Chapter Eleven
Ryder
“ S leeping here.”
She’s glaring at me and suddenly this great idea doesn’t seem that great. In the light of the Golden Girls, it seems a little iffy.
“Your sofa’s too small. It’s pretty and I’m sure it’s comfortable to sit on, but not to sleep. I’m six two. I’m not made for sofa sleeping. And this bed is big.”
“If you say just right, Goldilocks,” she says, grumpiness infusing her words and sending a bright spark of warmth through my blood, “I’ll bite you.”
“Do your fangs come out after midnight? I haven’t fed you.”
“That’s Gremlins, not vampires, idiot. Go back to the sofa. This is not for you.”
I know that. I’m not an idiot. She might sometimes look at me like I’m a delicious dessert she wants to devour, but she doesn’t actually want me. And I don’t want her, no matter how fascinating she is. No matter how good she tasted.
Elliot would probably cause bodily harm if I made a move, and I sort of find that refreshing. She’s like no one or nothing I’ve known. And falling asleep with her has the markings of a different kind of pleasure.
“I know that,” I say, trying to reassure her of my noble intentions, “as if I’d make a move on you.”
Elliot kicks me and makes a snorting sound. “I know that. I get it.”
There’s something about the way she says it that rouses curiosity. “Why do you say that?”
“You said that.”
“I meant…” I sigh. “I meant I’m not going to maul you or seduce you. That’s not my style.”
“Yes, it is. The latter, anyway. I haven’t heard anything about unwanted maulings.”
“I meant the… you get it.”
“I’m not the kind of woman you want. We know that. Do you have to keep on about it?”
No one’s been going on about it. At least not in the way she means. “I just thought it might be nicer to be in a big bed.”
“Be my guest.”
The sarcasm is clear and I ignore it, sliding in closer to her, the scent of gardenias is a lingering, subtle gift to the air if I breathe close enough to her. It makes me want to move in closer, but I don’t.
“Thanks.”
Deep down, I didn’t come in here just because the thought of her bed over the sofa is more enticing. It is. It’s a bed. It contains space and a warm body and one I know I can fall asleep next to.
But I didn’t stand, dithering for the first time in my life, outside her door like a teenager for that. Even if I’d wanted to just go to sleep in the same bed as a woman, I’d go in. I can pick up when and if I’m wanted, and I knew she wouldn’t kick me out.
Actually…
No. I didn’t know that.
I knew she’d get it. That it wasn’t a big seduction event, or me simply taking what I want, when I want.
I simply didn’t know if she’d tell me to go. And I’d have gone. Of course I would have. Climbing in bed with her was already a line crossed. I’m just not sure what that line is.
But I know why I did it.
I like being around her. And there was a loneliness I couldn’t shake out in the living room, something I didn’t know existed. Being here, with her, it’s gone. This feels right.
Because she’s Elliot.
A friend, I think. A female friend.
It’s a new experience so I’m still finding my way, and there’s so much about her that’s unexpectedly delicious, like the way I can tease and she flares up beautifully.
She shifts beneath the covers and her soft cotton-covered leg brushes mine.
“That,” she says, “was sarcasm.”
“I know.” I pick up a lock of her hair from her haphazard ponytail, fighting the urge to release the soft and silky mass. In the light of the TV, there are strands of gold and caramel amongst the red. “But you’re not going to kick me out.”
“I should.”
“You won’t.”
“No, I won’t. As long as you behave, which we both know you will.”
“Because,” I say, “I’m a gentleman.”
“Do not make me laugh.”
But I smile as I ease her into my arms, just so we’re more comfortable. For a moment she goes stiff then she makes a small sound that does very untoward things to my libido and she softens, melting into me.
She feels good. I almost tell her she made that weird, empty loneliness go away, but once said I can’t take the words back. Elliot might laugh. I know others would. Big, bad Ryder Sinclair getting in bed with a woman to chase the ghost of loneliness away. Yeah, they would all laugh.
Not at who I’m with, not at all. With her smoky voice and intriguing mouth and Rita Hayworth hair, not to mention that sharp wit and brain, I’m shocked men aren’t fighting to be where I am. No, they’d laugh because of how pathetic I’d sound.
“So the Golden Girls, huh?”
“Are we talking now?”
“Unless you can think of something else.”
“Sleep,” she says, “I can think of that.”
“It’s so overrated. I’d have pictured you the Gilda type.”
“I’m not pigeonhole material, Ryder.”
She knows the old film I’m talking about, it’s in her voice and somehow, it heartens me.
“I didn’t say you were. But you’ve got this edge of another time.” Her furniture in the living room, even the frame of the bed and the pieces in the bedroom, they’re all art deco, and they’re real. I’d bet money on it.
All lovingly restored. All respected. It’s like her plants. I don’t know what they are, not the ones in here, but they’re beautiful pieces of living art, tactile and…things she cares for, things she makes the center of attention, not herself.
It’s another piece to the Elliot Perry puzzle.
Her fingers slip against my arm a moment before she pulls her hand away, but I take it and rest it on my bare chest, where she curls her fingers into a ball. She sighs. “Do you always get your way and are you calling me old fashioned?”
“Sometimes, and maybe, but not the way you think. You’re something different, and I like it. I can talk to you.”
“Well, at least I’m good for something.”
I ignore the ice in her voice and pull her further against me, so I’m comfortable and from her little sigh, she is, too. I toy with her hair. “You are.” The old ladies talk on the TV, and canned laughter follows and I close my eyes, breathing her in, letting the warmth and softness of her meld into me. “Why did you choose to live above your damn office?”
Startled, she shifts, and almost hits a very important part of me, one I’m very fond of. “I love this building. I actually had this converted to an apartment. Or back to an apartment. It was empty office space when I got it.”
“Just get an apartment.”
“Of course you’d say that. Out with the old, up with the new, that it?”
I smile against her hair, and rest my other arm over her middle, buried in the soft white quilt. “You have to step up your insult game, Perry. You know that’s not how I operate, unless, of course, you didn’t do your homework.”
“How dare you.” But she doesn’t sound that mad. She shifts again and goes still and that something—my cock—she almost hit, this time she does, but just a soft brushing against it and that sweet, electric buzz of arousal shoots through me even harder. The arousal I’ve so far been ignoring. “You have an erection.”
She says this like it’s an insult.
“I’m aware. Don’t worry, I won’t molest you.”
Elliot sniffs like some outraged Victorian spinster. “I know. You don’t want me.”
All the evidence right now points way in the other direction, but I like her and I’m not about to fuck up this friendship by a quick grope when nothing’s gonna come from it.
“Look,” I say. “You’re female, you’re soft and you fit. I want. That’s how I’m built. But I like you, Elliot. A lot. So I’m not going to do anything about it. Okay? Rest easy. You can save your smelling salts for another time.”
“Where on Earth did you learn all your references? You’re so weird.”
I laugh at her slightly mollified, slightly annoyed tone. “Would you believe I was a lonely child?”
She doesn’t answer for a long moment. “Yeah, I’d believe that. Like you don’t fit.”
“Boarding school will do that to you. And, well, you get it, growing up rich.”
“We have money,” she corrects, “but we’re old name more than Sinclair rich. You’re in a different stratosphere.”
“Our father was a slave driver. It instilled us with a great work ethic but little else, and I was the dreamer.”
“That why you got the tattoo?”
“I forget about it, which is weird. I think because I wasn’t even twenty when I got it, or started it. The thing’s part of me.”
She traces a finger along one of the dancing skeletons. “It reminds me of the three.”
My heart beats a little faster. “The three?”
“Dante’s Divine Comedy.”
“Really?”
“It’s silly, but—”
“It’s not silly, because it is. I was obsessed with it when I was a kid.”
The tattoo stretches up over my shoulder to take over my back in a watercolor tattoo, but I don’t want to talk about me. I’d rather talk about her.
“Really?”
“Do you have to keep sounding so damn surprised, Perry. You do a man’s ego harm.”
She snorts. “I don’t think a nuke could harm your ego, Sinclair.”
“Do you think it would give me super powers?”
“Don’t!” She groans and goes to move away, but I’m not ready to let her go yet. She feels too good. “I don’t think womankind is ready for that.”
I just laugh. Who knew talking and lazy flirting with no agenda other than just being could be so much fun? In a bed? When I’m only wearing my underwear and a hard on that’s going to have to just deal with itself.
Either that or a trip to the bathroom—
No. No way am I doing that and risking getting caught. I’d never live it down with someone like Elliot Perry.
“Fine. But I’m not that bad.”
“You’re worse. And if you keep going, I might end up liking you.”
I pause. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” There’s something heavy in the air, but whatever it is she doesn’t say it. “I was planning on simply admiring your face and hating you.”
I want to ask what she was going to say, but I don’t want to break the mood. “I am pretty handsome.”
“Oh, yep, there we are. Back to hate.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“I think your plants like me. Did you see that velvety one perk up when I touched her leaves?”
She pinches my chest and pulls away. This time I let her, but she rolls over on her side to look at me, tucking her hands beneath her cheek. “My philodendron? Plants aren’t known for their leafy intelligence, Ryder.”
“I’ll tell them—”
“Don’t you dare.”
Her eyes sparkle, and like this she’s almost heartbreakingly pretty in that Elliot way. It’s something in her that shifts, like I can see a sliver of her soul and it’s breathtaking.
“Well, you did agree to share your bed with me, so maybe I won’t.”
“I didn’t agree to anything. You climbed in, unasked.”
I rise up a little on one elbow, pulling the pillow on my side down to my chest. I’m cold. “You didn’t kick me out. No court would convict me.”
“You’re a very strange, sad man.”
“I’ll take pity. Hey, should I develop a limp?”
“Idiot.”
“So,” I say, “you’re the middle child, aren’t you?”
“How do you figure?”
I didn’t mean for that to come out, but thinking about it, that fits. “I’m the youngest. Spoiled, and I got away with things King and the others didn’t. That happens with the youngest. I know you come from a biggish family, too. And the Perry kids all did things to put themselves out there. Except you.”
She looks down, bright spots of color blooming on her throat and cheek. “I’m not the out there type. People don’t notice me.”
“I do.”
Her gaze slams into mine. “Only because you hired me. Come on. If I walked into a room you’d barely notice me.”
I want to say that’s not true. And now I’ve gotten a glimpse of her beneath it all, I would most definitely notice her, but she’s right. If I didn’t know her I wouldn’t. And I’d be missing out.
What the fuck does that say about me?
“Then I’m a complete moron,” I say. “You—”
“I’m tired. We should go to sleep.”
She’s got a point. Although I could talk and tease and flirt with her until the sun came up. There are other things I could do, too. But I don’t say any of that because I like living.
She switches off the television. It doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep, and I watch her as a sliver of light comes in through her arched window.
Like this, she’s soft and sweet, and innocent. And I think she might be innocent—by my standards. She’s fresh and lovely and I inch a little closer to her until we’re almost touching.
The heat of her warms me and a calmness comes down over me.
I close my eyes as the sound of New York wafts up from the streets below, and let sleep start to take me away.
And as I drift off, it comes to me that this might be the first time I’ve slept with a woman.
As in slept slept with a woman.
She’s both a difficult and easy person, and the longer I spend with her, the more I like her and I know I don’t want to give this up, this seeing her, knowing her, when the four weeks are up.
And this? Right here? Right now?
I like it.
What the hell am I becoming?