The Dirty Secret (15 page)

“You will be at our open house, Miss Ratham, yes?” Bergman asked from the stoop.

Killian heard Vessa’s voice, but not her words. The old man huffed down the steps, and nodded once at Killian, a heavy-headed affirmative. He shook Killian’s hand—a jolt up his elbow, high praise from the boss—and got in his car to drive to the next house. Vessa waved from the doorway.

“Did they go upstairs?” he asked, his stomach still churning with dread.
Please say no. Please say no.

“Yes.” The door closed behind him with the
whoosh
and
thud
of a guillotine.

She wore a pink dress that hugged her skin, and her hair was pulled up off her neck with a ribbon. An energy surrounded her that Killian recognized on a bone-deep level, the forced serenity she wore when she was holding back a surprise. He bolted up the stairs.

“Holy. Fucking.
Shit.
” His anxiety dissolved into laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Vessa stopped at the top step.

“Something Donna Edith said.” He shook his head. Halfway into the room the bad carpet had been cut away clean, and in its place she’d laid light oak laminate floor. Heavy brackets held a solid railing, and behind them six long thin mirrors leaned against the wall. “You’re fucking amazing. A dance studio?” he asked.

“Or karate, or yoga.”

The walls were the same white but now glazed with rose, and the whole room glowed the barest petal pink. The other side of the room held a full-length artist’s easel, a low fainting couch and an orchid on a little table. A silk kimono hung on a hook near the chaise, turning the tableau suggestive—the artist would be painting a nude model. The only bright spot of color in the room was the flower, an explicit pink.

“How did you get all this up here?” Jealousy crawled up the back of his neck at the thought of anyone else being in the intimate room with her. He clenched his jaw, knowing he was being inane. She’d saved his ass—he should be grateful to anyone helping her.

“I carried it,” she said. “The easel comes apart, and the legs had to come off the chaise anyway. I had to scour the rust off them.”

“And the flooring? You did that, too?”

“It’s just the peel-and-stick stuff.” She shrugged. “Took me less than two hours to do.” She jumped and twirled on the surface, her skirt spinning out. She grabbed the barre, then turned and spun back to him, listing sideways and off-kilter. He caught her with a chuckle and kissed her. She parted for him, soft mouth tasting his, sweet and slow.

Killian’s guts rumbled and he pulled away, pressing his hand to his stomach. “Sorry. I skipped lunch. I spent half the day imagining popping Bengt’s eyeballs out with a fork, and he didn’t even come in today. It’s easy to laugh about it now, when you’ve turned his fuckery into something perfect.”

She smiled, bare mouth and a flash of white teeth and eyes with impossible lashes. “Could you help me with something?”

“Anything.” She’d just saved his career. He’d help her get to the moon.

“Could you take me to Brass and Bones? It would be so much easier to just pick things up rather than borrow the van and then take it back. We could get you some food.”

“Of course.”

He drove with the windows down, wanting everyone in the world to see her with him, riding in his vehicle. At the antiques store, the owner barely acknowledged him. He spoke on the phone in Spanish, not even holding the door when Killian carried a wingback chair out to his pickup. Vessa flitted around gathering up things, hardly looking where she was going, like she knew the place by touch. Killian watched her run up a flight of stairs, dress swinging around her body in all the right places. The old man cleared his throat and gave him a smirk as knowing as one of Donna Edith’s. Heat rose up the back of Killian’s neck.

She gave him a box of books to carry and a folding shelf and a wooden table. When she was at the other side of the store—ass in the air, rooting through a box—Manny tapped the glass case with a meaningful glance at the necklace underneath, blue glass and all the colors she wore on her eyes. Killian slid the man his credit card, not even looking at the price.

“What are you hungry for?” Vessa asked, adding more stickers to the bill of sale. The shop owner snickered.

They drove to an Indian take-out place and stood in line discussing the merits of vindaloo versus tikka masala. She edged closer to him with every foot they stepped forward in line, tapping one toe on the floor. He looked over his shoulder at the woman behind him, a blonde with a red-painted mouth and a red painted-on shirt. He looked back at Vessa and wanted to laugh, because she stole all the light from the room like a prism. She thought she had competition?

But then the man at the counter did a double take, eyeing her, and he wanted to plant his fist in the guy’s nose. He slid his hand to the small of her back as they stepped forward, a politeness that was an excuse to touch her, and a mark of possession.

They took the food to the house and unloaded the pickup. She set up the little bookcase in the kitchen by the back door, next to the armchair and the table, making the space a breakfast nook for one, or a cook’s corner to read recipes. Killian unpacked their dinner and brought it to the table, but she shook her head. “Indian food should be eaten on the floor, sitting on pillows.”

They took their plates upstairs and ate as the sun set, turning the pale room shadowy rose. “What’s next?” he asked, though there was really only one room left to do.

“The bathroom up here still needs something.” She gestured toward the copper guest bath. “It was a bit—”

“Tortured?”

She looked up, startled.

He tore the last piece of naan, and handed half to her. He kept his voice light, teasing. “I don’t like to think of what I would have felt, if I’d seen you out with another guy.”

She looked away and sipped at a glass of water. “It wasn’t just that. It’s who she is.”

“Starla?” he asked.

Vessa nodded, and pushed a few grains of rice around her plate with the flatbread.

“Because of who her dad is?”

“You could say that.”

“She can’t help who her parents are any more than you or me or Bengt.” He licked the salt from the bread off his fingers, aware of her watching him do it. “Do you have any thoughts about what you’re going to do to the bedroom?”

She smiled with the change of subject, as he had hoped. “Not yet. It’s so personal. Intimate. Sleeping is, you know?”

He wanted to sleep with her. Not just fuck her—lay her on that lady’s couch and spread her legs and kiss the hidden orchid there until she begged for his cock with her little cries—but sleep with her, to surrender consciousness with her in his arms, wrapped around him in oblivion.

“It’s intimate up here,” he said. “It’s pretty sexy, actually.” He gestured to the orchid.

“This is my favorite room. All the windows—it feels like a walled rooftop where a woman could sunbathe nude and touch herself without anyone knowing.” She didn’t look at him, but a blush was splashed across her cheekbones, and the most delicious trace of a grin tugged at her lips, like she had candy in her mouth.

Fuuck.

“Did you? Touch yourself? Finish what I didn’t this morning?” he asked.

Her blush deepened, along with the slow, secret sugar smile.

“Would you show me?”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” she said. “In the dark it’s different.”

“How?”

She licked her lips, a flash of pink on pink, and his tongue was envious of hers. “In the sunlight and the heat it’s about the body and relaxing, easing the muscles and the little ache that distracts you from everything you want to get done.”

He was hard, his erection painfully bent, but he didn’t adjust it, didn’t want to draw attention from her words by moving. “But in the dark?” he asked.

“At night it’s a mind release, the thoughts you’ve had all day going secret directions, the places they won’t go when anyone is looking.”

“Will you show me?” he asked again. He stood, slowly, and reached one hand down to her. Her face was still red, but she linked her pinky with his and rose. He moved to the easel in front of the chaise and sat on the stool.

Vessa turned her back to him when she undressed, plain white underwear stark in the twilight, then that fell to the floor too, and she was naked, skin and curves and his dreams for the past month. She lay on the couch, one foot on the floor, one knee raised, and her hand went between her legs without preamble, slow circles opening the folds. She was already wet, the shine glistening, and then her fingers moved in slick circles. Her lips were parted as she breathed, deep slow breaths.

Killian unbuttoned his pants, easing his cock to a better angle, but then he left it alone, no distractions from the display in front of him—the girl who wouldn’t talk about herself, baring it all so completely.

She added her other hand to the mix, and one finger disappeared then another, her hips rose off the bench, her breathing became faster, and his was almost as quick.

Her ring finger moved, slipping lower, not entering the pucker below, just sliding against it as she rode her hand. And then he did grip his cock, in self-defense, in self-restraint, as she came, arching, with a short cry, hands still, pressing, and then slow movements, almost soothing as her hips rocked with the muscles clenching in her belly.

She reached for him, empty hands grabbing at the air, and he was there, over her and then in her, hot and slick and so wet and soft, muscles still fluttering from her orgasm, clutching at his cock. He caught the rhythm, and then she was squeezing, wild, hands on his back, his ass, crying, “
Fuck, please, fuck, please, fuck
.” Sweaty and slick and writhing, she clenched around him and he swore, pulling out to come, spurting wildly over the undersides of her breasts, her stomach, filling her belly button.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why?” She ran a fingertip through the mess on her midriff, making a spiral. “It’s sexy.”

“I forgot to put on a condom.”

She smiled, relaxed, disheveled and unbearably beautiful. “I don’t need them, unless you do.”

“You’re on the pill?” He leaned on an elbow and brushed her hair from her face. Being naked inside her, skin against skin had been incredible. Wet and slick and perfect.

“I’ve got the little card from my doctor, too, if you want to see the last time I was tested.”

“I’m clean,” he said. “I’ve got the papers at home.” He kissed her then, and again, over and over, until she grabbed his hand and led him to the shower, and he took her again as the water poured down, his climax washing over him when she cried his name.

Chapter Fifteen

Final Bower

Vessa rinsed the brushes in the master bath sink. She had a smudge of blue on her cheekbone, and the hair over her left ear was stiff with lavender glaze. Her painting shirt had a smear of blue on the left breast and a glob of putty on the shoulder. She peeled it off and left it hanging over the bathtub before she walked into the kitchen, gnawing on the inside of her cheek.

Killian sat at the dining room table, drawings spread out before him, a ruler on his left, and a T-square on his right. His eyes smiled at hers, glanced kisses on her lips, and fell to her breasts—all but naked in the thin undershirt, without a bra—and his gaze lingered, dark and hard. Her nipples tightened, as if he had touched her skin already.

“Something wrong?” he drawled, leaning back in his chair.

She sighed and slumped into a seat. “What are you working on?”

“Bringing one of my boss’s designs up to zoning spec. It’s half of what I do at work. Apparently, 1970s bungalows make great optometrist offices. These prints are so old they’re actually blue.” He grimaced, then slid his fingers between hers. “Can I see what you’ve got so far?”

Vessa toed the floor like a disgruntled toddler. “It’s boring.” She followed him back to the largest room in the house.

“It’s nice,” he said. “I like the bed. It’s big. Somehow I knew you’d have one of those netting things.”

“I do love a good cliché,” she said, still sulking.

He turned in a circle, examining the room. “Well, they exist for a reason,” he said, throwing her words from their first dinner together back at her.

She sighed again. “It’s awful.” She touched the wall, an evening blue washed with peach and cream. “The way you’ve got this room, with the garden window and the sunken ceiling. It’s like both day and night in here, but it’s just not happening for me with the paint.”

“The deep blue is good.” Killian leaned back to look at the recessed ceiling. “How did you do the lights?”

“It’s just a string of battery-operated Christmas lights tucked up into the molding.”

He walked to the door in the far corner, his hands in his back pockets. Vessa followed him to the closet doorway, peeling a splatter of paint off her forearm.

“Oh, this is much better,” he said, pulling a wardrobe door open. “It’s like a Victorian detective agency disguise cache. Or a steampunk store. I need a top hat and goggles.”

He’d look incredible that way, too, enigmatic and handsome. “See, that’s the problem,” she said. “The closet is more interesting than the whole bedroom.”

“I want to hang my ties in here,” he said, “and see if they come back with a different pattern overnight, smelling like this.” Cedar, spicy and sharp, warmed the air from the hangers and the storage shelves.

She backed out of the closet and sat down, cross-legged in the middle of the floor. The bedroom walls mocked her with their permanence, knowing more about intimacy than she did. Long arms wrapped around her from behind, and his legs cradled hers as he sat down with her.

“I can tell you what it’s missing.” His voice was a low rasp against her neck, warm breath shivery, and his teeth grazed the shell of her ear. She leaned back in his arms, and he kissed her skin with the lightest touch. “It’s missing
you
. The night sky color is cool, and the astrolabe light is fun, but you’re whole galaxies. The bed looks comfortable, but not sprawling-like-a-freshly-fucked-harem-girl or sleeping-past-noon satisfying. The stacks of pillows on the shelves—they’re neat like that, but I have no wish to untie that ribbon and use them to fuck you in in every position imaginable.”

He leaned to her other side and murmured into her left ear. “That’s a lie. I do. With both the ribbon and the pillows.”

Oh, and she would let him do it, too. He wouldn’t even have to touch her—he could coax all her body’s secrets from her just by
whispering
. He kissed her neck before moving back to the right ear. “It’s nice in here. But the rest of the house is spectacular, and this room is stilted, tentative.” His fingers moved under her breasts, tracing over her ribs. “Give me a room you want to be naked in, that you want to feel against your skin, a ceiling you want to stare at when you can’t sleep, a pile of pillows for a rainy day spent in bed.”

His hands slid to the undersides her breasts, cupping her in the tank top. The ribbed cotton caught at her nipples, stroking the tender skin. “Why are you holding out on me?” he asked. “What are you scared of?”

He wasn’t just asking about the room.

“This is the last room. We’re almost done,” she said, hearing the panic in her own voice. A hand curled into her hair at the base of her neck, twisting with a short tug. She froze.

“We’re not done,” he said, his voice rough in her ear, an echo of her words upstairs, last week. He released her hair and rubbed her neck, soothing circles on her skin. “Are we?”

“No,” she said, leaning back into his chest, her heart pounding. But would they be when the house was finished, and they wouldn’t have a secret place to hide?

His hand returned to the side of her breast, running up and down in tandem with the other, tickling and delicious. “I haven’t gotten enough of you.” His breath was hot on her skin.

Vessa arched into his hands, running her palms down the tops of his thighs. She was wet between her legs, swollen, her body always craving his.

“Fuck, the view is incredible from here,” he said at her left temple. “How do you walk around and not stare at yourself, jiggling like that with each step?” His thumb rubbed a circle over the peak and it pressed back, wanting more.

“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Vessa didn’t want to go anywhere else, ever. She crawled up on the big boring bed, glaring up at the expected netting over the four posts that reached to the uninspired ceiling.

Killian came back, not with a little foil package, but with a small paper bag, stamped with the logo of Brass and Bones: the man in the moon with a jaunty curling mustache. He leaned over her, dropping a kiss on each nipple before laying the package between her breasts.

“I got you something. You can guess who picked it out, but—” He flopped down on the bed, making her bounce where she lay. He leaned over her and pushed her tank top up her stomach, kissing her above and below her navel.

She giggled and squirmed and sat up, pulling at the paper, revealing a worn black velveteen box. “Ooh!”

Inside was a double strand of costume jewels, aquamarine glass backed with vintage silver leaf, separated with buttery seed pearls and distressed rhinestones.

“I was going to give them to you next week, as a thank-you. But your Mr. Luna was right. They were made for you.” He waved his hand at the room. “It’s what this room needs. Eye shadow and glitter and shit. Flowers. Vessa magic.”

She touched the jewels, smearing the surface, and then she rubbed her fingerprint off with the hem of her shirt. “They’re gorgeous.” She was breathless, hypnotized by the glittering surfaces of the gems trapping the sun, throwing prisms and stars all over the walls.

He took them from her and settled them at her throat. “The clasp is tricky,” he said, and then it snicked together, and the necklace lay voluptuous and heavy against her skin, the dangling jewels brushing her collarbone when she moved. She grabbed his jaw, kissed his face, her heart huge and stupid with him, then she jumped up, running to the bathroom mirror. The necklace sat on her skin like a sunset on water, fire and icicles kissing her skin. She preened in the mirror like a princess, with paint on her face and in a sweaty see-through undershirt, while Killian leaned in the doorway, watching, mouth all crooked and smug, younger than the tiredness he carried on his shoulders.

“The clasp is difficult,” she said, fingers at her throat, “because it can be worn as bracelets, too.” She separated the two strands and slipped one around her left wrist, holding her arm out for him to close the toggle on the right. She turned her hands, the pendants shimmering with a jingle. “Now I can see them.”

She laid a palm on his chest, the jewels against her skin framed by his black T-shirt. She stood on her toes and kissed his mouth, quick lips and quicker tongue. He caught her, his hands in her hair, bending to kiss her back, slow and deep, stroking her giddiness into fire.

She pushed him backward, wishing she could crawl inside his bones, wanting to be inside his structure, his strength. He let her, stepping with her until his calves hit the bed. Vessa slid her hand up under his T-shirt, drawing it over his head. His chest had muscle definition drawn long, shape and sinew, a line of hair threading down into his jeans. She palmed the surfaces, watching her hands on the planes of his body like an expensive sculpture, and she was the rich woman with heavy gems who could afford such things.

He peeled her shirt over her head and sat down to kiss and lick and whisper at her breasts and her skin, drawing one nipple into his mouth and working his tongue against it as he sucked, and then switching to the other. She stroked his hair, bracelets catching at the strands, shivering as the tips of her breasts grew swollen, heat melting down through her body, pooling between her legs. She pushed at his mouth, aching for more. His fingers fumbled at the buttons of her jeans, pulling at the fabric.

“Your skin is salty,” he said, licking a line downward, tugging at her pants, holding her steady until she grabbed at him, wrenched at his jeans and shoved them down his legs with her feet. Her balance wobbled until he fell back on the bed, her on top of him, legs straddled, torso to torso, laughing.

He caught her under the arms, the tip of his erection nudging the cleft between her legs. She slid back, working her hips, coating the shaft with her arousal. Her movements were too quick, frenzied, caught up in the urgency that their time in the house was almost over, their private bubble would burst and they would have to face the outside world. She cupped him in her hand, tracing up and down, wetting the tip, and taking him deep.

“Hey,” Killian said. “Vess, slow down.” He held her waist, settling her over him, pulling her down, fingertips running up and down her spine. “Relax.” He soothed her, stroking the angst from her muscles, up and down, a slow rhythm she caught with her hips.

She pushed up, dragging her breasts over his chest, tips brushing his skin with each shift of her weight, sliding up and down his length. Killian rocked underneath her, flexing his thighs.

She arched her spine, bearing down onto him, hands on his chest, her splayed legs grinding when their thrusts met at the crux where they joined. He was gasping and so was she, crying out for him, the sunlight casting rainbows on the walls, bouncing off the jewels on her wrists, dizzying with their movement.

Then he stopped, hands tight on her hips, preventing her from moving. She stilled, panting, her body shuddering, on the edge.

“Don’t hold back.” He pushed her then, broad hands guiding her in a rhythm that made her senseless, and she could feel it, the crown of his cock swelling with each stroke. “Please,” he said, voice rough and dark, “I need all of you.”

She moaned, too close to the edge to deny him anything, to protest, to hide. He surged up into her, thighs rock hard under hers. He filled her, stretched her, and the heat washed over her breasts and belly, clit and cunt, claiming her. She shook, arching with him, contracting, wringing it from him, every drop.

She collapsed on his chest, panting, listening to his heartbeat. His hands ran up and down her back, the lightest of touches. He was still thick and hard inside her. Her body clutched at him, insatiable and desperate.

* * *

She closed the door.

The master bedroom door stayed shut. Killian chafed at this, especially when the whine of a drill squealed through the house. When she came out—dancing around in a white shirt with nothing underneath, the rosy coins of her nipples visible under the thin fabric—asking for a wood saw and spackle, he’d been jumpy as a jackrabbit sniffing Easter candy. He could have looked in the bedroom when she left to sleep, to go to Brass and Bones, to go wherever sex-witch art-fairies go. She came back every day with packages from the Indian import store, bags from the pagan crystal shop, boxes that smelled like incense and old wood. But he didn’t look because deep down he liked the mystery, that a woman had claimed a space in the house he’d designed, made it hers to reveal on her terms.

She teased him as he worked, breathing in his ear when she walked through the kitchen, stopping to knead his shoulders as he bent over his laptop at the dining room table, pressing her barely covered tits into his back. When it became too much, when he couldn’t think of anything but the sight of her, the smell, the way her lips felt on his neck, he caught her and took her on the table, spread out on Bergman’s courthouse plans. She wriggled, whimpered and wrapped her legs around his for better leverage, breasts bouncing, every workday fantasy come to life in his arms, in his house. It wasn’t really his, though. In a week it would be open to realtors and the public, no longer theirs.

Two days before the final inspection of the development, Killian walked into Bergman’s office, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe. The old man lowered his glasses.

“I need to take some time off after the open house,” Killian said.

“How much?” his boss grunted.

“I don’t know. Long enough to get my own place.”

Bergman nodded, once. “Is that all?”

“No. I want an intern,” Killian said. He sat down in the chair across from the boss’s desk. “The firm is paying me a designer’s salary for CAD entry that could be handled by any college junior with a major in mechanical engineering, or even stage design, and cost us a tenth as much. I will happily oversee bringing the firm’s archives into the modern age, but I’m not here to do data processing.”

“Fine,” Bergman said. “Hire two.” He turned back to his computer and scowled at the screen. “She’s something special, your girl.”

“Thank you,” Killian said. Was she his? He crumpled up the unviewed printout breaking down his hours, his salary and the tech needs of the firm.