Swap Out (3 page)

Her mouth twists and eyes sparkle with tears I never knew she was capable of producing, one of her hands coming up to cover her eyes like if she can’t see me then I won’t be able to see her. Too bad I can, and I wish I couldn’t because Zoe shouldn’t cry. It’s just wrong.

I sigh and walk into the kitchen, grabbing a paper towel before I take it back to her. And as I watch her dab and blot at her eyelashes, all I can think is that this is so messed up. Yes, she’s a frustrating, demanding, bossy little thing and it doesn’t excuse her treating me like a piece of gum she stepped in, but…

Even though I don’t know her that well, I know enough that something is definitely up and I’m not being nearly as patient as I probably should. And when she sniffles and looks up at me, her eyes all red and mascara smudged, I can’t stop thinking how I’m such an ass for making her cry. No wonder she fires me all the time.

“Zoe, are you all right?” I ask quietly, and she shakes her head, her mouth twisting again.

“No, I was…I’m sorry I was being so short with you earlier,” she whispers, and I roll my eyes, guilt instantly assuaged.

“Thought you clearly dictated there is no ‘work’ outside of work.”

She shakes her head. “There isn’t, but I…I don’t know what else to say, Luca. I know I’ve been in a really bad mood for the last couple of weeks and—”

“No shit,” I interrupt, and she squares her shoulders.

“Can you cut me a little slack? I need you to be nice to me right now.”

“I’m always nice to you,” I counter, and she winces, swiping her fingertips under her eyes. “But would it kill you to be nice to
me
for once? You are not the only one who works their ass off, Zoe, and I’m sick of you talking to me like I’m some servant you deign to tolerate.”

“I know that,” she fires back. “And I don’t mean to be like that, Luca. I just haven’t been myself lately and…I just…” She sucks in a shaky breath to steady herself, but her voice still breaks when she says, “I just don’t know what’s
wrong
with me.”

Tears start to slip down her cheeks again and this time, I can’t stop myself.

I pull her into me, wrapping my arms around her and somewhat surprised when her head settles perfectly against my bare shoulder. A sob escapes her as her fist clutches the military IDs hanging from my neck, the ones that for some reason I’ve never stopped wearing. And when I carefully unwind her bun and then run my fingers through her wavy hair, I feel her breaths settle a little more rhythmically, her chest melting into mine. The corner of my lips pulls up as I lay my cheek to her crown and fractionally tighten my grip on her because she is the queen of boundaries, so it’s kinda weird that she likes me holding her, but then again I’ve never understood this woman.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. After the last four months of her knocking on my front door well past business hours, I know one thing about her with absolute certainty. And that’s why I cup the back of her neck as I dip my head, my words rushing hot over her ear.

“You know what will make you feel better?” I whisper, and she shakes her head no. But she also doesn’t protest when I bend and scoop her legs up, then start carrying her towards my bedroom. “Exactly what you came here for.”

I settle a little deeper into my bed, one of my hands resting behind my head and the sheet just lazily draped over my hips as I watch Zoe fasten the last few buttons on her shirt. She runs a hand through her disheveled hair and tosses it, then steps into her stilettos, and I can’t help but lightly chuckle. Because they didn’t come off until damn near the end. But based on the pink in her cheeks and the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, I’d say she’s feeling
a lot
better.

She glances at me and when I wink at her with a grin, she softly laughs and then shakes her head.

“Bye,” she says, then heads right for my bedroom door. I listen as she shuts the front door behind her a minute later, then I turn over and stretch out, my muscles loose and warm after my favorite end-of-day workout.

The first time she showed up on my doorstep after work—stealing my address off my application and out of my personnel file—she pretty much laid what she wanted out on the table. Casual sex. Friends with benefits except we’re not actually friends. No discussion of work, or a word about this while we’re
at
work, no personal questions, and
no
kissing. That one I tilted my head at, but her reason was something about it being too relationship-y and Zoe doesn’t do relationships. I’m not looking to start one either, so it’s fine with me. And it’s not like I was gonna throw a fit about our lack of making out when she started strutting towards my bedroom, discarding her clothes on the short way there.

I yawn and huff a little when I catch a whiff of her lotion on my sheets. It’s not that I don’t like the scent, because I do. It’s clean and soft and reminds me of white cotton linens on a foreign shore. But sometimes when I come home and go to bed, then catch myself smiling when I breathe it in…it bothers me. Because Zoe is…she’s complicated.

She’s a pain in the ass to work for, most of the time. But when we’re running some random errand or doing a bid on a house, she can also be a lot of fun. She’s smart, and she isn’t afraid to mess with me. I don’t even know if it’s the military that ingrained it into my personality, or if maybe I was always like this, but for a long time I’ve lived with the outlook of work hard, play harder. And Zoe plays like she fucks: hard. It’s one of the things I like most about her. Not that I
like
her… But you can’t help but to be drawn to a woman who is confident, especially when it comes to her sexuality.

Her control issues don’t magically evaporate when she hits a set of bed sheets, and it’s not surprising a person who lives by getting what she wants prefers a partner who can actually deliver on her requests. But the thing that drives her completely, out-of-control wild? I fight her. And usually when I do, I win. I mean, it’s not like I’m hurting her, but sometimes she needs to be dominated a bit and made to be patient. Sometimes she needs to realize it’s fine to get what you want, as long as you give it back. So more often than not, sex is a
war
; battling for who is on top and which is stronger: my hands holding hers to the bed or her nails scraping down my back, how hard I can slam into her before I feel like my spine is going to crack, or whether my headboard is going to give out first. It’s raw, primal and dirty, and she’ll never admit it, but when I have her pulled up on her knees, her hands pinned on the mattress and stretched out in front of her, those are the times when she comes the hardest.

My eyes roll back in my head just thinking about it and I have to reach down and adjust myself, my dick instantly hard and still crazy sensitive. And even though she just left and I could probably sleep for three days, the truth is I’m totally addicted and have to remind myself why I shouldn’t text her and tell her she needs to come back because I’m not finished with her yet.

Because therein lies the problem. I can’t ever seem to cut myself loose from her. No matter how much she pisses me off, despite how many times I’ve cursed her out and flipped her off before telling her I’m quitting, I always come back. And what really gets my self-deprecating temper flaring is she knows that just as well as I do, and not once have I ever called her to come over here.
She’s
the one who shows up without warning, and I have never been able to figure out if she’s sleeping with me because it’s what she
wants
to do, or if she’s blatantly screwing me into submission. Maybe a little of both.

I huff and rework my arms around my pillow, scowling at the scent of her. Because maybe it started as one, and then became another. Maybe her intentions are just like all those couches she changes her mind on: it just got…swapped out.

Whatever, because I know that for as tough and unaffected as she presents herself, I get under her skin in more ways than one and as twisted as it is, I can’t help but to like it. I can piss her off as easily as I turn her on, get her to glare at me and then laugh out loud immediately after. And usually she acts like she can’t stand the fact that I know her triggers, but I do know them and façades aside, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like it, especially seeing as how she keeps coming back and is seemingly determined to keep me around.

So…yeah. I’m not claiming our “relationship” is the healthiest one ever patched together, but I don’t really see the harm in it. We’re not hurting each other, if anything, we’re helping each other out.

Everyone has needs.

A life-completing bottle of Mad Dog 357 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce.

Mocha Lattes from Starbucks.

Sex that could be an event in the X Games.

Just because I hate coffee and she thinks black pepper is the spiciest thing on the planet, it doesn’t mean we can’t have an understanding over our mutual predilection to daily sexcapades that are high in the number of calories burned and are a natural, healthy way to relieve stress. Seems pretty stable in my book. It’s like taking a yoga class, but cheaper and more fun.

I snort to myself at the thought, because tonight was
fun
. I took her a little slow at first because I honestly didn’t know if she was really sick and was going to be again, but she told me she was fine while I undressed her, and she didn’t do anything but pull me closer as I spent a good long while with my head tucked between her thighs. Which was great until she shifted her stiletto-clad foot and the heel hooked onto the chain of my dog tags, resting over my spine, and she damn near choked me. We finally got untangled and Zoe couldn’t stop laughing between her pitiful attempts at apologizing, which mostly included her telling me it was my fault because I wouldn’t let her take her shoes off.

I have a valid reason for that, mainly the fact that they are sexy as hell and turn me on like no other, but that concept never got fully expressed because it was all laughing and teasing: me tickling her as she squirmed and giggled, then pushed me onto my back and sunk down onto me. Even then we were still messing with each other, a certain level of trust and comfort bought by the fact that being naked and intimately connected is nothing we’re not familiar with. So it’s fine to talk, normal to taunt and make jokes because we’re different in bed and that’s when she smiles most. When we’re not thinking about work or To Do lists, we only know what feels good.

And what felt good tonight were hands: mine smoothing their way up her thighs and over her hips, lightly squeezing her waist before flattening on her back and tugging the ends of her hair when she said my cooking smelled like a dead raccoon. And when I retorted her sense of smell was whacked because of her obsession with guzzling chemical-laden caffeine concoctions, she pouted and walked two fingers up my chest until she hooked them into my IDs.

She has this weird thing about commanding me by my tags, and she’s probably going to break them one day but I don’t really care because when she does it…there’s just something about it that is really, insanely hot. And it worked like a charm too because when I allowed her to draw me up into sitting, my mouth level with hers, she wound the chain tighter around her hand and then timidly asked if I really hated her Starbucks habit.

A wide grin stretched across my lips, and I told her yes.

She scoffed and playfully swatted at me until I had her wrists locked in my grasp, tucked in between our chests, and with raw desire burning in her eyes as her gaze dropped to my lips, I let one of her hands go. I rewound an arm around her waist, then pulled her tighter against me so I was impossibly deeper.

Everything shifted into slow movements drowned in moans, reality sunk in her whispers of things we’re not supposed to say. So I did things I’m not supposed to do.

My touch was tender as my fingertips trailed up her back, my speed cautious when I brushed her hair over her shoulder. And when her head fell back, her breaths heavy with the slow intensity, I kissed her neck.

One light, little innocuous press of my lips against her skin, and that was it: I was ruined. She whispered I wasn’t supposed to kiss her as my mouth tentatively explored the satin of her shoulder, and I knew she was right. For all the things we do, that is the one thing we don’t. But when I cupped her cheek in my hand and my lips teased her jaw, I promised I wasn’t kissing her, and she only moaned and then nodded before winding herself tighter around me.

Yes, I was breaking the rules by daring to taste every inch of her skin available to me, but she started it, and that’s how she ended it. Because her hands cradled my face as she rolled her hips with a controlled pace that absolutely wrecks me, her eyes darting between mine and my mouth like she was asking permission. Then without waiting for an answer, she leaned closer. Just enough for me to feel the heat from her lips without ever tasting them, but the anticipation was too much. I lost my only chance when my head fell to her neck under my teeth-gritted roar, my claim on her hips severe as I clung to her body and claimed it, all at once.

When I could finally open my eyes again she was just watching me, boasting an amused smile. I rolled my eyes in an attempt to retain my dignity, but she knew the truth and made sure I was aware of it too when she patted my cheek with a smirk and then got up. I tossed up a hand in exasperation but still laid back against my pillows, propping a hand behind my head before haphazardly throwing a sheet over my hips while she got dressed.

There was nothing to say. And either her ego is going to be unhinged with the knowledge of how she blew the lid off my control with the simple temptation of her lips, or it’s going to send her spiraling into the zone labeled: Freak the Fuck Out. Because if she thinks I’m looking to take this to the next level since yeah, kissing her would be a nice addition to our agreement, then she’s wrong. To me, one has nothing to do with the other. And tonight was fun, but also a little more…intimate than normal if I’m going to be honest about it. But she said she needed me to be nice because she had a bad day and didn’t feel well, and so that’s what I did. I was nice.

The question of whether I was
too nice
is one I’m going to have to figure out tomorrow.

Dammit, she wants me there early. I groan and reach over to my bedside table, adjusting my alarm to an hour…yeah, I wish. More like
two
hours earlier.

Woman owes me.

I lay back down and yawn, scrubbing a hand through my hair until my stomach growls.

Shit! I never ate my stir fry…

*              *              *

I pull up outside the address of the house, and when I shut off my car, my head falls back against the headrest. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing here and all I want is to go home.

Today has been the longest, crappiest day I’ve had in recent memory. It all started when I got to the store at 6:30
a.m.
, got into our box truck and drove out to a store to pick up those bed frames Zoe had ordered. Except they only had
two
of the
four
sets and after arguing with the guy for twenty minutes, he agreed I could pick up the other two later in the day. I finally got back to the warehouse,
after
picking up Zoe’s coffee: the one steaming like a volcano because I threatened genital maiming on the barista if it was anything less than scorching. And when the Sovereign of Sofas came in an hour later, she looked like she was battling the worst hangover in history and took one look at the Starbucks cup, then threw it in the trash. Yeah. In the
trash.

I walked out in the middle of her bitch-me-out inquisition of why we only had half the bed frames we needed for that afternoon, ignored her every squawk of my name while I finished building the two we did have, then loaded up the truck for our morning stage.

We professionally ignored one another during the job and only communicated through messages passed on by the rest of the crew, then when it was over she got into her precious Buick and took a right turn out of the driveway, and I turned the box truck to the left. I sent her three subsequent calls to voicemail, went to go pick up the other two bed frames and when I got back, it was WWIII in her office.

She screamed I had no right to disappear with her truck on company time, and I bellowed back that all I was doing was my damn job and if she didn’t like it, then she could find someone else. She threw me out of her office and I smirked and bowed, slamming the door shut behind me and the rest of our crew cleared a path like I was a leper. Except a few of them were discreetly fist pumping and whispering their accolades of, “Yeah! You tell her, Luca.”