Mr Garcia, page 21
"You wanted to see me instead?"
His eyes hold mine. "Something like that. I'll get something later."
"By something, you mean my vagina?" I ask innocently.
He gives me a smile. "Precisely."
I stand and go to the fridge. "I'll make us something."
"That’s not necessary."
"I love to cook." I open the fridge and peer in. "It’s the one thing I'm good at."
"There's another thing you're very good at."
My eyes flick over to him and he gives me a sexy wink.
I smile to myself, feeling proud of myself. "What do we have in here?" I see that his fridge is fully stocked. "You cook?"
" I have a cook."
"Well." I take out some chicken and put it onto the counter. "Now you have two."
His eyes hold mine as the air crackles between us.
I take out some fresh garlic, cream, and bacon. I open the pantry and find some fettuccini. "Do you like Carbonara?" I ask.
"Doesn’t everybody?"
"Maybe not." I get to washing my hands, "Put some music on, will you?"
"What do you want to listen to?"
I narrow my eyes as I get out a chopping board and knife.
"I’ll play your anthem," he says.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I start to chop the onions.
"This was the song that you walked down the catwalk to in the Escape Lounge."
The song Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye sounds through the speaker system.
I stop what I’m doing and glance up. "Was it?"
"Uh-huh."
"How do you remember that?"
"I remember everything about you. You're not easy to forget."
I smile as I go back to chopping. "You do know that I'm going to rob your house while you're unconscious, right?"
He laughs and walks over behind me to refill my glass. Then, he pulls my hair to the side and begins to kiss my neck.
I smile as goosebumps scatter up my spine.
"Do that, and I'll tie you up in the basement for a couple of years and use you as my sex slave," he murmurs against my skin.
His teeth graze my neck. "I'm totally down with that." I smile, "Stop distracting me, or you won't be eating.”
"Let's skip the main and start on dessert."
"Sebastian." I turn my head and kiss his big pouty lips. "You need to build up your energy. I'm hoping that dessert will be a marathon event."
He chuckles, bites me hard, and slaps my behind before he goes back to his stool and sits down.
I turn the hotplates on and begin to fry the onions and garlic. I put the pasta in the boiling water, and we chat and laugh as I cook.
It’s not awkward, and it's not sleazy. It feels like I'm meant to be here doing this with him… whatever this is.
Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing plays throughout the house.
If this song is my anthem, I'm making it my bitch.
We've drank two bottles of wine over dinner.
After washing up, I now have Sebastian sitting in the armchair in his bedroom. The room is lit only by the bedside lamp. His bedroom is big and luxurious, like him.
It wouldn’t matter where we were. It's only me and him now, and this desire between us.
Sebastian and I have a lot of things that are good about us, but it's the sexuality, the raw hunger for each other's bodies that's next level. He makes me crave a deeper connection, a different kind of dominance. One I've never needed before him. But now that I've had it, I can't get enough.
My eyes hold his as I slowly undress to the beat.
He sits back, legs wide, his hunger real. I slide my jeans down my legs and throw them to the side. I lift my T-shirt over my head and stand before him in a skimpy white bra and G-string. I unhook my bra and throw it to the side, and then I drop to my knees between his legs. He hisses as he sits back, awaiting my mouth.
I spread his legs aggressively and then slide his pants down, followed by his boxers. His hard cock springs free. My stomach flutters at the sight of it, engorged. Its head a deep red, with thick veins coursing up the length of it.
I take him in my hand and kiss the tip. "Hmm." I stroke him, and a rush of cream blesses my body with lubricant.
I want him. I want every damn drop.
Getting to let loose on his body is a dream come true. I sit up to remove his T-shirt over his head and throw it to the side. I want full view of this perfection.
He sits back in the chair, his golden skin on show. His broad chest has a scattering of dark over it. His stomach is rippled, and a trail of black hair runs from his navel down to his well-kept, short pubic hair.
His parted quads are big and strong, and I run my hand up his inner thigh, drinking in his beauty.
His eyes hold mine and he cups my face, his thumb slowly sliding over my bottom lip. "Suck me," he mouths.
I smile as I lick up his length. I cup his balls, and holy fucking hell… this is a man that dreams are made of.
I take him deep into my mouth. His eyes darken, and he pushes my hair back from my forehead as he watches me.
I get into a rhythm. My hand follows my mouth. His moans are deep, his quads are flexing, and I can see the muscles in his stomach contracting on the upstroke.
Fuck, yes.
Watching him come undone like this is my new favorite thing.
His breathing becomes labored, and he begins to shudder as he tips his head back. "Yes," he pants. "Yes. Fucking yes."
He convulses hard, grabs my face, and he begins to fuck my mouth with force.
Damn it, I love this. I smile around him and bare my teeth. He convulses as he comes hard.
Euphoria fills me, and with our eyes locked, I drink him down.
His chest is rising and falling as he gasps for air. I keep on slowly sucking him until he’s empty.
"Cartier," he whispers in awe.
"April," I correct him, but he cuts me off with a kiss and moans again when he tastes himself.
He grabs the back of my head and holds me to him as our kiss turns desperate. "Get up here and fuck me."
Sebastian
I sit up onto my elbows and look around my bedroom to see it's empty. The sunlight is light as it peeks around the drapes.
"April?"
No reply.
Where is she?
The last thing I remember last night was being wrapped around her like a blanket.
I get up and go to the bathroom. When I go to put on my robe on, it's not hanging on the back of my bathroom door. Where did I leave that?
I throw on a pair of boxer shorts and make my way downstairs. I stop midway down the staircase and listen.
I can hear an American voice. I can also smell pancakes.
I frown.
I walk down into the kitchen.
"Ow," April says when she steps over Bentley. "You're in my way, old man."
Wearing my navy robe, she stops what she's doing and holds the saucepan mid-air as she watches something on the television in the living area. I glance over to see what she's watching. It’s CNN, the American news.
I smile and lean against the doorframe. I keep forgetting she's not from England.
She returns the frypan to the hotplate and continues cooking. Every now and then, she looks up and stops what she's doing to watch the television.
She goes to the fridge and takes out some fruit before she begins to slice it up. Watching her, a strange feeling comes over me.
This feels normal. Weirdly normal.
I haven't done normal for a very long time.
For ten minutes, I watch her. She talks to the dog and watches the news as she cooks and fusses about. I don’t think I've ever seen anything as beautiful and lovely.
She has an air about her. She’s confident but innocent, and yet I know she's far from innocent. Quite the opposite, actually.
The woman's a deviant. She fries my fucking brain every time we have sex.
I've never, ever come as hard as I do with her. Every time is better than the last, and I don’t know how that’s possible, because every time, I swear it's the pinnacle.
She glances up and sees me. "Hey, you." She smiles, walks over, and puts her arms around my neck to kiss me softly.
My heart somersaults at her tender touch. "There's my robe," I smile.
She giggles. "This old thing? I thought it was your grandpa’s."
I chuckle as I slide my hands down to her behind, and we stand in each other's arms for a while. Her lips linger over mine before she gifts me with another kiss.
"I made you pancakes."
"Did you?"
"Yeah," she takes my hand and leads me to the stool at the counter. "Sit down and admire my ass while I finish them."
"This, I can do."
"How do you have your coffee?"
"White and one." I watch her make it. "You don’t have to cook while you're here, you know."
"I like to cook." Her face falls as she passes me my coffee. "Why, does it bother you?"
"No. I mean… I don’t want you thinking you have to."
She smiles and serves up the pancakes.
"What?"
"It's so cute that you think I would do something I didn’t want to do."
I smirk, knowing that’s true.
April arranges the strawberries and bananas on my pancakes.
"Maple syrup?" she asks.
"Please."
She pours it on and passes it over, and then she sits beside me with her plate.
"No maple syrup for you?" I frown.
"No." She bites the food from her fork. "I'm sweet enough."
"Isn't that the truth?"
She puts her hand on my thigh and leans over to kiss me. She's right, though. She is sweet and gentle. Everything I'm not.
My heart constricts as I look at her.
She cups my face. "Last night was wonderful, Seb."
"It was."
We stare at each other for a moment, and an undercurrent of affection passes between us.
Don’t fuck this up.
I return to eating. "So, is this where I realize that you’ve robbed my house?" I bite the food from my fork.
"Aha." She giggles. " I cleaned the joint out last night. Man, you have a lot of shit. My back is sore from carrying it all out to your snooty car."
I smile.
"What are we going to do today?" she asks.
My gaze lifts to hers. There's a today?
"Umm." I pause because I don’t really know how to answer that. "What do you want to do?"
"Well, seeing as we can't leave the house due to the fact that we're undercover in a secret spy film like Mission Impossible."
I smirk at her analogy. "This is true."
"I thought you could give me a foot massage."
"I think I can manage that."
She leans over and kisses me again. Then, she rests her cheek against mine, and it's there again.
This tenderness.
It's so foreign to me, but so comforting and nice.
I pull away from her and return to eating. "What do I get after I massage your feet?"
"You get to cut my toenails."
I burst out laughing at her unexpected answer. "Is this some kind of perverted kink?"
She laughs. "Absolutely, Mr. Garcia. You are in for a treat."
"Can you call the car for me? I need to get home and organize my things for the week," April says.
After watching a movie on the couch together, I dozed off to sleep.
I sit up. "Of course." I walk out and text Kevin, asking him to take ‘Tara’ home. His response comes back quickly.
With her wanting to leave, I'm reminded what it's like when she's not here. A feeling of loss rolls around in my stomach.
"If I could take you home myself, I would," I say.
She smiles up at me from her place on the couch. "I know, baby." She holds her arms up for me. "Come and cuddle me before I go."
I lie down beside her, and she holds me tightly. I put my head against her shoulder.
I don’t want her to go.
She kisses my temple.
"What are you going to have for dinner?" she asks.
"Why don’t you stay tonight, too?"
She pulls back to look at me. "You can cook your own dinner, Sebastian."
"I didn’t mean that. I meant…" I stop myself.
"What?" She brushes my hair back from my forehead.
"We could get takeout so you didn’t have to cook.” I swallow the lump in my throat.
Her eyes search mine. "I haven’t got my clothes washed for work."
"I'll buy you new ones."
She smiles and kisses me. I know she thinks that I'm joking, I'm deadly serious.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight. So tight, I can feel myself squeezing too hard.
"Stay. I need you to stay, Cartier."
She pulls out of my grip and stands. "Don’t call me that. I told you last night. I don’t like it."
"It's just a nickname."
“One that brings back terrible memories for me."
I stand, annoyed that she pulled away from me. "How ridiculous. Why would it?"
She watches me. "It doesn’t bring back bad memories for you?"
"Nope." I walk out into the kitchen. "I happen to like those memories… a lot better than these ones."
She follows me. "What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing. Drop it."
She puts her hands on her hips. "What the hell? You like those memories better than now? What the fuck does that mean?"
I roll my eyes. "Cut the fucking dramatics. You know what I meant."
"No, I don’t. Explain it to me." Her eyes hold mine. "Why do you call me Cartier, Sebastian?"
"You know what? Just fucking go home, April. I'm not in the mood for this bullshit."
She watches me and I can see her brain working at a million miles per minute. "You liked it when I worked at the Escape Room, didn't you?"
"Shut up. Go home."
"Why would you like me better then…?" Her voice trails off and her face falls. "You’re compartmentalizing me?"
"Now you’re a fucking shrink. Go the fuck home." I march upstairs.
She storms after me. "You are, aren’t you?" She takes the stairs two at a time. "The way you're acting now is telling me that I'm right."
"Just go!” I don’t want her here, and I don’t want to talk about this.
"Sebastian!" she snaps. "Answer the question."
"What do you fucking know about compartmentalizing?"
"Everything." She throws up her hands. "I wrote the fucking book on it."
"Oh, so now everyone is fucked up like you, are they?"
"I'm not fucked up." She points to her chest. "And it took me about ten thousand dollars in shrink appointments to be able to admit that."
I walk into my bathroom and slam the door behind me.
She opens it. "Don’t slam the fucking door on me."
"Then stop following me!" I yell as I begin to lose my patience.
"Is that what you're doing?"
I stay silent.
"Sebastian?" she asks softly. "You're still thinking of me as your Escape Girl."
I begin to hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears as I stare at her.
She steps back, as if my lack of words physically hurt her.
"So…. I'm just some girl you pay to have sex with?" Her eyes well with tears.
I clench my jaw. "Don't you dare use tears as a weapon,” I sneer. "That’s not fucking fair."
Her face falls. “What was last night?"
I stare at her.
She puts her hand over her heart. "While I'm over here falling for you, you think of me as a whore."
I drop my gaze to the floor. I can't look her in the eye.
"Sebastian?"
I keep staring down.
"Look at me!" she cries. "Is that fucking true?"
My eyes rise to meet hers. "Just go," I whisper.
Her eyes search mine. "Answer me."
"If you wrote the book on compartmentalizing, you should already know the answer."
Her brow furrows. "I do it to everyone in my life; I hate that I do. I've sought treatment for it for years. And then I met you, the one person I couldn't block out." Her shoulders slump in sadness. "And you go and do it to me."
We stare at each other. "April…"
"What, Sebastian?"
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
Her eyes well with tears again, and she drops her head. "Me, too."
She turns and walks out.
I hear her go downstairs, and then I hear the garage door open.
Moments later, I hear the car drive off, and I close my eyes in regret.
Fuck.
April
If there's one thing worse than falling for the wrong man, it's having to work for him once it's fallen apart.
We’re in Bristol this week. It's Tuesday night, and Sebastian hasn’t said one word to me since I left his house on Sunday.
I'm angry at myself.
How the fuck did I let myself fall for him when I knew it was dangerous?
The worst part is, I know he's not happy, either. He's been a cranky bear, and everyone is scared to even talk to him.
We are in connecting rooms, but I'm not sure why. He didn’t knock on my door last night. Perhaps it was too late to change the booking.
I didn’t go out to dinner with everyone else. I chose room service alone instead. I’m not much in the mood for socializing. I heard his door open and close about an hour ago, so I know he's in his room alone, too.
And it sucks.
I hear a faint knock on the door, and I hold my breath.
Is that him?
The lock is on his side, so I lie still in the dark. I reach up and turn my bedside lamp on, my back to his door when I hear it open slowly.
I close my eyes.
The bed dips as he lays down behind me and pulls me into his arms.
He kisses my temple. "I'm sorry."
I keep lying with my back to him, unsure what to say.
"My demons are dark," he whispers.
I frown and roll to face him. "Then let me chase them away."
"They’re too big for us."
I stare at him for a moment. "What are they?"
He swallows the lump in his throat but stays silent.
