On My Knees (18 page)

I smiled in reply. “What?”

“Nothing like make-up sex five years in the making.”

I laughed. A tired heaviness inside me lifted, making room for his warmth, this simple happiness. My soul was lighter, stripped for the moment of my emotional defenses. As if by a light shining through the clouds, a dark memory from our past brightened. I remembered this. This had been our love.

CAMERON. We lay there for a long time, drifting in and out of sleep. I had no desire to leave or move if it meant putting unnecessary distance between us. I had her, and I had no intention of letting her go.

Her back was to me, her body barely covered by the sheet. Her chest moved with a steady rise and fall that told me she was sleeping. Somehow, between last night and this afternoon, I’d completely missed that she had a large tattoo on her back. I moved the sheet enough to reveal all of it. I traced the black ink that marked her skin, the flesh raised slightly beneath my fingertips like a scar. I wondered what this meant—a sketch of jagged branches drawn at the small of her back and a flock of stark black birds taking flight up the side of her torso.

What did it mean? As much as she’d changed, Maya didn’t strike me as the type of girl who’d mark her body without it having meaning. She didn’t strike me as the type of girl who’d have a tattoo at all, but she was surprising me left and right. This new Maya was still a mystery to me.

Inexplicably, I wanted to kiss her then. I pressed my lips to her shoulder and down her arm, slowly and gently so I wouldn’t startle her if she woke. With every brush against her skin, I breathed her in. The velvet softness of her skin was intoxicating. No woman had ever felt so soft. The curves of her body called to me like no one’s ever had. My fingers itched to claim them again, to pull her up against me, over me. I wanted to sheath my cock in the warmth of her tight little body. Already I wanted her again. Hours wouldn’t be enough.

She’d given herself to me. Never had I felt so gutted, so desperate to possess someone physically the way I had with her. We’d danced around our attraction all week, and I’d begrudged Darren’s seedling of advice, however inspired, to give ourselves over to what we wanted. Now we would see how it played out. I hadn’t planned to tell her I loved her. I’m not sure I’d even admitted it to myself. But something had transformed between us and the words had simply rushed out.

Everything was like that with Maya. A familiar impulse, a craving I had no good sense to resist because I’d indulged it already. My body and mind refused to go without the best thing I’d ever experienced, the embodiment of her love.

I idly traced my fingertips over a tiny black bird, its wings outspread over the back of her rib. Maya stirred then. She looked over her shoulder with those beautiful brown eyes.

My chest tightened almost painfully, like the wind had been knocked out of me. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered.

She frowned slightly as she turned, a confused smile turning up her mouth. “I doubt it.”

She lifted the sheet up to cover her breasts. I tugged it back, even lower than where it originally was. I caressed her skin, obsessed with every curve and contour of her body.

“You’ve never looked so gorgeous. I like you like this. No makeup, your hair wild like this. The ‘just fucked’ look works for you.”

She shook her head with a smile. “Yeah, right. I’m a mess.”

“A beautiful mess.” I kissed her. With my hand, I followed the arc of the design that I could no longer see on her back. “What does this mean?”

“What?”

“The tattoo.”

She hesitated, her eyes now more alert. She linked her arms behind my neck. “That was amazing, earlier,” she murmured, bending toward me. “I’m not sure how I managed to go without that for so long.”

Her breath warmed my lips. She darted her tongue out, licking my lower lip before seizing it between her teeth, biting down gently. I groaned, and she licked over the sting of her bite. My cock stirred back to life, ready for her. I grasped her hip, barely resisting the urge to push into her right then and there.

What the fuck?
The tattoo. My brain shifted back. She was avoiding the subject, but I pressed. “Tell me about it. When did you get it?”

She relaxed back into the bed. Her eyes were somber now, darker, as if she were remembering something unpleasant. “A long time ago.”

“And?”

She sighed, seeming to give up some resistance on the subject.

“It was a dark time in my life. Without you and…other things that were happening.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “So you commemorated it with a tattoo?”

She frowned and looked away. “It’s not like that. I guess it’s hard to understand.” Her body tensed in my grasp and a coldness began to creep between us. I caught her chin, turning her to face me once more.

“I don’t, but I want to. Help me understand.”

Her lips set firmly, resistance back in place.

“Please,” I urged, tracing the bow of her mouth.

She took a slow breath. “I think there’s something cleansing, even cathartic about getting ink. The decision, then the pain and the healing. Not just physically, on the skin. On the inside, it helped me heal. I remembered running my fingers over it the same day, feeling the beginning of a scar. It was kind of a rush, but something about it gave me strength when I needed it.”

“It’s enormous. It must have hurt like hell.”

She shrugged. “I knew it would hurt, but I’m not sure if the experience would have been the same without the pain.”

I nodded, trying to wrap my head around what she described. I’d put myself in harm’s way to deal with my demons, but never to commemorate them.

“It probably sounds strange, but getting the tattoo was like a rite of passage for me. Having it and remembering where I was emotionally at the time doesn’t make me sad. It reminds me that I can survive, that I came out of a difficult time in one piece.”

Maya’s lip trembled and she fidgeted with the edge of the sheet. She hadn’t opened up like this to me before, maybe ever. More and more my vision of Maya, who she was in her soul, began to resolve with the memory. The brown-eyed, blond-haired angel I used to love had changed, her bright flame both darkened and intensified at once, as if she’d walked into a long, cold shadow on her path and had spent the past four years trying to outrun it.

“Sometimes you don’t seem happy. I don’t have much to compare it to, but were you so much unhappier then than you are now?”

“Markedly. I’d lost you, I…” She swallowed hard and bit her lip, reddening the already rose-colored plump of flesh with the tip of her teeth.

Tension rippled through me with the unpleasant memory of how I’d left her. Wanting to forget it as quickly, I kissed her shoulder. I breathed in her subtle scent, reveling in the warm, petal-soft skin beneath my lips. Maya’s soul was encased in this body—warm impassioned flesh. Marked with dark symbols, her body held secrets to her past. I wondered what other truths I might uncover from it when she wasn’t pushing me away from her innermost thoughts.

I resisted the urge to let my mouth wander, to coax out the cries she’d given me earlier. I couldn’t ignore the premonition that more dwelled below the surface.

“You said other things… What other things were happening?”

She gave me a gentle push away. Resistant at first, I leaned back, giving her room to sit up. She moved her legs over the edge of the bed and rose quickly before I could pull her back down to me. She found her dress on the floor and slipped into it, the tight fabric hugging her everywhere.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to go home. Eli is probably wondering where I disappeared to.”

She had a valid point. In fact, I wondered why her phone hadn’t been ringing off the hook. She’d been gone for almost an entire day, and we’d never let anyone know we left. She could have been anywhere, with anyone. Maybe they assumed we would end up together last night, but then again, maybe this was routine.

Memories from last night played in my mind. The one with another women’s mouth on her shot to the forefront. I fisted my hand, bristling at the display they’d put on, how I’d nearly pummeled their onlookers.

“You disappear a lot on Saturday nights?” The question came out before I could think about its implication or temper the meaning and disappointment that laced every word.

She shot me a cold look. Motionless, she stared, and regret rooted in my gut. She grabbed her purse and pulled on her coat.

“Bye, Cam.”

MAYA. I took a cab back home. I wanted to put distance between us quickly.

I hated the judgment in his voice. Especially after what we’d done. I’d exposed myself physically and emotionally, only for him to fling my bad behavior at me.

I stewed the rest of the day, and my phone remained ominously silent. Maybe now that he’d gotten fucking me out of the way, we could get back to reality. Anger circled around the raw vulnerability I had when I was with him. I wanted to wipe it out, bury it deep. But how could I when he had me pinned that way, stripping me with his own honesty? He’d said he loved me. If he’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have believed him. I believed him. I had no doubts that he was falling as hard and fast as I was.

Yet, the hours of silence had me unsettled. I had no idea what he was thinking now, and I hated that I was on the defensive now. I sat with the rejection¸ slowly turning it to self-assurance, that I could stay ahead of this. I wasn’t going to let him run my heart into the ground this time. I couldn’t go through that again. I wouldn’t deny loving him, but I’d just dipped my toe in it. I wasn’t drowning in it yet. I could still save myself.

He called on my commute to work the next morning. I ignored it, and the handful of texts that followed. He’d let me sit with my resentment a little too long. Just before lunch, my phone dinged again. Compulsively I searched for it, too eager for another inquiring text from Cameron. Instead, it was Jia.

J:
Pop into my office before you head out.

A nervous heat prickled under my skin—a mixture of shame and embarrassment that I was going to lose my job for my atrocious behavior. I tried in vain to focus on work as the last thirty minutes ticked by before I was supposed to meet Vanessa for lunch. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I knocked quietly on Jia’s door. I heard a muffled voice inside. Hesitant, I opened it. She was sitting at her desk, her fingers flying over her keyboard. She paused when I entered.

“Come in. Shut the door.”

I obliged, taking a seat in front of her desk. Her office was small, not nearly as opulent as Dermott’s. Still, it was an office, a space away from the communal drone forces of the bullpen, with a desk and a sitting area to the side where she could meet with people.

She finished up her email and turned my way. I rolled a number of apologies and excuses over in my head, unsure which to use because I didn’t know how bad all of this was on her scale of inappropriate behavior.

“Jia, I’m sorry about the other night. I got so drunk, I really wasn’t thinking clearly.”

She frowned. “Do you think that’s why I asked you here?”

My eyebrows shot up. “Well...yeah. I mean—”

“Seriously, don’t give it another thought, Maya. We were having fun. I had a blast. I mean, I wouldn’t go shouting it off the rooftops at the Christmas party, but it’s nothing to worry yourself over.”

“Okay. Thank you, for your discretion, I guess.”

“Likewise.”

She gave me a smirk and straightened some of the papers on her desk. Relief flooded me, followed by an unexpected uneasiness. How could she possibly think this was acceptable? I didn’t even think it was appropriate. Making out with one of the female VPs of the company in front of a pack of horny guys wasn’t exactly reputable behavior. It fell into the kind of impulsive behavior that only drunk-me could talk herself into. Though I’d never admit it out loud, I’d
still
known it was a bad idea under all the alcohol I’d imbibed. I’d possessed enough control at that point to know better and act differently.

Stunned by her nonchalant attitude, I sat silently, waiting for her to continue. “What did you want to see me about then?”

“This is about the deal. We’ll probably need you to stay late all week. Hopefully it doesn’t run into the holiday, but it might. You okay with that?”

“Sure, that’s fine.” I nodded.

“Great. I just wanted to make sure, because I don’t want Dermott getting pissy if you can’t come through on this. If you can’t, I can find someone else to chip in.”

“I don’t have any family to go home to, Jia. I have nothing to keep me away from finishing whatever needs finishing.” I regretted the admission as it left me, but I figured blunt honesty might work here. Family obligations were the number one excuse during this time of year. I figured I would assure her that wasn’t an issue.

“Okay, good. That’s settled then.” She sat back, her pen resting against her full lips. “How did things go with the guy anyway? You two disappeared pretty quickly.”

“Cameron. Um, they’re fine.”

Her lips lifted into a coy smile, her eyes glittering. “He’s the jealous type, isn’t he?”

“Seems that way.” I couldn’t exactly judge him for it.

“Well, I hope it all works out.” Her voice was soft, a little more cautious than it had been. No doubt she could read the angst all over my face when I spoke about Cameron. “You have plans for lunch?”

I glanced at my watch. “Actually, I do. Maybe tomorrow?”

She nodded, dismissing me with a wave. I grabbed my purse and headed to the elevators with the rest of the cubicle crowd. I stalled in the lobby downstairs and spotted a stressed-out redhead walking my way.

“You look pissed,” I said as Vanessa approached.

“Same stupid fucking shit,” she spat.

I cringed for her. At least as of late I had a little bit of opportunity to look forward to. Vanessa was locked into a seemingly never-ending cycle of running around after Reilly. He expected her to look happy doing it too.

We pushed through the revolving doors without a word. As soon as we were outside, my eyes zeroed in on Cameron. He was leaning against the street sign, his legs crossed at the ankle. Shit, why did he always look so good? I groaned inwardly as we walked his way.