Seeing Red (19 page)

“I’ve got nothing to hide from.”

“And yet you’re keeping big secrets from me regarding my ex-husband. He’s my ex for a reason.”

“I observed a few of those reasons. Megan, listen, all that’s important is that I wanted to pacify him. Make him go away. If he wasn’t going to step up and do right for Toby, then he needed to move out of the way.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer.

She steered her car eastward and chose to bypass the exit toward the restaurant at the last minute. “It’s late. You might as well spend the night at my place, and I’ll take you to get your car in the morning.”

“Thank you, but I’ll take the bus. No need to disturb Toby.”

“He’s not at home, remember? Sharon came to get him. I can certainly manage to set an alarm clock for a respectable hour so you can get your car before it’s towed.”

Besides, she wanted to grill him. That yellow-bellied brother of hers may have gotten away, but she had one more prisoner of war to interrogate. She planned to make him crack before the night was over.

What the hell had he been thinking? And what had she been thinking, fantasizing that this thing—whatever it was—might work?

Earlier, Sharon had come upstairs looking dole-faced, with her hands folded behind her back. “Sorry, honey,” she’d said.

Meg had jabbed a finger at her and said, “See? Shit like this isn’t supposed to work. People who don’t know each other aren’t supposed to get married and expect a happily-ever-after.”

Sharon had cocked one eyebrow up and smirked. “You misunderstood me. I’m not apologizing for Seth and Stephen getting arrested. I’m apologizing because I know you’ll do anything to sabotage your own chance at happiness. Incurable pessimists, you Scorpios. Good to know you wanted a happily-ever-after, though.”

“I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist.”

“That’s just a nice way of saying miserable fatalist. And you’ll die horny and alone. You married a putz and divorced him. Time to cleanse your palate with an individual who happens to be a decent human being. So…take your time. Don’t worry about Toby. Ariel has some new action figures courtesy of her uncles she’s been dying to show off. Tell Connie I’m bringing rolls to Sunday dinner.” She’d winked and called out for Toby, who’d come running, the little traitor.

Meg sighed. “Did you have dinner before you pounded my ex-husband into a pulp?”

Seth, who was fiddling with the vents of her air conditioner, looked over at her, but said nothing.

“Connie said his fans may not be able to recognize him for a few weeks. Might have to have his jaw wired shut.”

“You need Freon. The air conditioner is blowing hot.”

“I like it hot. I’m anemic.”

“Maybe you should eat more meat.”

“Why? I’ve got a bottle of giant horse pills that do the job, more or less, minus all the animal slaughter.”

“Evidently not.”

“Who knows? Maybe I need new blood work. I’ll get around to that and every damn thing else I have to do sooner or later. My insurance just lapsed, so I’m in a special, fun place. Hope I don’t break a leg or get knocked up in the near future.”

He cringed, though she didn’t know for which part of her statement. Maybe both. “I have the paperwork started to add you and Toby to my policy.”

“Nope. Toby is still on Spike’s plan.”

“How long do you think that’ll last?”

“You know something I don’t?”

Of course he did. She could tell from the burr in his voice and the way his hand tightened around his left knee that he was holding something back. He’d learned something during that meeting earlier, and whatever it was, she had the right to know.

What the hell had Stephen been thinking, dragging Seth into the fray, anyway? Stephen couldn’t get anywhere near Spike without them coming to blows, and he’d probably expected a fight. But Seth? What was his endgame?

She stole a look from the road and glanced at him cracking his knuckles. His jaw ground left to right several times before she put her eyes back on the asphalt.

Never before had she witnessed him so agitated. She hadn’t known he was capable of it, and the energy in the car—crackling and anticipatory—was doing more for her arousal than him walking in front of her naked ever had, and she liked him naked.

A lot.

Perhaps her upbringing was betraying her, for as much disgust as she felt at once again being the butt of blogger jokes, part of her liked the idea that this man had fought over her, or at least in a situation relating to her, and won.

Maybe when she had insurance, she should get her head checked again.

Meg had her condo key extended, all ready to slip into the lock when Rosamund opened her door and peered out.

“Don’t say a fucking word,” Meg preempted. “Heard about your sweet tell-all book deal.” She turned the key and listened to the lock tumble. “Going around, doing interviews with all the women Spike slept with that lived to tell the tale? Classy, titling it
Poor Meg
. Real fucking classy.” She shouldered the door open and Seth followed her in, eyeing her with apprehension as he stepped over the threshold.

“Oh, come on,” Rosamund said. “Most of them, okay, seventy-five percent, were from after the separation. Meg, think of the possibilities. If I could get you to write the foreword, you’d lend some—”

Meg shut the door on Rosamund’s words, but not before showing off her second-favorite finger to the classless yoga-bunny. “I can’t wait to move out of this building,” she said to no one in particular, but Seth paused in front of her, studying her face.

“Where would you go?”

“The world is my oyster. I work from home. I could move to Moscow if I wanted. Anywhere with Internet access would suit me just fine. Alaska. Guatemala. Scotland.”

He shifted his weight. “How about Fayetteville?”

And he went there. She’d only half expected it, but was wholly flattered. She had no intentions of letting that on, though, because she’d already decided she’d never again be in a relationship with another man who didn’t value her counsel…and evidently Seth didn’t.

She was just an inane technical writer, after all. He was the one that built rocket ships and named stars and bullshit like that.

“Megan, you’re shaking. Are you cold?”

He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her into his warm, spice-scented chest and rubbing her back just way she liked. When he wasn’t there, his scent seemed to permeate everything around her. Her bed, in the fabric of her sofa, her towels. It drove her crazy and sent her rummaging through her old, reliable box of tricks. The collection she’d started during Spike’s third world tour—the first one he’d left her behind for.

She pushed Seth back, or tried to, anyway, but his hold was too strong. Too sure. Not this time, he seemed to be saying.

“I’m not cold. Let go of me.”

“Then you’re angry. Tell me why you’re angry.”

“That should be obvious.”

“I’m a scientist, not a psychic. If there were something observable and classifiable there for me to glean, I would have noticed, and therefore not asked.”

“Maybe I just think you’re an asshole and I regret doing this. Marrying you.”

His heartbeat against her ear sped, but his hold on her didn’t loosen. “I see.”

The words were tart, but she didn’t regret uttering them.

“So what do you want? Are you done? Ready to start our year’s separation before you file your paperwork?” he asked.

“Is that what you want?”

“What I want is obviously irrelevant.”

She leaned back and craned her neck up to see his dark expression. “Excuse the hell out of me? You entered this agreement willingly.”

“I did. Just as you entered kicking and screaming.”

“You haven’t seen kicking and screaming yet.”

All of a sudden, the angles and planes in his face looked sharper, more shadowed. His enlarged pupils made his hazel eyes dark, and the slight flaring of his nostrils gave her warning that she’d pushed some button he’d never before exposed to her.

“Really?”

She was gonna push that button again. She jutted her chin up and said, “That’s right, Red. I spend every waking moment looking for an avenue out of this thing.”

“I see.” In one second, he had her hauled up over his shoulder, and before she could register direction or intent, her tennis shoes were yanked off one by one, and he didn’t lose his stride one bit. By the time he slapped on the bedroom light, she’d lost her socks, too.

He tossed her onto her own bed like a sack of laundry, still wearing that cold expression that was so alien and unfamiliar to her.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. Just hooked his fingers into the waistband of her yoga pants and gave them a purposeful yank downward, taking her panties along for the ride.

He sat her up, and she complied as he pulled her sweatshirt and T-shirt over her head. Was he really doing it? Picking up the leash?

He laid her back down, wadded her clothes into a shapeless blob, and tossed them over the edge of the bed.

Time to poke the button again. “Should I just lie here and moan at all the right times, or do you want to feed me some lines to recite?”

No response to that either. He just dragged her by the legs so her ass was at the edge of the bed and dropped to his knees. “Going to help you with your kicking-and-screaming problem.” He draped her legs over his shoulders and stared up her torso at her, waiting for her to rebut.

“You’re welcome to try.”

He started off slow. Gently. Lapping his tongue around her clit without touching it, spreading her legs wider to expose more of her.

Her breath hitched when he drew back, not touching, not teasing—not engaging her at all beyond his breath tickling the skin he’d wet with his tongue.

She realized then he was staring at her. Studying her.

Unnerving the shit out of her.

“What are you doing?”

He directed a stream of air on the skin he’d licked that sent her fingers scrambling for purchase. Was he just going to tease, or was she going to get off? If she had to be nearly naked, she wanted to get off. He was reliable for that.

Now he buried his nose into her curls, probing the entrance of her sex with gentle flicks that had her clenching and toes curling.

She drew in a breath and grabbed the back of his hair. “If you’re going to order the meal, you’d better eat it.”

Nothing else seemed important at the moment. Not her bruised ego, Rosamund, bloggers and reporters who wanted to make her life a circus, preschool angst, the fact Toby was out of his favorite cereal, being in love with yet another man who didn’t consider her an equal partner, nothing. All that mattered at that moment was getting off at his touch, because he was the only one who could do it.

He had the nerve to chuckle with his face pressed so firmly there, so she pulled his head even closer.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but don’t stop.”

“Right.” He resumed his probing, deeper and more forcefully, and igniting a series of quakes in Meg that escalated when he put his fingers where his tongue was. He stroked deeper inside, flicking and fluttering fingertips over her second-most erogenous spot, as his mouth latched onto her neglected clit.

She bucked off the bed. “More of that.”

“Mm-hmm.” He thrummed his tongue beneath her clit hood, and his free hand—the bruised one—inched upward to her lace-covered breast, easily palming her. He flicked a rough thumb across her nipple while grazing her clit with his teeth.

All she could do was blink and breathe and occasionally squeeze his head between her knees.

His fingers inside her worked faster, teasing her mercilessly, until she was close, so close.

“Fuck, Sergei, fuck.”

“Mm-hmm.” He eased back a bit, moving his hand from the breasts he’d exposed. She thought perhaps he was unzipping his fly, because she ached for his penetration. To have him between her legs, loving her inside the way he did her outsides, but then the hand inside her slipped out, too, leaving her at an unsatisfied peak.

He eased her legs apart more, then let them fall, and stood, his erection evident against his khakis.

She opened her mouth to ask him to finish, but his lips came down over hers, crushing them, transferring her taste to her tongue. He kissed her hard, probing his tongue in forcefully, and ended with a stinging tug of her lip between his teeth.

Gasping for air, she eased up onto her elbows to watch him stride toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

He stopped, hand on the knob. “Figured I’d get a last meal before getting tossed back into the friend zone. I’ll take a cab to my car. Don’t worry about getting up.”

The door closed behind him, and she blinked with confusion. Next came the dull ache of her neglected sex, waiting for the release that wouldn’t come. Then came the realization that he had no intention of making her come.

She yelled, loudly and wordlessly, thrashing her arms and legs against the mattress.