Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) (19 page)

Zander unlocked the door. Faith jumped when he explosively kicked it open and went inside.

Hesitantly, she followed him, peering carefully inside the door before she entered and looked for Zander. He was standing in front of his dead fireplace, his face as hard and dark as the cold stone before him. “I don’t know what the hell happened between the time we left the bar and now. One minute you’re grabbing my package and the next you’re accusing me of not letting you touch me. You can’t have it both ways, Faith.”

Without a word, she walked right up to him. She rose on her toes to kiss him, cupping him as she did so. Zander’s hand clamped around her wrist, drawing it away.

“I rest my case,” Faith said. “And now I’m going home.”

She was at the door before Zander forced himself to call out to her. “Faith!”

“What?” she snapped without turning around.

“I don’t want you to go,” he humbly admitted. “Please.”

She went back to him. Standing toe to toe, her face aimed up at his, she challenged him. “Then let me touch you. The way you touch me.”

He threw his hands up in mock surrender and sat heavily on his sofa. “Fine. Whatever,” he said, his right thumb and forefinger worrying his right earlobe. “I’m yours, baby. Do your worst.”

Chapter 10

Faith took her time.

She asked Zander to make a fire, which he did. She asked him for the shiraz, which he retrieved, along with two glasses.

Her final request, that he take a seat on the sofa before the fire, was obeyed, albeit hesitantly.

Faith came at him slowly, carefully, rather the way she would have approached an injured wild animal. In some respects, that’s exactly what Zander was. Faith was no expert, but she had her own idea as to why Zander always took such control of their intimate moments, and she wanted to prove it one way or the other.

She joined him on the sofa, sitting astride his lap to unbutton his shirt. He settled deeper into it and rested his arms along the back of it. His casual demeanor seemed strained; a flash of defiance in his eyes belied his apparent willingness to give Faith control.

Faith soldiered on.

She opened his shirt wide, baring his chest. She hunched forward to take one of the tiny tips capping his broad pectorals between her teeth. Her tongue swirled around it, sampling the smooth disk of flesh at its base before she nipped at it, pinching it with her teeth just hard enough to make him squirm in his seat and clench his fists.

He rose, solid and heavy, beneath her. She undid his jeans and tugged them down past his knees, leisurely studying his legs while she pulled off his athletic shoes and socks.

“You have man hair,” she commented softly. “I really like that.”

“What’s ‘man hair?’ ”

“Too many models and actors wax things that should be hairy,” Faith said, glancing at his neat, honey-wheat nest. “Pruning the jungle is good, complete deforestation—not good.”

Zander absently stroked himself. “Exactly how many naked trouser snakes have you seen?”

Carefully watching the movement of his hand, Faith pulled his jeans free of his legs. “I’ll bet I’ve seen fewer bare batons than you’ve seen bacon strips and naked dugouts.” She stood and undressed, watching him watch her as she did so. His fingers closed around his baton, his motions growing more animated as more of her body was exposed. Once all of her clothes had joined his jeans on the floor, she parted his knees wide and kneeled between them.

“Who was it?” he asked.

“Who was what?”

“Your first.”

“My first what,” she purred.

“You know what. Was it Jeffrey Winslow?”

“Jeffy Winslow was never really interested in me. He came to visit me at NYU once, and loved the city so much that he moved there. Everyone back home thinks he works in theater, and he does. He performs in tribute revue called Tina, Diana & Friends.”

Zander’s abs bounced in a light chuckle. “Who does Jeffy play?”

“Lola Folana.”

“Your first time was with Lola Folana?”

“Do you really want to talk about this now?” She smoothly replaced his hand with hers, copying his technique. Chancing a glance at his face, she was pleased to see the battle waging there. His mouth would stiffen then relax, his lips parted. His eyes drowsed shut after he peered at her with something akin to wariness in them. His jaw clenched and relaxed, until finally his head fell back and his hips scooted forward in a mute invitation for her to go further.

Her fingers loosely laced around him, she stroked him, twisting her hands upward, meeting them with her lips at his tip. His abdomen jumped and he emitted a tiny grunt of surprise and satisfaction when his swollen cap glided against the hot, wet cushion of her tongue.

“Ahh, God…Faith,” he groaned when she guided him deeper, his girth almost overfilling her mouth.

His legs opened wider and his hands went to her shoulders. His grip was too firm, and Faith thought he would push her away. She took him deeper, coordinating her breathing with the up and down movements of her head along the stiff length of his flesh while she busied her hands anew with the firm, warm weights at its base.

Zander’s hands glided over the silky skin of her neck and shoulders, his fingers moved into the curls just behind her ears. He cupped her head but did nothing to interfere with her work between his legs, and sooner than he anticipated, he found himself near his breaking point, at that place where pleasure was almost painful. Acting automatically, he held onto handfuls of her curls and thrust forward again and again. Faith took all that she could, answering his deepest thrusts with a swallowing technique that created a vacuum the likes of which he had never experienced.

Faith was keenly aware of his readiness when she felt his twins crowding upward. She pried his hands from her hair, pulled her head from his lap and quickly mounted him, shuddering in pleasure as she fully enrobed him. Beneath Zander’s hands, her thigh muscles worked as she raised and lowered herself upon him, arching her back and curling her hips forward to generate friction just as pleasing to her as it was to Zander.

Cradling his head to her bosom, she fed him her left nipple. Hungrily, he took it, instantly triggering a response that locked her around him, the constrictions of her intimate chamber initiating Zander’s release.

His nails cut into Faith’s skin, his abdominal muscles bunched and hardened, his toes curled. His head flew forward, the cords and veins in his neck standing out as he shouted his surrender. He gave her everything she had wanted, and a little extra, and she thanked him with tender kisses and caresses meant to bring him even closer to her.

Shaking in Faith’s arms, Zander held her so tightly, he compressed her shoulder blades and interfered with her breathing. Faith returned his embrace, her arms wrapped around his head, her hands stroking his hair. He had given her the confirmation she had needed.

“I love you, Alex.”

Faith’s whispered words, the heat of them at his ear, started his heart pounding so hard he was certain she could feel it beating against her breast. He adjusted his hold on her, loosening it so he could see her face.

“You don’t have to say it,” she tenderly assured him. “I know you love me. You show it every second I’m with you. I wanted to know if you could accept it.”

“I don’t have a problem taking—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Taking isn’t the same thing as accepting. You know that.”

He sat up straighter with her, allowing her to wrap her legs around his middle, allowing him to seal her body to his. He’d been with a lot of women, too many. Some for survival, some for base relief. But none of them had touched him, not like Faith. Her touch, back in Dorothy and now, were the only times he had been touched by someone who loved him.

The realization weakened him as it washed through him, and it took all of his remaining strength to hold onto Faith, his Faith, who knew all along what he had only just discovered.

Having never received healthy doses of affection, he’d never learned how to accept love. His parents had ignored him when they weren’t abusing or stealing from him. He’d learned to take intimacy as it had been offered, but as Faith told him—that wasn’t the same as accepting it.

He’d accepted it tonight, when Faith showed him the most important thing he’d never learned when he was young: that he was worth loving.

Faith hoped it was the last step he needed to take to accept everything else, especially the fact that he was Alexander Brannon, her Alex, the love of her life.

* * *

“I did the Farmer’s Market this weekend,” Daiyu said in response to Faith’s inquiry regarding her weekend. “What’d you do? Or should I say ‘who?’ ”

Faith swiveled from side to side in her chair, her legs outstretched. Her feet bumped a side of her cozy cubicle with each turn. “I spent some time near Big Bear Lake.”

“With Zan—”

“Yes,” Faith spoke over her. “We had a really good time.”

Peering at Faith over the tops of her narrow black glasses, Daiyu folded her arms over her chest, carefully, so as to avoid puncturing herself with any of the jagged cloisonné anime characters pinned to the straps of her stretchy black paperbag overalls.

Faith stopped swiveling. “What’s that look for?”

Daiyu shrugged a shoulder. “What look? I don’t have a look.”

“I thought I saw a look, but if there was no look…”

“There was no look,” Daiyu sweetly assured her.

“Would you two knock it off?” directed a male voice from the neighboring cubicle. “You guys sound like a female Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza.”

“Are you on deadline, Vivian?” Daiyu called without leaving her perch on one edge of Faith’s cluttered desk.

“Yes,” he growled. “And I’m not even sure the piece is gonna run.”

“Why’s that?” Faith asked.

“No photo, no go,” came Vivian’s slow, deep drawl, which always put Faith in the mind of John Wayne.

Daiyu and Faith knew exactly what that meant.
Personality!
was a photo-driven magazine. Stories without suitable pictures didn’t run, plain and simple.

“Who do you need?” Daiyu asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Vivian said. “You ain’t got him.”

“Try me,” Daiyu challenged.

Vivian’s ancient leather and oak office chair creaked as he lifted his weight from it to lean over the cork divider. With his straight white teeth exposed in a neighborly grin, his jet-black hair neatly combed with a precise side part and his tanned forearms bared in a dark green polo shirt, Vivian looked more like a professional golf commentator than
Personality!
’s most senior entertainment news reporter. For fifteen years, Vivian had written a column titled
After Hours
, reporting on the antics famous folk got up to at some of the trendiest nightspots in Los Angeles. Vivian had stumbled into the gossip beat, after being assigned to the department by a former
Personality!
editor who hadn’t known that he was a man.

“I’ve got a bit on Joaquin Phoenix.”

“What flavor?” Faith asked. Joaquin Phoenix was one of her favorite actors, and Vivian’s
After Hours
vignettes typically came in three flavors: Dumbsel-in-Distress, Knight-in-Whining-Armor and the much rarer My Hero!

“Phoenix bought himself a My Hero blurb last night when he stopped to help a Dumbsel-in-Distress outside Catch, that new place on Sunset. The guy’s a class act,” Vivian went on. “He was leaving a restaurant, saw the girl being manhandled by some big dope and intervened.”

“Any punches thrown?” Faith asked, tantalized by the image of “her” Joaquin going medieval on a bully.

“He didn’t have to,” Vivian chuckled. “Phoenix has one of those faces. You don’t know if he’s going to ask you the time or go for your throat with his teeth bared.”

“He’s
my
hero,” Faith cooed.

“But the guy is a vampire,” Vivian said. “Three photographers thought they got him last night, but he turns transparent on film.”

“I got him,” Daiyu said confidently. “He must have just been leaving the scene outside Catch. He looked all moody and windblown.”

“He always looks like that,” Vivian said.

“You want the pics or not?” Daiyu asked.

“What’s it gonna cost me?” Vivian asked, his blue eyes sparkling.

“A post-awards ceremony shindig to be determined at a later date,” Daiyu said. “Anything but the Daytime Emmys and the Country Music Awards.”

“Done.” Vivian shoved a hand at her.

“I’ll e-mail the shots to production right now,” Daiyu said, cementing the deal with a handshake.

“You’re amazing, kiddo,” Vivian said with a wink before sinking back into his chair, which answered with a loud creak.

“Who did you get at the Farmer’s Market?” Faith asked, making room to allow Daiyu to slip a zip disk into Faith’s computer.

“Pretty much everybody, but nobody good,” Daiyu answered, making quick work of e-mailing the Phoenix shots to production. “You know who I’d really like to shoot?”

“Nope. Who?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“You.” Daiyu peered over the top of her glasses as she slipped her zip disk back into the case hanging from the silver chain around her neck. “And Zander Baron.”

“I can see why you’d want to shoot Zander, but why on earth would you want to shoot me?”

“Here’s the thing,” Daiyu said, “you’re pretty, he’s prettier—”

“Thanks,” Faith deadpanned.

“But the two of you together…it’s magic. It’s real. It’s gorgeous.”

Vivian reappeared over the cubicle wall. “You’re dating Zander Baron?”

“No,” Daiyu and Faith answered as one.

“This is so good,” Vivian chuckled, settling once more on his side of the wall. “Scoops never just fall into my lap like this.”

“What I wouldn’t give for real walls,” Faith muttered.

She smoothed her short, leather skirt around her hips as she exited her workspace, Daiyu right behind her. They wove their way through the maze of cubicles, hopped into an elevator, and took it to the lobby. They left the building and went straight to the one place they knew they could speak openly without being overheard.

“Could you at least turn on the air conditioning?” Daiyu asked as she settled into the passenger seat of Faith’s old Camry.

“It’s not hot,” Faith protested.

“It’s not hot
outside
,” Daiyu disagreed, propping her booted feet on the dashboard. “It’s plenty hot fastened up in this car.”

Faith started the engine and turned on the air conditioner. A blast of chilled air rushed in with a loud, rattling wheeze.

“Do cars get emphysema?” Daiyu wondered aloud.

Faith got right to the reason for their escape from the news floor. “Why do you want to photograph me with Zander Baron?”

“Why are you trying to hide that you’re seeing him?” Daiyu countered.

“It’s an invasion of privacy,” Faith contended. “I don’t want people in my business.”

“Invading people’s privacy is our job. It’s what we do for a living, it’s what
Personality!
is. Why should we be exempt?”

“Who’s ‘we?’ ” Faith scoffed. “I don’t see you taking pictures of you and your cowboy and plastering them all over the place.”

“Justin is a civilian. Zander’s in the biz. His photos are a bigger commodity.”

“I’ll ask him if he’ll sit for you, but I can’t be seen in a photo with him.”

“I can’t help being intrigued by your adamant refusal to sit for a pic with your man friend,” Daiyu said suspiciously. “If I were a reporter, I’d probably dig a lot deeper into that.”