Into My Arms - Lia Riley Page 0,20

by guilt and self-doubt. Z seems tangled in these knots, and perhaps that’s what makes me feel tied to him, connected in some deep way beyond just the physical connection.

I pad to the bed and run a hand over the thick gray comforter. Gray. Black. White. These are the colors he favors. Both his office and his home keep to the same monochromatic palette. Why does he insist on shying away from any brightness, living in shadows and eschewing any vibrancy? Always the somber, never the pleasure.

Without warning, he steps through the sliding glass door that must lead out to a balcony. His shape is forbidding, large and hulking, and my shoulder blades slam back on instinct.

Settle down.

This isn’t Batman, just a screwed up, angry guy.

“Why are you here?” His voice isn’t harsh despite the word choice. Instead he sounds dejected and more than a little weary.

“What would you say if I asked to make love to you?” I hadn’t realized until this moment that’s why I came in here.

“Make love?” His accent twists the words, cutting them with a mocking note.

“You prefer to call it something different?” I take a step forward. “Fucking?”

“Bethanny.” His hands ball into two fists at my approach. “I think bringing you here…to this place…alone…it was not wise…perhaps we…”

I rise on tiptoe and whisper in his ear without actually touching him. “Do you want me?”

“More than anything.”

“Good answer.” My hands drop down over his chest, and I splay my fingers over his hard pectoral muscles. He winces when I move to undo the top button.

“Seven years?” I ask. “I can’t believe you’ve gone that long.”

He teeters as if this is too much, like if I say anything else or move too fast or even breathe that he’ll fracture into so many jagged little pieces.

“You are barely holding on, aren’t you?” I still, refuse to let my body move a fraction. “And here all this time I thought you were the guy who had everything I could ever dream of. Professional success. Mind-boggling wealth. Power.”

“Power.” He grinds out the word. “Yes. That’s been my replacement lover. Ambition, my drug of choice. Did Brandon truly never tell you anything of me?”

“No. Not a word.” I get together with him and my friend Talia whenever our schedules allow, which is infrequently, as she’s busy with her radio job in the city and they tend to be insular—a quality I find myself envying.

Once, at a funky little sushi bar in Japan Town, Talia said, “You know, I think true love is finding the perfect person to nap with.”

Bran had given her an inscrutable look across the table and she’d coughed, pretending it was the wasabi.

The handsy way those two behave around each other makes it hard to believe they do a whole lot of sleeping. Ever.

I keep my touch on him featherlight. “Bran never mentions you; although, come to think of it, he does always ask how I’m enjoying the job, as if there’s more to the question. It never feels like small talk, but as if he’s waiting for me to tell him something. I’d always assumed what he really meant was, ‘Have you cracked it and quit yet?’ But now I can see there was something more, wasn’t there?”

Z smirks. “That nosy bugger was checking.” He speaks of Bran with something approaching fondness.

“Checking on what?”

“To see if I’ve grown a pair to make a move. You see, I have noticed you, Bethanny, for some time. And he well knows it.”

“Well, I do work outside your office and we communicate two hundred or so times a day.”

“And before that even. One night, working late, I paced the halls of Zavtra Tech, thinking myself alone. I saw you at a desk, long after midnight.”

He did? “Probably trying to keep up with the insane workload and pressure. You know your company as a reputation for being…how can I put this…”

“Demanding?”

“Ah.” I snap my fingers. “Yes, that’s the word. Sort of like you.” I pop open a button on his shirt. “Which makes me wonder? How would you feel if I called the shots for once?”

He stiffens.

“Downstairs on the patio, you told me that you liked to watch.”

“It is easier.”

“Okay, so what if you turn, look at yourself in that mirror, and simply…watch.”

I angle his body to face his reflection. “Don’t look away,” I whisper. “And don’t look down. It’s dark in here. Don’t think, just feel.”

I drop to my knees and unfasten his black leather belt, undoing the top button