“Want to talk about it?” Malcolm asks from where he sits across from me, reaching out to brush my hair back. Eyes like blades slice through my walls.
Malcolm is such a sex god. He’s a playboy and a player, but nobody sees past that. That he’s funny. Also, in a way, very reserved. He’s kind . . . I’ve seen it firsthand. He’s kind with me, with his friends, never denying any request for charity. For anything. If he doesn’t want to sleep with me ever again, he’s a man I’d be honored to call my friend. I’ve come to respect him that much.
I’m also feeling so jealous over him, to know I have to step back so others can have him kills me.
“I’m having one of those days when my family . . . well, my mother and my friends and I aren’t seeing eye to eye,” I murmur.
The concern in his eyes is almost too much for me right now; right now when I hate myself for my job. For what I’ve been doing.
“Malcolm.” His name escapes my lips in a soft moan.
He reaches out and draws me between his widely spread knees. “Never saw eye to eye with my family,” he offers, sitting me on his thigh, and I’m surprised that he’s willing to go there again. On his own. A tiny voice in my mind tells me, He’s doing it for you, Rachel. To connect with you. “It made me feel all sorts of fucked up. Like there was something wrong with me. It doesn’t matter what they believe. What do you believe?”
That I suck! I want to cry. I look down to his hand on my hip, and I slip my hand over his just because I don’t want him to remove it—and I know that when I turn in the exposé, I will never feel this big, strong hand holding me by the hips again. Can I really do this?
“We didn’t see eye to eye on anything,” he continues. He brushes my hair behind my ears as the wind flaps it around, then grabs it in his fist and holds it to the nape of my neck so we can look at each other. “Nothing I did was good enough. I could never live up to the Saint name.”
“So since you couldn’t live up to the Saint name, you gave it a whole new reputation?”
His eyes glint greener. “Nah. I just did my own thing, tried to be happy regardless.”
He watches me as if wondering why I’m not happy.
No. He watches me with intensity as if he’s wondering what he can do to make me happy.
“Most times, I am happy,” I admit. “Others it’s like I keep waiting for something. I feel like I’ve lived with this little hole all my life.”
“I know that hole.”
When he nods, I tease him a little, reaching out to jab him. “I thought all your toys filled it up quite nicely. And your blondes.”
“Not the toys.” He laughs, then he catches my arm before I stand and ends up pulling me down on his lap with a forceful tug. The moment I land on his lap, well, let’s just say it’s not a soft landing. “Only one blonde.”
He wants me.
His cock is so hard it’s throbbing prominently against my bum. A heat rises in me as he slips his fingers into my hair. He whispers in my ear, “You look wound up and ready to be loved.”
“And you don’t waste a boner,” I tease.
He laughs, and our smiles start to fade as we look at each other.
“I saw . . . how you got rid of the rumor about us,” I finally tell him.
He looks at me, as if waiting for the question.
I want to ask, but I can’t. It would be so hypocritical of me to ask if he’d slept with her when at the same time I want to keep our relationship casual.
“No, I didn’t,” he answers, watching me, and I’m sure he can see the tumult of feelings I have for him in my eyes.
I’m aware that I’m falling, I’m falling so hard my tummy aches. I’m playing with fire, putting my heart right on the train track for it to be squished soon. But neither the threat of being burned nor the oncoming train can stop me.
“You totally could,” I say, as nonchalantly as I can.
“Yeah, I know.” His lips twitch, his eyes sparkling tenderly, as if I amuse him.
Heart pounding, I wind my arms around his neck and whisper, “I’m glad you didn’t,” and rain slow, deep, anxious kisses up his thick neck while I tug his shirt out of his waistband.
“I won’t,” he rasps, and for a man who makes no promises, this feels like one, like a warm promise on my ear as my fingers slide up the bumps of his abs. It unravels me, all the knots inside me, so hard and so fast that a tremor racks my body and he notices, smiles at it.
“Malcolm,” I breathe, all of a sudden as wet as I’ve ever been, feeling like he’s mine right now, all mine. He lets me do the kissing for a moment while he drops his nose into my hair as his hands tangle in the length of it.