Читать книгу Cross My Heart - AM Hartnett - Страница 6

Ryan always was a morning person. He loved the hush that could only be found as the daylight began to stain the night sky and before the crows began their noisy morning conversation. He loved taking his coffee on to the fire escape and just decompressing with a book or morning radio before the day intruded.

And lately he loved coming back to Evie in his bed. Between his coffee and his shower, he closed his eyes and synced his breathing to hers. She stirred as he made his reluctant retreat but didn’t wake, and the small happy sound she made almost called him back. He didn’t stay, but those five minutes when he snuggled up next to her and wrapped his arms around her stayed with him longer than the coffee. He’d conjure it midway through his shift, when he knew he still had four hours to go before he could head home and do nothing but wait for her workday to end. He’d linger at the bedside a moment longer and smile as she wiggled to the centre until she was just a small bump in the bed, and with a low groan he’d go to his shower.

That morning he managed to keep his frustration at bay through his shower and dressing, but once he was at the bus stop with his earphones on it crept over him.

The nerves had returned. Back when he and Evie had first started up and he was flirting with the idea of telling her his secret, his guts had twisted constantly. Sitting on the sofa with her in the crook of his arm, staring at the television but not really seeing it, nor really feeling the hard pebble of her nipple as he toyed with it beneath her sweater, he’d gone breathless with fear. By that point they’d started to divulge their tastes to each other. She trusted him enough to tell him about her penchant for being pushed down and treated like a plaything. She’d confessed that she’d never tried anal but had always wanted to, and had trusted him completely as he worked her up from a small vibrator to his cock. She’d bought the restraints that were now tucked away in the bottom drawer of her dresser. Her eyes went wide and she tried to keep her smile from getting too big every time she made a confession, and he could have burst with wanting to make her fantasies come true.

And yet his own had been so hard to confess. He held back again and again, until one afternoon when he was at work and she was at home they texted back and forth, and after he asked her to send him a short video of her using her vibrator she asked if that was one of his fantasies to watch. Somehow his attempt at a little saucy fun turned into a discussion about how he had never told her any of his fantasies. When she seemed to be upset, he agreed to tell her when he got home.

In bed, with Evie resting her chin on his chest and looking up at him, he had told her. He’d expected the worst when he revealed that he was bisexual. He couldn’t even make eye contact with her, instead talking to her chin and her neck. He didn’t want to see the excited glint in her eye fade as he told her he wanted to bring another man into bed with them.

But Evie was limitless when it came to her curiosities, it seemed. She’d crawled along the length of his body and leaned forward, sheltering them both in the veil of her hair.

‘What would he do?’ she whispered against his mouth, and as he let loose one fantasy after another she rocked against him. He didn’t hold back. He spilled his guts and held her hips as she bobbed over his cock, and her climax squeezing around him was the most glorious feeling in the world riding on the weightlessness of his confession. He’d turned her over and kept talking as he fucked her, telling her not only what he wanted this other man to do to him but what he wanted them both to do to her.

They’d carried on all night and then slept the day away, and Ryan had gone weak in the knees when she shuffled in his wake as he made a late breakfast. Hair mussed and eyes bright, the halves of her ass peeking from the hem of her nightshirt and still bearing the shape of his hand. She looked fearless to him. When she suggested they make his fantasy a reality he agreed.

They should have just done it, he realised now as he flashed his transit pass to the driver and took the first empty seat on the bus. Gone out together, had a few drinks and found someone to bring home. That had been her suggestion, but he didn’t want some sloppy hook-up. He and Evie had fitted so well together that he didn’t want to risk ruining that with just anyone.

So he’d made the profile online. 28M and 23F seeking another playmate. He’d used a selfie in front of the mirror as his profile picture. He’d been clear in his profile that he was looking for a bisexual man to join them. He was upfront about the games he and Evie played. The response had been immediate and disappointing: explicitly gay men who were only interested in Ryan, old men and young men, some just looking for a show via webcam and others bringing invitations to group events.

How hard is it to find a bisexual guy in his late twenties to mid-thirties who doesn’t immediately come off as deranged? Agonisingly hard, apparently.

He and Evie had thought they’d finally found someone last week, a barrel-chested man in his early forties. Both of them answered his messages and were optimistic. He communicated well and when Evie had sent him a below-neck picture in her bra and panties he had been respectfully complimentary. His interest was in both of them but, just as they entertained the idea of asking for a meeting, the man lost interest following a discussion about kink. He said that he didn’t think they were compatible, that his tastes were more intense than what they were used to, and that it was best that they didn’t waste one another’s time.

That’s the version that Evie got. She hadn’t known about the one Ryan had deleted where REDWOLF77 had grilled him about his relationship with Evie, then questioned whether Ryan really could keep it together while watching another man treating Evie to the same savage loving as Ryan’s.

Can you honestly say that you’d have no problem watching me tie her hands over her head, stuff her own panties in her mouth and fuck her until she can’t stop shaking? I think you would. You come off as very protective of her. I think we’d have a problem in a hurry.

Up until that point he had been wrapped up in Evie and living out those filthy fairy tales they spun together. He’d close his eyes to think about her shivering as he and another man closed in on her and in minutes he’d be seeing stars while a sticky mess ran down his hand. He was dying to know if she’d make the same sounds while another man used his tongue on her, if she’d bite her lip or if she’d buck and scream as she took a cock that wasn’t his. Would she touch herself when another man puckered his mouth around Ryan’s dick? Would she come, or would she wait for one of them – or both of them – to take her there?

He needed time to process the doubt REDWOLF77 had poisoned him with. He’d wanted to give up after that, but Evie had insisted they keep trying. Now part of him hoped they never found a suitable match so he wouldn’t have to find out he couldn’t handle watching Evie with another man, while the other part of him couldn’t stand not knowing. He’d been so concerned with making sure that Evie wanted this as much as he did that he didn’t stop to wonder whether he would be the one who got cold feet.

And now he had them, and he didn’t know what to do with them.

He got off the bus in front of the hospital and grabbed a second cup of coffee from the cafeteria before heading to his locker, where his heart kicked at the sight of the photo he kept taped to the inside. It was taken before they had gone from friends to lovers: he and Evie when they had both been struck down with a cold in the same week. They looked terrible with red and raw noses and unwashed hair, but it had been a good day of being lazy on the sofa watching DVDs. She’d tried to hide her face when he took out his phone but he’d tucked his fingers into her armpits and tickled her, and the shot he got was a little blurry but made him deliriously happy whenever he saw her smile. He’d almost gone crazy with wanting to kiss her, even with the runny nose and puffy eyes.

REDWOLF77 was right. He was protective of her. He loved her. God, he loved her. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, but that didn’t stop him from loving her. If she gave him any indication whatsoever that she wanted to end this he’d do it, but his Evie was fearless.

Which was why he needed to be sure he found the right man. Not for him, but for her. For them.

Someone he could trust not to hurt her.

Someone he could trust not to take her away from him.

Coming out of her apartment, fingers flying over the screen to return Ryan’s text, Evie didn’t see the wall of plaid and hair standing on the other side of the door until she walked into it.

‘Jesus!’ Seth stepped back as she jumped, and returned her smile with a scolding look. ‘Maybe they should start giving out tickets for walking with those things.’

‘Or you could stop being a dinosaur, trade in that flip-phone and start communicating like someone your own age,’ she countered, hand still against her throat as her heart crawled back down where it belonged. She leaned in the doorway and looked down at the toolbox in his hand. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘You didn’t get my notice?’ She shook her head. ‘Why do I bother? I got my grant. I need to measure the windows on the inside, and while I’m in there I thought I’d run the tape through the whole place and check out that slow drain of yours.’

‘Planning to evict me?’

‘Never, though I expect I’ll be getting your notice to quit in the fall when you finally move upstairs.’

‘Shush,’ she said, though he was probably right. She’d spent more time in Ryan’s apartment since moving in than she had in her own, and Ryan had already teased that he should start making space for her in his closet.

‘The bathroom is kind of grungy, but that’s nothing new. Go ahead.’

She stepped aside, and Seth looked down her body. ‘No work today?’

‘I always have the day off after I do evenings.’

His first look had been nothing more but a quick intake of the green leggings and white sneakers she wore, but the second was slower, more discreet. It was the same look she got on the elevator with him when she first came to look at the apartment, and, just like she had to keep back her giggle then, she had to do it now as she watched him tuck his interest away.

When she first moved into the building, she became a little giddy whenever she ran into Seth. ‘Sex on legs’ was how she described him to her sister once. Not at all her type, not like Ryan, but he certainly fitted nicely into those fantasies that had yet to be indulged by a young woman out on her own for the first time. In her imagination, Seth had her on her knees in the elevator or bound to the cage down in the storage basement, or even bent over the banister outside her apartment with his hand in her hair.

She would have settled for a hard screw in her virgin bed and was on the verge of asking him for a drink when Ryan became a fixture, and her fantasies about Seth were overtaken by the flutter she got just thinking about her adorable neighbour. Then, once Ryan told her about Seth’s wife, she couldn’t meet Seth without feeling a little sad.

It was a little funny watching him walk into her apartment now, the picture of manliness with broad shoulders covered in plaid and the ink on display from the elbow down where his sleeves were rolled up, but wearing moccasin slippers, his usual uniform.

A horrifying thought struck her as he headed for the bathroom, and she followed behind him.

‘Oh, I think I forgot my phone. I’ll just be a second and I’ll be out of your hair.’

As he turned on the bathroom light and set his toolbox aside, Evie veered off into the bedroom. The bed was made – she hadn’t slept in it for days – but a tangle of sheets was the least of her concerns.

Evie peeked back to make sure Seth was still turned away from her, then quickly untied the nylon restraints from the head and footboard and dropped them into the hamper. She did another quick check around the room but there was nothing else, no handcuffs carelessly tossed on to the vanity table and no vibrators or plugs mingled with the bottles of nail polish and pots of creams.

‘So, do you need to use the toilet before you go?’ Seth asked, appearing in her bedroom door as she finished her perusal.

‘No, I’m good.’ She smiled up at him as she replaced her purse across her chest. She hated to admit it, but just watching him lean on the threshold had the potential to get her really horny really fast.

‘I think you probably should,’ he said, holding her gaze with a crooked smile, and mortification gushed through her.

She clapped her hands over her eyes and groaned. ‘Oh, shit, I’m so sorry.’

‘I’ve seen worse,’ he said with a quiet chuckle as she rushed past him to the bathroom.

Laid on the lip of the tub where they had been left to dry was a row of vibrators in various colours.

‘Define worse,’ she groaned, then held up her hand. ‘No, please don’t. I don’t want to hear about the fucking machine the middle-aged couple downstairs has in their spare bedroom.’

‘You need to run up to Ryan’s and do a sweep?’

She swivelled around and frowned. ‘You’re having too much fun with this, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t have a neatly arranged line of vibrators air-drying in my bathroom, so I’m actually feeling a little bad about myself at the moment.’ He slipped a hand into his breast pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. ‘I’ll give you a minute to put those away and dismantle the sex swing in the closet.’

‘You’re not funny,’ she called after him, and quickly gathered up her freshly washed toys. She was pretty sure she didn’t need to check Ryan’s place, as they hadn’t used any toys the night before, but after she called out her goodbye to Seth she went up to check anyway.

She’d already missed her bus to the mall, and so she sank down on the end of Ryan’s bed and pulled up her text app.

Seth saw my toys in the bathroom and now I think I’m going to die.

Not the anal beads! came the reply almost immediately. He must have been at the nurse’s station or on break.

You’re not mature enough to be my boyfriend.

I’m not the one with a vibrator shaped like a dolphin.

Evie flopped back on the bed and dragged the pillows over her face. She supposed her smell was in there somewhere, but all that filled her head was Ryan.

What would have happened if you had given up on Ryan and asked Seth to come in one night?

She tried to push the question away, but it refused to be banished. She rolled over, closed her eyes and cuddled into the pillow as she would have done if he was holding her in his arms.

She knew now it probably would have ended badly. Now that she knew Seth better, she could see that they might have burned hot to start, but he would have left her charred. On those nights when they sat together on the fire escape she could feel the blackness inside him seep out to join the shadows around him. Some nights he drank too much and fell silent for long stretches. Other nights he caught himself before he said Rita’s name.

It’s possible that Seth would have indulged her fantasies like Ryan did, but even if she had been able to withstand his darkness, there still would have been Ryan. He still would have knocked her world off its axis, and things would have become messy.

She pressed the pillow against her face and breathed deeply, and then guilt pricked her.

Ryan would be furious if he knew she had gone ahead and made a second profile online. Not on the free site he had been trying, but one that cost her a tidy chunk off her credit card. She couldn’t take waiting any longer. If she wasn’t driven out of her mind by those filthy things he whispered in her ear while he played with her, she was twisted into knots watching his impatience grow.

In the three hours since she’d created the profile, she’d received almost twenty replies. There was a definite improvement, but no one had grabbed her so far. She hadn’t replied and wouldn’t until one of them really attracted her, and then she’d tell Ryan about it, let him have a little sulk and then show him what she’d found. If none of them appealed to her, she’d just close the account and think of all the things she could have bought with the money she’d spent.

‘Fuck! Goddamn motherfucking cocksucking bitch!’

Evie tossed the pillow aside and went to the window. She could see movement below, and when she pushed the window open all the way and poked her head out she couldn’t help her laughter.

Seth stood on the landing, soaked from the waist up.

‘Find the leak?’ she called to him.

He shot her a look as filthy as his language, then tugged his ponytail free. ‘I busted a pipe.’

‘But my vibrators are OK?’

The fury he directed towards her made her giggle, and Seth followed suit as he shook his soaked hair.

‘As long as they’re waterproof,’ he said, and leaned back against the railing. ‘It’s not that bad. I’ll clean up the floor before you get home but I’m going to have to call the plumber. Oh, look at this dirty little fucker coming to gloat.’

Marco had pattered up the fire escape and now rubbed himself against Seth’s calves.

Seth wrung out his hair and flung the water at his pet. Marco jerked but nonetheless resumed his worship.

‘I’ll throw your towels in the wash, too,’ he called up, but Evie just shook her head.

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got to do a load tomorrow anyway. Just hang them up and I’ll get them. You going to the hardware store?’

He picked the cat up and cradled it in one arm. ‘Wasn’t planning on it, but I am now.’

‘Good. I’ll go with you. There’s a dollar store next door and I need a few things, then I’ll make you a tea while you fix my busted pipe. Hey, Seth!’

He looked up again, and Evie snapped a picture.

‘You put that on the Internet and I’ll kill you,’ he warned.

‘How would you know? You have a flip-phone. You probably still have an AOL account. If I put it online you’ll never find it. Change your shirt. I’ll meet you downstairs.’

She sent the photo to Ryan as she headed out. Caught the landlord getting some pussy wet on the fire escape.

Too bad he kept his shirt on. He’s got a great chest.

‘Oh,’ she said, sitting on the bottom step by the mailboxes. Even after all this, it still surprised her when he said things like this and reminded her that he actually looked at other men and found them attractive.

She flashed back to the night before when he’d teased her about bringing Seth into the fold, and she actually felt faint.

If only. None of this online bullshit or getting a feel for a potential playmate. Just the three of them getting wild between the sheets.

The thump of Seth’s boots on the stairs jarred her out of the porno playing out in her head. He’d changed from his red plaid into a green T-shirt and had let his damp hair hang free around his shoulders.

‘You ready to go?’ Seth asked.

Evie nodded and followed behind him. ‘You have no idea.’