Perfect Strangers

32

“A father who doesn’t show up to his own child’s funeral.”

That one hurt the most. Of all the times Chris was absent, that time carved itself so deep into my heart the wounds are still as fresh as if they were slashed there yesterday.

My baby girl was gone, my soul was in ashes, and my man was nowhere to be found.

Everything crumbled after we lost her. We couldn’t talk anymore. We could barely meet each other’s eyes. The silences in the house would stretch on so long I’d sometimes wonder if we’d lost the ability to communicate. Group therapy was a horror, more painful than pouring acid on open cuts. All those stories of loss piled up on top of my own until I felt suffocated.

Marital counseling wasn’t much better. There was no way to make sense of such a senseless thing, and no amount of talking was going to help or change it.

Then, finally, after Chris packed his bags and moved out, I went to individual therapy on my own in one last ditch attempt to find peace with the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Or at least some sort of meaning.

But there’s no meaning to be found in violence. Murder is an end unto itself.

A moan jolts me out of the swamp of my memories. I open my eyes and look across the courtyard from where it came, at a window that was dark only moments before but now is illuminated.

Gigi and Gaspard are in their bedroom, doing what they do best.

I turn away and go inside, chugging the rest of the bourbon. Then I turn out all the lights and go to bed.

I wake up hours later knowing instinctively that something is wrong.

It’s that mother’s intuition. The heightened hearing. The sharper sense of smell. The finely-tuned antennae you never lose, even when your child has long since been ripped from your arms.

Heart pounding, I sit up in bed, my ears straining to hear any sound. I’m not sure if it was a sound that woke me, but I listen hard into the dark. My eyes slowly adjust until I can make out the edges of the dresser, the curved arm of the chair near the door.

And the tall figure of the man standing beside it.

I scream in terror, but he’s on me before I can jump out of bed. He grabs me and pins me beneath his heavy body, flattening me against the mattress as I struggle wildly underneath him.

“Olivia,” growls a rough voice into my ear. “It’s me. Stop. It’s only me.”

I fall still, panting, realizing from one heartbeat to the next that it’s James. It only takes another few seconds for the fury to hit.

“What the f**k!” I shout. “You nearly scared me to death, asshole!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry? How did you even get in here?” I continue to struggle, but he’s not letting me go. If anything, his hands tighten even more around my wrists. He slides a leg over both of mine, stopping me from kicking him.

“You left the front door open. I knocked and rang the bell, but you didn’t answer.”

I was so distracted by the stupid thing vs. think argument when I came in that I can’t remember if I locked it or not, but it doesn’t surprise me that I left it open. I did the same thing the other night when he took me to dinner. The man always puts me out of sorts.

“So you thought it would be a good idea to just waltz in uninvited?”

“I told you I’d come.”

“And I told you not to!”

I feel his hot breath on my neck when he whispers, “Tell me to leave and I will.”

I lie there glaring at the ceiling and grinding my teeth until I get my breathing under control. Part of me wants to snap Get the hell out…but there’s another part of me—a bigger part—that doesn’t.

I haven’t had a man in my bed in years. Years. Every neglected nerve in my body is shrieking.

And considering it’s this particular man, who gets me so hot with a single look that my eyes cross, I’m inclined to let him stay and see where this is going.

I grit out, “You can stay, but you’d better make it up to me.”

He releases my wrists, props himself up on his elbows, and kisses me. It’s a gentle kiss, a searching one, and seems apologetic. He knows I’m walking on the razor’s edge of my temper.

He says, “I want to make it up to you, sweetheart, but you haven’t given me your list yet.”

Grr. “Fine. You want a list of what I like to do in bed? Here’s the top five: sleep, read, watch TV, cuddle my boyfriend pillow while daydreaming about winning the Nobel Prize for literature, and sleep.”

It takes me a moment to realize the slight shaking in James’s chest is stifled laughter.

“You said sleep twice.”

“That’s because I really like to sleep!”

He kisses me softly in the sensitive spot under my earlobe, making me shiver. “I see. And what is a boyfriend pillow, exactly?”

Another kiss, lower on my neck, and I shiver again. “You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t.”

Kiss. Kiss. Nibble. Kiss. He works his way slowly down my neck to my collarbone, then dips the tip of his tongue into the hollow of my throat. He adjusts his weight on top of me, sliding his leg between mine.

He’s so big and heavy. So warm and solid. So strong. And God, how I love it.

There’s nothing that makes you feel more like a woman than lying under the powerful bulk of a man.

“It’s…um…like a big comfy sleeping pillow about half the length of my body.”

“Mmm.” He slides a hand under me and squeezes my ass, drawing me closer against him and flexing his hips.

He’s already hard for me. My pulse goes arrhythmic. I clutch his shoulders, sinking my fingers into the fine fabric of his suit.

Why is he still wearing his suit? Did he come straight here from wherever it was he went? “It’s very supportive,” I say, breathing harder. “I love my boyfriend pillow.”

James lifts his head and locks eyes with me. His gaze is intense and heated. “Interesting.”

“My pillow?”

“No, the fact that I’m insanely jealous of it.”

Because I sleep with it or because I said I love it? My heart flutters, but I don’t ask the question aloud.

I whisper, “If anything, it should be jealous of you. I’ve never given myself an o****m while thinking of my boyfriend pillow.”

James’s eyes flare, drilling down into mine. “You made yourself come thinking of me?”

I can tell he’s excited by the idea. His voice is raw and there’s a new tension in his body, a telling change in the rhythm of his breathing.

I nod.

“When? Earlier tonight?”

Oh God. He wants all the dirty details. Why did I even open my mouth? I moisten my lips. James tracks the motion of my tongue with the eyes of a predator. “No. After I met you at the café.”