Chapter Sixteen
Chap-ter Six-teen
A dam called her ev-ery day over the next two weeks. They went out on dates dur-ing the week and spent at least one day a week-end to-gether.
And they didn’t have sex.
Prior to meet-ing Adam, Dina would never have char-ac-ter-ized her-self as sex-starved. She never would have char-ac-ter-ized her-self as “sex” any-thing, if she were be-ing com-pletely hon-est.
She’d had boyfriends—mostly sev-eral years older than her, since she used to re-late bet-ter to older men who ap-pre-ci-ated a woman with a brain. She kept a box of con-doms un-der her bed. The box had been opened and sev-eral con-doms had been used. But sex had never been some-thing she thought about very of-ten.
Af-ter meet-ing Adam?
She thought about sex con-stantly.
And his de-sire to take things slow, to woo her, or what-ever crack-pot idea he had in his head, while lovely, was driv-ing her mad.
That rom-com movie they’d gone to? She’d barely been able to fo-cus. The scent of his af-ter-shave, min-gled with the but-tery pop-corn smell, had al-most made her hy-per-ven-ti-late.
The night they’d gone to a karaoke bar? It was a damn good thing the words of the songs had played in front of her, be-cause his arm wrapped around her shoul-ders had sent tin-gles run-ning up and down her spine, and if not for the teleprompter, she would have been un-able to re-mem-ber a sin-gle word.
She had no rec-ol-lec-tion of the taste of any of the food they’d eaten, since the only taste she could re-call was his mouth and his skin.
And to-day they were go-ing ice-skat-ing. She’d be lucky if the heat of her de-sire for him didn’t melt the ice be-neath her feet and send her plung-ing into the icy wa-ters be-low.
At least she’d fi-nally be able to cool off.
Her apart-ment buzzer sounded, she grabbed her skates and skipped down the stairs to meet Adam. She was go-ing to jump him af-ter skat-ing and con-vince him they needed to have sex. To-day.
Still think-ing about all the ways she was go-ing to con-vince Adam to have sex with her, she didn’t see him stand-ing on her front porch un-til she was on top of him. He grabbed her by the el-bows, os-ten-si-bly to keep them both from top-pling over.
It was the per-fect op-por-tu-nity to press her-self against him and kiss his lips.
“Whoa, there,” he said against her mouth. “In a hurry?”
To have sex with you. “I didn’t want to keep you wait-ing.” I won-der what sex on the porch would be like?
He nipped her lower lip and she melted against him, drop-ping her skates and wrap-ping her arms around his neck. He groaned, and pulled away.
“Come on, the ice awaits.”
Def-i-nitely go-ing to melt through it.
With a sigh, she picked up her skates and fol-lowed him to the car. “I thought Men-nen Arena would be a bet-ter op-tion,” he said as he pulled out into traf-fic. “I never fully trust the lake is frozen, no mat-ter how many peo-ple are on it.”
Well, at least she wouldn’t drown when she melted the ice.
Once they parked and paid for ice time, they sat on the bench and laced up their skates. Adam took her hand in his and they both stepped onto the ice. Push-ing off with her left foot, she dropped his hand as she ad-justed to mov-ing on the ice. Adam was a strong skater, and grace-ful, too. Dina hadn’t skated since she was a teenager and had been in-vited to some lit-tle cousin’s birth-day party. She’d spent most of the time hold-ing up the younger kids so they wouldn’t fall down, and her cur-rent skills were rusty. But with Adam’s help, af-ter a cou-ple of laps, she had the rhythm and bal-ance down pat.
This time, she seized Adam’s hand and squeezed.
Look-ing down at her, his mouth broad-ened in a grin. She tripped and he grabbed her waist.
“You okay?”
They were still mov-ing and Adam had her pressed against his side, seem-ing re-luc-tant to let her go even though she’d re-gained her bal-ance af-ter a stroke or two.
“I’m fine.” This time, she didn’t look at his face. It was hard enough to con-cen-trate pressed up against him, feel-ing his mus-cles, his warm breath tick-ling her neck.
His strokes were sure, and he glided with ease. They skated around the rink in si-lence, un-til he spun them around. She caught her breath and laughed as the lights in the rink twin-kled and his warm body seemed to en-velop her. Clos-ing her eyes at the dizzy-ing sen-sa-tion, she let him spin them across the ice, un-til fi-nally he stopped in the cen-ter.
She opened her eyes to see him look-ing down at her. “Like that?” he asked.
She nod-ded and took his hand as he be-gan mov-ing again. “Where’d you learn to skate so well?”
His stride fal-tered, but he righted him-self. Had she not been so close to him, she prob-a-bly wouldn’t have even no-ticed his mis-step. He stared across the rink. “My mother taught me.”
“That must have been nice.”
He shrugged.
“Did you two skate to-gether of-ten?”
He waited so long to an-swer, she thought he would re-main silent. But he fi-nally an-swered.
“She took me skat-ing ev-ery Sat-ur-day. Af-ter-wards, we’d go out for fresh donuts at this lo-cal bak-ery down the street. It’s no longer there.”
The “nei-ther is she” re-mained un-spo-ken, but Dina heard it loud and clear. “How old were you when she left?”
He glided with her and from the cor-ner of her eye, she could see him swal-low. “Seven.”
She squeezed his hand, want-ing to say some-thing com-fort-ing. But what did you say to some-one whose mother had left him?
“For a long time, I blamed my-self,” he said. “Now I mostly blame my fa-ther.”
His “mostly” com-ment told her more than any-thing else he’d said, be-cause no mat-ter how much blame he’d shifted to his fa-ther, Dina would bet a part of him blamed him-self. Sud-denly, his ques-tions about why Dina stayed with him made sense. Her throat hurt from the urge to cry. In-stead, she squeezed his hand again and rested her head on his shoul-der for a brief mo-ment be-fore con-cen-trat-ing on re-main-ing up-right.
“My dad used to take me to the li-brary ev-ery Fri-day af-ter-noon,” she said. “He’d come home early for Shab-bat and we’d go bor-row enough books to last me through the week-end.”
“So that’s where you get your love of read-ing.”
She nod-ded. “To this day, my arms ache from car-ry-ing too many books ev-ery time I go into the chil-dren’s sec-tion.”
“Do your par-ents still live around here?”
She shook her head. “No, they moved to St. Louis when I was in col-lege. My dad’s a pro-fes-sor at a uni-ver-sity there.”
“And are they as smart as you?”
She glanced side-ways at him, but he wasn’t mak-ing fun of her. “My dad is a physics pro-fes-sor, my mom is a lin-guist and my two broth-ers are doc-tors.”
He turned so he was skat-ing back-wards, fac-ing her. “Yeah, but are they as smart as you?”
It was the first time some-one had heard her fam-ily’s pro-fes-sions and didn’t make some com-ment about her only be-ing a li-brar-ian. It was the first time, for that mat-ter, that a man her own age val-ued her in-tel-li-gence. She swal-lowed. Her heart rate sped up and the tears she’d swal-lowed be-fore prick-led be-hind her eye-lids. She blinked quickly be-fore an-swer-ing. “We’re all pretty smart.”
With a nod, he re-sumed skat-ing next to her. “It’s hard liv-ing up to fam-ily ex-pec-ta-tions, real or imag-i-nary,” he said.
She never thought any-one would un-der-stand what it was like to live in the shadow of her bril-liant fam-ily, but Adam seemed to im-me-di-ately. A knot some-where in-side, one she’d al-ways felt and had al-ways picked at, loos-ened. This man, this amaz-ing, com-pli-cated man…
“I’m thirsty,” Adam said. “Want to stop for a drink?”
It took her a few sec-onds to process what he said and by the time she did, they were al-ready skat-ing to-ward the exit. They hob-bled over to the re-fresh-ment stand, where Adam or-dered two hot choco-lates and two bot-tled wa-ters. Find-ing an empty ta-ble in the back, they sat and peo-ple-watched.
Or rather, Adam peo-ple-watched.
Dina Adam-watched.
His in-nate un-der-stand-ing of her, and his demon-stra-tion of vul-ner-a-bil-ity, made him even more at-trac-tive to her. He tipped his head back and gulped most of the wa-ter in the wa-ter bot-tle. His Adam’s ap-ple bobbed and the light shone on his skin. His hand wrapped around the bot-tle, the same hand that cupped her jaw when he kissed her, or her neck when he drew her close. His lips pursed around the mouth of the bot-tle, wa-ter moist-en-ing them, and she licked her own lips with de-sire. He re-turned the bot-tle to the ta-ble and the clap of the bot-tle against the Formica made her jump.
She drank her own wa-ter, slak-ing her phys-i-cal thirst, but leav-ing her sex-ual de-sire un-ful-filled. Her hot choco-late was steam-ing and she played with the cup. She didn’t need any-thing to make her hot-ter.
“Not a fan?” Adam asked. He nod-ded to-ward her cup.
“Oh, it’s hot, I’m let-ting it cool a lit-tle.” And me.
“What do you think their story is?” he asked, in-di-cat-ing a cou-ple two ta-bles over. They were both on their phones, look-ing to ev-ery-one else as if they weren’t pay-ing any at-ten-tion to each other.
“Brother and sis-ter,” Dina said.
Adam stared at them a mo-ment longer. “Nope. I think they’re send-ing each other dirty texts.”
Dina choked on the hot choco-late she’d just sipped and her eyes wa-tered. Adam leaned over to help her and she waved him away. Her throat stung from the heat of the liq-uid, but she got her-self un-der con-trol and wiped her mouth with a nap-kin be-fore speak-ing.
“That was un-fair.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Be-cause you can’t tell a per-son some-thing like that while they’re drink-ing.”
“Should I have texted it in-stead?” he asked with a wink.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re im-pos-si-ble.” But her neck heated at the thought of the con-tent of those texts and she tried to dis-tract her-self. “Do you have any?”
“Dirty texts?” He pulled out his phone and Dina squeaked.
“No!” Peo-ple around them turned their head and she ducked, hear-ing Adam chuckle softly. “Sib-lings. Broth-ers or sis-ters.”
His re-laxed ex-te-rior changed once again, tight-en-ing and grow-ing wary. His jaw vi-brated, as if he were clench-ing and un-clench-ing his teeth. “No, just me.”
“I’ll bet that has its ad-van-tages.”
He shrugged, star-ing into his hot choco-late. “I never thought about it re-ally. What’s it like hav-ing sib-lings?”
“Com-pli-cated. It’s like be-ing in an un-end-ing com-pe-ti-tion, where the stakes are con-stantly raised.”
“At least they pro-vide a dis-trac-tion.”
She waited for him to ex-plain fur-ther, but he re-mained silent and she could al-most see him rais-ing his walls. Only this time, they weren’t quite as high. She’d knocked a few down and she was de-ter-mined to tackle the rest. If he’d let her.
Adam forcibly re-laxed each part of his body—his neck, his shoul-ders and his hands—and tried to clear his head. He’d given away more about him-self than he’d in-tended, but he’d learned more than he’d ex-pected about her as well.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“Why? Don’t you want to skate some more?”
“Not un-less you do.”
He led her out to the car. He went to turn it on, but she stopped him with her hand on his up-per arm. “Why don’t you like to talk about your fam-ily?”
His hand gripped the key and he forced him-self, once again, to loosen his grip. His chest tight-ened and his gaze trav-elled from the key to her hand, up her arm to her vi-o-let eyes, un-blink-ing and kind. Crap.
“There’s noth-ing to say.”
“You don’t act like a man with noth-ing to say.”
The air in the car grew heavy and he needed space to breathe, but short of open-ing the car door, there was nowhere to go. He pulled at the chest strap of the seat-belt, un-til he felt more pres-sure on his other hand. Now it was be-tween both of hers and she was stroking it, like one would a fright-ened puppy.
He had noth-ing against pup-pies, un-less he was be-ing com-pared to one.
Swal-low-ing, he tried to grin at her, but it came out as more of a gri-mace. “You’ve met my fa-ther.”
“And I’m still here.”
Good point.
“It’s not your fault your mom left.”
He rubbed his other hand, the one Dina wasn’t hold-ing, across the top of his head. He needed a hair-cut. “You can’t pos-si-bly know that.”
“It’s never the kid’s fault. Have you talked to your dad about it?”
He choked on a bit-ter laugh he tried to swal-low. “He likes the con-ver-sa-tion even less than I do.”
“That must have been hard for you to deal with.”
He didn’t know how to an-swer that, or even if it re-quired an an-swer. So he fo-cused on her hands wrapped around his. They were cool, but sooth-ing. They didn’t add to the heav-i-ness around him. In fact, they cen-tered him. “It’s done.”
She stared at him a mo-ment longer and he won-dered what she saw. But she gave noth-ing away and fi-nally, she let him have his hand back. He wasn’t sure if he was dis-ap-pointed or re-lieved.
With-out a word, he started the car.
“Come back to my place,” she said. Her voice was low, but it wasn’t a ques-tion. If it had been any-one but Dina, he would have said it was a com-mand.
Not in the mood for an ar-gu-ment, and re-ally, what was there to ar-gue about, he drove to her apart-ment and parked in front. She climbed out of the car and waited on the side-walk un-til he joined her. Then, tak-ing his hand once again, she led him into her apart-ment.
Once in-side, his mouth went dry and for the first time, he didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t a mo-ron when it came to women. He could read the signs, and Dina’s clearly pointed to sex. From the way she’d touched him fre-quently, to the way her tongue had just slid across her lips, and the way she gave him so lit-tle per-sonal space as she stood next to him.
She held her hand out for his coat and when he gave it to her, she held his hand just a mo-ment longer than nec-es-sary.
They’d had sex once and it had been great. But he was try-ing to change, to show her and him-self that he was dif-fer-ent. He wouldn’t have sex with her again un-til they’d spent time get-ting to know each other bet-ter.
Re-turn-ing to his side, she placed a hand on his arm. His mus-cle twitched and her fin-gers tight-ened. Her gaze was fo-cused on his arm, and his was fo-cused on her. She pulled away and left the room.
He couldn’t af-ford to get at-tached and have her leave him. It’s why he never went for se-ri-ous re-la-tion-ships with women. Ca-sual flings? Sure. Him leav-ing first? Def-i-nitely. But Dina? Did she de-serve some-one like him? Prob-a-bly not.
“You’re think-ing too hard,” Dina said, re-turn-ing with a bot-tle of wine and two glasses. She gave him the bot-tle to open and when their fin-gers touched, he felt a jolt of elec-tric-ity arc be-tween them. Stand-ing this close to her, he could see her in-di-vid-ual eye-lashes fram-ing pupils that were wide with de-sire.
She wanted him. He wanted her. What was the prob-lem?
“I seem to think a lot around you,” he said, pour-ing the wine and clink-ing his glass against hers.
Was she al-ways this bla-tantly sex-ual? An-other rea-son why they needed to get to know each other bet-ter. She kept her gaze trained on him, took a sip, swal-lowed, and then ran her tongue once again across her lips. His groin tight-ened. Be-fore he could force his brain to fig-ure things out, she stepped to-ward him and took the glass out of his hand.
Oh God. She pressed her body against him and rose on tip-toe to kiss him, cre-at-ing a tor-tur-ous fric-tion be-tween them. His hands, which had been sus-pended in some kind of midair limbo, dropped to her hips.
Mean-while, her hands brushed against his back-side and squeezed.
He groaned, and when he opened his mouth she slipped her tongue in-side. She tasted of chardon-nay, she smelled of co-conut and he was done for. So much for wait-ing. Lift-ing her up, he car-ried her across the room, head-ing to-ward her bed-room. She wrapped her legs around his waist.
Adam leaned against the wall and all of a sud-den, her hands were ev-ery-where—his hair, his neck, his back, his chest. She nib-bled his ear and trailed kisses along his jaw. Blood rushed to his groin and he felt light-headed, a buzzing sound in his ears so loud he couldn’t think. He just knew he had to have her right here, right now.
And she seemed to agree. She fum-bled with the but-tons on his shirt, push-ing the fab-ric back and off his shoul-ders, rub-bing her fin-gers across his chest and driv-ing him mad. He low-ered her to the floor and pulled at her jeans, and she pulled at his at the same time. A mo-ment later, both pairs were down. He ran his fin-gers be-neath the waist-band of her panties, dip-ping down fur-ther and feel-ing how wet she was for him al-ready. He hard-ened painfully, his cock jump-ing against her as if of its own vo-li-tion. She quiv-ered against him and an-gled her hips to-ward him.
“Are you sure?” he ground out.
“Yes.”
That one word was all it took. He grabbed a con-dom from his wal-let, hands shak-ing as he un-wrapped it and slid it on. Us-ing the wall for sup-port, he slid into her, try-ing to go slowly, but with her grip-ping him and rock-ing against him, it was al-most im-pos-si-ble. She was so tight and her mus-cles clenched around him. His pant-ing min-gled with hers and sweat dripped down his back. God she felt good. His legs shook and he braced him-self as he plunged in-side her, deeper still. His fo-cus nar-rowed un-til all he could feel was her, all he could smell was her. She screamed her re-lease and ev-ery-thing around him went dark un-til sud-denly he was over the edge. Red and yel-low lights flashed like a hun-dred fire-works light-ing up the night sky and he roared.
When their breath-ing eased and his heart rate slowed, he low-ered him-self, with her still in his arms, to sit the floor and pulled her into his lap. She smelled of sex, co-conuts and her, and he in-haled deeply, lean-ing into her neck.
“Why didn’t we do this sooner,” he asked.
She punched his arm. “Re-ally?”
Smil-ing against her skin, he let her hair cover his face. God he loved her curls.
Her fin-gers drew small cir-cles on his back and a deep sense of peace set-tled over him.
“This is good, right?” he asked.
“This is very good.”
“I wish I had bet-ter news for you,” Ja-cob said.
Adam’s ev-ery mus-cle tensed.
“I ex-tended some feel-ers. Peo-ple are hir-ing.” He trailed off and tapped his pen-cil on his desk.
Adam frowned. It wasn’t like his friend to be this un-com-fort-able. “That’s good. I can take it from here if you just give me the con-tact info.”
Ja-cob shook his head, leaned for-ward and stared at him. “I can’t. Be-cause as soon as they heard I was check-ing things out for you, they sud-denly lost in-ter-est. I even tried not men-tion-ing you, but they’re all talk-ing about how your firm is bungling big-name cases. I’m sorry, Adam. You need to give it some time to let things set-tle.”
Adam thrust him-self out of his chair and stalked around the of-fice, rub-bing his hand over the top of his head. He wanted to shout. No, he wanted to kill his fa-ther.
“What the hell did he do to me?”
“I don’t think it was your dad, Adz.”
“Who else could it have been?”
Ja-cob spun around in his chair. “What about the para-le-gal? Could she have told some-one?”
Adam turned to-ward the win-dow and looked out, im-ages of his fa-ther, the para-le-gal, and his for-mer of-fice shut-tling through his brain. “I don’t know why she would. I mean, I know the par-ale-gals in our of-fice talk, but be-tween dif-fer-ent law firms? I can’t imag-ine that hap-pen-ing.”
“Your dad’s an ass. Sorry.”
Let-ting out a laugh that was far from amused, Adam turned back to Ja-cob. “I need a new ca-reer plan.”
“Well, if you can fig-ure out who’s spread-ing the news, maybe you can do some-thing from that an-gle.”
“The horse not only left the barn, but it left the state. It doesn’t mat-ter if I can find out who’s af-ter me. The news is out there. Shit, I am not let-ting them end my ca-reer!”
“I don’t think you should ig-nore who might be try-ing to hurt your ca-reer. I think it’s worth look-ing into.”
“Oh, I’ll def-i-nitely be look-ing into it, don’t worry about that.”
Ja-cob flipped a pen-cil through his fin-gers. “How are things with Dina?”
For the first time, Adam smiled. “Good.” Great .
“Have you talked to her?”
He could play dumb and pre-tend he didn’t know what Ja-cob was talk-ing about, but he didn’t think he could pull that off. “Not yet.”
Ja-cob shook his head. “How se-ri-ous are you two?”
Adam pulled at his col-lar.
“That se-ri-ous? Have you had sex yet?”
“Twice.”
Ja-cob let out a breath, flut-ter-ing pa-pers on his desk. “Oh boy. I hope you know what you’re do-ing.”
“If I tell her, she’ll leave.”
“If you don’t, she might any-way.”
“I can man-age it.”
Ja-cob walked with him to the door. “Go through your dad’s em-ploy-ees and see who jumps out. And tell Dina.”