Unrestrained, page 7
She smiled, feeling her spine unknot at the conversation entering safe waters. “Now it’s my turn to embarrass you. I spent my day editing a report on the artificial insemination of pigs.”
At his soft snort of laughter her lips curled. “I knew I could depend on you for sympathy.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Sympathy is for cry-babies. So…” A glint crept into his eyes. “You’re a wordsmith, a lover of good writing. I hope you used your powers for good, all those pigs out there are depending on you.”
She smiled. “I did. You can rest assured, pork products are in no danger.”
His answering smile made her hold her breath. He was beautiful. When you took away all the anger and the grim expression and forgot the scar, he had the face of an angel. A beautiful, tempting archangel. Possibly a fallen one.
“Do you like your job? Artificial insemination aside.”
She thought about it. “I do, mostly. I’ve got a soft spot for language. I majored in Russian and English at university.”
He cocked his head to regard her, the gesture surprisingly at home on him despite his size. “All those odd English spelling and punctuation rules don’t bother you?”
As if any language escaped the curse of odd rules. “I know some people treat punctuation like it might come creeping up a banister and strangle them, but I find it logical, comforting.” Unlike people.
He smiled. “That’s quite a turn of phrase. Do you write as well as edit?”
She shook her head. “I’ve tried but it always ends up with me writing around myself.” Around herself and her feelings, all the vulnerable ones she didn’t want to acknowledge. And now she’d said too much again, with not even a full glass of wine under her belt to blame. Fuckity-fuck.
A glance at Stein confirmed he’d caught the slip, and was now excavating the full significance of her words the same way he might chisel out a block of marble to reveal the best vein of color.
“What’s wrong, Holly? Afraid I might actually get to know you if you say too much?”
Obviously he wasn’t going to let her off the hook twice in one night. “As mentioned, your directness is terrifying.”
A soft glow lit his translucent eyes. “At least you’ll always know where you stand with me.”
She grimaced. “Whereas I, as we both know, like to gloss. Some diamond.”
A slow smile, both seductive and patient, curled his lips and warmed parts of her more frequently referred to in her racier romance novels. “Yes, but you’re so bad at it, you know, you may as well be telling the truth. Why don’t you tell me one of your little lies right now, I always enjoy them so, and I could use some enjoyment after my Scheisstag.”
What a self-absorbed thing she was, not even thinking to ask him about his day. “You had a shit day?”
“I got a new commission.” He paused and took a sip of wine, leaving her wondering what was so terrible about that. “From the parents of a young woman only in her twenties.”
“Ah.” Now she felt an idiot for babbling about her day. She sat in silence with him and watched the candles shorten. Like her, he was undoubtedly recalling how easily years could be pruned from a lifespan, and it was a relief when his elbow crept onto the table in a rude, life-affirming gesture.
“So, do you live alone or share with others?” he asked, shaking her out of her reverie.
“Alone. I have a studio apartment all to myself. Rented.”
“Do you ever get lonely living alone?”
Did she seem lonely? She shrugged, looked at the bread rolls and tried to decide if she could fit another one in. “It works for me. I don’t have to deal with other people’s crap which is cool because I need all my energy just to deal with my own crap.”
“Ah, I see. And what crap would that be?”
She fell silent. How quickly he’d pounced on her off-hand comment, almost as if he’d been waiting for such an opportunity. But even her flirt-fogged brain knew better than to talk about her ‘problem’. “Oh, you know, just crap. Everyone’s got crap, right?”
His gaze rested on her. “True. But some of us have more than others, don’t we, Holly?”
Was he insulting her? She studied his face. “Was that a pointed comment about what happened last time I was here?”
“No, I merely pointed out that some of us have more to deal with than others. Is that not a fact?”
Her every alarm bell sounded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He put his fork down and leaned back in his chair, at ease despite her hostile tone. “Come on, Holly, my dinner table is a bullshit-free zone, so don’t bullshit me, and don’t bullshit yourself. I know that you know what I’m talking about. I know you.”
He knew her? The hell he did. And she didn’t need someone in her head, sticking their fingers in her wounds because they held some half-assed notion they were helping. “Oh, you know me, huh? What do you know?”
“First time I saw you, I saw how tightly wound up you were, watching everything in the room, hyper-vigilant for any sign of trouble. And then there was your exaggerated startle response, the way you flinched when I reached for my drink. Plus you almost jumped out of your damn skin when I went to pull that leaf out of your hair. As for what happened when I was about to kiss you, I’m not sure, but I think you had a flashback.”
Her vision narrowed and dimmed, and then the dark, scaly part of her brain that was all about survival let her know it was ready—ready to do whatever was necessary to protect her. “You ever consider that maybe I just changed my mind about kissing you?”
“It’s a possibility. Or maybe what happened has something to do with those impressive scars of yours.”
His questions were getting far too close for comfort and she hated the pissed off, helpless feeling building in her chest as she sat, unable to fight or flee, trapped in the grinding cogs of a conversation she didn’t want to have.
“Gee, Doctor Freud, was that psychoanalysis for free or do I owe you a consultation fee?”
He gave her a lazy wink. “I offer a special discount to women I’m interested in.”
Smug, sexy bastard. She didn’t know whether she wanted to fuck him or take him apart. “What if those women don’t fucking want to hear it?”
He brushed an invisible crumb from the tablecloth. “Wow, look at that, from zero to rage in under a minute. How often does that happen?”
What? Taken aback she opened her mouth and then shut it again.
“How often, Holly? Less often or more often these days?”
She looked away from him. “What does it matter?”
“Not at all, if your splendid self-imposed isolation is making the bad stuff go away, if you think you’re getting better on your own.”
She snaked her head around to glare at him. “If you know so much about it you should know there is no ‘getting better’, post-traumatic stress disorder can’t be fixed, there is no ‘cure’.”
He scowled. “What? Who told you that? That’s crap.”
A small, painful knot formed in her chest. “They all said that. The doctors I saw.”
“Like they know shit. There’s stuff you can do. After that dog nearly took my face, I nearly pissed myself every time I heard a dog barking. Spent all day hiding indoors waiting for the sky to fall in. Now I can pass a dog on the street and barely even look at it.”
She slid him a sideways glance, unable to believe he’d ever been afraid of anything let alone a mere animal. “Well I wasn’t hurt by a dog. I was hurt by people, and it’s pretty hard to avoid other people.”
“People?” His gaze dropped to the scars on her neck. “More than one person attacked you?”
A flash of unwanted memory, a hand stabbing keys in her throat, one of the keys breaking with the force of it. Rage so familiar it was welcome rose in her. “No. But no one helped. All the people waiting for taxis, they all just stood there and watched and didn’t help.”
“Perhaps they were afraid.”
“So what? That makes it okay for them to just stand by and watch? He held me down, punched me in the face and then started stabbing me. How could all those people not help? They stood there and watched. I want to kill them, all those nice, helpful witnesses.” With a start she realized her voice had risen and that she’d almost shouted the last word. And that she’d just admitted her most hateful, most murderous thoughts.
The words lay between them like jagged nails. She met his gaze. Now he knew just what she carried inside her, knew just how horrible she was—except for the one dark secret she’d never willingly tell. All her anger expelled, she slumped back in her chair, her body limp. Stein watched her closely. “Now doesn’t that feel much better having that off your chest?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She looked away. She wanted to thank him but couldn’t. She felt raw, unpeeled. Ashamed.
“Don’t mention it.”
Staring up at the ceiling she feigned calm. “Just tell me one thing. Why should I trust you to mess with my head and ‘help’ me?” The word ‘help’ left a bitter taste in her mouth.
An unreadable expression flitted across his face. “Alright, that’s fair, you’ve got no reason to trust me. Yet. But I do want to help you, and not because I expect anything in return.”
She eyed him. “How? How can you help me? Did they teach you psych stuff when you were a medic?”
“No, they didn’t.” His eyes met and held hers. “But I can tell you all the things I did to help myself, and help you to help yourself.”
She looked away. “Like my own personal therapist?” She didn’t want a therapist, she wanted a lover.
“More like your own personal friend.”
Friend, well, that was cute. “Is that with or without benefits?” The bold question left her breathless the second it escaped her lips.
He gave her a slow smile before pointing at her plate with his empty fork. “Save space for dessert.”
It took her a second to change mental gears, but she welcomed being let off the conversational hook. “Oh, no, I don’t like dessert.” He liked her lies? Fine. She would give him plenty.
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Really?”
“No, not a bit.”
He kept a straight face. “What about chocolate cake?”
“Yuck.” Her heart twisted a little as one corner of his sensuous mouth lifted.
“Well, how about I bring you some anyway and you can tell me how bad it tastes?”
She inspected her well-chewed fingernails to hide her smile. “Well, okay, but don’t blame me if your feelings get hurt.”
He stood, gave her a slashing smile and threw his reply over his shoulder. “Give it your best shot, Süße.”
Sweetie? All the fine hairs on her body stood on end. The last time she’d been called sweetie was, well, never. Expectations, manage those expectations. Remember the lipstick on the wine glass, and remember he has certain kinks that he’ll undoubtedly be looking to get scratched by someone with similar tastes, someone much prettier than you. But still she hugged the word ‘sweetie’ to herself, unable to recall the last time she’d felt so feminine.
When he returned she was still turning the word over and over and made no comment as he placed a giant confection of chocolate Bavarian cake with cream and cherries in front of her and held out a long-handled spoon to her like a challenge. Barely aware of what she was doing, she took the long, slender handle and cast him a long look full of unspoken trash-talk before stabbing into the cake and carving out a spoonful to raise to her lips. Ohhhhhh. Dark and rich as sin, the chocolate flavors exploded on her tongue, big and sinful as the man taking his seat next to her.
He squinted at her. “So?”
His tone was casual enough, but she could tell he cared, really cared, what she thought of his chocolate cake. What a fucking softie.
She assumed a thoughtful expression as she spooned another portion. “I need another bite to tell.”
His gaze rested heavy and expectant on her as she chewed through a second heavenly mouthful. “Well?”
She fixed her gaze politely on the tablecloth. “It’s alright.” She smothered a grin at the exaggerated lift of his dark brows.
He held out his hand. “Give it to me, I’ll eat it.”
“No, no, I’ll finish it, I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“No, you wouldn’t want that.”
She nodded at his empty dessert bowl. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I will in a second. Right now I’m watching you eat.”
She frowned. “Well, don’t.”
Silver eyes studied her. “Why not?”
“It’s making me uncomfortable.”
He leaned back in his seat. “I live to make you uncomfortable, Holly Unthanks. I want to make you squirm.”
Her heart stuttered as all the other situations in which he might make her squirm flashed before her eyes.
The long, deep scar along his cheek twisted as he gave her a mocking smile. “What’s wrong, Holly? Has it been a while since somebody made you squirm?”
Chapter Six
She bit down so hard on her spoon it hurt. Hell, she’d probably just left a perfect dental impression in his silver.
“Here’s something else that’ll make you squirm. I’ve been thinking about you all week.”
She stared at the now visible bottom of her bowl. No way was she looking at Stein when she knew what his next question would be.
“What about you, Holly, have you been thinking about me?”
Yes, those were exciting words, and, yes, they made her squirm. But they also made her angry. He wanted her to say things she couldn’t say, and the risks were not equal. If she rejected him, he could shrug those big shoulders and find a willing replacement the next day. But if he rejected her...
“Sure I’ve thought about you. Once or twice I thought about getting that cake recipe from you.”
It came out far more cutting than intended, and she regretted the words as soon as they left her lips and smashed into him, leaving a confused frown on his face.
She took a deep breath, heat searing her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, but you should know better than to back me into a corner.”
He studied her, his expression cool. “I guess I should by now. But how long do you want to play this game where we both pretend we’re only interested in talking and eating rather than fucking?”
Oh, thank you, Mister Direct, thank you for letting me off the hook by becoming the rude one. She dropped her spoon in her empty bowl with a clatter and narrowed her eyes at him. “Fine, let’s talk about fucking then.”
He had the gall to smirk at her. “Ladies first.”
“Good to know chivalry is not yet dead.”
Eyes still wary, he gave her a nod. “I do my best.”
She frowned. “Okay, then. Where shall we start? I know. What’s with the rope business? A longing for your boy scout days or something darker?”
His smile tightened into a thin, humorless line before he took her bowl, stood and left her sitting alone at the table wondering whether he’d return, whether their date was over, and whether she’d ever wrestle her prickly need for self-protection under enough control to connect with another human being again.
She followed him into the kitchen where he calmly scooped the dirty cutlery into the sink. He glanced at her and, amazingly, his expression held no resentment. Still, Stein didn’t strike her as the petty sort.
She shuffled her feet. “Sorry.”
“I’m not so delicate you have to apologize for hurting my feelings.” He focused on the plug he was fitting into the sinkhole. “But just so you know, my kink is not the product of some deep, dark psychological trauma, if that’s what you were hinting at. It’s just how I’m wired. Something I enjoy now and then. Well, perhaps a little more often than just now and then, but I can get by without it. It’s just a preference. That’s all there is to it.”
But his answer wasn’t enough. She needed to know more. “Is it a physical addiction?”
His smile was indulgent, and a weight slipped from her knowing that the small storm between them had passed. “Arousal is mostly in the mind, don’t you think?”
His intent gaze made it difficult to swallow. “I’m not sure what you mean. Surely both physical and mental stimuli are necessary?” Oh, god, had she really just used the least sexy words ever to describe sex?
His smile and the warmth in his eyes suggested she had, but he was going to be a gentleman about it rather than rubbing her face in it. “Sure about that? What’s the unsexiest thing you can think of doing?”
She thought for a moment, looked at the sink. “Washing dishes. I worked as a dish pig once. Lasted a whole nine months. Now I can’t stand greasy dishwater.”
“Okay. Let’s try something. An experiment in arousal. See the dishes there, I want you to wash what’s in the sink.”
She scrutinized him. “You sure you’re not just trying to get me to do your cleaning?”
He grinned. “Maybe. But you’ll have to find out the hard way, won’t you? Oh, one more thing. You have to wash the dishes with your hands bound.”
With her hands bound? Her chest constricted all over again. Then a laugh built inside her, the lusty type of laughter that easily turns to piggy snorts. “Oh, ha-ha-ha, you said that like you were actually serious.”
“I am.” His expression mirrored his unyielding tone.
A slew of doubts rushed in to crowd her and she grew very interested in her trainers and the way the laces zigzagged up her arches and then curled and furled in bow and knot. “Oh. Ah, sorry, I’m not really the adventurous type.”
Heavy silence broken only by the loud ticking of the grandfather clock in the next room formed a wall between them. She snuck a glance at him. His face was calm and impassive as he regarded her. “It’s up to you, Holly. I won’t tie you for real. Just use sports tape which you can easily pull off with your teeth. And I won’t touch you while I give you an idea what I’m talking about.”
