He palmed her knee and pushed it towards her chest, his eyes raking her body. “No one before you. No one since. No one after.”
She died. The sensible career woman for whom sex had a place, like food and water, like shelter and warmth, turned to salt, to ash and crumbled away. In its place a creature formed from aching want and stunning need, of physical greed too strong to tame. It knocked the sense out of her.
He braced against her core. He was trembling too. “Keep you safe always.” When he opened her she clamped him tight, her eyes rolling back and closed as he started to move. She took his mouth and clawed at his shoulders wanting him closer, harder, faster, longer and getting all that, and starlight too.
25: Words
It was well past time to get his own place. It was insanity to ask Cinta to move in with him. So he didn’t ask. He dangled it in front of her.
Six weeks they’d been together and Mace had spent every night at her place, sleeping with her curled in his arms. He’d begun to wish the summer wouldn’t come because it would get too hot to lie so close to her. Six weeks and he’d stopped obsessing about Ipseity and convinced Dillon he didn’t need help with his grief. He felt good. He didn’t think about being bipolar. He got a haircut. He was eating better, so long as he did the cooking, and his jeans fit like before.
He had a job too, nothing special, casual hours on a help desk, for a hardware vendor. He could earn enough to cover his expenses, stay out of his savings, and still have time to tinker with Ipseity. So it was the right time, he just didn’t know if it would be the right place, right thing.
He packed a picnic dinner. He told her he had something to show her and brought her to the loft. She got suspicious the minute he showed with Dillon’s basket, but since it had edible food in it, he was guaranteed she’d play along at least until she got fed.
She didn’t say a word on the walk there. She avoided his eyes, but she let him hold her hand. That was so like her. She was both ends of a magnet, pulling him in and pushing him away at the same time. She got anxious if he wanted to make plans more advanced than the next day or two, but she clung to him at night and gave him shelf space in her bathroom.
He’d have been confused but he understood her motive. They were friends who fucked, though more accurately it was the other way around; they fucked, therefore they were friends. It wasn’t what he wanted but it was all she could deal with. She wanted them easily breakable, separable. He wanted that damage prevented.
Dillon said he was punching above his weight. That wasn’t news. Had Jacinta’s life not gone so far off the rails he’d never had had the second chance. She’d have eventually sketched the crap out of the memory of him and moved on. In six weeks she’d not given him any reason to think he’d gotten that wrong, except when they fucked and then it was impossible to believe there wasn’t something more permanent between them.
Under the circumstances, Buster would’ve called what he was doing now scaring the horses. She would’ve liked Jacinta. She would have loved her because he did.
Straight up, no dodging it. He loved her fighter spirit and her determination, and he loved her sharp mind and the softness in her she tried to deny. She really could not do anything useful with food. She got antsy when he got the job, and not because she was jealous, because that left her with art school and Pilates and time on her hands she didn’t know how to use.
She could be moody. She could be a bitch. She would draw but not paint, wouldn’t even talk about it. But he could swear his heart, dumb pump that it was, swelled when she smiled at him. He felt her tension in his chest. He tasted her restlessness on his tongue and he could smell her indecision about them from half a room away.
And if Buster was right, if this idea fouled up, he’d have rooms and rooms to wallow in his bad idea by himself.
She didn’t speak on the street outside the warehouse, or on the stairs. When he keyed open the door she went inside without a word. He was pretty sure she did that just to annoy him.
He’d taken Buster’s furniture out of storage. It’d been big, clunky and old-fashioned but serviceable and he hadn’t known what to do with it when the house sold. In this open space it looked retro funky. He’d set the table, and now he lit candles. He unpacked the picnic basket and pulled out a chair for her.
“This is my new place. I want you to move in with me.”
She sat hard on the chair, her eyes on her hands in her lap. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He’d put words together for this, a script to go with the chequered tablecloth and the flowers in the jam jar. And then he spat out the first thing in his head.
He sat opposite her and she looked up. “All right.”
His chair tipped over when he stood, rounded the table and snatched her up. “It’s bigger; this room, bedroom, office and a whole room with a deck attached filled with natural light for you to paint in.”
“I see that.” Her words were going in the right direction but she was a tough negotiator. He searched her face for a clue to how she felt.
“Your lease is month to month. This place is cheaper and I can afford it on my own.”
“I’ll pay my share.”
“You will?”
She put her hand to his face, rubbed her thumb over his bottom lip. She frowned. “Did you really think I wouldn’t love this? I hate that I’ve done that to you.”
His turn to not get what was going on. “I know you don’t want us to be a full-time gig. The lease is in my name. This is not on you. I can’t stay at Dillon’s forever and I don’t want to sleep without you. I thought if you had room maybe—”
She stopped him with her whole hand over his mouth. Just as well, he was rambling.
She took his hand and drew him over to Buster’s day bed. It was thick dark cane and the spring base squeaked. It needed new upholstery or maybe it needed to be thrown out. He had no clue what she was going to say when she made him sit and climbed over his lap.
“I made a mistake, Mace.”