Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A STOP SIGN
PAST
“ Y ou said you’ve never invited another woman to your home,” I start as we settle on the couch, dinner a distant and delicious memory. “Is that you being honest or you saying anything to try to fuck me?”
He chuckles as he turns to face me, his knee pointing toward me, nearly touching my thigh. I try to ignore the fact that we’re unsupervised and maybe I want to hear that he wants to fuck me. Just that he isn’t trying to do it in some sleazy way.
I don’t need a fa?ade to sleep with him.
But I like this chemistry…if it’s honest. I like feeling like this—wanted and pursued.
“You do realize I don’t have to lie to get a woman in my bed?” His lips do that wicked show of pleasure, his eyes glittering as he watches how his words affect me.
“The bed you don’t invite women into?”
“Figuratively,” he tells me, maintaining that grin of his. “But yes. It’s the truth. This is my sanctuary. ”
I love the way he says that word. It sounds poetic and a little more personal than I’m used to with him.
“So why am I here?”
Rather than answer my question, he continues to prove his previous point.
“If I just wanted to fuck you, I have an office. I could get us a room at my favorite hotel and seduce you with what my life affords me. I guess I thought offering you my personal space would make you feel less like?—”
“The others?” I supply, smirking at the way he groans and runs his hands over his face. It’s then that I notice the thin tan line on his left ring finger.
“You were married,” I say, not needing confirmation, not liking the taste of the sentence as it leaves me mouth.
“I was,” he confirms, dropping his hands. “It ended fairly recently but we’ve been separated for over a year.”
It’s a reminder that this man has lived a whole life in the span of time that I was going through puberty and learning how to be a woman. It’s a reminder of my youth and his age.
“How did you end up here?” The game of questions hasn’t bothered him yet and I’m soaking up every bit of information I can before my desire takes hold and fogs my brain. But the way he leans forward a little and runs his fingers along my shoulder makes me think time is running out.
“I needed a break from Hollywood,” he supplies, staring at my bare skin as he strokes it with his fingertips. “And a friend needed a favor.”
I’m learning this relaxed version of Abraham and I’m somehow trying to connect him with every other Abraham I’ve met; from the stern and surly to the flirty and tempted.
“You make everything sound so simple,” I tell him, watching as his lids lower a fraction and somehow, he’s leaning even closer. There goes that masculine scent of his, smoky and intoxicating, clouding my better judgement .
“Usually, it is,” he murmurs, the ends of his lips lifting as he eyes mine.
“You and I aren’t simple,” I point out, trying not to shiver under his touch.
“You are far from simple,” he confirms, and that beautiful smile is back. I shake my head, unsure if he’s being charming or honest. And as if he can read my mind, he continues.
“Why do you act like you’re some kind of plain woman who blends into the crowd?” He snorts, leaning forward to finger a lock of my hair. Unlike the first time he did it, the night we met, I don’t pull away. “You are a stop sign, from your red hair to the curves of your hips and waist. You are…divine.”
I’m quiet, watching him as he watches me, his fingers stopping just at the ends of my hair.
“You are anything but plain, Sabrina. And anyone who doesn’t see you, doesn’t deserve to have you.”
I can’t help the way my eyes close a fraction, the way my tongue peeks out to wet my lips in anticipation, the way I lean into his touch when his palm slides over my chin to my cheek.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asks me, his thumb running along the corner of my mouth.
In response, I lean forward, pressing my mouth against his as he grips my face. He’s still for a moment before he exhales and takes me in, accepting my body with a tight embrace, accepting my tongue with a languid sweep of his own.
One of his hands stops at the base of my neck, the other sliding along my ribcage before his fingertips dig into me, pressing me into him like he wishes I were inside of him.
No, I wish he was inside me.
I break away from him, abrupt, aware of the way we’re breathing, like there isn’t enough air in the room.
I’m in trouble, I think as he stares at me with those sultry eyes that speak of a lust I’ve never encountered in my twenty-one years. It gives me butterflies…the kind that start in my be lly and work their way down. I’ve heard of this sensation, never having experienced what it was like for myself. Before I can move away, he’s pulling me close again, pressing his lips to my cheek and then my neck.
“I’ve wanted to taste you from the moment I saw your flaming red hair and the way you looked at me like I was a mere annoyance,” he breathes into my air. “No one has ever looked at me like that.”
“That’s what did you in?” I ask, my eyes fluttering shut as I try to remain composed. This man is making love to me. What the fuck?
“And your beautiful breasts that you hid from me.”
I pause a moment, thinking about my barely a handful boobs and how I hadn’t noticed him noticing them that night. My T-shirt hadn’t done much for my shape at the time but I’m sure that since then, he’s been able to take a gander at what I’m working with.
He called them beautiful, I think to myself, trying to stamp down my inner swoon.
“You sure know how to seduce someone,” I whisper, feeling like a fumbling and inept teenager. Abraham is well-versed in lover language, where I’m used to young men who fuck like jack rabbits and have to ask if you came.
“Will you show them to me?” He ignores my statement, pulling back to stare into my eyes. As if I’m promising him something priceless.
Yes.
“Only time will tell,” is all I can muster, hoping that in time, I start to truly feel as valuable as he’s making me think I am.
“You tease me with time when you know it’s not promised, Stellina .”
“Why do you call me that?” It’s hard to get the question out when he’s so focused on me, so close that I can see each of his dark lashes as he lowers his eyes to look at my lips .
“That first night, you were scared to make eye contact. You kept staring up at the stars like they offered you comfort when I just wanted you to look at me .” He presses a light, tentative kiss to my lips, soothing my slight discomfort at feeling so seen.
Moments of that first night come back to me like waves and I settle on one that has me pulling back from him.
I’m about to share a truth I’ve never uttered to anyone, and I can’t think of a better person to share with than someone who is my very own secret.
“You asked me why I dyed my hair.” I take a shuddering breath before I continue. “My mother was…unkind. She had a severe case of bipolar disorder and mixed with her alcoholism, it led to a lot of trauma. Anyway, she had dark hair and…in an effort to remove her from my identity, I did this to myself.”
I think about the day she died, the many missed calls I had waiting for me when I finished my last class for the day.
And when I found out she was gone, I didn’t rush home. I stayed and finished my classes and sent flowers. Because even though she’d been softer, needier, in the last few years of her life, I would always see the monster in her eyes. It was only held by a short leash, able to strike with the slightest inconvenience if her sobriety and medication weren’t involved.
This woman struck us, nearly starved us, and forgot about us too many times to count. Penelope Milas was unwell and the scars that pepper my body are proof.
“You changed your hair and I moved to another continent,” he whispers, pulling me back to him. I blink a few times, trying to keep the tears at bay. I haven’t cried over her in such a long time. And maybe I’m just crying over what could’ve been, had she gotten help sooner.
Mostly, I’m crying for the little girl I was with dark hair who flinched anytime her mother was near.
Embarrassment courses through me and I try to pull away, hide my face, anything to get the fuck away from him. But he doesn’t let me, shaking his head as I start to speak.
“Shit, I didn’t think I’d cry on our first date?—”
“Ah, ah. Our second date,” he supplies with a smile, wiping my tears with his thumbs before he sits back, pulling me to lay flush against him.
“We’re both two people just trying to find light in a world that’s fed us a lot of darkness,” he tells me, and it makes me want to ask about his darkness, but I can’t handle his along with my own.