Window Shopping, page 18
Good lord, the sex.
I’m a changed man. Hell, I’m a grateful man.
In more ways than one. Just having Stella here, in my home, is more than enough. It’s something I spent the weekend thinking was never going to happen. Sleep was lost and an unhealthy amount of bourbon was consumed over it. That’ll teach me to doubt when it comes to this girl. She’s extraordinary. She’s got a hundred little cogs turning in her head right this very second—I can see them chugging away. By some miracle, she decided I’m right enough for her to claim officially, on paper, and now I just have to make sure she never regrets it.
It’ll be easy.
That lie is so hard to swallow, I have to tug on the front of my bow tie to get it down.
Being with Stella might be easy, but there is a perpetual tug in my subconscious telling me she’s not all in. Yet. She’s window shopping, while I’ve already bought out the whole damn store.
Patience.
My ribcage expands on a deep breath. “You can open your eyes.”
Watching her thick eyelashes blink open, I notice absently that she’s wearing less makeup than the first time we met. Less of that black liner under her eyes. When did she make the change? I probably should have—would have commented on it if I wasn’t too focused on the blue eyes themselves to notice how they’re made up. I like her either way . . . but God, I love her like this. Sucking in a breath over the haphazard Christmas lights, pleasure and nostalgia and joy washing across her features. Damn. I’ve done something right in my life if I get to watch this happen up close.
“Wow.” She exhales in a rush. “Your place. It’s even better than I was picturing. It’s . . . a vintage bachelor pad. Like Dom Draper if he had a soul.”
I laugh out loud at that description and she relaxes enough to set down her purse, toe off her boots and close the apartment door behind her, turning the lock.
“Consider me called out,” I say, taking her hand and tugging her deeper into the apartment. So help me God, watching the toes of her tights sink into my living room rug makes the fly of my dress pants feel tight. My voice is significantly deeper when I say, “I tend to gravitate toward the old-fashioned.”
“I noticed.” She glances over at me. “I’m kind of the furthest thing from old-fashioned, though. Did you take a detour and get lost?” Her tone is light, but her eyes are vulnerable. “That’s just like a man to drift off course and refuse to ask for directions.”
“I know right where I am, Stella.” I hold her attention as long as I can before it dances away, moving to the Christmas tree. Not only am I positive I’m going the right way, but I’ve thrown out the map altogether. How would she react if I told her that? Probably by running out the door—and I can’t even say I would blame her. We signed paperwork with HR so we could date, not get married. Slow your roll, Aiden. “When you’re ready to talk about where you are on the map, I’m here.”
Her chest rises and falls a little quicker, but she tries to pass off her nerves as arousal, flashing me a wobbly smile. “If your plan was to seduce me with cartography talk, it’s working.” She pushes her hair back, shifts her focus back to the tree. As always, Christmas seems to be her—our—safe place. “Your tree is beautiful, but not too beautiful. It’s got character, just like the way you did your office.”
The corner of my mouth tugs. I’m more than willing to let her get away with the subject change for now. If she wanted to do aerobics on the roof, I’d find a way to make it happen. “See any room for improvements?”
She rolls her lips inward, wetting them. Slaying me where I stand. “When I was a kid, we’d make a popcorn garland and string it around the tree. My mother had all these old Victorian doll ornaments, heirlooms passed down through the generations. The popcorn garland was our one modern touch.” Her gaze drifts around the living room, the kitchen space just over my shoulder. “My old-fashioned boss definitely has popcorn and a sewing kit.”
Boss?
All right. Now she’s pushing it.
Or rather, pushing me away. Trying to establish a boundary.
And that’s fine. That’s her right. But we’re going to negotiate where it lies.
I close the distance between me and Stella, watching the color climb her neck and cheeks. When I slide my fingers up through the back of her hair and grip, her eyelids droop like twin weights and the pulse at the base of her neck starts to sprint. Magic. She has to feel that. “That’s boyfriend, Stella. Not boss.” I fuse our lips together and she stumbles into me, giving me full access to her mouth, even though she denies me the same with her thoughts and fears. I’ll get there. We’ll get there.
Her tongue flickers against mine, inviting me into her mouth and I take. Just like earlier in my office, I sense she needs to be . . . insulated. Surrounded. So I wrap both arms around her, crush her close and kiss her until she’s whimpering. Until her arms are wound up around my neck and she’s rubbing her tits side to side against my chest.
“Boyfriend,” I rasp, when we come up for air. “That work for you?”
“You’re still my boss,” she breathes.
Using my grip in her hair, I tilt her face up to mine, studying it closely. “On a scale from one to ten, how much does that bother you?”
Those cogs are turning. She’s thinking about it. Processing and re-processing. Good. The last thing I want to do is leave an issue undiscussed where it could pop up and bite us later. “It doesn’t bother me,” she whispers, as though she’s realizing it in real time and it’s surprising her. “It . . . just doesn’t. You’ve given me no choice but to have total faith in your actions and judgment.” She frowns at my chin. “Sneaky. How did you do that?”
“Pure willpower. And the worst blue balls known to mankind.” I’m trying not to project everything inside of me onto my face, but I’m pretty sure I’m losing the battle. “The pain of walking out of your apartment was worth it, Stella. You just said you have faith in me.”
She hums. Keeps on frowning. “Apparently you have it in me, too.” After a moment of lip chewing, she lifts curious eyes to mine. “How did you know I didn’t take the earrings? Did you Google me? You did, didn’t you?”
Her question throws me for a loop. It’s not that I haven’t considered Googling her to find out more about the night of the robbery that sent her to prison. I have thought about doing it. A lot. I suspect the finer details of what happened matter quite a bit. “No. I didn’t. You’re going to tell me what happened when you’re ready.”
“I told you what happened.”
“Not all of it.”
Lord, her heart is jackhammering against my chest. I want to lay her down and press my full weight down on top of her, just to make her feel grounded. But I appease myself by walking her backward to the couch, turning and sitting down, pulling her sideways into my lap.
When she tucks her head under my chin, I swear I’ve died and gone to heaven.
“You were right. I’ve got popcorn and a sewing kit. We’re going to make a garland worthy of the Rockefeller Center tree just as soon as you get this off your chest.”
“There’s nothing on my chest,” she grumbles, sniffing my bow tie. Snuggling in.
“Nothing but a forty-pound boulder,” I manage through my tightening throat.
“Wow. Who’s calling out who now?” Stella sighs and I wait, trying not to be obvious that I’m holding my breath. “I thought maybe you Googled me and found out, you know . . . that I didn’t leave the night of the robbery. When the restaurant owner was shot, I called 911 and waited with him, holding my sweatshirt over his wound. I didn’t leave with Nicole. I couldn’t.” Her voice grows a little shaky but she clears it. “And I thought maybe you read about that on the internet and assumed I could never steal earrings. Or hold up a restaurant with a real gun, having no idea it wasn’t fake. Because you’re a man who wants to believe everyone is redeemable and good deep down.”
It takes me a minute to speak. I’m not even sure what’s happening inside of me, I just know I want to go back in time and be in her corner that night. “I won’t deny that. I do think everyone has some good inside them deep down, even my grandmother and father, but I’m also logical. I’m realistic enough to know some people might never locate that good or do anything with it. You’re not one of them. I don’t need a search engine to tell me that.”
“Did you at least type my name into the Google search bar without hitting enter?”
“Sixty-three times, at least.”
Her laughter is light. Lighter than I’ve ever heard it and it sends my heart climbing up into my throat. When the musical sound fades, she’s silent for a moment. Then, “Nicole is getting out of prison earlier than expected. I found out over the weekend. I ran into you right after I spoke to her on the phone—”
“That’s why you were upset,” I say on an exhale, relieved by all of the puzzle pieces fitting into place. “You’re not on good terms with her.”
A beat passes. “I’m not sure our terms have ever been good. We’ve been best friends for a long time. But it’s a relationship that . . . I don’t know, it got twisted up somewhere along the line and I couldn’t . . . I can’t untangle it.” Her curled hand settles on my chest almost hesitantly, relaxing slowly. “I’d never put the blame on Nicole for anything I did. I’m responsible for my own actions. I can’t pretend I didn’t go along with her ideas so she’d be happy, though. She had it so much harder than me growing up. Why couldn’t I just do these things that bonded us, made us a team, so she’d feel a . . . connection? I had one. I had a great one. But time passed. Our antics escalated. And one day, I realized I didn’t have my family connection anymore. We’d drifted apart. I’d gotten closer and closer to Nicole. By then, I was in too deep to climb out. I’d gone along with these plans that made me uncomfortable so long that I’d gotten comfortable. Until the night of the robbery. It all just came into focus. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to go home. But the home I remembered wasn’t there anymore. I’d ruined it. I’d lost the respect of my parents and I’d lost myself.” She looks up at me. “I’m still trying to locate her again. But today . . . it went a long way. What Jordyn did. What you did, standing up for me to your family like that.”
“Well.” Ah, Jesus, I can barely speak around the rawness in my throat. “A wise woman once told me it’s not my job to teach people to be happy.”
She rubs her cheek against my shoulder. “Who?”
“You, Stella,” I laugh, tipping her chin up with my finger. “You did. I’ve been bending over backwards trying to make them happy for years. You were right. They don’t want to be. Not right now. I wouldn’t have loosened my grip on that responsibility if you didn’t give me that to think about. All right? You’re as responsible for what happened today as I am.”
“That’s a stretch,” she whispers, visibly processing my words. Taking them to heart despite her obvious hesitation to do so. “But if you insist.”
More than life itself, I want to pin her down on this couch, ruck her up skirt and make love to her in front of the Christmas tree, but my heart might as well be on the outside of my body right now, after the way she opened up to me. After the trust that took on her part. And if I get inside of her when I’m feeling like this, I’m worried I’ll try to push our tenuous boundary even further and scare the bejeezus out of her. It takes an enormous effort to tamp down on my hunger for Stella. For more. More physical and emotional connection—all of it, everything she’s got—but I force myself to have patience. “What I insist on . . .” I clear the growl from my voice. “ . . . is making a popcorn garland and eating so much of the materials that we have to pop the whole box.”
A smile blooms across her beautiful face. “You make it on the stove, don’t you? Like an old-timey gentleman.”
“Is there any other way?” I lunge to my feet without warning her, lifting her in my arms and drawing a squeak from her mouth. “Come on. Let’s Stella-fy my Christmas tree.”
* * *
Stella
I wake up in a mountain of bedding. Early morning light.
Soft sheets that smell like peppermint.
Aiden. I’m at Aiden’s apartment.
Sitting up in the bed, I glance to my right. The indent of his head is there on the pillow, but he’s not asleep beside me. I remember him being there, sort of unconsciously. Holding me in his arms in the darkness. He snores. Why am I pressing my knuckles to my mouth and smiling over that little nugget of information?
Then the night comes back to me in a flood and I clap both hands over my face.
I fell asleep. Curled up at the foot of his one-of-a-kind Christmas tree, head in his warm lap, listening to stories about Aunt Edna, surrounded by foot after foot of popcorn on string. We’d been talking for hours. Favorites. Likes and dislikes. His honey company. Growing up in Tennessee versus Pennsylvania. How I sketched store window designs in Bedford Hills to pass the time. His favorite spy movies. We even speculated on the state of Jordyn and Seamus’s romance, which Aiden has been pretending not to notice—as if I could like him any more than I already do. I’ve never been so relaxed in my life as I was last night. Not that I can remember. And I just kind of . . . drifted off.
But not before I asked Aiden about his perfect Christmas.
“What would be your perfect Christmas?”
He takes a moment to think about it and I use the opportunity to study the strong line of his jaw from below, growing drowsier by the second as his fingers thread through my hair, stroking it from the roots to the very—probably split—ends. “You promise not to laugh?”
“I promise,” I sigh, half asleep.
So close to giving up the fight and letting oblivion claim me.
“Matching robes,” he says, shaking his head at himself. “I think of having a family around the tree in matching robes.”
“That’s nice.” I yawn. “I like that.”
Waking up a minute ago is the next thing I remember. Did he carry me in here?
Undress me?
I’m already shaking my head. Not Aiden.
I don’t even have to feel for my tights to know they’re still on.
Wiggling my way out from under the mound of covers, I stand up and stretch my fingers toward the ceiling, frowning when my back and shoulders feel completely different. Relaxed. Free of knots I didn’t realize I had. Have I been waking up sore every morning from sleeping on the old mattress in my own apartment? I might as well have slept on a cloud last night. There is some definite tenderness between my legs, but that ache has been there since our office sex adventure yesterday afternoon. The memory of that—and perhaps the fading feeling of Aiden’s hard body against mine throughout the night—sinks a ticklish weight low in my belly.
I walk to the window and take a moment to marvel over the glow of orange and gray rising behind the buildings of midtown. Waking up like this is so far outside of what I consider ordinary that I might as well be flying through the rainforest on a zipline. Spokes poke upward from beneath my skin, trying to dissipate the warmth and safety cocooning me. There’s a sense that I’m in the wrong place. I don’t belong here in this luxury high-rise with a man who obviously has a lot of money. You always did think you were better. Ironically, it’s that taunt, that sneer straight out of the past that makes me determined . . . to stay.
Makes me determined not to finger comb my hair, run out the door with a brief goodbye and return to my dark apartment that, truthfully, has always just felt like a holding cell between prison and real life.
I’m going to allow myself this morning with him.
I’ll take on tomorrow when it gets here.
With a deep breath, I shed my clothes. Dress, underwear and tights. I trade them for one of Aiden’s T-shirts, a white cotton one with a little bumble bee over the pocket above some script reading Aiden and Hank’s Honey Bank. Breathing through the tug in my middle, I make a pit stop in the ensuite bathroom to pee, wash my hands and finger brush my teeth. After making some kind of sense out of my hair, I follow the scent of coffee toward the kitchen.
Where I find a shirtless Aiden cracking eggs into a bowl, his hair wet from a shower.
Who knew so many muscles were required to flex to perform that domestic activity?
His back is wide up top. Thick with muscle, along with his upper arms. Smooth. There’s a scattering of freckles down his spine that makes my mouth water even more than the coffee. From my vantage point, the breakfast bar is blocking him from the waist down, so I take several steps to the right until, dear sweet Jesus, his derriere comes into view in a seriously thin pair of pajama pants and heat coils up inside of me like a spring.
“Wow,” I whisper.
Aiden does, indeed, have a bubble butt and that fact is so much more obvious without the advantage of dress pants and a jacket to hide it. Until meeting this man, I never fully understood the human fascination with butts, but I get it now. I’m a believer. At least in this particular set of taut, brawny buns. He should enter it into some kind of booty pageant.
A twinge of jealousy catches me off-guard.
Oh great, now I’m jealous of the imaginary judging panel of a butt contest.
My life has taken a serious turn.
And when I walk into the kitchen and Aiden greets me with that gigantic heart in his eyes, I decide I don’t hate the turn it has taken. Not one bit.
I’m deciding whether or not to kiss him good morning—is that too much too soon?—when he sucks in a breath and drops an egg on the floor. Splat. Yolk and egg whites everywhere. “Shoot. Sorry.” He turns in a circle, eventually locating a roll of paper towels. “I just . . . you did something to your hair. Your bangs are pinned up.”
My stupid heart is clunking like a car with cinderblocks for wheels. “Oh, um . . . yeah. They’re messy in the morning, so I twisted them back.”
