Chapter 10 Melbourne
MELBOURNE
ALEXANDER
When Sage goes to the bedroom to shower and dress, she neglects to close the door. This doesn’t particularly surprise me. One could call her an exhibitionist, the way she invites attention.
The shower water turns off. She’s singing an old Gary Numan song, her voice dropping low and sooty as she delivers the words We are not romantics… A minute later, she leaps onto the bed and springs across, hopping down on the other side to hunt for something on the floor.
I’m mesmerized, as always, by her combination of innocent unselfconsciousness and raw sexiness.
She’s only partially dressed. When she drops to all fours near the bedside table and sweeps one seeking hand across the rug, pale blue satin tightens across her muscular bum.
She’s bobbing along to her own singing, and the motion looks for all the fuckin’ world like an invitation.
I recross my legs, adjusting for the enthusiasm of my suddenly half-rigid cock.
“Lovely knickers,” I call out. “Are they French?”
I’m surprised at myself for alerting her to the view I’m getting. Normally I’d just enjoy it, but for one thing, I need to sort out this inconvenient erection before we can leave, and for another… well, somehow it feels wrong.
Who am I?
“Nah, they were like three bucks,” she calls back, continuing to hunt for the elusive item on the floor, not fussed that I can see her. Finally she pops up, standing on her knees and holding aloft an earring. “Aha! There you are.”
She tips her head to one side, affixing the bauble as she rises to her feet.
I can’t help marveling at her strength. Every muscle is cut hard as granite, and she seems impervious to gravity.
Going from kneeling to standing, she doesn’t lean, doesn’t touch the floor, there’s not even a catch of breath.
I spend loads of time at the gym, but getting to my feet from the floor takes more effort than what Sage employs. The woman moves through space with the effortless three-axis physicality of a seal in water.
She rotates to face me as she adjusts the dangling earring. “What?” she says with amusement, planting both hands on her hips. “You’ve already seen way more than this.”
The way she’s flaunting herself is pure challenge. To my surprise, I kept my eyes mostly averted earlier when she opened the door naked—I was more concerned with whether she’d broken her foot, and it all happened so quickly. Now I accept her apparent offer to look my fill.
My gaze rakes every plane and sinuous arch.
She’s compact, powerful, elegant, her posture proud, shoulders back.
Like a statue of an athlete in ancient Greece.
An uncharitable viewer might call her flat-chested, with curves little bigger than the bottom of a Jaffa Cake, but she’s every bit as sweet.
She’s more inked than I assumed, with a detailed underwater scene of a kraken exploring a shipwreck wrapped around her right side.
There appears to be a scar hiding amidst the seaweed, but it may just be a trick of the light.
Her left thigh has a spot-on reproduction of an old Art Deco–era racing poster: MONACO, 8 AOUT 1937.
I must look half-witted, because she laughs. “Whatsa matter, Sandy? Never seen a real live woman before? And I thought you were such a swordsman.”
I lift my chin. “You’re provoking me.”
She closes the distance to the doorway and lifts her arms to hold it, her body a suggestive letter Y. “If I were provoking you, you’d know.” With an impish wrinkle of her nose, she turns and darts out of sight.
It takes a minute of focused breathing to calm the effect her words have on my, erm… lap. She’s singing again, now Elvis Costello’s “Alison.” Her voice is off-key, breaking with that hint of raspiness I love on the high notes. I could listen to her all day.
“Hey, could you do this?” she calls out from around the corner.
Whatever it is, the answer is yes, I want to say. Instead, I take my time crossing the room, then lean in the doorway.
“You summoned, O seraph?” I say dryly.
She’s in front of a tall mirror, her hair pulled into a messy bundle that makes her look more postcoital than when she opened the door of the suite.
Her jeans are all but painted on, and she’s wearing a tight T-shirt that reads ENCHANTED FOREST, OREGON.
The shirt’s neck is cut off wide and ragged, displaying the pale blue straps of her lacy bra.
“I can’t get the clasp done on this thing,” she mumbles, fiddling with a necklace, hands behind her head. “Can I borrow your, uh, fine motor skills?”
Drawing up behind her, I take the chain ends from her fingertips and have the clasp done in a second, but take longer to fuss with it just to be near her, breathing in the warmth of her neck.
My eyes follow the tiny stepping stones of her vertebrae, and there’s a tugging in my chest—and below—as I imagine pressing my lips there, feeling the peachy softness of her skin.
“You know what’d be hilarious?” Sage poses. “You should stay here with me tonight to piss Priya off.” She meets my eyes in the mirror with a glimmer of mischief. “We can make sex noises and freak her out. Get super theatrical about it.”
I rest my hands on her shoulders. “Are you so practiced at feigning your pleasure?” I tease.
“Pff! I’m not polite enough to fake it. If a guy’s doing a shitty job, I just say so.” She moves away to get her shoes, and my hands feel empty. She sits on the bed and laces up her trainers. “Also, I don’t have to fake—I’m highly orgasmic, and I’ve got a prominent clitoris.”
Were I taking a drink of anything, it would have launched through my sinuses. I cough and laugh at the same time. “You’re alarmingly candid.”
“Ain’t I?”
“But again I’d remind you that I want no part of you winding up the best friend, who—by every indication—wants what’s best for you and is distressed by your… communication issues.”
“Psh! Why do you care? She doesn’t even like you, dude.”
“She has every justification. I was a complete tosser.”
Sage rolls her eyes. “It’d be funny! Just a joke. I thought maybe you were game to mess with her head a little, after the way you answered my phone. But never mind.”
As she tries to sidle past me into the living room, I put an arm out and stop her. She remains pressed against my forearm, as if stepping back would be a win that she refuses to give me. She turns slowly, her jaw hard, and meets my eyes.
“What,” she says, her tone flat.
The scent of her is driving me mad. I lean closer. “If I spend the night in your bed,” I growl, “it won’t be ‘just a joke.’ You’re bold as brass on the track. Have the courage to proposition me because you want me as much as I want you—don’t hide your true intentions behind immature pranks.”
Her golden eyes narrow, and as we study each other for a long beat of silence, the ENCHANTED on her shirt rises and falls.
“You think I want you?” she asks, not quite managing the haughtiness she’s trying for.
“Yes.”
Another half minute passes as each of us refuses to look away first. Finally she hums out a dismissive laugh. “Yeah, maybe. But…” She chucks me beneath the chin in the same patronizing way I’ve done to women a hundred times myself. “You want me more.”
When the lift opens, Sage and I each hold one side of the door and gesture for the other to precede.
“Ladies first,” she drawls, pointing for me to step in. “God knows I’m not a lady.”
“Such a brat. Fine, you win.”
She chuckles, following me into the mirrored enclosure. “I looooove to win.”
She plucks at her aqua hair, fluffing it up and away from her eyes as she checks the reflection of her teeth. Turning around light as a ballerina’s pirouette, she claps her hands once, pinning me with a look of determination.
“So here’s the dealio, Sandy-boy. Julian is my older brother, and a dipshit deadbeat. He comes off all charming”—she rolls her eyes—“and everybody loves him; he’s a goddamned delight, ugh. But don’t buy into it. You’re on my team, got it? No becoming best buds with him after a handshake.”
I don’t think Sage realizes how much she’s told me about herself with this caveat. I can view the mechanics of not only her relationship with the ne’er-do-well brother but also Sage’s fears, through a layer of self-control stretched so paper-thin as to be translucent.
Her posture betrays her feelings; she doesn’t seem to know what to do with her shoulders, which adjust like the antennae of a threatened insect. I want to embrace her, to tuck her head under my chin and hide her from everything.
It’s in this moment that I feel the most guilty for what I wrote about her on my blog. She appeared so impervious to hurt that it seemed a harmless way to engage her. Reaching out with compliments would’ve been futile. I’d have been just another trivial fanboy.
But if I infuriated her? Becoming her enemy gave me a place, a status.
Badrick was right—I should have used a different strategy.
Not because I think my redemption in Sage’s esteem is now impossible (though it might be with the frosty Priya, who clearly loathes me), but because in the space of weeks, I’ve come to care for Sage so much that I’m overwhelmed with defensive rage at anyone who might hurt her surprisingly tender feelings.
The current chief threat is malignant blogger CJ Ardley, whom I’ve kept at bay over the past week. I told the woman to lie low and not to mention Sage in her posts, because I’m “working on something sensational,” which I’ll soon share with her.
I’m pondering the right time to speak with Sage about my role as double agent. Given her mischievous nature, she may find it entertaining to collaborate on providing misleading details to feed to her nemesis. But another side of me is concerned about bringing it up.
Sage has mentioned more than once that she doesn’t trust me, so I don’t have complete confidence that when I reveal my phony “allegiance” with CJ, Sage will believe I’m on her side.
What if it shuts the door to a growing friendship?
There might be no more hanging out, no more small shared confidences and glimpses of vulnerability.
Should I wait until we’re closer and she knows me better before saying anything? I have the situation well under control for the time being…
Folding her arms in almost a parody of childlike disgruntlement, Sage concludes, “I don’t want you and Jules bonding over ‘idle rich-boy shit’ like how cool it is to sit in a hot springs in Iceland and watch the northern lights with a supermodel on your lap. Or whatever.”
I cross the elevator and lean beside her, draping an arm around her shoulders, which to my surprise relax under my touch. “I won’t be so easily enraptured by Julian’s glamour. I’ll fight your corner, pet.”
I dare to plant a light kiss at the crown of her pastel blue hair, and she jerks her head away with a scowl. “Hey, watch where you put those lips.”
“So shy,” I tease, “despite the intimate familiarity you told Priya we’ve shared.”
“Haha.”
“I confess to curiosity about the story you spun.” I step back and lean against the wall. “Just what was our fictional tryst like?”
She snorts a laugh. “Man, you’re so narcissistic. Of course you’re dying to know the details of something that didn’t even happen, and how it reflected on you.”
“Guilty,” I reply, holding my hands up.
She pushes her lips into a thinking moue. “I said that when we went to your room to make that Christmas light video, I basically attacked you. Rrraawwwrrr!” She forms her hands into claws and lunges at me, grabbing my pecs. “Then we fucked like a hundred times, and—”
“I’m rather energetic in your fantasies, aren’t I?”
“I had to keep it believable.”
“A hundred times is believable?”
“Okay, exaggeration. Maybe I said four. I’d rather do it four times at fifteen minutes each than once for an hour. Get on, get off, reboot, go again. That’s my style.”
“Duly noted.”
The smile we exchange is all cautious mischief. I reach for a coil of Sage’s hair that’s escaped its confines atop her head and smooth it behind one of her abundantly studded ears.
“Sometimes I wonder if I dreamt you,” I say before I can think better of it.
Her eyes widen, amused. “Uh-oh. Not just a narcissist, but… what’s that called—solipsism? You’re the only thing that exists, and I’m, like, your hallucination?”
“Frustratingly defiant hallucination, you.” I sink my hands into my pockets. “Let’s test your hypothesis. I’ll imagine you’re kissing me, and we’ll see if it happens.”
“Dream on.”
“I’m trying! Yet my lips remain tragically unkissed.”
The elevator stops at a lower floor and two women from Team Easton get inside, dressed in their white work shirts with sponsor patches and lime-green trim. One glances at the other silently as the doors shut, and a look of agreement passes between them.
“Not to be disloyal,” the taller woman says to Sage, “but we’re both huge fans. I hope you kick ass on Sunday.”
As I watch Sage chat with her admirers for the rest of the trip down to the lobby, I’m impressed by how fluidly she adapts in social scenarios. She has that driver’s talent for making complex things look easy—her manner smooth, her timing impeccable.
Longing drags through me like a plow stabbing at hard ground. I want to know her… to really know her. The heart of Sage Sikora, with all its blind alleys, a place where I suspect I could lose myself.
Or maybe find myself.