It also consisted of some pretty amazing features too, like tall floor to ceiling windows which overlooked the rocky waves on one side, and the lights of the city far off in the distance on the other.
His office especially caught my eye. Drawings, paintings, scraps and printouts hung everywhere. Two desks sat on opposite sides of the room, each sprawled with so many things, but surprisingly not just with drawings, but with gadgets.
I didn’t get to look at it for long but the little metal pieces scattered about, not to mention the tool kit, all caught my eye, striking me as strange.
I wanted to ask him more about what I saw, but he rushed me out and as we walked away I found more pressing questions weighing on the forefront of my mind.
“Who’s that girl in the pictures in the entryway?” I asked over the glass of water he just gave me.
He didn’t need to ask who I was referring to. He already knew. “My sister.”
That explained some of it, but still, why was that picture so old? Why wasn’t there an updated one anywhere? I sipped my water. “Does she live close by?”
“No.”
“Well, where does she live? What does she do?” I asked, wanting to break into something that was important enough for him to display in his home.
His sad smile instantly made me want to take it back. His eyes flashed up to me for only a second, shameful and weary. “I dunno.”
Oh.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I hated that look on his face. It didn’t belong there, that frown. Not where the guy I knew always smiled. Always laughed. Always stood tall.
I wanted to ask him more about her, more about what not knowing where she was in the world could mean about their relationship, but I wanted to get that look off his face more.
My eye caught onto my clothes which he’d picked up from where they’d been strewn on the floor and draped over the back of wooden dining room chairs. Seeing them, I scoffed a laugh that was only half-forced.
“Did you hate my outfit that much?” I asked.
Immediately rewarded by the mirth in his eyes, I watched as he searched my face for clues. “How do you figure?”
“You ripped it off fast enough. And I think you growled at my gloves.”
His soft laughter filled my ears and calmed my stirring heart. “I wasn’t expecting the marshmallow getup after all that sexting you did. I thought you would come, like, naked under a trench coat or some shit.”
“Sexting!” I laughed. “I was not sexting.”
“You so were,” he grinned. “Don’t worry, it turned me on enough that even your Michelin man coat couldn’t deter me.”
I snorted. “I like my coat!”
“It’s cute. I like it too,” he said. “I like it better on the ground.”
“Oh I get it.” I nodded, setting my glass down on the counter beside me, I pulled myself onto the dining table to sit. My voice took on as low of a monotone as I could get. “Harper’s so tough, he onlyfucks, and all his girls wear lingerie, and he never kisses on the mouth, and?—”
Soft lips cut me off, a strong hand their contrast as it held onto my neck and pulled me tight against him. This kiss was as punishing as it was consuming, and it had me feeling hot and needy way too soon after just coupling not twenty feet away nor twenty minutes ago.
He pulled his lips away, but that’s it. Letting his fingers sink into my hair, the pads of them running along my scalp, his other hand held my hip gently.
“You’re so wrong,” he said.
“Yeah? What about?”
“I never said I don’t kiss. I’d kiss you from sunup to sundown if you let me,” he said.
“Hmm,” I replied. Only because what else was there to say? There wasn’t a singular word that could express the cocktail of emotion his words pulled from me, so I wouldn’t even try. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” He ran his eyes over me, before saying. “Sure we’re fucking, Alta, but I want to make two things clear. One. Just because I like to call it vulgar words and tease, doesn’t mean I don’t cherish every fucking time you let me share this with you. And it doesn’t mean it means nothing to me.”
