Chapter Nineteen #2
Julian always looks good to me, but today, he looks particularly delectable.
He’s been hearing pitches from aspiring entrepreneurs all day, and so he’s dressed for business in a well-fitted suit and a crisp white shirt that only helps emphasize the taper of his waist. Only his tie is doffed, probably tossed into the passenger seat on his way over to mine.
I have a ridiculous image of him calling out, “Honey, I’m home!
” and dropping his briefcase onto the floor before wandering in and asking me what’s for dinner.
Me, I would say.
By the way his eyelids flutter as he looks me up and down, Julian would probably respond to that by tying a bib around his neck and saying, “Bon appétit.”
“Wow,” he says, clearly caught off guard. “You look—”
Onix lunges between us, somehow regaining enough grease in his joints to leap onto Julian’s legs, and he falls out of my trap.
I watch as Julian drops into a squat right at the door to lavish him with pets and coos, and I find myself a little jealous and not a bit ashamed of it.
I give Onix a look that says, You are definitely going in the crate for dinner.
He gives me a look back that must mean Ha! Got your man.
Julian seems to notice the tension between woman and woman’s best frenemy, because when he finally stands and steps inside, he pulls me in by the waist.
“Good,” he finishes. “I meant to say you look good.”
I throw my arms around his neck, glowing in self-satisfaction when his gaze drops to my glossed lips.
“Just good?” I ask, and Julian smirks as his free hand trails up my neck.
“Distractingly good,” he says. He pulls on the strap of my suspiciously clean apron. “I’m not sure I ever thought I’d see you in one of these. Very domestic of you.”
“Do you want me to take it off?” I say. “I look even better underneath.”
“I’m sure you do,” Julian says, drawing me into him.
His kiss starts the way it always has, with a gentle, breathtaking press that is salacious in its suggestion but not its technique.
It’s the anticipation that gets me, the subtle tensing of his hand at the small of my back, the closing of distance between our bodies.
I groan into it, draw myself onto my tiptoes to offer myself more to him…
He pulls back and steps bodily away from me.
“I’m eating crow already. It smells amazing in here,” he says, whipping off his jacket and arranging it carefully over the back of my chair. He folds up his sleeves, revealing his strong, threaded forearms, and reaches into his pocket. “Got something for you.”
Of course you do, I think. When he pulls a Tiffany blue box out, I have to fix my face into one of appropriate gratitude.
I take it from him and pop it open to reveal a pair of small diamond-studded hoop earrings.
Between the luxury branding and the stones, I know that this gift, one of many just this month, costs more than the engagement ring that was once a permanent fixture on my finger.
“Thank you. They’re beautiful,” I say. It’s not a lie; they’re exactly my taste, the sort of jewelry only a man who pays attention could choose for a woman. “Though you know you didn’t have to.”
“I know. And I like spoiling you in part because you don’t demand it.”
I scoff, reaching to take out the studs I already have in, but Julian steps up. “I’ve got it.”
He stands close as he works, and every hair on my body strains for him.
He’s switched colognes to something sweeter, warmer, with caramel and smoke, and I resent how much he smells like home.
Resent his gentle reverence as he pops out my earrings one after the other and stows them in the new box, then affixes the new set with the same care.
Resent the pride in his eyes when he leans back to regard me, and the way, afterward, he so easily breezes past me to grab a corkscrew for the wine.
The food I’ve prepared is heavy, meant to be consumed after an energy-draining romp or two.
Already my plan to seduce my boyfriend is falling apart, and I’m struggling to hide my frustration.
When I take off my apron to reveal the deep V of my dress and the breasts that sit pretty behind it, Julian’s gaze only drifts down once before spending the rest of dinner affixed respectfully on my eyes.
He fills my petulant silence with compliments on the meal, updates about the breakthroughs the companies he’s backing in Malaysia have made, the recent extensions of his odd hours to take meetings, the possibility of him supporting an artist residency in Woodlawn, topics I would normally find interesting but today exhaust me.
When he asks me questions, my answers are clipped.
We have just gone through our fourth tense silence when Julian finally sets his cutlery down.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say, even as I stab into a cluster of lettuce.
Julian sighs.
“Sean, you’ve spent the last five minutes trying to murder your salad for a crime I’m sure it didn’t commit,” he says. “So why don’t you tell me what’s going on, so we can discuss it?”
It’s a measured, mature, and altogether reasonable response, but I’m no longer a reasonable woman. I’m all fire and brimstone, red wine fanning at the flames of my humiliation. I push my chair back and stand.
“You’re a smart man, Julian, I think you can figure it out.”
I reach for his empty plate to take it to the sink, but Julian stills me with a hand over my wrist.
“Not smart enough to read minds,” he implores. “Please, Sean. Talk to me.”
There’s an earnestness to his tone that makes something in me crack.
I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my head a hundred times.
But the words that finally find their way out aren’t the controlled, composed, structured dialogue I’ve prepared.
They’re raw, and angry, and my throat closes around them as I speak.
“Are you not attracted to me?” I ask.
Julian’s eyes widen with shock, and his hand falls away.
“What?” he says. “Of course I am. How could you even ask that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe because we’ve had sex once three months ago, and you seem to have no interest in doing it again.”
And there it is, my grievance laid bare. It feels like I’ve just dragged the elephant in the room onto center stage, and that he’s taken a shit on the floor.
Seconds pass, maybe a minute, with no response.
My face burns with mortification and I wish, more than anything, that I could start today from the beginning.
I wouldn’t invite Julian over. Would certainly not have spent the morning pushing my cart around the local Jewel for ingredients for tonight’s dinner.
I would have been comfortable in sweats and slippers, not battling acid reflux and a nip slip in this too tight velvet number—
Suddenly, I am being propelled roughly forward.
It takes me a second to realize that it’s Julian, tugging me into the space between his legs by the fabric at my hips.
I tumble into him, my hands grabbing hold of his shoulders for purchase and my knees knocking against the edge of his seat, but he doesn’t apologize, just watches me with a stare so intense that I feel the pressure of it against my skull.
“Do you think I don’t want to sleep with you?” he says. His voice is strained. The way it used to get before, like he is one temptation away from eating me alive.
“What else am I supposed to think? I—”
The rest of my words are swallowed in a gasp; Julian tugs the skirt of my dress up and over my hips.
The cool air hits my stockinged thighs, and I don’t even have a chance to shiver before his warm hands cup my ass.
Julian sighs, then rests his head on my chest as his hands wander higher.
They find the waistband of my tights, tug at them like he’s trying to decide whether to roll them down or tear them apart.
“You don’t have to worry about if I want to sleep with you,” he says, deciding on the former. I step out of my heels as he rolls the tights down over my hips, pausing to caress the exposed skin as he reveals it. “You should worry more about whether I’ll be able to find the strength to stop.”
There it is again, hesitation that has no reason to exist. I hook my hands around his jaw, tilt his head back so that he can see the conviction in my eyes.
“Let me make this even more abundantly clear,” I say, watching his lips part, his eyes darken. “I don’t want you to stop.”
I can almost see the moment when the final thread of Julian’s tenuous control snaps.
He makes a sound that is half growl, half groan, and suddenly I’m being lifted into the air and deposited onto the cool granite of my kitchen island, one leg of my tights hanging helplessly between us.
He snatches the rest of it off, tosses it to the ground with a finality that makes my thighs quiver.
“You are something else,” he whispers, his mouth hovering so close above mine that I can feel the words form. His other hand wanders between my legs, and I hiss, the familiar friction so welcome that I could almost cry. “So wet already.”
“Yes,” I whimper. “Always, when I’m with you.”
Julian finds my clit through my panties, nestles it between two firm fingers.
I’m not sure what sound I make, whether it is a moan or a cry or even his name, just that his jaw tenses with satisfaction and his mouth meets mine.
He’s rough, but he rides the line between inflicting pain and pleasure as perfectly as if he lives in my head, feels what I feel.