Fall Guy (15 page)

"We have a cleaning staff. You don't need to do that."

Nothing about Winch screamed "money" when I first met him, not the way
everything about my ex Rabin did. Rabin was
all
ego
and polish and pampered can't-lift-a-finger-to-help-himself syndrome.
But Winch
doesn't just have money; Winch has control. He's used to being in power.

What does he do?

What does his family do?

He steps surely and quietly along the bleached hardwood floors, past the living room full of leather chairs and cathedral ceilings, past a granite and stainless steel kitchen, down a long
hall
lined with brilliant modernist prints, to a series of doors. He slides a key out of his pocket and slips it into a lock, then throws open the door on a room that feels like it's all windows
facing the crashing ocean waves
and a bed.

A big, soft, inviting bed.

There must be other things in this room, but, despite my mind's very sensible protests, all I can think about is lying down on that bed with Winch and forgetting everything that happened -- or didn't happen -- this past week.

He leans his long
frame in the doorway and his eyes follow me
as I walk around the room
,
his mouth tight. "You want a drink?"

"Sure."

My feet manage to move me to the bed, and I sink onto the mattress, suddenly surrounded by the mingling smells of detergent and clover and pure, hot Winch. I hear him put the key in another door, and the low rumble of his voice, then another guy's, I assume his brother's, hits my ears, though I can't make out a single word. I hear him click the door shut,
then
I hear the sound of glasses clinking, the refrigerator opening, and his returning footsteps.

He comes in, two glasses in hand, and gives me one before he takes a seat in the chair across from me. I'm attempting to position my dress so he doesn't see my underwear and balance the glass he handed me, all the while wishing I'd taken the chair.

And wishing twice as hard that he'd chosen to join me on the bed.

I take a long chug, and my tongue recoils in shock at the crisp lack of bite. This isn't vodka, which I stupidly thought it would be. It's ice water. Winch leans back in his chair and eyes me over
the rim of his glass.

"I wasn't going to give you alcohol, Evan. I'm in deep enough shit already with you. We don't
really
need to mix drinking in with
all
this."

I pull my index finger around the edge of the glass, collecting condensation in the whorls of my fingertip.

"What is
all
this
exactly?"

I keep my voice tightrope taut, but my eyes hunt his, refusing to let him duck and cover away from my gaze.

He shifts uncomfortably on the chair. "I don't know."

"Why?" I bully, not abo
ve beating this out of him if
that's what it takes.

"Because my life is a
clusterfuck
, Evan!
”
His voice bursts out louder than either of us expected. We both jump,
then
he lowers his voice and explains.
“
It's not fair for me to even imagine letting you into it. And it looks like things are going to get a
fuckton
worse before they get any better."

He puts the g
lass down with a thump and pushes
up
off the chair
, moving around the room in a random, edgy circuit. I sit straight on his
bed,
legs crossed, and watch him.

"I thought I'd be able to just flirt with you when we met. Like that would be enough." He runs a hand through his hair, then brushes it back down, over and over, his still-fresh tattoo poking from the cuffed sleeve of his
untucked
, cuffed
button-down. "Then I thought, fuck it, we could just be friends during that shitty time we had to hang out at our service assignment. I figured I'd get my fill of you and be able to leave. But you know how that worked out."

"Actually, I thought that was exactly how it worked. You took me on one date,
then
didn't call for a week. I would have said that
was
you getting me out of your system."

I put my glass down and jump up, reaching for his hands because there's no way I can watch him attack his hair like a maniac anymore.
He stills instantly,
but, somehow, it’s like he’s
transferred all the pent-up, pacing, wild momentum of his body
to his eyes
, so
it still feels like
he might as well be climbing up the walls.

I run my fingers over his forehead because I can’t convince myself not to touch him.
"Look, if this is so damn hard and so damn confusing, maybe it's not meant to be, right?
In the last few months
I found out my ex-boyfriend is a sexually harassing shithead, my parents
’ marriage is
probably officially over
, and I had to move in with my grandparents a
nd start a new school I hate
, all on top of getting arrested and having to do community service. We're both in a shitty place, and it was fun to flirt, but maybe that's all it needed to be. I'm cool with that."

My heart is a pod of dolphins
beaching themselves on the
rocky
s
hore for no apparent reason
.

His hands break from mine and sweep up and down my arms, replacing his manic hair mussing with lulling arm-brushing. His words are low, slow, and ring with solid honesty.

"I'm so not cool with that."

"We can just be friends." My voice slaps and smack
s, devoid of any real conviction.

His fingers press and draw down my arms. "I haven't stopped thinking about you all week."

"If it bothered you that much, you would have called." The flop of my voice has moved up sev
eral octaves
, graduating to a high-pitched s
queak.

His voice
, on the other hand,
is beach-
glass smooth.

"I'm crazy good at resisting temptation." He cups my shoulders and drags the back of his fingers down the skin of my bare back.
"Correction.
I
was
crazy good at resisting temptation. But here you are, in my room when I should be on the road bringing you home."

My heart had been warming like a surfer
s' contained bonfire, but h
is words are the gasoline that’s
exploded it into an arsonist's wet-dream.

"What do yo
u want?" My voice scratches
out of my throat desperately.

"You."
He cups his hand under my chin and rubs the pad of his thumb along my bottom lip.

"This is stupid."

My sad little voice barely registers at a whisper because his thumb plus my lip equals debilitating brain chaos.

"This is too fast."

His other hand holds the
side of my face, and he traces his thumbs in sweeping crescents over my cheekbones and around the curves of my ears.

"We tried this
,
and it was worse than a royal fucking mess," I
remind him and myself.

I need a ruler slap to
my
brain
, because I might be falling way too hard and fast under the wrong guy's spell.

"Try again?"

His mouth closes in on mine, and that single second before o
ur lips
meet spins out for an eternity. A
nd
it
makes graphs and flow-
charts and
PowerPoints
underlining
all the reasons we should absolutely not be doing this.

But we are.

We so completely are.

Winch walks me back to the bed and lays me down, his entire body pressed long and perfectly weighted over mine. He kisses me with gentle, coaxing pressure for a few minutes, like he's taking my temperature, gauging my heart rate, and determining if I'm in.

I'm all in.

I vice my arms around his ribs, clamping him close, and his kiss deepens, his tongue slides into my mouth and moves sweet and quick over my tongue and the inside of my lips before he pulls back and sweeps in again. I arch my spine and can feel how hard he already is against my thigh.

His thumbs trip under the straps of my dress, and he pulls his mouth away so he can kiss my shoulders where the cloth was. His mouth follows up and down my shoulder and the curve of my clavicle. He presses his mouth to my breastplate and leaves a soft, warm trail of kisses up to my neck and back down until I'm digging my heels into the mattress and straining against him.

His hands reach up to find mine, lock around my wrists, and twist my arms over my head, gently pinning me.

His face is so close, I can see the olive black of his pupils, round and hungry,
and the way his mouth is held tight, like he’s working hard not to lose control
.

"I promised we'd just talk." He swallows hard and licks his lips. "This isn't just talking."

"We can just kiss."

I want him to press his mouth back on mine. I want his hands under my clothes, I want to peel away everything he's wearing...but I know that's all sprinting when this is a marathon. It needs to be a marathon, because I feel a funny pinch of panic when I imagine that this will end up a repeat of last week, with Winch turning into a pumpkin with no contact information at midnight.

He lets go of my wrists slowly and bends his head back down until our lips find each other, and this time it's a heart-hammering, blood-pounding, body-shaking tempo.

"Evan," he moans, pulling his lips away and kissing my temple and the side of my ear.

I stroke one hand through the soft strands of his dark hair, and wedge the other between us so I can open the line of buttons that run down his shirt.

"Evan." This time his voice is a plea.
Or a warning.
His eyes flicker down over my hand, flattened on the hard muscles of his chest. "I want to take this slow
. And you're so damn sexy. S
eriously, you're beating the shit out of my willpower."

"You don't have to worry. I'm not a virgin or anything," I inform him, and his eyes shutter. He pulls back just a fraction, and I sit up on my elbow
, surprised at how quickly the sexy got sucked out of the room
. "What's the problem?"

"We just met. We're not having sex yet," he declares, then shakes his head. "And, you know what? Here's my other problem. What the fuck is
going on
with you? You need to give yourself more credit, value yourself more."

I can't keep the snort back, and he goes full-blown scold-mode. "You took a ride out to the middle of nowhere with that scumbag
Jace
. What were you thinking?" His mouth presses into a long, flat line and his nostrils flare. "What if he took you to some shithole where they were doing meth? Do you know how violent those assholes get?"

I sit up and yank the straps of my dress back onto my shoulders.

"
Jace
is harmless," I huff. I have no clue if I'm accurate, but I do know that I don't need Winch getting all parental on my ass. "I had my cell phone."

"You can't be serious." This time when he grabs my shoulders, it's
definitely to full-
on
lecture me, and I angle my face away, determined not to pay attention to this co
ndescending crap. "Listen to me.
You need to t
ake
better
care of yourself. Don't trust people so easily."

I purse my lips and examine his face, so serious and intent, it rubs away some of my moodiness.

"What about you? Do I trust you?"

"Yeah."
He kisses my lips softly, and that brush feels more astoundingly erotic than the
full-on
makeout
session we just had. "You can trust me because I care about you, and I always watch out for the people I care about."

My heart leaps into my throat, the way it feels when an elevator drops too fast from too high a floor.

"This is weird.
Really weird.
I went this whole entire week thinking that you didn't give a damn what happened to me, and now all this?"

He leans his forehead on
mine and runs his hands up and down my back in slow, even swipes.

"This is
the beginning. You make me feel crazy, Evan. You make me feel ali
ve for the first time in a long time
, and that scared the shit out of me. But I can't risk not having you in my life. I'm so glad that
douchebag
brought you here tonight."