Chapter 6 #2
“Come on, Molly,” he says, kissing me. He tastes like me, smells like me mixed with him. “We’re going home.”
He kneels and starts to loosen the ties.
“H-home?” My lips are numb. To Mom?
“That place you live? Yeah. Home.”
“Good.” I push the word out, past the inexplicable hurt. “Because you suck.”
“Yeah, I know. I sucked your cli—”
“I mean you suck. Conceptually.” I struggle for my breath, my cheeks burning like they’re on fire. “My boyfriend—”
“We both know he’s not your boyfriend. I’m not sure who he is to you, but he’s not your fucking boyfriend.” He reaches around and unties my hands. When I try to push him away, he puts his hands on my waist, holding me. I hate that I like that touch, how it grounds me as much as it undoes me.
“If he was, then I doubt you’d have gotten so wet waiting for me. I doubt you’d have touched my dick in that truckyard. You were soaked when I got back here. You begged. You’re a filthy, delicious little liar, Molly girl.”
Christ, he’s right. And I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go with him, either, but there’s a freedom in the air, something new I can taste, and it threads through me, pushing at the surface of my skin.
Because maybe…maybe this won’t be bad. With his connections, maybe he can help find Dad.
And while we’re “together,” I could use him, learn about sex, and then after everything, I could run.
There must be a way to escape a life of dance.
I’m not good enough to be the principal, not really.
I can do it; I can if I push myself, but I’m aware with Mom’s money and backing, I could be locked in there until my thirties.
Some of the best dance into their late forties.
I’m not one of the best, but there’s the ballet or a husband I don’t want, and this could be a way out…
“A fake marriage?”
He looks at me, a faint frown. “What are you up to, Marlowe?”
I shrug. “I want a life away from people controlling it, and if that gateway is you, then I’ll take it.”
“So it’s that easy?”
“I’d want a contract.”
He doesn’t smile. “We can do a contract.”
And one of his hands drops, slides between my thighs, stroking me slowly, and I let him. God, do I let him. He pushes a finger into me, thrusting with bone-melting, gentle moves that stoke my inner fires with the steady beat of the movement.
Because I want more.
I want him.
“We can play it fast and loose,” he murmurs, leaning in, trailing soft kisses up my throat to my ear.
It takes a million glorious years.
It takes no time at all.
“Or we could clamp it all down tight.” He stops his thrusts and moves his finger inside me, rubbing something so glorious that I shudder, everything in me focusing in on that because in seconds he’s got me teetering on the edge of an explosion of orgasmic bliss.
“Rule by rule of what can and can’t be done. ”
He stops, right at that edge.
“You decide, Molly darlin’.” And then the monster pulls free.
I’m spinning. He stands and I try to follow, but I stumble, everything out of order.
He doesn’t offer to help, even though he watches me intently and I’m hit with the stupidest, most na?ve feeling that if I so much as looked like I’d face-plant, he’d catch me.
Because he’d more than likely laugh.
“You’ll find my dad?” I ask in a small voice.
“I’ll do my best.” He comes up, a hand slipping around my waist, and he tilts my chin up.
A girl could lose herself in those eyes forever and not care that she was gone.
So fucking dangerous.
“I need him found. Whatever it takes.”
“I won’t be making false promises to you, Marlowe,” he says. “But I’ll do everything I can. Sometimes, people don’t want to be found.”
“Or?”
“Sometimes they can’t be.”
I swallow. He means if they’re killed and every trace of them is gone. I can feel it. Dark, cold, in the air.
It cools me right down and I shove those thoughts to the far recesses of my mind. Because I refuse to believe he’s gone for good. I have to believe he’s still out there. Alive. So I switch back to our sham arrangement. “We’re not getting married for real?”
“No.”
“And you’ll let me go after you find him?”
He quirks a brow. “What’s the thing you’re not saying?”
I press my lips together. I want to ask him to help me get out of everything, the dancing, the cloying world my mother wants me to be part of.
If I could dance just for me, or even make it into something else like a studio of my own where I’m helping kids, or anything other than have it consume my life, I could deal with it.
But I don’t want to be part of the whole stuffy world of the rich that surrounds the high-performing arts.
Help me get out of something like a marriage or a life she might have planned for me. I’ve heard her talking about the right man. A good deal. It’s for her, not me.
I want to ask for his help to escape it all. I almost do. But I don’t.
So I pirouette on him verbally. “If we have sex, that’s what it is, because I don’t like you. But…” Shit. “Don’t go thinking it’s more than me using you for your body.”
His mouth twitches. “Hate sex is a maybe, got it. Your sex toy, got it, too.” He brushes his lips over mine. “Goes both ways, Molly. And…I don’t share.”
“Me either.”
“I’ll get that contract.” He moves me then, pressure light on my lower back, and we walk to the door. “But just to be clear, no Leon. No firing me—hence the fake marriage, and neither one of us walks away from the arrangement.”
“And you’ll do all you can to get Dad.”
“On my mam’s life.” He puts his free hand to his heart. “Yes.”
The drive to my home is too short. And I expected…
I don’t know… Declan to flirt or try to fuck me.
But then again, all those years ago, he didn’t want our first time to be in a car.
I remember that, just like I remember his lies, his shattering my stupid heart when he kissed that girl and left with her.
But he’s on his phone. The blue light from it paints his face like modern art, and I melt in places inside me, down deep, over and over. I throb in my pussy, where the ghost of a memory touches and strokes.
I press my knees together. I don’t want to find him so beautiful or his touch so magically good. And I don’t want to go home.
But we’re there, and he puts the phone away.
“Thanks for the ride.” I reach for the handle.
He catches my arm. “We’re both going up because you’re coming back with me. We’re going to move fast on this.”
“Fast?”
“The fake marriage. All we need to do is just slip a ring on and tell people.”
He smiles.
“Fast, Marlowe.”
Mom isn’t home, but they clearly arranged this, because bags are sitting near the foyer in the apartment. Pepper’s in his covered travel cage. Fiona’s in her carrier, and all around the bags, carriers, and cases slithers Lola, who hisses at Pepper’s cage.
“Murder! Fucking Murder! Help!” Pepper caws each time Lola hisses.
“Well, fuck me,” mutters the driver.
“Fucking brilliant! Fuck me!” Pepper says.
They start carrying things to the elevator and loading it, using Pepper’s cage to hold it open. And I go after Lola.
It takes a bit to nab him, and he grows about twelve extra arms and legs and meows his broken low meow like he’s being murdered as I put him inside.
“Hold on,” Declan mutters behind me. Then he disappears. I use the time to pack a few things from my room, and it’s like being stabbed in the heart.
I don’t want to be here, but Mom’s eagerness to be rid of me is damn unpleasant.
When I’m done, I wheel it all out. Declan has a bag and Monarch’s dog bed under an arm. “You can’t—”
“I can,” he says. “Can’t leave her alone.”
The trip to Declan’s place isn’t quiet, but Pepper runs the litany of his phrases as Declan pets the dogs and talks back to the bird.
My head spins the entire way. When we arrive, it’s in the middle of a sea of animals, who rush up to meet Declan in a tangle of wheels, fur, and slobbery doggy licks.
“Later, guys.” Declan says with a grin. “You got new friends.”
“Fucking friends! Help!” Pepper says.
My world tilts as we climb the stairs and he puts me in a room that’s big, pretty, and decorated in white. All the pets end up in there, too. Mine, his, my mother’s.
Lola’s crate is old, and somehow as I put it down, he busts out. His fur rises as he goes stiff legged, tail up in the air. He yowls and growls and swipes claws at everyone and everything.
The black cat swipes back, and before Declan can do a thing, they take off. I run after them and Declan does, too, but in their big foyer, Lola zooms through the driver’s legs as he sets down the last bag, the door still open.
“Lola!” I cry, even as Declan launches through the air and slams the door shut, moments before the cat can race into the night.
Lola stops a whisker short of hitting the door. He growls and turns, lifting a paw to lick it, then he becomes a million legs of cat power and launches himself up the stairs past everyone.
Fiona yips, and Pepper squawks out the profoundly odd phrase, “You didn’t see a thing, right?”
“Goddamn it, Dec, what the fuck’s going on? Did you bring home a fucking zoo?” A voice thunders from somewhere in the house, making my cheeks burn.
“Only half, Tor.”
The apartment I grew up in is big; this is on a different level.
I stare at Declan, trying to find words as the driver edges out of the house, leaving us alone with the cats and dogs.
He steps up to me, slipping a finger along my lip and my entire body throbs. Is this the moment when we…?
Slowly, Declan lowers his head, lips close to mine, and I lick them, aching for his kiss. Aching for him…
“I need to walk the dogs,” he says. “Go to bed.”
I drag in a shaky breath. “Declan, I…”
“Goodnight, Molly.”
He kisses my forehead and walks out the door, pulling it shut.
I don’t check to see if he locked me in.
I don’t want to know.
But I tell myself this won’t be for long.
It won’t.
One day soon, I’ll finally be free.