Sin With Me

41

He exhales a small, shaky breath. “Because if I start I won’t be able to stop.”

I tilt my head up, daring him with my eyes. My hand drifts lower. “And that’s bad because . . .”

He grabs my wrist and winds my arm behind my back. He pulls me against his chest, bunches a hand into my wet hair, and rasps, “Because the first time I f**k you, Grace, it’ll be the last time either of us f***s anyone else, and you’re not ready for that yet.”

To punctuate this shocking statement with an exclamation point, he angles my head toward his and kisses me, deeply, greedily, feeding on my mouth like he’s starving and the key to his survival is the taste of my lips. I kiss him back just as hungrily.

I can’t get enough of this—of him. I thread my fingers into his wet hair and pull his head down harder, greedy for every possessive little growl he’s making in his throat, desperate for there to be no space between us. I want, so badly, to feel him inside me. I want to feel him everywhere.

“Señorita Grace!”

With a groan, Brody breaks off the kiss. He glares at Magda, standing at the open patio doors. She’s holding my handbag in her hand. On my way into the party yesterday, I’d stashed it in a covered basket beneath a table in the entry.

Magda holds out the bag. “Esta es tuya?”

I answer in Spanish, “Yes, Magda. That’s mine.”

She tells me the handbag has been ringing for an hour.

Brody demands, “English, devil women!”

“Apparently my phone’s been ringing nonstop while we were out.”

Brody drops his forehead to mine. He chuckles. “Saved by the bell.”

“I don’t need saving, Kong.”

His smile is devastating. “I wasn’t talking about you, Slick.”

On cue, my phone—buried inside my handbag—begins to ring again.

I sigh and pull away from Brody. As much as I’d like to continue this lovely moment, I’ll need to deal with whoever is on the other end of that phone first.

I take the bag from Magda, dig my phone out, and frown at the caller ID. It’s the main office at my condo building.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Stanton?”

It’s the building manager, Linda Conley. She sounds panicked, but the woman is as high-strung as an overbred Chihuahua, so I don’t give it a second thought.

“Hi, Linda. How are you?”

When she exhales an anguished cry, a twinge of alarm zings through my stomach.

“Oh thank God! You’re safe!”

The twinge of alarm balloons into fear. “What’re you talking about? What’s happened?”

Brody looks at me sharply. Magda turns around and wanders back inside the house.

Linda breathes, “Oh, Miss Stanton—Grace—there’s been . . . there’s been a terrible accident.”

Everything inside me freezes. My blood stops circulating. My lungs refuse to contract.

“Accident?”

In a few long strides, Brody’s at my side, his hand on my shoulder, his worried gaze on my face. Linda tells me the news, her words all running together.

“Yes, there was a terrible accident, Mr. Liebowitz in unit 1302, you know he was on oxygen for his emphysema, he wasn’t supposed to be smoking, all the doctors told him not to smoke but he was a stubborn man—God forgive me for saying that—and you know how volatile those oxygen tanks are—what could he have been thinking? Everyone’s in a panic, the fire department is here, so many paramedics and fire trucks, it’s absolute pandemonium! And the mess! It’s such a terrible mess, I don’t know how long it will take to clean everything up, it’s like 9/11 over here—”

“Linda!” I shout. “Tell me what happened!”

There’s a short pause. Then Linda says quietly, “Mr. Liebowitz blew himself up.”

He lived in the unit directly above me.

I close my eyes, already knowing what Linda’s going to say next.

“I’m so sorry, Grace, but . . . your home was also destroyed in the explosion. There’s nothing left. It’s gone.”

I can’t move. I can’t speak, even when Brody desperately begs me to talk to him, to tell him what happened, to tell him if I’m all right.

I’m not all right.

I’m homeless.

“Grace, you’re scaring me. Please. Look at me.”

The freeze abruptly thaws and all my bodily functions slam into high alert at once. I start to shake, sweat, and hyperventilate. Brody grips my arms. “Is it Kat? Chloe? Did someone get hurt?”

I moisten my dry lips, swallow the bile rising in my throat. “My condo . . . the man who lived above me had these big tanks of oxygen delivered every Saturday. He was a smoker. There was an explosion. My . . . my home is gone.”

My voice is surprisingly steady, but that’s all I can manage to say in one breath.

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“Destroyed,” I say. “Blown up. All my things . . .”

I have extra copies of my bible at work—that’s what I call the binder where I keep everything pertinent to my life in case I wake up one day a blank slate—so at least I have something left.