For You (14 page)

The kid turned to me, his chocolate-brown eyes pleading and large. He was breathing rapidly, shaken, but not broken. Now that I could see he wasn't hurt, I could be properly pissed at him.

The kid cried out, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything! I was joking.”

“That's fine,” I said. “Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours.”

Sawyer released his grip on the boy's jacket, and he darted away, down the hallway.

I didn't know whether to give Sawyer holy hell or thank him, so I just pulled open the door to the stairwell and started up the stairs.

Sawyer stood in the doorway and called up after me, “I probably shouldn't walk you to your door. Your husband might grab me by
my
jacket collar and give me a talking-to, right?”

I stopped and turned my head to the side. “There is no husband.”

Then I closed my eyes and held my breath.

I heard his foots on the carpeted stairs behind me, and then I heard his breathing.

We walked up to the third floor in silence, and I opened the apartment door without looking his way. I winced at the familiar sight of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. At least the place smelled decent, thanks to a peach-scented air freshener I had plugged into the outlet on the stove.

“Sorry,” I muttered as I flicked on the light switches. “My place is a disaster.”

“Dude, you've seen my place.” He stopped and kicked off his shoes in the tight entrance, then followed me into the kitchen and stopped at the fridge, admiring the artwork by Bell that surrounded his drawing of the frog.

I pulled off my shoes and tossed them back to the doorway. “You Canadians,” I said. “Always taking your shoes off in the house and making me feel like I have no manners.”

Without taking his eyes off the drawings, he said, “You did mention you were raised by wolves.”

Did I? Was that to him? I couldn't keep track of my stories anymore, and now I'd just admitted there was no husband, whatever that meant.
Should I say there is one, but he lives in America? Or that we're recently separated?

“I've never been married,” I said.

He nodded, still looking at Bell's drawings.

“I've never even had a real boyfriend.”

“That's hard to believe.” He glanced over at me, looking sexy and dangerous. “Wait, no. It's easy to believe. You push people away.”

“People suck.”

“That they do,” Sawyer said, running his finger over the lines of the frog drawing. “I hated myself for chasing a married woman, and I got used to that disgust, and now I find out you're not married, and I don't know what to feel.”

“Did I suddenly get less interesting?”

He turned to me, his green eyes dark and serious. “You didn't get less beautiful.”

Embarrassed, I started rummaging in the kitchen cupboards, looking for something to offer him. I had a bottle of red wine Bruce had given me as a housewarming, so I pulled it out and ransacked the junk drawer for a corkscrew, though I was fairly certain I didn't own one.

Sawyer caught my hand and pulled it toward his mouth. Slowly, tenderly, he kissed my knuckles. He caught me in his gaze and turned my hand over, then kissed my wrist.

My heart fluttered and my head buzzed. This was happening. Right now.

His voice husky, he murmured, “Your daughter's away for the night?”

I nodded, yes.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Not yet.”

He tugged my hand, looping first one of my arms and then the other over his shoulders. I gazed up at him. His wavy dark hair was still flattened from the helmet, so I ruffled my heads through it, amazed at how soft his hair felt. After all this time, I was touching him, touching his hair, the back of his neck.

“Aubrey, you confuse and confound me. I love not knowing how I'm going to feel from one moment to the next whenever you're around.”

I leaned forward on my tiptoes, moving my mouth closer to his.

“Aubrey, I ...”

Green eyes sparkled down at me, burning the moment into my mind.

His dark eyelashes lowered, and he shifted down, his lips touching mine with what felt like a spark. We were still in my little galley-shaped kitchen, next to dirty dishes, but the whole world disappeared as his lips touched down and explored mine.

At the same time as my lips parted, his tongue wetting the edges of our lips, his hands landed on my waist, pulling me to him and then moving around to the small of my back.

Our tongues touched, and now I was eager for him, burying one hand in his hair while the other rested on the back of his broad shoulder, steadying me as I moved higher on my toes to reach him. My whole body yearned for contact.

His hands, hot and heavy, moved across my back and up between my shoulders. He pulled his mouth from mine with a sigh, and kissed my neck, sucking at the sensitive skin below my ear and jaw, making me aware of the strong, steady pulse thrumming there.

He pulled gently at my skin with his mouth, licking and sucking down the side of my neck, up my throat, and around the other side.

“C'mere,” he grunted, and he moved me with his hands on my hips, over to the kitchen table. He scooped me up and sat me on the surface as if I weighed nothing. Now he was leaning forward, pushing me back, pushing me back with the force of his lips until I was on my back.

He grabbed my legs and tugged me toward him, and I felt his hardness against me, through both of our jeans. Leaning forward, his elbows on the table on either side of me, he kissed my hungry lips, then my throat, and the skin at the top of my shirt.

I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't do this, and now I was. I'd never been as excited for anything as I was for Sawyer. My hands explored his body, cupping the muscles on his back, feeling the raw power of him. So fucking hot.

He pulled back from my grasp, grabbed onto the hem of his T-shirt, and pulled it off over his head in one smooth, slow motion. As he moved, back-lit by the lights in the kitchen and hallway behind him, I admired the way his muscles and masculine form revealed itself to me. He leaned forward again, over me, the muscles across his neck and shoulders like taut knots of power.

I cross my arms and reached down to do the same with my shirt, but his hands were already there, tugging my shirt up and over my head. I shivered as the air touched my warm skin.

When he leaned over me again, my back still flat against the wood kitchen table, our upper bodies touched, heart to heart, skin to skin. I sighed into his lips as he kissed me again, like a fever.

My knees were up, my feet against the edge of the table, and I used my leverage to rock my hips up, pressing them against his body with an urgency that terrified me. His hardness pressed against my inseam as he thrust against me, all while kissing my lips and then my neck. I wanted to tear through our clothes and merge with his body.

As he sucked on my earlobe, I pulled his hand to my mouth and sucked on his thumb. He moaned into my ear as I sucked harder on his thumb in my mouth, my legs wrapped tightly around his waist.

I wanted him so bad, and I didn't care about tomorrow, or any other day.

My hands went to his waistband, unfastening his button.

He grunted and pulled me back down the table, my sweat-dampened back sticky on the wood surface. As he thrust against me, he pulled down the band of my bra, shaking out one of my breasts.

I stopped moving and went completely limp as he moved down over my breast with his mouth, licking and blowing air on my nipple. He mouthed my breast, then sucked the nipple firmly, sending an electric jolt through my body. I arched my back, rolled my head back, and moaned. He sucked harder on my sensitive nipple and squeezed the other breast with his hand.

I thought I might die from the pleasure of Sawyer's weight against me, and his skin. The smell of him was in my nostrils, and I sucked at whatever part of him I could reach. I licked and kissed the tender-skinned inside edge of his forearm as he focused on one breast, and then I dug my fingers into the muscles of his back when he moved over to the other.

Having my jeans on was almost unbearable.

Then he was moving down, kissing along my stomach and around my navel. I closed my eyes and let myself be in my skin, in this moment, with Sawyer unfastening the button of my jeans. He reached under my buttocks and tugged my jeans off, but not my panties.

He kissed his way back up my torso, to my lips, as he caressed me through my underwear. When his fingers pressed over that hot, sensitive area, I moaned with pleasure.

As he pressed gently, moving in fiery circles over the cotton fabric, he whispered in my ear, “Is this okay?”

“Mm hmm.”

His fingers moved up again, and then down, inside my underwear at last. His touch traveled down with the grain of the hair and then between those furrows of flesh, slipping along. The sensation was like a searing knife of pleasure, to be touched there. I cried out against his lips as he kissed me harder, his tongue firm in my mouth.

He moved his fingers up and down rhythmically, and my ears began to burn. I was going to come, just like this, any minute.

“Is this good?”

I whimpered in response.

He kept going, and kissing, and moving his body against me along with his fingers, until I gasped.

My eyes flew open and I was staring up at his face as I came, my head and my shoulders lifting up from the table and curling into him.

He slowed his hand and pulsed gently, pressing against me as I shuddered.

Again, he kissed me, only this time my senses felt different. I was aware of the hard table under my back, and the wet sounds of us kissing. I could hear him breathing, heavily, as he rocked into me, his hardness against my inner thigh.

Knocking.

I giggled, embarrassed, and he made a reassuring noise as he kissed my chin and gently bit the edge of my jaw.

Knocking.

“Someone's at your door,” he murmured.

The tapping at the door was insistent.

I whispered to Sawyer, “Just ignore them.”

“Do you have a peephole?”

“I don't know. I just moved in here.”

He pulled back and fastened the top button of his jeans, grimacing, then picked up his shirt from the floor. Stepping carefully, so quiet, he moved through the galley kitchen and to the door.

I whispered, “Can you see anyone?”

He pulled his shirt back on over his head as he walked back to me from the door. His voice low, but not whispering, he said, “There was a woman, Indian, not very tall. Older than us. Probably that boy's mother, right?”

“Or his aunt. He lives with his mother and aunt, I think. No men.”

He shrugged. “Blood is thicker than water. If it's family, you just don't know if she's coming to apologize on his behalf, or tear you a new one.”

Shit.

I was in trouble.

With the damn neighbor.

The moment had changed, so I pulled the band of my bra back up and composed myself, then reached for my own shirt.

He continued, “She looked like the Mama Bear type. Like you don't want to come between her and her cubs.” He winced and adjusted his crotch area.

“Is she still there?”

“No, I saw her walk away.” He looked sheepish. “I hope I didn't create more problems for you by talking to that kid.”

“You did a shade more than talk to him. Didn't you lay him out on the sidewalk?”

“That was his buddy. I barely touched your neighbor's kid. He threw himself back into the front door when he saw me about to reach for him.” He shook his head and looked down at his socked feet. “Good thing he did. I would have knocked his head into the other ones like bowling pins.”

“That's not funny.”

He grinned. “Sure it is. You ever go five-pin bowling?”

I pulled my shirt on, not sure what I was feeling. My emotions were all over the place, and I felt all this aggression suddenly, like I wanted to pick up something and throw it at Sawyer. How dare he touch me and make me helpless, then act like it was no big deal? How dare he joke about beating up some little punk kids?

He mimed throwing a bowling ball and made the hand-explosion gesture.

I snarled, “That's not fucking funny. I live in the same building as those people.”

He looked at me sideways. Without humor, he said, “And that's exactly why you need to establish rules. Don't let people push you around, and they won't.”

“Easy for you to say. You're way bigger than that kid you flung to the ground.”

He took a step back, shaking his head, both hands held up between us. “Easy now. What is happening here?”

I combed my fingers through my tangled hair and looked away. “I don't know.”

There was a long silence.

I scratched my cheek, the sound of my skin under my fingernails audible in the tension-filled space.

“Aubrey—”

“Hand me my pants?”

He moved forward clumsily and scooped them off the ground to hand to me.

I turned my back to him and wriggled back into them.

He said, “We should talk about what just happened.”

“Let's not and say we did.”

“Why are you making me out to be the bad guy here, when all I did is care about you? That kid needed to be put in his place, so that's what I did. If his mother gives you a hard time, call me and I'll deal with her, too.”

He smiled to show me it was a joke, but I wasn't in any mood to laugh. My name wasn't on the lease for the apartment. I had no rights there, at all, and had been told, in no uncertain terms, that if I made any trouble at all, I'd be out on my ass. No warnings.

Bruce and my grandparents probably wouldn't allow us to be homeless again, but that apartment was my independence, my dignity.

Sawyer's first instinct with the old beggar we saw earlier that night had been to turn him away. He didn't know what it was like to have nothing. To stand in line for food at a food bank and leave with canned meat that smelled like garbage. To pour a box of macaroni into the boiling water only to discover bugs floating to the surface, but scoop them out quietly and not tell anyone, because otherwise you'd go to bed hungry.

Something told me Sawyer wouldn't understand, and maybe I didn't want him to. Maybe I wanted him to think I was an angry, crazy bitch, and he'd better stay away.