Chapter 26
the new jersey contract clauses
NICOLAI
Three hundred sixty-four days to go.
And I am already falling for her.
Twenty-four damned hours with her, and my world is turning, orienting on her like she is my compass.
After setting the temperature and flow parameters on the shower stall’s control screen embedded in the wall, I stepped in and held out my arm to check the water. I couldn’t let my little angel get burned or chilled.
Pleasantly warm water cascaded over my palm and fingers, a handful of warmth that dripped away, and then I handed her in. “Let me know if you want me to adjust, or there should be a smaller screen in there. Tap the red arrow for warmer.”
She pivoted slightly on her bare little feet as she walked into the long shower stall, her yellowish blond hair hanging over the bright white towel wrapped around her. The glass door drifted shut behind her.
Twenty-four fucking hours, and I wanted to suck her soft little toes and watch her moan.
But it had been twenty-four intense hours, and yes, that was how I was rationalizing it.
Lexi had seen me at my most vulnerable, literally drunkenly vulnerable to attack or kidnapping or compromising photos or getting run over where I’d passed out in the street, or anything else.
Her kindness toward an idiot drunken stranger was incomprehensible.
That day, I’d talked to Lexi about what must’ve been one of the worst days of her life, when that dumbass fool jilted her at the altar, and seen deeper emotions in her than I had in my so-called friends whom I’d known for decades.
If I’d spent twenty-four hours with her as a series of eight dates that had lasted three hours each, speaking and listening and negotiating and finally touching each other, it wouldn’t have been hard to believe that I was falling for her.
Those could have been spread over two months.
If I’d dated someone for two months, if I’d helped them and they’d helped me with problems, if we’d talked so much, if they’d met my friends and I’d made their ex jealous just for the chaos of it, feeling the gentle descent from living in my head to reaching for her would be believable.
Why not this?
Those thoughts drifted in my head as the water pattered and splashed and steam collected near the starlight fixtures in the ceiling, roiling.
I’d made her ex-fiancé jealous.
For the chaos of it.
John was right. I was not myself.
Maybe I was slowly going insane.
Or had been possessed.
Or maybe it was her.
She’d met my only close living relative, Kostya, and helped me deal with his tantrum.
Even Clemmy liked her and was willing to help her.
Considering Clem’s observation about our wedding rings, her loaning Lexi the earrings that obviously were a set with the butterfly necklace she’d been wearing, and then texting me to expect her for coffee and strategy this afternoon, Clemmy must be infatuated with my Lexi.
Clemmy didn’t help people like that. She let them flounder and then turned away because she couldn’t be expected to save all the socially awkward little starfish of our sad, alienated generation.
There were a lot of those awkward downward-drifting starfish in our circle of friends. Clemmy had been more approachable when we were younger, but she’d burned out like a star.
My friends liked Lexi. They’d been fine with Hannelore, even though she hadn’t been to school in Switzerland because the British generally educate their children at English boarding schools. No one had warned me off her, and the class-conscious ones had approved of the match.
But they’d liked Lexi. Magnus had been pissed at me for not preparing her enough. Ryan was too wasted and burnt out to have a decent opinion of anyone lately.
Even though John Borbón had been worried that I might have been honeypotted by Russian intelligence, he’d been easily convinced that Lexi was a decent human being because he’d seen the evidence with his own eyes every time she spoke.
My hands on her skin and her taste in my mouth made me fucking feral for her. I wanted to drag her by her heels to the bed, drive her wild again with my mouth until she was writhing and begging for me, and then bury myself in her until she screamed my name.
I wanted to take her until her body and her love were mine.
Yeah, I was already fucking gone.
I wanted to be in the shower with her, washing her with a soapy washcloth, making her clean and relaxed.
Bathing my women after sex had started in college because I liked the surprise in their eyes and then the way their bodies luxuriated under my touch.
The way their skin turned steamy and flushed in a shower was beautiful to behold, even when it didn’t culminate in round two.
Maybe especially when it didn’t culminate in round two.
When instead, they were warm and sleepy, sultry humidity rising from their damp skin. When they melted when I wrapped them in my arms, and they stayed.
No one stayed anymore.
But I didn’t get to do that today. Lexi was beyond innocent. She’d been brainwashed to be afraid. If I weren’t careful, I might shock my little ingénue too much. When I’d held her arm above her head minutes ago, she nearly slid down the wall to get away from me, cowed by my proximity.
So instead of joining her in the shower and running a washcloth over her silky body, I shucked my sticky, stiffening underwear and pants and tossed them in the laundry, grabbing a towel to tuck around my hips until Lexi was done showering.
Might as well brush my teeth.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bare arm cram the white hotel towel around the towel bar at the back of the shower.
Her fingers curved, poking the thick terrycloth behind the bar, the rest of her luscious body just out of sight behind the marble wall around the stall.
I worked very hard not to peep at the rest of her.
It was difficult to refrain. All I’d have to do was lean.
I nearly sprained my eyeballs, keeping them on my own face in the mirror above the sink, which grew more haggard as I clutched the edge of the counter to keep myself there while I shoved that whirring toothbrush around my mouth, trying to keep my attention on it.
I wanted my eyes on her curvaceous body, my hands on her skin, my mouth on her secret parts.
My body wanted more, and my stupid dick stiffened, nudging the towel tucked around my waist like it was seeking the overlap to peer out and have a look around.
I thought about empty waving wheat fields for a moment, and Stoic books about the dampening of desire, and then the business contract concerning the New Jersey properties that John and I really needed to go over tomorrow.
The PDF had arrived earlier in my email, and I’d noted how damn long it was, pages and pages of exclusions and for-absence-of-doubts and loopholes and clauses to close loopholes and yet somehow made more loopholes.
My dick deflated until it was hanging sadly limp.
Except that Lexi was splashing around in there, water ricocheting off her skin and slapping against the walls, the water trickling over her like my fingers craved, my tongue craved.
I thought about the New Jersey paperwork again.
Longer, this time.
I started planning my own “for the absence of doubt” clauses in the real estate contract while I brushed my teeth, grinding the rotating brush head into my gums.
Good God, my body was behaving like a randy teenager sniffing outside the girls’ dormitory at boarding school, hoping to catch a whiff of perfume.
I smiled around the toothbrush whirring around my molars. I guessed I’d asked for this.
I had asked for my heart to be open, to find someone with whom I felt new and clean, not guarded and hopeless.
Damn, what a wish.
As I brushed my teeth, I found myself humming a tune that I hadn’t thought of since high school, about bursting with joy.
It was a cute song.
It reminded me of Lexi when she smiled.
So I spat toothpaste foam in the sink and rinsed it down, and then I wiped the remnants off the corners of my mouth and waited while the shower splashed, while the notes of the water rose and fell as she turned in the stall, while her soft feet padded on the stone floor, while the liquid soap dispenser or shampoo lever pumped, while the scent of roses perfumed the steaming air.