Scandalous Love

Chapter 3

“Really? A campground? Did you grow up there?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“And you have brothers and sisters?”

“I have five brothers.”

His hand froze. This wasn’t an uncommon reaction and his eyes locked with hers, mouth going slack in a look of surprise and a bit of awe. “Five brothers?” His brow furrowed. He said, “Let me guess—they’re all older.”

“Not quite. I have one who is younger. I’m right in the middle, the fifth kid.”

“So you have…wow, I have all sisters,” he said.

“So, you know what it’s like,” Ashley replied. “Being the only one.”

“Yeah but…from the other end.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Five brothers. This is going to get grim.”

Her heart soared. That kind of comment meant that he was thinking about more, and until now, she had just been thinking about each moment, one by one, unfolding. The past few hours had been a heady rush of everything all at once, heart, mind, soul, and now here he was, talking about meeting her brothers. She wasn’t sure what to say.

“You ready to get out of here?” he asked, eyes darting back and forth across the room.

Full, and very much interested in spending more time with him in private, Ashley smiled and said, “Sure, want to…” She paused, then looked him right in the eye, with the most determined look of an invitation that she had ever given a man. “…Come back to my place for a drink?” Her middle finger traced circles around the top of her glass.

His eyes broke away from hers and stared at the motion, transfixed. His neck and shoulder muscles relaxed and he reached for his wallet, pulling out a credit card to pay the bill. When he motioned for the server to come and handle the transaction, he found her eyes again. “I would love a nightcap.”

“How about a morning coffee?” she said.

The grin that spread across his face was shaky at first, and then, with a deep, gravelly voice, he answered, “Even better.”

They left, the old man from the couple waving with a lecherous smile, as they departed, Chad’s arm around her waist, her stomach filled with butterflies. How could she still want more? she wondered. More, more, more, she thought. Of course, it was natural that she’d want more, precisely because this, what she had with Chad, was more. It was more intense, more respectful, more emotional, and more promising than any set of interactions, of touches, and sighs, and words than she’d ever had with another man. More.

Stepping out into the cool evening air, hoping to cool her thoughts, the walk back to the office was reasonably short, and then the question, She hadn’t driven in today, had he?

“Where’re you parked?” she asked.

“In your spot.”

Both laughed.

“Why would you take my spot?” she poked, as they walked to the very familiar location.

“You don’t drive in half the time, so why do you need to defend it?”

A tiny little piece of irritation mixed with the sheer joy of what she was experiencing. Memories of that first encounter in the parking lot, so long ago, and yet, so recent, fluttered through her mind. She shrugged. “It’s mine when I want it, and it’s yours when I don’t need it.”

“Isn’t that the toddler creed?” he asked, opening the passenger door to his Toyota.

She climbed in and had to concede that he had a point. “Fine, what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.”

“That sounds like my last girlfriend’s mantra,” he poked back. Starting the car, he pulled out of the parking lot and made his way to the main street, then halted. “I have no idea where you live,” he said.

She gave him the address and he punched it into an old GPS. “Calculating,” the machine said, and then boom.

“Seventeen minutes and fifty-three seconds?” she said. “Well, that’s fiction.”

“The machine doesn’t know Boston or Cambridge,” Chad added.

“This time of night it shouldn’t be too bad,” she said, as he made a left, and then for the next thirty minutes they chatted—lighthearted banter that gave her the opportunity to live a dual existence, to let her own racing thoughts, assumptions, suppositions, and hopes all coexist with the small talk coming out of her mouth. This was going so much better than she could have ever expected, and taking him back to her apartment was going to be interesting. Grandma was gone for the night, staying at her boyfriend’s house. She’d been spending more and more time there, and it had left Ashley feeling a sense of neglect, of being left alone a little too much. Now she was grateful for the solace; it meant there would be no prying eyes of any kind in her relationship with Chad.

What the hell are you doing, Chad? he thought as his hands turned the steering wheel to the left, and then, like a good little soldier, he turned to the right, following the GPS’s precise instructions. Going back to her place was a natural next step, perfectly within the order of an evolving relationship, except this wasn’t. Oh, how he wanted it to be, but oh, how he had f****d this one up royally.

Turning his phone off had been smart. It felt a bit surreal to not have his hip or his upper thigh, or wherever the phone rested, buzzing nearly nonstop. The flood of calls, texts, and email notifications that filled his life so readily, so palpably against his body, had halted, giving him the ability to focus solely on Ashley. If only he had had this awareness back at the office, there were so many ways he could have prevented it happening—and now, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, he realized that what he was doing with her was scrambling to get the last little bit of normalcy that he could possibly have.

Claiming a small amount of intimacy with her, carving it out of the remains of the day, would have to fulfill him for the rest of his life, because once she found out what he had done, there was no turning back. He had no way of explaining what had happened. Vicious scenario after vicious scenario whipped through his racing brain. This wasn’t going to be a surprise, for him at least, but for her, it could destroy her, and the idea that he could destroy the woman whom, he had to admit to himself, he was falling in love with, made him sick.

Taking a deep breath, he kept himself calm. Where was the focused, centered, unflappable Chadrick Smiths who had built an empire? He lay ruined in that office back there. Drained, and ridden, and driven out of his own mind by his love and lust for Ashley. Pressing his lips together, he suppressed a very sour smile, too many emotions churning inside him and bobbing up for brief glimpses from an ocean of emotion, whipped up by the perfect storm. Ashley would hate his guts in the morning.

Right now, though, she wanted him. She enjoyed him. The look on her face told him that she was enraptured by all this. Goddammit, so was he. Like a death row inmate, ready for his final meal, he turned the corner to what he assumed was her road, and she pointed to a small, nondescript building like plenty of others in Cambridge that housed multiple apartments. Parking was a b***h, but he finally found a place where he could nudge the rental in. Still playing the Chad Smut game, the junky little Toyota got him where he needed to go, and he parked it—inexpertly, but managed nonetheless.

They climbed out of the car and she reached for his hand, a bounce in her step that made her ass so much more appealing that he ever imagined a woman’s could be. Her whole body was fluid, and excited, and enticing in a way that he knew he had no choice but to relish. In the morning their relationship would be a clusterfuck of unimaginable proportions. While he didn’t have a crystal ball, he wasn’t stupid—he knew how this would play out.

For now, though, it wasn’t morning, and the warmth of her fingers entwined in his, the brush of her upper thigh against his leg, all of it was his final meal. Ashley would be the appetizer and the entree, and most importantly, the dessert. As they entered the apartment, all he could think was that he needed to bury himself in her, in her scent, in the touch of her soft skin, their bodies melting together so that he could drive the thrumming fear and pain out of him.

As Ashley flipped lights on in the small apartment, he noticed a Morris chair, a fine antique with a giant tie-dyed blanket that looked like something out of a Woodstock festival slung over it. She led him to the kitchen, which looked like something out of the Midwest, with rows of geese and a country feel to it. This was not your typical Cambridge apartment, where generally the decor ran from sleek Scandinavian down to a festive look at the past four decades of varying decorative styles, where the average seemed to be late ’70s to early ’80s, cheap Formica, and paneling.

“Have a seat,” Ashley said, as she pulled out a couple of bottles from the cabinet. He spotted tequila and then some sort of mixer, and then she reached into the refrigerator to pull out a jar of orange juice. “Something simple?” she asked and he nodded, admiring her body and her casualness. Something in her had moved closer to comfort and to the assumption that the two of them were together. He liked that. Watching the rhythm of her chest as it rose and fell through breath after breath, her hands competent and efficient in pouring the drinks. She turned, her cheeks pink and face bright and hopeful, and nodded back toward the living room. “Let’s sit in there,” she said.

He stood and took his glass from her. The first sip was a bit of a shock. It was tequila, sours, and orange juice. It was good, however, surprising him. “What is this?” he asked.

She grinned. “It’s nothing. Just something I make. No name to it.”

“I’ll call it the Ashley-tini.”

She chuckled, looking down at her body. “I’m anything but teeny.”

“You’re lush,” he said seriously, taking this as an invitation to begin touching her body once more, sliding his left hand around her waist, his hands covering the curves of her body, as if he were memorizing them to call upon them in the future, a map of her. His other hand was hampered by the drink, and so he drank it all down in one gulp, the sting of alcohol almost making him cough. He bent at the knees to set the drink down on an end table.

Her eyes were wide with surprise. “That good?”

“You’re that good.” Now that he had both hands available, he sank them into the soft flesh of her ass, grabbing her and pulling her close, a little rough, though she seemed to like it. Her lips touched his briefly, and then she imitated him, slinging back the drink like a coed at her first frat party. As she licked her lips he stopped her, the ferocity of his kiss mingling with the sweet taste of citrus. Tongues dancing and hands roaming, they stood in her barely lit living room, the air a bit stuffy, the room on fire. He gently turned her around and then sat on the multicolored Morris chair, pulling her into his lap. She hiked her skirt up and straddled him, just as they had in the office. He broke away from a sultry kiss. “Wait,” he said, “isn’t this déjà vu?”

“I think we’ve been here before.”

“Not here,” he said, looking around her living room.

“No, but in this position.”

“How about we try a different position?” he asked seriously, catching her eye in what little light emanated into the room.

Standing, slowly unfolding her body from his, she reached back with one soft hand and beckoned to him. Fighting within against the pounding, screaming conscience that told him he was taking advantage, that he had gone too far already, that he shouldn't compound the inevitable pain by drawing this out, he followed her into a neat, gray and lilac room that was starkly furnished, so different from the country kitsch of the kitchen.

This was Ashley's room, and it reflected her. Any other day and he would scan the room, practically inhaling the details so he could learn more about her. Time was precious, though, and instead he viewed this as a swan song of sorts, a bittersweet night of passion and expression that would have to last him the rest of his life.

Once she knew what had happened with the camera there would be no way to explain the truth. How could anyone believe that Chadrick Smiths, of all people, had lost his head and fallen so deeply that he’d forgotten his own plan?

Even he wouldn't believe it, and it was his fault.

For one split second he nearly stopped, his own ethics swaying him just enough to believe that it was better to end this as her hands wandered to his waist band, beginning to unbutton and unleash him. Her face carried the hooded look of a woman going into a layer of arousal and wanton desire, and his body responded accordingly, erection quick and ready at the thought of being in her again, except this time without cameras or the interference of clothing. All night long with his passion unbound and this woman before him? In a bed with no boundaries, no rules, no pre-conceived notions…