Chapter 7
He was looking forward to seeing Seth Mays again. To touching him. To—
“Shit!” I hissed, dropping the pencil I’d found on the kitchen counter that I was trying to take back to the cup on my desk.
I did not need or want to know anything more about that.
First of all, it was none of my business.
Second of all, I didn’t want to be thinking about whatever it was that person had been thinking every time Mays, a CSI who worked for the Richmond police, brought some bit of bone or scrap of bloody fabric in for Ward to touch in order to make contact with a murder victim.
Third, I didn’t really want to have those kinds of thoughts in my head unless they were mine.
And even then I wasn’t always all that comfortable with them.
It wasn’t like I never thought about that sort of thing. I did. I just… It was complicated for me. When you add having been locked in Tranquil Brook to the fact that I didn’t really like interacting with people… Let’s just say I didn’t date much. Or at all.
I’d once tried, at the suggestion of my former psychologist, who thought I needed to get out and meet people more, one of those friends-or-dates kinds of dating apps. I’d gone on a few dates and hadn’t enjoyed any of them.
I know that I’m not exactly an easy person to interact with.
I don’t like touching things, and my social skills, well, to borrow a phrase from Mason, leave a bit to be desired.
I have a hard time reading people, knowing what they’re thinking or feeling, and an even harder time coming up with the sorts of things that are considered appropriate for small talk.
Usually, anyway.
I felt like, aside from a few moments here and there, dinner with Raj Parikh had gone okay.
It wasn’t a date, of course, and it wasn’t like we were now friends, but I thought we’d at least had a decent conversation, and I hadn’t spent the whole time stressing about how stupid I thought I sounded or feeling like I didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation, which was actually pretty nice.
Most of my dates ended after a few hours, often without so much as a handshake.
Except the couple that had ended with my dates being exceedingly annoyed that I wasn’t going to sleep with them.
One had gotten… not violent, but pushy. Until someone else in the café where we’d met intervened.
Which had not made me terribly inclined to try using that app ever again.
So I just tried not to think about sex. It mostly worked.
Unless I picked up something that someone else had been holding while thinking about sex.
I glared down at the pencil.
My gloves were in my desk drawer, so I went back to get them.
“Hey—this yours?”
I turned around, finding Elliot Crane, his jeans stained and a little ripped, having picked it up. It was, but I didn’t want it anymore, so I shook my head.
He spun it around his fingers—a neat trick, actually. “Mind if I keep it?”
I shook my head again.
Elliot smiled at me. “Thanks. Can’t ever have too many pencils as a carpenter.”
I blinked. “Why?” I asked.
He looked a little startled, as though no one had ever asked him that question.
“We use them to mark things—where to cut, where to line up one piece of wood against another, where to put a screw or finishing nail or whatever.” He smiled.
“I usually use drafting pencils, but I left them in the storage unit.”
“Storage unit?” I asked.
“Yeah, Taavi’s unit. It’s where I’m actually working, since I’d make a hell of a mess in here if I did the build in the office.”
“Oh,” I said. I supposed that was true. If you were cutting a lot of wood, I guess you’d generate a lot of saw dust, and that would probably irritate Mason, who was extremely fastidious.
“Just getting a few measurements to make sure that the pieces I bring in will fit through the doors.” He smiled again.
“Does that mean it’s almost done?” I asked.
“The basic table, yeah,” he replied. “I’ll do the carving and inlay here, though—it needs to happen once the table is fully assembled, and,” he continued, a half smile curving his lips.
“I figure it’s important to make sure that someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing supervises that process. ”
I nodded. “Yes,” I agreed. “That’s probably true.”
He chuckled a little, spinning the pencil over his fingers one more time before tucking it into his back pocket.
“You ready to go, asshole?” came Hart’s voice.
I blinked, startled.
“Yeah, dickhead,” came Elliot’s laughing response. “Don’t get your little elf-panties in a twist.”
“Elf-panties?” He sounded offended, but Hart was grinning when he came down the hall from the back door. “The fuck are elf-panties?”
“I don’t fucking know, do I?” Elliot retorted. “I’m not a goddamn elf.”
I did not understand why they were both smiling and laughing and also insulting each other.
Just more evidence of my social ineptitude, I guess, that this interaction that seemed so natural to them was utterly alien to me. I knew better by now than to ask someone to explain, so I just smiled, then turned and made my way back to the front desk.
“See ya, kid!” Hart called after me.
“Bye, Hart!” I called back. “Bye, Elliot!”
“Later, Rayn!” Elliot replied.
I went back to my desk, letting out a long breath. Back to the spreadsheets.
It was late, and while I was tired, I wasn’t falling asleep. The next day was Friday, so I still had to go to work, but lying in bed and staring at the ceiling at ten p.m. hadn’t done anything to help me actually fall asleep, so I’d tried reading. But picking up 2312 hadn’t really worked, either.
Because that had made me think about Rajesh Parikh. In a way that I really shouldn’t have been thinking about him.
It had honestly surprised me.
I mean, yes, I’d noticed that he was an attractive man.
Tall, muscled broad shoulders, bright golden-brown eyes.
The dark facial hair that made him look rugged beneath well-defined cheekbones.
Long fingers that he used to toy with all sorts of things—his water glass, a pen, a small figurine of an elephant that had been on his desk.
Fingers that I couldn’t help but think about toying with other things.
My own, for instance. What it might be like to feel his long fingertips play with mine. Trace a path along my skin. Run through my hair.
I shifted, uncomfortable for more reasons than one.
Maybe it had been that stupid pencil, but now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Him.
I let my hand wander lower, slide into the waistband of the thin knit shorts I wore to bed, wrap my by-now-familiar fingers around the semi-soft flesh that grew hard beneath them.
It was difficult to imagine what it would actually be like, to have his hands on me. To know how he would choose to touch me. Where I would like him to touch me.
I knew his hands were warm—warmer than I was, anyway—because he’d touched me on the arm or the shoulder.
A chaste, ordinary form of contact over a sleeve or shirt.
But I’d felt the heat of his palm. Imagined that if his hands were that warm on a cold day, the rest of his body would be even warmer.
Imagined that heat pressed against my back, the hand stroking me bigger than mine. Warmer.
Tried to imagine the kind of low, deep sound he might make if I touched him. If I let him press into me, filling me.
I panted a little, my cock hard in my hand, hot, as I imagined his skin would be.
I imagined the strength of his hands, fingers digging into my hips hard enough to bruise. Hard enough that I wouldn’t need to touch the sheets to be reminded of what he’d done to me.
A moan escaped me at the thought, my stomach muscles tight with want.
I imagined the kind of low, guttural sound he’d make as come spilled out of him, and gasped as mine coated my fingers and dampened the fabric of my shorts.
I lay still as my breath slowed back to normal, my cock soft again between sticky fingers. And I wondered what was wrong with me, that I’d fantasized about a man I worked with—a man who was, even if temporarily, kind of like my boss.
It wasn’t really appropriate.
No, that’s not true. It wasn’t appropriate at all.
And yet, here I was. I hadn’t really thought about actually dating in probably… six months? Longer? I wasn’t honestly sure.
I’m not asexual. Demi, maybe, but I’ve had boyfriends. Well. Lovers would be a more accurate term, I suppose, since most weren’t serious romantic commitments.
There was an orderly at Tranquil Brook—not like that, a man who was only a handful or so years older than me. Chris. He’d been kind. Had talked to me about what was happening outside in the world. Smuggled in books so that I could read. Had been tender and gentle.
Until one day he didn’t come back.
I’d assumed he’d found another job or another, saner boyfriend or girlfriend, and simply hadn’t returned to Tranquil Brook.
Now, knowing what I knew about the people who had run the asylum, I wondered if he was even still alive.
But I wanted to not know more than I wanted answers.
I wanted to keep hoping that he was alive somewhere, living his life.
Being happy and whole, in spite of what he must have witnessed.
What I didn’t want to think was that he was dead, a hole in his chest or his head that had been written off as a robbery or a suicide that just went cold and unsolved.
There had been a few other patients at Tranquil Brook, as well, although we hadn’t done much more than hold hands and steal occasional kisses, since anything else was impossible under the ever-present eyes of doctors, nurses, and orderlies.
Since then—just the occasional disastrous date, really.
I have a sex drive, as should be evident from the mess I’d just made of my shorts.
It was just… more controlled than most guys’, I suppose.
I don’t go around asking people how often they think about sex, but if movies, TV, and books were any indication, I’m definitely on the lower end of the sexy-thoughts spectrum relative to most men.