The Dirty Secret (8 page)

Her car was in front of the house. The interior was pristine, and no dangly things hung on the mirror, not even a pack of gum in the console. Just a disconnected GPS with the wires hanging out like entrails.

“Hello,” he called, pushing the door open. “I forgot to drop off—Fuck. This is awesome.”

Yesterday, the walls were a placid mauve, like Donna Edith’s office, but now they gleamed with layers of purple and the blue wash of the connecting dining room. The rug, their rug, was where they had laid it—and lain on it—but now the love seats were stripped of their plastic and bolstered with an assortment of pillows.

Two of the small couches were grouped around the fireplace, and two more clustered around a TV/bookcase console. A small chair sat by the fireplace, a silly thing with ribbons and bows and fairy wings on the back, like it had flown in from a little girl’s picture book. The window had the same stuff on the top of it, the netting that ballet skirts were made of, firefly green, strung with strange flat silver spoons, all pierced with designs and swirls.

The room would have felt juvenile, but the sweetness ran to decadence, and the picture on the mantel did not belong in a child’s room. Inside the gold frame, a naked woman with green and black wings gazed at him with drunken eyes, holding a glass filled with pale green liquid strategically over her breasts. Words in French tangled in her hair and her legs.

Another print on the wall opposite had a sprite in stockings floating in a green glass, her skirts the froth on the drink. And next to it was a matching one by the same artist, a fairy riding a spoon between her legs like a witch on a broom, or a stripper on a pole, a cube of sugar dripping from the filigree.

Vessa sat at the dining room table, packing books into her bag. Her hair was down, brushed forward under her ears, and a black scarf was looped around her neck. Her eyes were painted with phosphor green lines, and she had feathers in her lashes. She could have stepped from one of the pictures on the wall, a Goth pixie in a short dress and lace-up boots.

“It’s an absinthe parlor,” he said, turning in another slow circle. It was deliriously feminine, whimsical and somehow filthy. He was violating the room by standing there with his half-hard penis, an oversexed frat boy in a girls-only dorm room, a football jock in the frozen yogurt store.

“How the hell did you get the idea for doing that?” He pointed up at the ceiling fan. She’d replaced the blades with wings like the ones on the fairy chair, only longer.

“It came to me while we were fucking,” she said with a cool glance at him, before she walked down the hall.

The room spun around Killian with the slow turn of the fan. He sat down on one of the little couches. “When did you do all this?”

“My schedule opened up,” she said. She came back, a condom between her fingers, an unreadable look in her eyes. Was she angry with him? No, she was reaching under her dress, sliding her underwear to the floor.

“Vessa?” he asked, uncertain of her mood. His cock had no qualms though, as she climbed into his lap, pulling his pants open.

She freed him from the fabric and opened the foil packet, and rolled the condom down his erection, taking her time about it. She squeezed him and then she settled over him, arching to take him deep.

“Okay,” he said, breathless at the suddenness of it, that he was inside her and he hadn’t even kissed her. He grabbed her ass, cradling her weight.

She ran her hands through his hair, which he loved almost as much as her hands on his cock, but she pulled his head back when he tried to kiss her mouth. She set a slow grind, a delicious teasing pace, her body drawing him in, and he tilted his legs to shift her toward him, to reach her skin with his mouth.

She stopped moving and pulled his head back by his hair again, hard enough to hurt. He gasped, thrusting up into her, but she forced his head up, away from her neck. “Do. Not. Mark. Me.”

Killian stilled. He let go of her hips, and slowly slid the scarf from her throat. Her neck had a line of dark bruises down the side, from jaw to collarbone. He inhaled, hard, one foot ashamed and twelve inches turned on when he remembered doing it, sucking the heat to her skin.

She twisted her fingers, making him look at her, and yeah, she was pissed, but she was also sexy as all hell. And damn if the pain didn’t feel good, with her fingers knotted in his hair and soft heat pulling him deep.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t.”

His hands were lax on her thighs, unsure what he should do, his cock eager to thrust. She let go and leaned back, one hand around his neck, the other dropping to where they were joined, rubbing herself, three flat fingers working with the circles her hips made, using him to get off.

She was panting, and he caught her rhythm, his hands on her ass, helping, working her over his cock until she cried out with a shudder, clenching around him and—

“Fuuck!” His orgasm rushed through him. He was helpless, out of control, grunting, and she leaned forward and kissed his mouth as he shook beneath her, her toy, in this woman’s room where his cock was obscene, taboo.

She lay limp in his lap. He caught his breath, kissed her temple, then lifted her from his still-stiff dick and set her on the couch. He walked to the bathroom on unsteady legs to deal with the condom, and when he returned, her clothes were in place, the scarf around her neck. He tucked his shirt back into his pants.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked. She was always disappearing—but then, so was he. He was supposed to be meeting the gang in twenty minutes, back across town.

She didn’t answer. Her jaw was tight as she looked at the floor.

“Hey, it’s none of my business,” Killian said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m really sorry about your neck.”

She stared at him with her bitch-fairy makeup and black scarf, her back stiff. “First impressions of me shouldn’t be influenced by knowledge of what we do in private.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. His chest felt like it’d been punched in his solar plexus. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” She picked up a pillow that had fallen to the floor. “What’s next?” she asked, her tone professional, like she hadn’t just fucked him senseless.

“Anything you want,” he said. Killian forced himself to think. “Maybe not upstairs yet. I want to get that creak fixed.”

She stepped close, pulling his head down by his tie. She kissed him, a light brush of her mouth, then walked out of the house without saying a word. He left a minute after, his head still full of her, confused by what just happened. Should he have invited her to come with him for drinks? At a stoplight he reached for his phone, but set it back down again.

The usual happy hour place had tables arranged on the dance floor and a baseball game on all the TV screens. Seth stood at the bar, paying for a pitcher and four glasses. “Good timing,” he yelled. “Bengt just scored us a table.”

Killian slid into a booth next to Deb. She asked, “Starla not coming?”

Seth shook his head. “Said she had to work late.”

Bengt flipped the stack of glasses over and poured. “What’s going on with you two? That was like the death glare with a sidecar of acid at staff meeting.”

Killian swallowed half his beer at once and forced a loud wet belch. “She slapped me.”

“What did you do to her?” Seth’s glass stopped in midair.

“Nothing.” Starla had slapped him when she was pissed. Vessa had pulled his hair and gotten off on his lap.

“So what did you say?” Bengt asked.

“I said I wasn’t the kind of guy who slept with interns.”

Deb set her glass on the table with a
thump
.

“Anything else?” Bengt asked, his face slashed with a huge smirk.

“I told her she didn’t want to be the kind of intern who slept with associates.”

“Ooh,” Seth said. “Oops.”

“You really said that?” Deb’s shoulders shook as she cackled.

“Jesus, Killer.” Bengt was laughing so hard he sloshed his beer. “You’re not from this state so she should have given you a pass, but one of the more famous scandals that has ever come out of this town is that our beloved lieutenant governor, back when he just got elected mayor of this fine city, was busted for sleeping with his own interns. One of them got knocked up. He married her in a huge ceremony, and there was enough spin put on it that his popularity tripled. It’s openly been called ‘the affair that launched a career.’ A lot of folks think it’s the affair that will put him in the White House after he serves a term as governor.”

“So basically,” Deb said, slapping him on the back, “you managed to reject the baby Star, disparage her origin of existence, and question the morals of her entire family. You’re lucky she didn’t taint punch you into next week.”

Chapter Eight

Hall of Mirrors

Vessa peeled the palest paint swatch off the hallway wall. She flicked the light switch, rearranged her paint chips, and then turned the bulb back off again. A key turned in the front door, an ominous noise, an exciting noise, but she didn’t move to go greet him.

“Hi,” he said. “I got you something.”

And it made her nervous, that after she’d taken charge, after she’d pulled his hair and chastised him, he was buying her gifts. She hoped to hell it wasn’t flowers. Flowers meant awkward conversations that ended with slammed doors.

The water ran in the kitchen, cabinet doors opened. A machine whirred and grunted, and then the most delicious smell known to man or woman slipped down the hall, purring like a black cat in heat.

Vessa ran into the kitchen, colliding into him. “You got a coffeepot!”

He grabbed her hips but she danced away, jumping up and down. It was one of the fancy kinds, with the little pods of gourmet flavors, no filters. Just pop it in and the coffee came out directly in the cup like a faucet.

Killian held out a mug with a gothic
V
lettered on the side, looking extremely pleased with himself. He wore a gray T-shirt and blue jeans, and his hair was freshly slept in. “I don’t know what you take in it.”

On the counter next to the black-and-chrome space-age machine was a bag of sugar and a selection of artificial sweetener packets in blue, pink and yellow flavors, and a pint of half-and-half. Oh, he was dangerous, seeing into her so deeply. No one had ever given her a gift so perfect.

She poured the cream into the cup. It sank to the bottom and then rose, diffusing, turning the black brew a rich, gorgeous shade of perfection. She blew the steam from the surface, then sipped, closing her eyes at the taste: toasted earth and sunshine and all the things the commercials talked about.

“That is heavenly. Coffee is like the complete sensual experience,” she said, sighing. “Smell, taste, texture, color, even the sound it makes when you sip at it and it’s too hot. Nothing has that much evocative power.”

Killian’s mouth fell open. He turned to the pot, dropping the little cartridge twice.

“I can think of a few things,” he said, pressing the button on the pot. He cleared his throat. “I was hoping to get the wireless set up today, if that’s cool with you.”

“It’s your house, Killian.” The coffeepot gurgled and then peed into his cup.

“I don’t want to disturb you. You’re like the elf, and I’m the desperate shoemaker. I wake up, and you’ve magically created something amazing overnight. But if I actually see you doing it, you’ll vanish in a puff of smoke. Oh, that’s good coffee.”

“Why are you desperate?”

“Not desperate, just...” He went to the back door and looked out. “There’s so much to do. I haven’t even talked to the landscapers, and it might be too late. And Bergman dumps more work on my lap every day. I’m not whining.” He looked back over his shoulder. “I’m really not. I’m twenty-seven years old and I’m a voting associate at a respected design firm. I’ve already got a house built. That just doesn’t happen.”

“So how did it?” Vessa sat down at the table, wrapping her hands around the cup, warming her fingers.

“Bengt.”

“What’s a ‘bangkt’?”

“A Bengt is an obnoxious, extremely talented waste of overprivileged space. He was my roommate in college. And now, I guess.” Killian folded his body into a chair, drawing his legs up, balancing his coffee cup on his knee.

“He’s got some pretty severe reading disabilities, though he hides it pretty well. He’s brilliant, honestly, when he’s not being an impulsive dick, but traditional academia was not a good fit. I got him through school. His mother was so grateful that she gave me a job, and well, Bengt tends to make sure I get whatever he does, so it doesn’t look like complete favoritism for the boss’s son. But there’s some resentment from the other junior associates, you know? So I wind up taking a lot of the scut jobs at the office to prove I’m pulling an equal load, not just riding the coattails of the owner’s son. Which means I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the extra opportunities that do get thrown my way.”

“Like this house,” she said.

“Or anything else I might like to spend time on.” He met her eyes. “Or anyone.” He jerked his knee, and the mug fell to the floor. He jumped up, knocking the chair over with his elbow. “Shit.”

Vessa grabbed a handful of paper towels and blotted the rug, while he flailed around and apologized. She took the empty cups and set them on the counter, then kissed him on his mouth. “Help me pick a color for the hallway.”

He followed her, his hands in his back pockets. “Isn’t this what I’m paying you to do?”

“Not my fault you’ve made an impossible space.” She tugged his belt loop. She kissed him again, lingering on his upper lip, and this time he relaxed and kissed her back. “Stand here.”

He took two steps and leaned on her shoulder like an armrest. “So what’s the problem with the hallway?”

“From this vantage point you can see every room downstairs, except the kitchen. We’ve got purple walls there and light blue that way, robin’s egg turquoise here and then red this way. The bedroom is going to be something else—”

“What are you going to do with the bedroom?” His voice was too casual.

“Haven’t decided yet.” She kept her voice equally neutral as she turned away from the open door. “So we’ve got all these blank walls, but not enough space to use it as a picture gallery.”

“Why not?”

“Stay here.” Vessa pulled one of the absinthe advertisements from the living room and held it up to the wall.

Killian stepped back to see it and hit the wall behind him.

“If it were someone’s house, this would make a great portrait space,” she said. “You’d step in to look at personal photos. But we want something generic in a house just for show, right? You don’t want the client to feel like an intruder looking at people they don’t know. But to look at artwork—”

“Yeah, I see what you mean. It’s too narrow.”

She took the picture back to the living room and picked up a roll of painter’s tape.

“So what did you decide?” he asked.

“Nothing. But staring at it isn’t getting anything done, either.” She nudged him at the small of his back, bones and muscles and sinew. “You get back to work, too.”

He wandered off. Vessa laid the tape over the baseboards and around the doorframes, then dragged a chair from the dining room table.

“Need a hand?” Killian plugged a wire into a silver box with blinking lights.

She shook her head. “No, thanks.” She masked off the ceiling, breaking the tape every five feet to move the chair and do another.

He returned to the hallway five minutes later. “You want another cup of coffee?”

She just looked at him. He was hot boy incarnate, this man with the morning hair, and he was hovering. He looked away, his face reddening. “I should go,” he said.

“You stay,” she said. “Maybe checking out lighting fixtures will give me some ideas about what to do with the paint.”

“What, bare bulbs in builders’ bases not good enough for you?”

“Wow. Say that three times fast.”

He mouthed the words, lips moving over the consonants, like a vocal warm-up before going onstage. He stopped, his eyes dark again.

“Vessa.” His voice was husky, rough, and then he kissed her, slow, hesitant, like he had the first time. Soft kisses, his mouth tasting of black coffee and heat, his lips tender. He touched her neck, brushing his thumb down along the healing bruises.

“You don’t have to treat me like glass,” she said.

He stepped away from her. “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said, and she had to bite back her laughter because he knew exactly what he was doing with his mouth, his fingers, his words. His hand waved in a vague gesture between them. “I don’t just do this.”

“We’re adults, Killian.” Somehow she had become the one in control, and he was the nervous one, waiting for her to call the shots. “We’re working together on a very intimate project, one that you asked to be sexy and sensual. Of course it’s going to rub off on us. It means we’re doing it right. In theater, showmances happen all the time. Actors, directors, designers. There’s this crazy creative energy that goes wild during the run, and the chemistry gets explosive.” She met his eyes. “Can’t you feel it? Even just with the two of us in this house. It hangs in the air, bounces off every wall.”

“Yes,” he said. “I do feel it.” His mouth curled on one side, but there was a steel glint in his eyes as he asked, “How does a show romance end?”

“Well, if it’s a lighthearted comedy, the lovers part as friends after doing wonderful art together, with some fun memories and the promise that it won’t be weird when they work together again. Or, midway through the run, Romeo confesses that he really prefers boys, and the cast and crew throw him a hella coming out party.”

Killian chuckled. “And if it’s a tragedy?”

“That only happens when the distractions backstage affect the show. Usually ends in embarrassment and a reprimand for being unprofessional.” Vessa examined her shoes. “If it’s Titus Andronicus, it results in a restraining order and a transfer junior year.”

The architect’s indrawn breath hissed through his teeth.

“But this house is more of a burlesque revue, don’t you think? With sexy moments stolen in the wings during the rush to get the production on the stage.”

“That sounds...enjoyable.”

“It’s also a huge job, and we haven’t got a lot of time.” She pointed to the table where his router and cable lay. “So get to it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, returning to his laptop and wires.

She stared at the corridor, its doorways at all angles, the walls stoic—a tunnel, too flat for the dynamic entrances it traveled between. Killian was bent over the table, his T-shirt riding up his back, the furrow in his spine disappearing into his jeans.

Vessa peeled her paint chips off the wall, laid them on the floor and eliminated two that read too pink against the flooring. She stared at them for five more minutes, then sighed and made more caffeine. She warmed her hands on the mug and then slipped behind him and brushed her thumb along the divot between the plateaus of muscle on either side of his backbone. His skin was soft in that spot, and the deep hum of pleasure in his throat warmed her as much as the hot drink.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t...enjoy...a coffee break,” she said.

“Business before pleasure?”

“Or during.” She sipped from her mug, holding his gaze as she drank. “As long as we don’t get distracted.”

“Do you have any idea how distracting you are?”

She kept the cup against her lips, and blew the steam across the surface. His eyes dropped to her mouth, but he didn’t reach for her.

“Do you like it, knowing what you do to me?” he asked.

Oh yes. She set down the coffee and kissed him on the mouth. He bent to her, hands brushing her sides, lips gentle, restrained.

She pulled away. This wasn’t him, careful and polite, afraid to make a wrong step. But how to break him out of his eggshell? “Show me,” she said.

He inhaled, his chest rising, eyes darting to her mouth, to her neck. He didn’t move.

“You’ll know,” she said. “You’ll stop.” She still had the upper hand, too much control. Vessa picked up the coffee again and sipped, wetting her lips with it before licking it off. “Show me.”

Killian made another noise in his throat and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, taking the cup from her hands. He kissed her after he set the mug on the table, and he drew her hand down, to the erection in his jeans. She palmed him through the denim, and his mouth grew rough on hers.

“I don’t want to stop when I’m with you,” he said against her mouth, and this was him now, his hands on her ass, no longer tentative. “All I think about is being inside you.” He kissed down her jaw, feathery brushes of his lips over her neck. “Your skin is fantastic, perfect, fuck—”

He unbuttoned her shirt, two down, his mouth following his fingers, breathing whispers into her cleavage. “All I see is your skin, your tits...this color pink.” He pushed the cup of her bra away with his thumb and stroked back and forth over the nipple until it drew up, puffy and thrusting. She squirmed, squeezing his erection. He pressed his hips into her hands and lowered his head to her breast. His mouth was hot and she sighed, straining against his tongue, pushing more against his lips. He obliged, sucking gently, and then harder.

She grabbed his hair, a short hard tug. He stilled and raised his head.

“See?” she said. “Like that.”

“Was that too much?” His breath came hard. He cupped her breast, warm palm soothing the tense peak.

“Not at all.” She touched his bottom lip with her finger. “But your break is over.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tugging her bra back into place.

She took her cup to the kitchen and rinsed it out, her skin shivery with his touch, his eyes following every move she made. She grabbed her bag and her keys, and strode to the door in reluctant shoes, without kissing him goodbye. “Get to work.”

“Vessa,” he called, deep voice all dark and rough. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

A shiver slid up her entire body, as warm as his mouth. Her nipples hardened as if he had pinched them, and she grasped the doorknob to steady herself.

Winning point to the desperate hot-boy shoemaker—she was definitely not the one in control. He had her with every sentence, every whisper.

* * *

If she knew how fucking good it felt, she wouldn’t pull his hair as a safeword.

As long as we don’t get distracted
, she’d said. All he saw was her, all he felt was her. He considered his workload, and how much time it would take to drive to the house on the pretext of watering the plant or rebooting the wireless router. He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have space in his head for a girl, to constantly wonder what she was thinking or what mood she would be in if and when he got to see her, or what the hell she would come up with next.

“Are either of you even listening to me?” Starla stood with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring knives at him.