of progress I’ve made.”

“All right. We’ll work without it.”

“Thank you.” She snuggles in closer.

I tip her head up for a long kiss before I head back downstairs. We might not be married, but it feels like it. And it’s not a bad feeling. Not at all.

I end up working late and Natalie is still in her office. Sabrina is gone, but there’s pasta in the refrigerator. I reheat it and then head upstairs.

“You hungry?” I knock on the door.

She opens the door. “Sabrina fed me a few hours ago.”

“Do you mind then?” I gesture toward the food. She shakes her head. “Mind coming upstairs?”

“No, I can do that. Can we ride the elevator?” Natalie believes the elevator inside the house is tremendous. After our sex ride, I’m beginning to agree with her.

“Yes, but I need to eat before I can service you.”

She sticks out her tongue. I whip out my left arm and drag her to me, burying my nose in her neck as she squeals. It’s a tremendous relief not to worry about which arm I’m using to touch her.

“Come on.” I drag her into the waiting box and press the button. I shovel the pasta into my mouth as the elevator rises from the third floor to the fifth. She stays snuggled up to my side. “How’s the writing going?”

“Good, I’m nearing the end. I can feel it. I think a couple more days and I will finally be able to answer Daphne’s emails.”

We walk out and my knee locks up. Stumbling, I drop the bowl and it crashes to the ground. “Fuck!”

Natalie grabs my arm to steady me, but my heavy weight nearly takes her to the ground. I shove her roughly away—too roughly. Cursing, I apologize. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

There’s glass everywhere. The sauce has splashed the walls, the carpet, and me. The burn of humiliation crawls over my skin. Natalie tries to pick up the glass.

“Stop. Just stop,” I snap.

She does immediately and scuttles back, looking hurt and concerned. Fuck.

It’s the first time I haven’t felt completely competent around her and it’s pissing me off. I close my eyes and gather myself. “Sorry.” It comes out grumbly so I try again. “I didn’t want you to hurt yourself on the glass.”

She swallows. “I just wanted to help.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m a fucking beast.”

“You’re not, but I know what it’s like to not always be showing your best side.”

I take a deep breath and then another. “I want you to think of me as a man.”

“I do.”

“A normal one.”

“You are.”

I wipe my hand across my mouth and start picking up glass.

She watches me for a few moments, and then says, “You know, Jake Tanner, you talk a good game.”

“How’s that?” After she gets to her feet and disappears inside the bathroom, I limp over to the dresser and pull out some T-shirts. I dump them on the floor to cover the mess. I’ll get someone up here tomorrow to clean it up. The best I can do now is make sure Natalie’s feet don’t get cut.

“You tell me I’m fine when we both know I’m not, yet you have to be perfect at all times? Even if you had your two original limbs, you would trip and fall because you’re human. I trip and fall. I drop things. It doesn’t make me less of a woman. And, if you do think that flaws make you less than normal and not worth loving, then what am I?”

She dumps the towels at my feet and drops to her hands and knees to clean up the mess I made. Poleaxed by her comments, I don’t try to stop her. I’d thought I’d made the big sacrifice by taking my prosthetics off in front of her, but I hadn’t fully let my guard down. She wore her flaws on the outside, like me, but she’d accepted them and allowed herself to be loved.

So I owed her the same or I didn’t deserve her. She’s allowed me to see her at her most vulnerable and to help her. I can’t turn her away now. I limp over to the bed and unfasten my jeans, pushing them down until the top of the compression sleeve shows.

“Will you help me?” I gesture toward my leg.

Her eyes widen and she nods. Halfway across the room, she turns back to look at the spill. “What about the mess?”

“Leave it for tomorrow. Someone will clean it up. Right now, I need you.” I needed to hold her in my arms and reassure myself I haven’t fucked it up too badly.

She kneels between my legs, looking like both a supplicant and aggressor. “What do I do?”

“There’s a valve behind my knee. Turn it to the left. You’ll hear the air displace and then the compression sleeve will loosen. Pull the sleeve down.”

She does as I instruct, her hands all over my prosthetic. But she doesn’t look revolted or, worse, turned on. The fetishists, the ones who get aroused by the amputations, the stumps, the devices, are worse than the ones who pity me. But there’s none of that in Natalie’s face. She’s full of intense concentration as she twists and then sits back to wait for the vacuum seal to evaporate.

“This is really cool. I’m going to incorporate some of this in my next story.”

She might be turned on a little, I guess, but just by the technology and the marvel of it all. Truth be told, it is cool and I’m glad that fascination is her response rather than revulsion. She pulls on the sleeve, her warm fingers a welcome touch. The sleeve goes nowhere.

“More force,” I say wryly.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.

She reapplies herself to the task and as she pulls, her little tongue appears between her teeth. My body responds in predictable fashion.

“Does this feel good?” she asks in surprise. My newly formed hard-on is hard to miss.

“Nope, this is just the result of being near you.”

This generates a smirk. She gives a hard jerk and the compression stocking gives way. When her hands pull down the inner lining and her knuckles brush against the tender skin, I shiver.

“Did that hurt?” She tosses the liner behind her and pulls my jeans all the way off and out of the way.

“No.” It’s my turn to laugh slightly. “It’s sensitive.”

“In a bad way or a good one?”

“Don’t know.”

She runs her hands down what’s left of my calf and I flinch at the sensitivity.

“Too much?”

“A little,” I admit. “I haven’t had anyone but a medical professional touch me. It’s not a very erotically charged situation.”

She rubs her hand on my knee. “Maybe another time.”

I don’t say no. The sensation was strong and maybe if I had time to steel myself to it, it might end up being very arousing.

I hold out my arm and she stands between my legs and helps me off with the arm. She picks up both devices and takes them over to the chair. I watch her with bemused affection.

I could get used to this. It was a lot easier with her help than doing it by myself.

“You up for a shower?” I ask.

“Tonight?” she says, turning around and climbing on top of me. I steady her with my forearm and squeeze her plump ass with my right hand.

“The hot water can make it harder to get into the prosthetic in the morning.”

She nods eagerly and we go into the bathroom. The shower has a wide marble bench for when I want to lie down during a steam. I place a couple of heavy towels on it and turn on the steam to warm up the enclosure.

Sitting down, I pat my lap.

She crawls on top of me. The rain head sprinkles hot water down on us and we make the sweetest, most tender love of my life.

I didn’t know it could feel like this. I’ve come hard for her and wanted her more than anything, but this?

There’s no describing it. There’s her slick flesh rubbing against mine. Her bouncy tits squish against my chest as she rides me. I grip an ass cheek and hold her hip steady with my forearm.

The water sluices over us, a stream that we drink in as we kiss each other in deep open-mouthed caresses. She rocks against me and I swell inside her, getting harder and bigger with every thrust. We make love for an endless amount of time, until our skin is wrinkled and we are dizzy with pleasure.

With love.

“I love you,” I whisper into her mouth.

Her breath catches and then releases on a half sigh, half sob. “I love you too, Jake. So much.”

And then the words as much as anything drive us over the cliff.