“Maybe that’s just what you want to see. Maybe you like that about me.”
“Why would I like that you’re in control?” he asks, and even tilts his head to the side—for all the world like a curious little boy.
But I think he secretly knows. I think I know too—of course I know. I’ve been playing this game ever since I hired him.
“So is it all right if I go?” he says, quite abruptly. It sounds as though he’s waiting for something—or looks like it, at least. But he’s so closed and tightly wound, how can I know for certain what it is?
“Of course.”
He flashes me that smile, the one with the pointed incisors and the curling tongue. The one that makes him boyish and not so weighed down by whatever he’s weighed down by. And then all at once I know what he was waiting for.
Permission.
I flick through Sins of the Flesh, looking for all the things he will have seen. He strummed her clit with thick fingers, that sort of thing. I want to get inside his brain and swim around in it, understand all the things he thought and felt when reading words like that.
It’s not like with Andy. Andy’s brain runs on one track; it’s obvious he reads those words and gets an erection. It’s a simple reflex.
But I remember what it was like to know nothing about words like that, to uncover a whole secret world one page at a time and be both baffled and awed. Is that the way Gabe thinks? Or has this always been his little furtive habit, while dodging around his crazy parents? If he reads this sort of stuff all the time, likely he knows more about fucking than Andy does.
That thought pulls me up short.
As does the scene in Sins of the Flesh where the heroine tells the hero to get on his knees. Though it’s not the fact that the scene is hot that pulls at me. I think of Gabe liking it, instead, and feel my sex grow warm and plump. I’m supposed to be catching up on a little bookkeeping, but somehow the room has grown dark and my receipts have gone untouched and I’ve got this book in my hand while thoughts of Gabriel, downstairs in the shop, fill me up.
It’s not the book, it’s Gabriel. It’s not that someone was watching; it’s not the idea of being watched. It’s the fact that it was someone so dark and strange and potentially pliable watching.
The realization makes me cover my face with the book.
I like it. I like teasing him and tormenting him, peeling away all his layers and giving him permission. I could have chosen the girl, if I wanted. I could have chosen Andy to be my assistant. But I didn’t. I chose Gabriel Kauffman.
Probably because of my strict father, thanks so much, Dr. Gabriel Freud.
Fuck knows what I’m going to do from here. K-I-S-S-I-N-G, my brain sings, and I hate myself. Why can’t I just be satisfied with Andy?
Because I’ve been satisfied with Andy all my life, maybe.
I throw the book aside and stand, straighten my shirt, smooth my trousers. I look neat and professional, which should help with the firing of my almost perfect assistant. I can tell him that we’re just not busy enough—which is a lie—or that the economy is biting too hard, or some such nonsense. And then I can go back to the way things were and the way I was.
Straight, simple, professional.
Unfortunately, even before I get to the shop I know something’s going on. I know the way I knew when I saw that little flash of hot pink and he stood up too hurriedly. The kitchen door opens out almost on top of the counter, and he’s not there. He’s not anywhere in the main space of the shop—though I suppose that isn’t too unusual, considering that it’s closing time. It could be that he’s just tidying the second tier, the little alcove at the back of the store that made me buy the place.
And yet I know he’s not tidying. I don’t do anything as clichéd as keeping the filthiest books back there, but it’s where I catch the most embarrassed-looking men in macs. I don’t get all that many, however—I think because I sell so much romance, too. It’s hard to lick the pornography amidst the hearts and flowers.
I like Gabe, a lot, for not seeming to mind how many hearts and flowers flutter around his smut. In fact, I think he prefers it that way. He’s standing right in the corner, in front of the bookcase beside the window, reading Passion’s Flame. I can tell it’s Passion’s Flame, because it’s one of my all-time favorites.
I can also make out his teeth, biting deep into his lower lip. That furrow he sometimes gets between his heavy black brows, as though he’s uncertain how to proceed. But then his head turns slightly—I think so he can look at the right-hand page—and I can no longer see the lovely slant of his face. His back is almost completely to me—though that’s not exactly an unpleasant sight.
He isn’t big, like Andy. But that curve, to his back. The narrowness of his hips—so clear in those tidy gray trousers he always wears—contrasting giddily with the broadness of his shoulders…
I don’t want to alert him to my presence, just so that I can keep looking at his back. I don’t want to alert him to my presence because then he would stop reading, and biting his lip, and acting like a nineteenth-century maid who’s doing something she shouldn’t.
I think I know when he becomes aware of me. His back stiffens ever so slightly. He doesn’t turn the page when it comes time to.
My heart thuds, low and long. I’m not going to fire him. Oh my God, I’m not going to fire him. He’s wrong, he’s wrong—I’m not in control at all. I’m taking the step up. I’m strolling across the lovely plush carpet toward him.
When I get up close—so close that I can smell that old-fashioned pine-y aftershave he wears—the full pleasure of his height strikes me, as it did before, when I asked him if there was something he wanted. He must be six foot three, and yet so often he doesn’t seem it. He hunches.
He’s hunching right now. I can see him doing his best not to let me know he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He’s keeping very still, juddery breathing aside.
I have to put my hand on his back. It’s practically a necessity. I need to feel those unsteady breaths, vibrating through his sinewy body. I want to see him jerk when I touch him—and he does. But he keeps still, then, for the slide of my hand—all the way down that glorious curve to the hollow at the small of his back.
He won’t look at me. So I just do my business while his back is turned. I slide my hands over his narrow hips and feel him tremble, then go further yet and pass them over the firm cheeks of his arse.
He makes a little startled sound when I touch him so intimately. His body vibrates with it, but he doesn’t try to escape. So I rub harder, caress him more firmly. I slide my palms over the crease between his buttocks, pressing that tweedy material as deep as it will go.
He’s taking tight shaky breaths, now. When I squeeze one arse cheek, the breathing gets even tighter, and shakier. He even lets out something that’s almost a wavering moan—though not quite.
It definitely becomes a moan when I slide my hand around his hip, and go for the parts between his legs.
My hand immediately encounters the thing that’s making him moan. A rigid erection, thick and pressing out the material of his trousers. It’s so heavy and ready that just a brush of my fingertips makes it clear to me what’s there, and he gasps, for extra clarification. He drops the book he’s still holding, just so I’m sure.
I think he goes to say something then—something like stop. I can’t. Don’t. But when I finger the stiff shape of him through his trousers, the words trail away. He wants this. He’s too eager for it to let propriety or repression or whatever else it might be stop him. I think about all the nights he must have spent with just his own hand