Текст книги "The Other Man"

Автор книги: R. K. Lilley

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

I’d taken my cell phone with me on the walk as there were a few clients I was expecting calls from.  When it started buzzing, though, and I saw who was actually calling, I cursed.

My fucking ex.

He would call today.  Talk about the worst luck in the world.

Or worse, had Deborah already called and told him she’d seen me and Heath?

Dammit.

“What’s the matter?” Heath asked tonelessly.  His eyes were on my phone, and I had this strange thought that he knew who was calling.

The lock screen had lit up with EDUARD CALLING, and it was likely he could have read it from where he was standing.

Instead of answering, I was studying him.

He was fascinating to me.  Expressionless, toneless, but all of it somehow telling me that he was agitated.

I tried to shake off the suspicion, but it just wasn’t working.

“So how much do you know about me?” I asked him slowly.  “How much did you uncover in your . . . background check?”

“I know that’s your ex-husband calling.  I know you divorced him because he’s a cheating piece of shit.”

Wow.  He’d apparently done his research.  I was torn on how freaked out I should be about that.

“Why’s he bugging you?” he asked, through his teeth.  “I know you don’t have anything to do with him anymore.  What does he want?”

I grimaced.  I really hated to talk about this.  “He does this every so often, calls to chew me out.  He thinks it’s my fault that his sons don’t want anything to do with him anymore.  But if I had to guess why he’s calling right now, I’d say it’s because of Deborah, that neighbor you noticed I don’t like.  Remember how I said she’d tell my ex about seeing you and me together?  I didn’t think she’d work this fast, but here it is.”

My phone started buzzing again.  Irritated, I answered with, “What do you want, Eduard?”  My tone was biting.

My ex-husband took immediate exception to my tone.  “Is that any way to greet the father of your children?” he shot back.

“What do you want?” I repeated.

He cut right to the chase.  “How old is he?”

Ugh.  He was so predictably unpleasant about everything.  Divorce brought out the worst in everyone, but Eduard had sunk to new levels of low over the past year.  “Have you been talking to your good friend Deborah?”

“At least older than our sons, I hope?”  He was in a mood.  Usually he didn’t escalate this quickly into straight asshole when he called.  Generally he tried cajoling first.

“Not doing this,” I bit out, already thoroughly annoyed.

“I had no idea you were such a cougar, Lourdes.”

“Not doing this,” I repeated, about a second away from hanging up on him.

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t work out.  I was too old for you.”

That was too much.  “It’s not a mystery why we didn’t work out.  You were sleeping with my ex-best friend.”  I caught myself, just barely, from resorting to name-calling.

“You never even let me explain about that!”  His voice was close to a shout in my ear.

Oh.  Ugh.  This man.  How had I been fooled by him for so long?

“None of this matters,” I said, voice going very blank and cold.  I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

I was starting to suspect that he enjoyed our hostile interactions.  Why else would he go out of his way to make them happen?

“Tell me why you’re calling,” I said slowly.  “And it had better be productive, or I’m hanging up in exactly five seconds.”

“You’re lucky, you know.  I could have pressed assault charges against both you and Rafael for what you did to me.”

Ugh.  This man.  Grrr.

He rendered me incapable of coherent thoughts he was so frustrating to deal with.

“Are you threatening to press charges against your own child right now?” I shot back, astounded that Eduard was even capable of disgusting me more than he usually did.  “Is this a joke?”

“If I had known, if I’d had any clue, that you were vindictive enough to turn my children against me—”

I hung up in the middle of his tirade.

“Assault?”  Heath’s tone was sardonic.

I looked up at him, smiling ruefully.  “It’s a long story.”

“I’m here all day.”

I sighed, and let it spill.

“For the record, I’m normally a pacifist.”

“Noted,” Heath drawled.

“But, and I guess you know this, or at least part of it, I caught him cheating on me.  He butt dialed me while he was having sex with my ex-best friend.  I heard enough to be certain that it was them and what they were doing.”

I paused, trying to read his expression.  “My reaction, more than anything, was fury.  I became so furious that I did assault him.”

“How?”

I always felt like a psycho retelling this story, especially now that I was so completely free of my ex.  But I told him.  If you wanted someone to open up to you, of course you had to reciprocate.

“I waited until he got home, honestly not knowing what to say to him, and he acted like everything was normal when he greeted me.  He went right away to take a shower, and that was when I lost my temper.  You see, he’d done that a lot, come in from wherever and gone immediately to shower.  He must have been stepping out on me for ages, and I hadn’t a clue.”

I studying him a while, trying and failing to gauge his reaction, and finally continued, “I grabbed the Fabuloso and his belt.”

“I like where this is headed,” Heath noted, and it made me smile.  At least he didn’t think I was a complete nutcase.  Yet.

“I sprayed the ground right in front of the shower.  It’s very smooth marble.  The second he stepped out, he slipped, cracked his head hard on the counter, and landed on his ass.”

“Good,” Heath said succinctly.

I smiled.  I should have known this wouldn’t remotely shock him.  “That’s when I took a belt to him, buckle first.”

“Good,” he repeated.

“I beat the shit out of him, beat him until he ran out of the house, naked, just to get away from me.  Then I locked him out.  Filed for divorce as soon as humanly possible.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’s threatening your son with assault charges.”

“Rafael, my oldest, beat him up rather severely when he found out what his father had done.  Still, I can’t believe Eduard would threaten his own child like that.”

“He’s a scumbag.  Want me to take care of him for you?”

I felt my eyes growing wide.  If it were anyone else, I’d have assumed they were joking.  “Do you mean . . . ?”

“I’m not talking about killing him.  I guarantee I can get him to leave you alone without resorting to that.”

Now that was half tempting.  But I restrained myself.

“He’s nothing I can’t handle.  To be perfectly honest, he just annoys me at this point.  And the assault charges are bogus.  If he was going to do that, he’d have done it ages ago, when he could’ve proven it.”

“Why do you think he’s still harassing you?  And why is he so concerned about who you’re seeing?  Do you think he’s trying to get you back?”

“God, no.  But, you know, it’s started to occur to me that there’s a motivation behind it, and it’s not that he wants to see more of our sons.”

“What then?”

“I . . . ” God, I hated talking about this.  “Well, you see, I’ve always had I guess what you could call a trust fund, for lack of a better word.  From my father.  And I’ve had a few successful careers over the years.  Long story short, I’ve got a bit of money saved up.”  Several hundred thousand, to be exact.  “And my ex knows it.  He thinks he can use this to somehow get more money from me.”

“Motherfucker.”  Heath’s voice was low, and his tone managed to achieve a rather intriguing combination of being both blank and succinct.  “You let me know if you change your mind, okay?  I’d have no problem whatsoever putting that guy in his place.”

I nodded, wondering what to do with him.

We started walking again.

“You should show me your house.  Didn’t you say it was around here?”

He took a deep breath, and I just knew he was about to lie to me.  “It’s a mess,” he hedged.  “I’ll take you there on another day, after I’ve straightened up.”

“Are you telling me that you’re a slob?”

“Yeah,” he said, no hesitation.

I didn’t believe that for one second, not any of it.  He either didn’t live around here, or there was another reason he wasn’t bringing me back to his place.

Dammit.  And we’d been doing okay, making progress.  But at this simple lie, some seeds of suspicion were planted.

What if he had a live-in girlfriend?

Fuck.  What if he had a wife?

“Do you have a girlfriend . . . or a wife?” I asked him point blank, watching his face carefully.

A look of very pure annoyance crossed his face, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.  He was genuinely offended at the question, and I found that boundlessly reassuring.

“No.  Of course not.  I wouldn’t be with you now if I did.  Is that what you think of me?”

Now I was on the defense.  Oh, he was good.  “No,” I said carefully.  “It’s just never bad to be clear, I figure.”

He grunted (this one was annoyed, I thought), and we started walking again.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Next, I took him to my gym, because he asked what I liked to do on my day off, and my first and favorite choice, spending time with my boys, seemed inappropriate.  I didn’t even want to guess what my sons would think of Heath and our age difference.

My next few choices were shot down emphatically.  Shopping was not his thing, and I had a good feeling that I wouldn’t be changing his mind about that.

And no, he hadn’t changed his opinion about me photographing him.

So we settled on a plan.  We’d hit the gym, then I’d head back to my place to shower, and he’d go grab a few things from his place, make a few phone calls (for work), then come to pick me up for our date.

We actually went over all of this, every detail.  Heath seemed to think the day needed to be handled with a well thought out strategy.  I figured this was just another one of his quirks.

“I’m guessing you’ll head straight to the free weights,” I said, after I’d checked us both in.  I got a few guest passes every month, so Heath had been able to accompany me without a hitch.

“I’m guessing you’ll start out with cardio,” he returned.

We smiled at each other.  So we did have a few things in common that didn’t involve a bed.

I found a treadmill with the best view of the free weight area, tossed my hand towel across the top, and started stretching, my eyes on Heath.  I figured that watching him workout would be a treat.

And he did not disappoint.

When we’d been going over the day’s plans, he’d mentioned to me that he didn’t have a gym membership anywhere, or even a home gym, and I’d had a hard time believing it.  He was in perfect shape.  Beyond perfect into mind-blowing, to be precise.  No one got that way without work.

But, watching him work out, I quickly caught on why it made sense.

I’d clocked him as military, and his workout was surely proof of it.  It was grueling, but called for little beyond some room on the floor and a pull-up bar that took a lot of weight.

I didn’t even realize I was counting his pushups in my head until a voice from the machine next to me started counting off the numbers in a mutter.  They were that impressive.

I was running by then, but I shot a glance to my right, taking in the other woman who was shamelessly watching Heath go through his routine.

She was pretty.  And at least ten years younger than I was.  And clearly into Heath.

I started looking around the room, noticing all of the female attention he was getting.

I could certainly see why.

He didn’t pace himself at all, going through his routine at full speed, and in a way that could only be described as punishing.  Even in a large building full of people in excellent shape, his body and methods caught the eye.

When he got to the pull-up bar, I even heard one of the fawning women gasp, and I couldn’t really blame her.

His pace was astounding.  If this was the end of the world, and the only way you could save humanity was to do as many pull-ups as possible, Heath was definitely going to save us all.  And it wasn’t just the pull-ups.  This was how he approached every new maneuver.

I had to squint and do a double take when I saw the size of the weights he used for a long round of surrenders.

At one point, a very hot young brunette approached him, smiling, flirting from across the room.

Oh wow.  I was jealous, and it was awful.

I was not the jealous type.  I’d always been very confident in myself, had felt secure even with my cheating husband, until of course I found out he was a cheat and my best friend was a home-wrecking whore.

But even then, rather than getting jealous, I’d gotten rid of the dead weight that was my loser of a husband.  I’d known it was he that was flawed, not me, and I’d moved the hell on with my life.

I was not a jealous soul.

Or so I had thought.

But then Heath did something that I found made me feel kind of wonderful.

He blew the girl off rather aggressively, with a less than friendly go away motion of his hand, and a sharp, short shake of his head.

She went away, looking baffled.

It was hard not to smile about that.

I wrapped up my cardio at the fifty-minute mark, and he was still going strong, so I hit some of the lighter weight machines, doing lower body reps and mourning the loss of my perfect view of him.

I only had two machines left in my rotation when he showed up at my side, looking oiled up with sweat and good enough to eat.

“You finished?” I asked him on an exhale.

He jerked his shoulder up in a half shrug.  “Whenever you are.”  He was studying me intently.  “We’ve been at this for hours.  How do you never sweat?”  As he spoke, his eyes raked over me.

I did sweat, it was just minimal, and what was there was hard to see, but there were a few spots:  Into my hair, but the dark color hid it well.  And strangely, the outsides of my elbows.

I showed him said elbows.  He traced a finger over the slight bit of moisture there.

“That’s it?” he asked.

I nodded.

He opened his mouth to say something, I’ll never know what, because he was interrupted by another hot young thing brushing up beside him.

“I saw you working out,” she told him, smacking her gum.  She had one of those Kardashian accents that made me cringe, and she was acting like I wasn’t even there or like she assumed he wasn’t with me.  It was infuriating, and I felt another hot stab of awful jealousy.

But his focus was so sharply on me that the feeling went as quickly as it came.  He didn’t even notice, let alone care about all of the attention and admiration being sent blatantly his way.

“Do you mind backing up?” he said tersely, not so much as glancing at her.  “You’re in my personal space, and I don’t even fucking know you.”

She sent him a dirty look and stalked away.

I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh.  He was brutal.

“I hate your gym,” he told me.  “It’s a fucking meat market.  I don’t know how you can stand it.”

I bit my lip, again to stifle a laugh.  I couldn’t really blame him.  I got more than my fair share of male attention on a pretty regular basis, but it was never anywhere approaching what he’d been put through in a few short hours.

“Let’s get out of here,” I responded.

We went for coffee next door to my gym.

“What kind of music do you like?” I asked him.

Of course he turned it on me.  How very Heath.  “What kind do you like?  I bet I can guess.”

It struck me at that moment how we were looking at each other, with near twin expressions, if you could discount his broken, lifeless eyes.  We were smiling at each other like old friends, neither of us hiding our obvious affection for the other.

What strange things we brought out in each other.  Strange, wonderful things.

“Go ahead,” I told him.  “Guess.”

“You like everything.  You’re a moody listener.  Whatever strikes your fancy.”

Dammit.  “It’s like you know me.”

One of his big, rough fingers stroked feather light over my cheekbone.  “I want that.  To know you.  I really want that.”

Sweet, strange man.  “My turn.”

His smile widened, and it nearly took my breath away.  I’d never seen him do anything quite like it, all of his inherent meanness gone from his face, the ever present tough guy gone for one brief moment.

He looked happy.  God, he was gorgeous.  And so young.  It was easy to forget.

“Go for it,” he prompted.  “I can’t wait to hear what you’ll come up with.”

“Death metal.  You’re a metal head.”

He laughed, threw back his head and laughed.

I can’t deny, just seeing it had me falling just a little bit harder for him.

I knew this was precious, a rare showing for Heath, and all I wanted to do was devote my time and energy into bringing this out of him, to cultivating his softer side.

I was a chronic fixer.  Hopeless, really.

“No,” he said finally.  “Not even a little.  That sort of music gets on my nerves.  Too loud and disorderly.”

“Rock?”

“No.”

“Rap.”

Another laugh, and I fell a little deeper, damn him.

“No.”

“Country?”

“No.”

“Um . . . pop?” I was running out of options.

He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.  “Not likely.”

“Okay, I give up.”

“Classical music is the only stuff I listen to by choice.  It’s . . . peaceful.  The rest is just chaos to me.”

I never would have guessed.

He was so complicated, and God was I a sucker for a complicated man.

I had kind of assumed (and hoped) that we’d mess around before getting ready to go out, but no such luck.  Heath left me at my front door with an obligatory goodbye and a warning that he’d be back in an hour.

Eek, I thought.  I wanted more than an hour.  I was pretty sure I needed more.

This was, after all, our very first date.

I’d never even gotten a chance to dress up for him.  He’d seen me sans makeup/sans clothes more than anything else.

I hopped in the shower in a rush, washing my hair, though I knew it took nearly an hour just to get the thick masses dry.

I had my wet hair wrapped in a towel as I perused my closet.  Dinner and a movie was the strangest kind of date to dress for, but this was Vegas.  Just a few days ago, I’d seen someone in a full out ball gown at the grocery store.  Anything went here.  It was one of my favorite things about this town.

I loved clothes.  Shopping was an enduring obsession of mine, but I was dressing for a man who I knew would not appreciate anything about the latest trends.

So I went for sexy and flirty with my favorite little black dress.  I hadn’t worn the thing in ages, but nothing flattered my figure more.  It showed off my legs and just enough cleavage to turn some heads.  The stretchy jersey material hugged my chest and waist, dipping in to accentuate my curves, then flowed out in a short, A-line skirt.

I left my hair wavy, which saved time, but went all out with the makeup, going for a smoky eye and red lips, so I was still pushing it to the very last minute.

I slipped into my favorite black Lady Peep Louboutins.  They were sky high, but Heath was tall enough that I could get away with it.

I grabbed a light jacket since I always got cold at the show.

I was ready almost to the second, which was a good thing, because Heath was at my door exactly on time.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

His reaction to my efforts was gratifying.  His eyes were indecent as they took me in head to toe.

He was wearing a dark polo and dark wash jeans, and he looked good enough to eat in tiny, savoring bites.

“You sure you want to go anywhere tonight?” he asked.

In answer, I shut and locked my door.

He cursed under his breath.

He led me to his car, a Jaguar F-type that I knew had to cost upwards of a hundred grand.

“Is this your car?” I asked him as I slid into the passenger’s seat.  I was back to wondering again if he was a criminal.

“I’m borrowing it,” he said after he got behind the wheel.  And of course he didn’t elaborate.

I picked a gourmet burger place for dinner.  I didn’t imagine Heath would appreciate gourmet French cuisine the way I did, so I settled on my second favorite—a perfect burger.

“So if they leave out the e, it makes it gourmet?” Heath asked as we approached the restaurant Burgr.

I sent him a sideways smile.  He did have a sense of humor, I was finding out.  It was just very dry.  “Do you like burgers?”

“Yeah.  I have to say, I was worried you’d pick someplace with frog legs or something.”

“I found a compromise.”

The restaurant was crowded, and I wasn’t imagining it, people were definitely staring at me, then him, then back at me as we were shown to our table.

“People are staring at us,” I said quietly.

Heath glanced around and stared at some people until they looked away.  “So?”

“They’re staring at us because I’m sixteen years older than you.”

He leaned in close, his eyes all over me.  “You’re right that people are staring.  But not at us.  At you.  But this I guarantee, no one is staring at you because of that.”

I felt instantly better.  He really did have a sweet side.

I ordered a martini, and he ordered a water.

“You don’t drink alcohol?” I asked him when the waiter had left.

“I do, occasionally, but most of the time I like to keep my senses sharp.”

I gave him my best imploring smile.  “This is a date.  You don’t need to stay sharp.  This is when you relax.”

After staring me down for a brief moment, he called the waiter back and ordered a beer.

“Anything look good to you?” I asked him after he’d perused the menu for a bit.

He just shrugged.

“I can tell you what’s good.”

He shrugged again.  “I’ll just have whatever you’re having.”

“Do you mind having an egg on your burger?”

“Sounds fine.”

I ordered the truffle fries and two farm burgers.  It was simple, but the best burger: duck breast bacon, English sharp cheddar, and a fried egg.  Perfection.

  “So good, right?” I asked him after the first bite.  I was one and a half martinis deep, and he’d downed nearly his entire pint of beer.  I was feeling great and it might have been my imagination, but I thought he was starting to relax.

“It’s good,” he agreed, then proceeded to finish the burger off in under two minutes.

I was about a third of the way through mine.  “Should we order you another one?” I teased him.

His answer was to finish off the fries.  Then my fries.  Then his beer.  He ordered another and I almost cheered.  I wanted him to have a good time tonight, wanted him to unwind and open up, and alcohol seemed like a great way to make that happen.

“Do you like to gamble?” he asked me.

The restaurant was located inside of a casino, as most of the good ones were in this town.

“Very rarely.  How about you?”

“Never, if I can help it.”

“I don’t mind losing the random twenty dollars on a few rounds of blackjack,” I shared, just to keep the conversation going.

His brows went up like I’d said something fascinating.  “My . . . friend is obsessed with blackjack.  She counts cards.  Makes a fortune whenever she needs it.”

“Really?  Isn’t that illegal?”

“It’s actually not.  The casino will blacklist you if they catch you, but she sticks to the smaller establishments, wins little bits at a time, then moves on.”

“Wow.  She must be smart.”

“She’s brilliant.”

I wondered who this brilliant friend was.  She was important to him, I could tell with just a few sentences.  And the hesitation before he said the word friend bothered me a bit.

Also, he quickly changed the subject, like he hadn’t meant to bring her up at all.

Other than that, though, dinner went well.

The movie, well, that was another story.

Intense was the best word to describe that part.

He was bored as hell walking in the door.  This was not his thing.  He was humoring me.  Proving a point?  Or just trying to be nice?  I couldn’t say.

Once the actual movie started, though, things changed a bit.

I had a loud laugh.  I knew this.  It’s also the kind of laugh I just couldn’t hold back.

I loved me some romantic comedy, and this was a good one.

I laughed hard.

Once I started laughing, he stopped being bored.  He didn’t watch the movie so much as study me for most of it, putting his arm around me and leaning close when I started laughing like he was taking it in, inhaling it.  Soaking it up.

I reached over and touched his knuckles lightly.  He grasped my hand instantly and firmly, interweaving our fingers, watching himself do it like he couldn’t quite believe it was happening, like he’d surprised himself with the action.

We both just stared at our hands for a while, and the whole time I was thinking about how horrible I was at casual sex.  An utter failure at the casual part of it.

And then I went back to laughing, and he went back to watching me.

He didn’t even smile much, but something about the way he was staring at me, his eyes losing some of their usual shutter, had me feeling things I hadn’t thought I’d ever feel again.

When he looked at me like that, it’s hard to even describe, but I’d never felt more beautiful, never felt more desirable, never more joyful, or hopeful.

How could the way someone looked at you change the way you saw your life?

And how was I just now finding this?

And—what was it?

But I knew.  It was different from the first time, I was different, but, regardless of how fast it was happening, I knew what it was.

That first sweet blushing bloom of the L word.

I was embarrassed to even think it, but we did have a moment in there, where something occurred.  Both of us softened toward the other just that little bit more, that profound distance between intense interest and true affection, between adoration and endearment, and suddenly the future looked very bright and exciting.

This new, familiar, alien feeling was as scary as it was utterly addictive.

“So that was a date,” he stated.

We were driving back to my house.

“Yes, it was,” I agreed, tone wry.

“Was it a good one?”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing.  “You tell me,” I urged him.

“Depends.  Do I get to fuck you soon?”  He sounded surly.

I tensed.  Just when I thought things were going so well that I was giddy with it, he had to open his big mouth.

“It seems likely,” I told him slowly.  “Though the more you talk, the less likely it is.”

“Noted.  Shutting my mouth until you’re ready to fuck.”

I tried not to grit my teeth.  He could be such an asshole.  The only redeeming part of that was that I didn’t think he had any idea how to be any different.  For whatever reason, he’d never developed that kind of a filter.

“Do you enjoy spending time with me, doing anything besides fucking?” I asked.

He sighed.  “I hated that movie.”

My mouth twisted.  He hadn’t had to tell me.  I’d known that.

“Fuckin’ hated it.  But I’d sit through it again.  I’d put that thing on repeat just to watch you watching it.  To see you laugh like that.”

And just like that, he turned it all around.  Sneaky man.

“I love it when you say sweet things to me,” I told him, voice breathless.

“I’m not good at sweet.”

“You have your moments.  Tell me another sweet thing.  Let’s see if you can do it again.”

He didn’t even miss a beat, like it had already been on the tip of his tongue.  “You’re the best sex I’ve ever had.”

Wow.  That shocked me into silence.  And made me feel good, really good, because I believed him.  I didn’t think he’d lie about something like that, didn’t think he’d waste the energy or the breath.

“You too,” I finally managed to respond.

“Good,” he growled, his hand going to my knee.

And just that easy, from that one simple touch, hot life flooded inside of me.

I realized that he hadn’t had me since this morning.  Nearly a full day and it felt like ages.

I felt deprived.  Needy.  Desperate for him.

I leaned toward him, hand going to his chest, touching softly because I knew the area was sensitive.  “Drive faster,” I breathed into his ear.

He floored it.

When he parked at the curb in front of my house, I pretty much shot out of the car and ran to the front door, fumbling to unlock it fast enough.  But I needn’t have rushed.  He was still at his car fishing a big duffle bag out of his trunk, by the time I got the door open.

I stopped what I was doing to stare at him.

“I’d like to stay a few days, if you don’t mind,” he said as he approached and saw that my gaze was transfixed on the bag.

“Not at all,” I said, voice faux casual and went inside.

“There’s not much extra room in my closet,” I told him.  Which was a huge understatement.  Due to my lifelong love of shopping, the thing was stuffed.  “But there are other closets, and feel free to put whatever in my bathroom.  Just make yourself at home.”

I cringed inside.  Did I sound too needy?  I didn’t know.  I’d never done anything like this.  Sleepovers were out of my realm, one of the many quirks of marrying young and staying married for too damn long.

This relationship, for lack of a better word, was unprecedented for me.

He didn’t seem interested in unpacking.  The second we got into my bedroom, he tossed the duffle in the middle of the floor and started rummaging through it.

I saw why a few seconds later as he straightened, grinning at me, a pair of padded handcuffs hooked on one of his fingers.

Oh yeah.  That.

I’d almost forgotten about our little agreement.

“Undress,” he told me gruffly.

I did it leisurely, slipping the shoulders off my dress and dragging it sensuously down my body.

I stood straight when I was left in just my bra, panties, and stilettos.

“All of it.  Except the shoes.  Keep the shoes on.”

I smiled at him as I shimmied out of my lacy underthings.

“Get on the bed,” he enunciated slowly.

I took a deep breath and obeyed, climbing onto the bed in my platforms, doing it seductively, gazing at him over my shoulder to give him a sultry smile and take in his reaction, which made me feel as beautiful as I knew it would.

“On your back.  Arms above your head.”

I lay down on my back, throwing my arms up above my head, a willing lamb to the slaughter.  An eager one.

I’d never done kink, though I knew a lot about it, thanks to having made some very kinky friends in recent years.

I’d never done it, but I wasn’t against it.  I thought it was hot, in a vague, probably not my thing sort of way.

But right then, I was thinking, maybe it’s just my kind of thing.  Or at least, the part that Heath seemed interested in.

“Just handcuffs, right?” I asked to be sure.

Handcuffs I was pretty comfortable with.  The idea of him having me helpless the first few times we were together had been too much for me, but I felt like I knew him well enough now.  I mean, if he wanted to hurt me, if he was even capable of it, I’d have gotten some sense of it by now.