4. Liv
Liv
Theo bought me a glass of wine as promised, along with a tumbler of whiskey for himself.
He sat next to me at the bar, exchanging pleasantries over the jazz blasting from the speakers.
I kept waiting to find fault with him, but he was polite, without so much as a hint of a come-on.
Despite his earlier comment about the dress, I started to think I’d misread his signals, especially when he got to his feet, glancing over at the piano.
“I should get back to it,” he said, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes.
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to keep you.
” I looked down at my glass, embarrassed.
After Gray, I’d sworn off men, tonight’s disastrous date aside.
I’d figured flirting would be like riding a bicycle—it’d come right back to me after a break—but my radar must be on the fritz.
Which was too bad, because I was willing to make an exception to my no-men rule to get to know Theo a little better.
After all, it wasn’t like I was going to marry the guy.
He gave a deep, amused chuckle, startling me. “You weren’t keeping me. I’m the one who’s sorry, abandoning a beautiful woman.” His fingers brushed the back of my hand, a light touch that sent electricity coursing through me. “I don’t usually do this, but...will you wait?”
Ah. So maybe my radar hadn’t been on the fritz after all.
“I don’t usually do this either,” I admitted.
Even before I’d married Gray, I hadn’t been the pick-up-a-guy-in-a-bar type of girl.
Gray and I had met at a party hosted by mutual friends.
He’d come with another woman, someone he’d just started seeing; we’d hit it off, and two days later he called me, saying it was over with her, and would I like to meet for drinks?
I should’ve known then what kind of guy he was.
But I’d been young, and dumb, and foolish enough to confuse infatuation with love.
I wouldn’t make that same mistake again.
For that reason as well as so many others, saying no to Theo’s question would be the practical thing to do, not to mention the way I’d been raised to behave.
But I didn’t want to. What I wanted was to find out if he kissed as well as he sang. If his body lived up to its promise.
“I’ll wait,” I said, a frisson of excitement coursing through me.
And I did, through one song after another, until he shut the lid of the piano, downed the dregs of his whiskey, and came to stand by my side as the last of the patrons spilled onto the sidewalk.
The bartender, who had been loading the glasses into the dishwasher, gave the counter a cursory swipe.
Then, at a pointed look from Theo, he followed the customers out the door.
He turned to look at me, dark eyebrows raised. “Alone at last.”
I opened my mouth to reply, starting to rethink my earlier assessment.
Maybe I should leave, after all. He didn’t seem like a serial killer, or the type of guy who would assault a woman, but what did I know?
Sure, he was hot as fire and he had a singing voice that made me want to pin him to a wall and have my way with him. Still—
He cut off my musings by moving past me, close enough that his shirt brushed my arm.
I caught my breath, inhaling his scent: soap and salt and an intoxicating, spicy aroma I couldn’t quite identify.
I thought maybe it was just him. Stepping back, I fought the dangerous impulse to wrap my arms around his neck and press my lips to his.
Theo turned, wearing a wicked smile that made me wonder if everything I was thinking was stamped on my face, like my mother had always warned it was.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “but I need to clean up a little, since I tossed Jonas out early. Don’t want the opening crew to come in tomorrow afternoon to this mess. ”
Puzzled, I regarded him. “For a piano player, you’ve got a diverse job description.”
“Comes with the territory.” He shrugged. “It won’t take long.”
I glanced around the room. It wasn’t that bad—glasses and napkins littering tables, chairs out of order, a jacket abandoned in a corner—but the idea of having something to do put me at ease. “I’ll help you,” I offered.
“But your dress.” He gestured at it, indicating its general unsuitability for cleaning endeavors. Then his gaze settled somewhere around my hips and held.
I cleared my throat. “It’s a slip dress, not a hoop skirt and corset. I think I can manage picking up a few glasses. If I find I’m hampered, I’ll let you know.”
His eyes flicked up to mine and he laughed, a deep chuckle that sent a rush of electricity through me. “Do you actually own a hoop skirt and corset?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I retorted, and he grinned.
“We’ll file that under ‘to be determined at a later date, if I’m so lucky.
’ If you insist, Liv, I’d be grateful for your help.
But first, here.” He ducked behind the counter, and when he straightened, the Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic filled the room.
“Classic cleaning music. All right. Let’s get it done. ”
One might think watching Mr. Dark and Sexy wield a broom would have lessened his appeal, but my libido—having spent nine years putting up with a man whose version of cleaning was flipping the comforter over to the other side when guests visited—had decided the opposite was true.
I focused on tidying up, doing my best not to steal glimpses as he bent to load glasses into the dishwasher or stretched to put a bottle on the shelves above the bar, but I was fighting a losing battle.
My only consolation was that most of the time, when I glanced over at him, he was looking right back at me.
Fifteen minutes later, the floor was mopped, the tables clean, the jacket stashed in the lost-and-found, and I was feeling a lot more comfortable than I had before.
After all, I doubted the average serial killer rolled up his sleeves and rinsed dirty dishes in the sink before spiriting his victims off to his lair.
Turning off the music, Theo dried his hands on a towel and came out from behind the bar. “You ready?”
I opened my mouth to tell him I was. But the two glasses of Shiraz I’d drunk must’ve affected me more than I realized, because what came out instead was, “Before we go, will you play something for me?”
One of his black brows arched in surprise, but he smiled in acquiescence and crossed to the piano without hesitation, sliding onto the bench. “Got something particular in mind?”
Self-conscious, I shook my head. “You pick.”
Theo sat for a moment, deliberating. And then he put his fingers to the keys and began to play, the notes rising into the space between us. Another classic: Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence, a song I’d always loved.
He ducked his head, his hair falling into his eyes as his voice filled the room, singing about communing with darkness and walking alone.
He sang as if the song had personal meaning, his voice lingering on each syllable.
Mesmerized, I drifted toward him as he sang about loneliness and prophets’ words scrawled on the walls of subways and tenements.
I’d thought he was sexy before, but this was different—like he was giving me a glimpse into his soul.
His fingers stilled and his eyes met mine, the expression in them open and raw. He opened his mouth to speak, and before I could overthink it, I leaned down and stopped whatever he’d been about to say with a kiss. He tasted intoxicating, like whiskey and spearmint gum.
Theo froze. And then he reached for me, cupping my face in his palms. His skin was hot against mine, almost feverish. I wound my fingers in his hair and he moaned, an eager sound that elicited the same from me. My pulse picked up, pounding until I was sure he could feel it.
I jerked back from him, trying to pull myself together. It didn’t help: He looked sexier than ever, his black hair tousled and his eyes half-lidded. That brow of his arched again in a question.
Atomic only had a single window, and we were nowhere in sight of it. Still, I couldn’t help feeling like an exhibitionist. “Maybe we shouldn’t… Aren’t you worried someone’s going to come in?” I said, in a belated attempt at prudence.
He grinned at me—not the shy smile from earlier, but a cocky smirk that didn’t make him any less alluring. “Nope. I own the bar. And Jonas locked the door when he left.”
“You...what? You own the—”
“Atomic is mine,” he clarified. “And we’re closed. No one is coming in unless you and I want them to. And right now, all I want is to kiss you again. May I?”
I met his hazel eyes and saw nothing in their depths but sincerity and undeniable desire. After everything, I deserved to have a man look at me that way. I deserved this.
My doubts dissolved. “When you put it like that—yes,” I whispered.
“Good,” he whispered back, and then he tugged me down to him.
I gasped, and his tongue slid into my mouth, a slow, sensuous licking that had me craving more. He rose from the piano bench, tilting my head back to deepen the kiss, one hand settling on my hip with a possessive grip that sent heat curling through my belly.
I shifted, restless, and he nipped my lower lip in reprimand, then soothed the sting with his fingertip.
I nipped him back, a challenge, and his eyes met mine, their hazel shade gone midnight-dark.
His hand tightened on my hip, pulling me closer, and I shivered at the weight of him, hard, against me.
Fire seared through my veins, chasing away logic and any remaining second thoughts.
I wasn’t the kind of woman who made out with random strangers in a deserted bar. I hadn’t been that person before my disastrous marriage and afterward, every potential date had come with a pro-and-con list. I wasn’t careless, or impulsive, or reckless.
And yet, I wanted Theo. I wanted to stop thinking, to start feeling, to do something just for me. He didn’t know who I was, about my family, my daughter, my divorce, my career. He just wanted me, and it was liberating. Freeing.
“Liv?” he said, his voice low. “Okay?”
That honey-over-gravel tone of his sent another shiver through me. “More than okay,” I told him, meaning it. “Freaking great.”
Relief flashed through his eyes as he brushed his lips over mine in acknowledgment. This kiss was different, almost tender. And yet there it was again: that incendiary chemistry, heightening with each stroke of his tongue and glide of his fingertips across my skin.
I’d always thought the idea of a kiss making you weak in the knees was a Disney cliché, but my legs shook, threatening to dump me onto the floor.
He caught me, his laughter a low murmur that echoed in the empty room.
Then he was walking me backward, his hands buried in my hair, his mouth on mine.
We hit something solid, which jangled in protest. His piano.
Theo lifted me, laying me down on top of it as if I were made of spun glass. His body slid over mine, his lips ghosting down my neck to my collarbone. Beneath us, the keys played a discordant complaint.
His finger caught the strap of my dress, pulling it off my shoulder.
He trailed a line of kisses down my arm, leaving a tingling sensation behind, and I hitched a leg over his hip.
The taste of whiskey swam through my head, but instead of swallowing the world in a haze, each detail clarified—the cold wood of the piano, the warmth of Theo’s body.
His fingers twined in my hair, yanking the bobby pins loose so they cascaded in a hail to the floor. His words were heated whispers against my skin. “So beautiful...just let me…”
I fought the urge to pinch myself. How had I gone from the nightmarish dinner with Mustache Man to a seduction straight out of a romance novel?
This was someone else’s life, not mine. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d felt this way: a pure physical embodiment of mutual desire, not Chloe’s mom or therapist par excellence or Gray’s beleaguered ex-spouse.
“God.” He ran his hands over me, tracing my shape, then tugged at the other strap of my dress, a question. “Please,” he said, his fingers stilling.
The heck with worrying how this might look or how I would feel about it tomorrow. Emboldened by Shiraz and secondhand whiskey, I undid the strap and let it fall.
Theo gave a low rumble of appreciation, and I arched against him, eager. I didn’t recognize the woman I was in this moment, confident and unafraid to ask for what she needed. Even if she—if this—was gone in the morning, I wanted to savor every second of it.
“I want you,” I told him, a sentence I’d never said aloud before. If I were living in a romance novel for the night, I might as well lean into the fantasy.
I expected it to sound ridiculous. But the growl he made, the hunger with which his mouth took mine, told me Theo didn’t find it ridiculous at all.
His hands went to his jeans, which fell to the side in a clatter of keys and phone and belt buckle, and then he was stretched full-length on top of me, heavy and warm.
He met my eyes, asking for permission, and I nodded, my heart pounding with anticipation.
Then he was fumbling in his wallet for a condom, hazel eyes darker still with desire, and I was guiding him over me, into me, and he was filling me, moving slow and then faster, a delicious, addictive friction.
I clenched around him, and he moaned, his head thrown back. “Slow down,” he begged. “If you do that, I won’t last—”
I didn’t want him to last. I wanted all of him, now, wild and undone. I sank my teeth into his biceps and he surrendered with a hiss of pain, driving into me, hard. Again and again, until I teetered on the precipice and he gritted out my name between clenched teeth.
We fell over the edge together. Afterward, his arms around me and his face against my neck, he whispered into the dark, “Christ, Liv. You were made for me.”