Chapter 3
3
M ACKENZIE
“Who the fuck are you?” he pushes under his breath, which is, by the way, great thinking on his part.
I’m sure his voice would sound like a thunderbolt in the land of fluttering snow if he didn’t do that.
“Are you asking me who I am?” I toss back at him in a muffled voice, pointing to my chest in a fit of outrage.
“Yeah. You,” he snaps, attempting to touch the handrail again and release some of the tension lodged in his arms.
His chest glistens from the snowflakes meeting their creator in the sizzling warmth of his delicious skin.
I wish I could reach him and wipe off the melted snow from his bumpy pecs.
Am I horny or what?
Although, realistically, I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-fool pole.
He moves his menacing eyes to my hand.
“What were you doing with your phone?” he probes, his entitled attitude quickly getting on my nerves.
“I was about to call the cops, but then I thought, why not get a few snapshots of you and post them on my social media accounts? Have some fun, you know.”
I raise my free hand and slide it across an imaginary line.
“I already see the headlines. ‘A man sneaks into a Brooklyn apartment to have sex with a married woman.’ Stuff like that…” I say, my eyes locked with his.
It takes him a second to mull over how truthful my words truly are before anger engulfs his eyes.
“You can’t take pictures without my consent.”
My eyebrows snap up.
“Oh, really. Watch me.”
I lift my arm and click the shutter.
He swiftly acts like his bum has caught on fire.
He makes an honest effort to place both feet on the railing––what is he thinking?––and then starts sliding across the balustrade.
I’m fairly confident he won’t peel his hands off the bottom of the upstairs balcony.
He’s not that stupid.
There’s no way he could do that stunt and not fall over. Suffer some serious injuries.
But what do I know about this man?
He seemingly likes living dangerously and has a high threshold for complications. Although, it doesn’t appear that way right now.
He seems determined to get to me, even though he struggles to maintain his balance.
Despite being cautious and hating to take risks in general, I still use my phone camera as a weapon to make a point that he is in the wrong and also to have something to talk about with my best friend, Kayla.
She won’t believe this.
Truthfully, I don’t think anyone would believe that a man like him sort of slid down from the sky and started an argument with me on my balcony.
“Stop doing that, or I’ll sue you.”
“Oh, yeah. And what will you get from me? My credit card debt?”
He freezes only for a second before continuing his effort to find a perfect landing spot.
“You can’t do that,” I warn him when I notice the direction of his gaze. “Don’t even try it. It would be a shame to ruin that perfect body of yours,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“You think it’s perfect, huh? Watch it become a weapon and your worst nightmare when I get my hands on you. Stop snapping pictures of me,” he barks, and I laugh, not stopping.
“Shhh…” I tease. “You stop doing that, or the scorned husband will hear you and come here to whoop your ass.”
“The only one getting their ass whooped will be you,” he says before the miracle happens.
The man, who is clearly the beneficiary of some rare athletic genes, rips his hand away from the upstairs balcony––he’s legit crazy––and walks like an Olympic gymnast on the narrow metal bar, keeping his balance like a pro.
I’m horrified at the idea that his boot might slip on the icy slab of metal, and I might stare at the chalk outline of his body on the sidewalk.
“You are not doing this,” I say, lowering my phone and watching him on the balustrade, hands in the air, snow gently brushing over his bare chest.
Isn’t he cold?
I sure am, my teeth chattering.
The last ounce of self-preservation in my body shouts at me to run inside, lock the door, and let him find his way out.
He’s not my business anymore.
He can climb down whichever way he wants and vanish into the night.
At any rate, the woman upstairs has no qualms about him getting frozen to death or smooshed against the pavement.
Why would I care?
He says nothing to my words, focused solely on finding the right spot to stick his landing.
He’s getting closer and closer, and at the last moment, I sort of realize he has a good chance to accomplish what he’s set his mind to.
Fuck.
I jolt out of my paralysis while watching him lose his balance, cuss like a sailor, and jerk his arms up as his feet slip.
My first thought is that his package will meet the cold metal first and his chances of producing offspring will be greatly reduced, but then my focus is solely on my well being.
Through some Christmasy miracle he has enough common sense to jerk his body slightly left, heading in my direction.
A shriek of surprise shoots up my throat when the big bad man morphs into a limber feline and jumps in the middle of the balcony, using me as a landing mat.
It’s become unavoidable if you ask me.
Instead of standing here and watching him vault onto my balcony, I should’ve retreated when my instincts told me to.
His strong arms wrap around me in an attempt to protect me––I like to believe––before pulling me down with him.
It was that or getting crushed under his body.
This way, he executes a pirouette at the last moment before we both crash, his back meeting the snow-covered concrete while I end up on his chest like a pin stuck to a pin cushion.
My survival instincts kick in, and a fight ensues, mainly fueled, on my part, by confusion, guilt, and the unresolved sexual tension that hasn’t left my body since last year.
He doesn’t let go of me, and that truly puts me in a fighting mode.
“Get off me,” I say, my words met with cynical laugher.
“You sit on me, Cupcake. You get off me.”
I wish I could, but he has no intention of releasing me.
“I’m not your cupcake.”
“That I see,” he mumbles, his eyes moving quickly from my face to my hands. “You’re more like a savory snack.”
His gaze keeps sweeping over the balcony.
“Where is your fucking phone?” he asks in a brutally sexy tone.
A sliver of light falls over his face, and I’m staring at some seriously good-looking man. Crooked eyebrows, a frown sitting in between, locked jaw, lips that could feel like heaven against my skin, dark amber eyes unable to stay still, a simmering fire shining through them, their flames going from ink dark to fiery red.
He is a pain in the ass, I can tell, but he must be a master in the bedroom according to the noise filling the room upstairs in the evenings.
But why go to all the trouble when he could get sex with a flick of his hand, a teasing smile, or even a lifted eyebrow?
He’s sexy even when angry.
I can only imagine how irresistible he might be when he’s in the mood to pick up and have sex with a woman.
Those strong hands could rile up nerve endings a woman didn’t know she had, making her wet between her legs just by trailing her bare skin.
Obsessed with finding my phone––which should be my concern as well––Mr. Devilish himself seems unaware of his impact on me.
I move my hand around the concrete, riffling through the fluffy snow.
It can’t be far, and I hope the screen didn’t crack when I dropped it.
Speaking of bad luck.
This is the second time I’ve dropped it since I lost my job.
He holds me with one arm, not minding the snow lining his back, and runs his free hand over the floor of the balcony.
I use the opportunity to pull away from him.
“Stay still, babydoll, or you’ll get in trouble.”
I huff at him.
“Let me go.”
“Huffing won’t get you far. Where is your damn phone?”
He’s probably sitting on it.
As if he just heard my thought, he shifts slightly and lifts his knees before sliding his hand under his legs.
We see it at the same time, and we both make a go for it. He’s fast, but I’m just as quick. Plus, I have my both hands free. And we fight, the slippery gadget sliding out of his hand while I use my weight to ruin his feeble balance and recover my phone.
“You little cunning fox,” he says, the slightest shred of dark amusement threading through his voice.
None of it seems real, though.
The only thing he cares for is my phone, and it dawns on me that this is not a game for him.
He really is interested in getting those pictures––and my recording however long it is––erased from my phone.
Why does he care about them so much? He didn’t throw a fit when the woman’s husband came home unexpectedly.
He doesn’t like his pictures on my phone?
Really?
What about him dangling from her balcony?
Did he like that?
How is that right?
“It’s my phone,” I bark, swatting his hand away.
“Shush,” he says, pushing me away from my phone.
“Don’t you dare to shush me, or I’ll go straight upstairs and tell her husband you have fucked his wife for seven days straight.”
His hand turns to stone on my phone while I wrestle to unlock his iron grip, trying to peel off his fingers.
“How do you know he’s her husband?” he asks, realizing he’s propped on his elbow, his arm looped around my waist, my robe undone, my hard nipples adorning the peaks of my breasts visible through my sheer bra, not appreciating the cold in the slightest, and my legs open smack across the man’s bulge. His warm package is tucked right beneath my sensitive flesh.
The thought that my neighbor upstairs has played with his jewels makes me harrowingly aware of where I’m sitting.
Forget about my phone. I push up, and his man’s eyes go straight to the apex of my thighs.
My tiny sheer panties don’t leave much to the imagination.
“No boyfriend, huh?” he says, tipping his chin to the dark hairy patch gracing my pubic area.
I swallow hard, pretending I’m not offended.
“Not everybody likes an ice rink,” I retort, up on my knees, my hands busy tying my belt. “Give me my phone,” I demand.
“His tongue slides smoothly over the clit if the pussy is nicely trimmed.”
I turn still, my eyes locked on his as I process his words.
The man doesn’t tease me.
It’s not like he's flirting with me or anything.
Sprawled on my balcony with my phone clutched in his hand and his eyes pinned on my face, he appears to be trying to solve a boring puzzle.
“You haven’t had sex in a while,” he flings at me, unperturbed.
“Give me my phone,” I say, evading his eyes while pouncing on his hand.
Short of breaking his pinkie there is nothing I can do to make him release my phone.
“Okay,” I say in a strained voice. “You can have the damn phone,” I add, hatching out another new plan.
All I need is to pull up, walk inside, slide the door closed, and let him be. He will beg me to open the door and let him inside. And then I’ll get my phone.
Yes, he could go back to the railing and risk falling to the ground, but that is not my business.
He can do whatever he wants.
I don’t care.
I zip up but just as fast I meet resistance and fall back to my knees, his arm looped around me like a tight rope.
Forced to focus on him, I reluctantly shift my gaze to him.
“How do you know he’s her husband?”
Oh, are we back to that again?
“You know that too.”
His eyes drill into mine.
“I wasn’t talking about myself. How do you know that?”
“I don’t. But frankly, it’s not that hard to guess. You and her get together at a certain hour. Listening to you fucking her drives me up the wall.”
Oops.
Too much information?
My gaze slips from his face like a dead snake.
He moves his hand from my waist to my face and tilts it to his liking so he can meet my eyes.
A faint smile adorns his lips.
“Because you haven’t had sex in a while,” he says.
“That’s not the reason. And not everybody lives for sex and smooth ice rinks that feel good under the tip of the tongue.”
He bites his lip to crush his amusement.
Although, again, I doubt it’s real.
“Has she brought home other men?” he asks, and I turn to stone.
“What?”
The revolt sweeping through me makes me choke on air.
I push up again.
He grabs me firmly and brings me down.
With unabashed resolve, I sit on his bulge, a small volcano against my skin.
“Do I look like a snitch or something?” I toss at him.
He slightly tips his head to the side, a sarcastic smirk on his lips.
“You just threatened me with going upstairs and blowing my cover. Doesn’t that make you a snitch and extortionist at the same time?”
“Huh? Extortionist? Me? Who would’ve thought?” I say, acting like I’m affected by his words. “That’s rich coming from you. You’re still holding my phone hostage.”
“You took unauthorized pictures of me.”
“Oh, get over it. Who are you? And why are your pictures so important?”
He flashes a sly grin, and this time, I believe it’s real.
“I don’t know. You tell me. You took my pictures. You watched me coming down from her balcony.”
“All right. All right…” I say impetuously, my patience running thin. “First off, Mister… You banged that woman seven days straight. And I had to live through her oohing and humming every time you put your dick in her. It got old after a while. But since I was home doing nothing while waiting for some stupid ass company to call me and let me know if they were willing to offer me a second interview and possibly a job, so I could make coffee and fetch lunch for some obnoxious boss,” I say in a breath, not blinking once. “There was nothing else to do. I barely moved into this building. So, I don’t know much about anyone, including your crush upstairs. I didn’t know there was another male involved. But you sure did, or you wouldn’t have taken so many precautions. So, honestly, I don’t know why you’re so surprised. Or upset. Or even caring if she is seeing other men. You didn’t pick her because of her moral compass.”
He almost breaks into a smile.
He baited me, and obviously, I bit.
I swat his bare chest.
“Fuck you,” I say and push up for the third time.
This time, he lets me go, but his hand cuffs my ankle tighter than a house arrest ankle bracelet.
“About your boyfriend,” he says, not impressed with my huffing and puffing or crossing my arms over my chest.
“There is no boyfriend.”
“That much I know,” he says, his focus shifting to my phone as he taps the screen with hopes of getting a look inside.
“Unlock this for me,” he says in a domineering voice.
His eyes flick up.
“Unlock it,” he says without smiling.
“Why would I do that?”
“To avoid my filing a suit against you and getting a judge's order to confiscate it and erase my pictures from your damn phone.”
He’s not joking.
Is that even possible?
He notices I’m teetering on the edge, so he tilts his chin down slightly.
He means business.
And who the fuck is he?
I take a better look at him.
Despite the shaggy Santa pants, black boots, and now crooked belt, he could easily fill a suit, a uniform, even a motorcycle club member vest.
Although, he doesn’t seem the type. He could be an athlete, but a gang member? Probably not. Despite the tattoos and naughty eyes.
As much as I move my gaze over him looking for clues, I have a hard time believing the man has a criminal streak in him. But never say never. I’ve seen plenty of documentaries about serial criminals who looked clean cut like an accountant. Or a financial advisor. Or a teacher.
They don’t have a type.
But this man…
Is he more than some random guy having fun with a woman? Is he a man of influence?
A good actor?
I have a hard time reading him now.
He’s in his thirties and very good at climbing balconies and fucking dick worshiping women.
He could be anyone.
This is New York, after all.
Well, it’s Brooklyn technically, but who knows what snazzy Upper East Side dude he might be, getting his rocks off in a cute apartment in a snowy Brooklyn.
Life is strange, man.
“Would you really do that?” I ask, my mind made.
He tilts his head a couple of times, and I grab my phone from him and punch in my passcode.