Chapter 17 Gaining Tempo
When he opens his door, I step around him, set my shoes on the mat under the hallway table, and say, “I used to have a crush on you.”
Faust’s eyes flick from my shoes to what I’m wearing to me, tracking my every step as I walk to his window.
His room is bigger than mine, and immaculately neat.
Like he’s spent the last few days cleaning when he hasn’t been driving.
Also, he’s in jeans and one of the good T-shirts after the sun has set. Not normal.
“Okay.”
“Oh—okay.”
“Christine told me. You’re leaving?” I spin around, watch his eyebrows pull together in confusion. “You can’t quit. You can’t just be done driving. That isn’t how passion works.”
“That’s why you wanted to…?”
His sentence fades as I take a step toward him, suddenly desperate for him to see what I see, even if that sight is trapped in my memory.
Him on top. Expansive and unstoppable. He’s Faust and he has a legacy and he’s just—giving that up?
I would kill to be remembered like he is, and he’s walking away from it.
“It’s my counteroffer. If you want to help me, you have to let me help you.
” I’ve thought about this. It’s a stalemate.
Proof that he’s serious about keeping my secret.
“Wait until after I’ve left to announce, if you don’t change your mind about retiring.
And I hope you do. I—I’m going to try and make you. ”
Faust laughs, kind of. I think I’ve stumped him. “That’s all?”
“No. I’m…” I can do this. It’s six words. “I’m not going to date you.”
He stares at me, taken aback. “Okay.”
“I don’t do that. And I don’t have sex, either.”
A moment passes—the longest of my life—and he nods.
“But if you… if this is…” Hello, death. Great to finally see you.
“At the gala, Bernard asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes. Because that’s what I do.
I date shitty men and I dump them. But then he went to kiss me and I sort of panicked.
” I try to make that last word funny and not weird and sad.
Minimal success. “And it isn’t even that he went to kiss me, like I don’t like that, I don’t want to kiss him.
But sometimes I do peck the guys, you know, on the cheeks or lips.
Not often, surprisingly. And it usually doesn’t mean anything. ”
“Usually?” he echoes gently.
“Usually.” I run my finger around the loose cuff of the jacket he gave me, biting my lip. The soft fabric soothes my nerves, though that work’s undone by how Faust watches me here—in his room. Wearing his clothes. “I just… haven’t kissed anyone I like in so long. Or anyone, really.”
Holding my breath, I make myself peek at his face again, needing to see his reaction. This is when he white-knights me, isn’t it? Tells me that nobody is making me kiss men I hate. Says that I deserve better than doing what I want to do, because he knows best.
This is when a man makes me pick.
And yet.
Our eyes meet, and his gaze holds mine, the lamps and wallpaper and hotel art turning into gold-black blurs behind him.
His face has gone soft, slightly tense, a thin line creased between his dark brows.
Words right there, on the edge of his lips.
And as transparent as he is, I worry that I misinterpreted what he’d meant by brilliant and fucking unreal, right until he says, “I could.” A pause.
“Some time. And if I… work.” Another pause. “You could kiss me.”
“Oh,” I say, because that’s the only word that exists in my entire brain. Oh, and much more loudly, yes.
One final moment ticks by, and then Faust’s eyes widen like he’s registering all at once that he said that out loud instead of only thinking it. “Sorry. That was.” He rakes his hair back, turning away. “So inappropriate. Jesus, I don’t—I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I’m beside him before I know it. “It wasn’t.
Because you could, um. Now. If I—you know.
” I’m thinking about him asking me if I like dominance, and his hand on my wrist, and how it’s so obvious he’s never had bad sex one time in his life, and it has to be very clear to him now that’s all I’ve had. “Do I… work for you?”
Emotions flip over his face, rapid-fire.
Disbelief, mostly. Then fifteen others I don’t recognize.
Slowly, he lifts his hand to my face, thumb brushing over my cheek.
We’re eye to eye again. Actually alone. “You work for me.” A ghost of a smile passes over his lips, and my stomach flips.
He’s tracing my freckles. “You really work for me.”
I touch his hand. “Show me. Please.”
His warm palm smooths around my jaw, cupping my face in one large hand, like he owns me already. He’d hurt me if I let him in. I know this. He’s just like me. That’s why I ignore the somersault inside me when his thumb slips over my lip. His forefinger, wrapping around my chin.
And then he’s kissing me. And it’s so hard to ignore.
I’ve spent so much time thinking about this, and so much time never getting what I want, that it knocks me senseless, this kiss, Faust giving me what I asked for.
Then there’s what I haven’t said—he gives me that, too.
His free hand winding into the loose fabric of his jacket, pulling our bodies flush, landing on my waist. His rough fingers on my face, anchoring me against him, his mouth on mine, inescapably close.
Every touch is firm, purposeful, possessive.
And I try to keep up with the kiss, but I can’t.
He’s already so far past what I know, that all I can do is let go.
I waited in line, I saw how tall the drop was, and I willingly strapped myself into this roller coaster.
Heat pulses deep inside of me as he licks my mouth open. His tongue slips over my lips, gentle at first—then not. And when his tongue brushes over mine, he makes the most indecent, insane groan that I might pass out.
Oh, fuck. I grab his shirt, dizzy, the kiss breaking.
Faust’s grip eases instantly. “Breathe.”
I obey, wheezing slightly as I take a pathetically shallow breath. I keep my eyes shut. “I’m okay.”
“Don’t lie.”
My face heats. “I’m not. Can we just go back to that?”
He chuckles deep in his chest, then there’s two muffled footsteps, and I peek to find Faust seated at the foot of his crisp white bed.
And, how? How did I do this to him? His shirt is wrinkled, his full lips kissed red, and a deep pink flush glows beneath his tan skin.
He’s a vision. And still so ridiculously composed that it makes me want to kiss him until he isn’t.
Then, wordlessly, he pats his wide thigh twice.
The universally accepted signal for come sit on my lap.
Goose bumps dart down the back of my neck.
“Do you…?” I swallow. “Should I…?”
“Come here.”
I pad over to him, my heart pounding. This is—it feels like more.
More than kissing, though that doesn’t make sense.
We’re not even kissing right now. Does he want me to sit side-saddle?
Open-legged? He doesn’t say, only lifts his fingers to graze my side, encouraging me to make a choice, any choice.
I tug awkwardly at my elastic shorts, hoping the fashion gods heed my prayers now and keep them from slipping down, then straddle him.
His hands ghost up my sides. “Better?”
I sink down, resting on him, and his hands slip down. I’m overly exposed, embarrassed, trembling, and much more comfortable. I nod.
Lines fan out from his eyes as he smiles gently, and there’s so much raw affection on his face that my heart snags in my chest. His thumbs brush up my stomach where he’s holding me steady, and I lean into his touch, our foreheads almost touching.
My breath with his breath, my hands on his shoulders.
“What else?” he asks softly.
“Hm?”
“Tell me your other rules.”
As he talks, Faust’s hand snakes around my back, beneath his jacket, above my shirt. He presses against the dip of my spine, and I bow toward him on instinct, our lips grazing.
“I—I did. You know them all.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” His nose bumps against mine, each word an almost kiss. “All I know is, no dating, no sex.”
Ban him from saying that word while his mouth is centimeters away. The world would be better for it. “I don’t… ah.” There’s a warm pressure against my neck. His lips, now wet, moving against me as I speak. “I don’t talk to lawyers. And—no cops.”
He hums approvingly and, oh God, I can feel it in my throat. He’s that close. “Go on.”
“And… I don’t forgive. If you hurt me, I don’t, I—” My voice catches as he presses a kiss against my neck, my pulse pounding beneath his lips. “I won’t forgive you.”
His fingers tighten on me, greedy. “Good.”
Fuck me, he really has lost his mind in the exact same way I have.
I’m all heartbeat, a bow strung too tightly.
Hyperconscious of where he’s touching me—my neck, my hips—and the places he isn’t, where the angle of my knees and his lap and our heights haven’t even let us brush.
“Is this still okay?” I ask, my voice almost a pant.
“You’re doing so good. So fucking good for me.”
My blood freezes to a standstill, then rushes through me all at once.
Good. For him. I want to be good for him, I think.
Which is—new, yes. And weird for me, someone who’s been pretty categorically not-good for many years.
Well, okay, that might not be true. I like to think I’m good to my clients.
But usually, people don’t go out of their way to point that out; it’s an awkward business, what I do.
No one is sending me fruit baskets for ruining a shitty guy’s vacation, or slapping gold stars on the report of my life anymore.
Is this a kink? Do I have this kink?
“What about you? What are your rules?” I run my fingers up the back of his head, his damp brown waves soft to the touch. “Like in Paris, when you asked if I was into, you know—it kind of seems like maybe you’re the person who’s actually…”