Читать книгу Just You - Jane Lark - Страница 13

“This is for you.” I held out the stuff I’d got in a store along the street, offering it to Portia. Arriving empty handed would have been lame. “There’s M&Ms, vodka, cola and popcorn. All we need for a few hours of Netflix.”

She looked uncertain but she took the carrier from my hand and checked inside it.

She was different outside the office. Her hair was down, and she was only wearing a sleeveless tee and a pair of skinny jeans that clung like a second skin. She looked like a different girl, a girl who might actually play a game of tonsil hockey in a pool with a guy about thirty steps below her on the social scale.

I knew she came from money but shit, you wouldn’t know it from the place she lived in.

She unpacked the stuff from the carrier and put it onto the tiny square of space she had beside a two plate burner.

I glanced about her room.

It was just a room, with a single bed, a few cupboards, the burner and a basin all-in. I’d researched her family in a bored moment when she started at the magazine and I knew her parents were loaded.

I didn’t say anything as she tossed the packet of M&Ms and toffee popcorn on her bed. Then she looked up at me with those blue eyes that always seemed to judge people. “Thanks for coming over.”

“You’re welcome.”

She made a face at me, a cute face, her nose wrinkling, I’d never seen her wrinkle her nose, or look cute, ever. Sexy? Always…

“Shall I put a film on now then?”

“If you want, unless you want to change plans and go out somewhere?”

“No, I’m happy to watch films, if you are? It’s my favorite thing, getting lost in films.”

When I’d got her text asking me over here, I’d been at the table with Mom and the others. We’d just finished lunch. Mom had seen my face. I think my expression had probably said: What the fuck?

“I’m bored.” What the hell had that meant? My mind had run through the fuck-buddy idea in my head. I mean, I’m young and I’m a guy. And after the party, there was reason to hope keeping her company might come with benefits.

Mom had fired questions at me as I’d left the apartment. But I was twenty-two. I didn’t want to be entirely tied to her. There had to be some get-out time in my life.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Portia asked, throwing a look over her shoulder at the bed as she turned away from me.

It was kind of intimate sitting on her bed. Maybe this seriously was a fuck-buddy thing, not just my wishful thinking.

I perched on the edge, my hands clasping together as my elbows rested on my parted thighs and I tried to keep a firm hold on my imagination––and my libido.

“You can take your coat off. You’re staying aren’t you?”

She was laughing at me internally; it was in the movement at the corner of her pretty pouting lips and it caught in the blue in her eyes and made it brighter. I smiled at her, giving her a look that told her not to tease me but I stood again to take off my jacket and hung it from a hook on the back of her door.

It must be weird, just having a bedroom to live in. It was about the same size as mine although I did share my room with Robin. But at least I had a living room to walk into and a couch to sit on. She just had a bed and on the other side of the room, a cupboard, counter and basin.

She poured the vodka into glasses and then added the cola and held one out for me to take before I sat down again. “Do you think it’s too early for this?”

For a minute, I thought she meant me being ‘round here when we’d only just started something, but then I realized she was referring to the drink… And besides, we hadn’t really started anything. As I’d told her before––we’d just messed around in a pool at a party.

“At two? No way.”

She put her drink on a chest beside the bed and picked up the laptop. I watched her face as she opened it.

She glanced at me. “What do you want to watch?”

Her eyes were definitely more blue than gray today. Maybe cause she had a blue sleeveless tee on. I shrugged. “You can have what you want. I’ll even suffer the Notebook or the Break up; your call.”

She smiled.

Beauty literally shone out of the girl when she smiled like that. I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile that openly at work. She always looked sly when she smiled at work, like she was being coy when she was anything but.

“You’re saved, I hate romantic stuff. What about a Final Destination marathon, we’ll start at number one.”

I grinned at her. “You’re on.”

This was weird. I was sitting in Portia’s room, by her invitation, talking about watching horror movies. Had I slipped into a parallel universe? She wasn’t only thirty steps above me on the society ladder. She was about the same in looks––a whole mile out of my league. I’d pitch myself at eight, maybe scraping nine, but she was a full on ten.

She went back to concentrating on setting the film up. My gaze dropped to her chest, the tee she was wearing clung, tucking beneath her breasts. I remembered the feel of her breasts in my fingers. They’d looked pretty awesome in a bikini, the perfect fit for the heel of my palm to press them up, so my thumb could rub her nipple.

Beneath her tee, I could tell she wore a thin cotton bra. The shape of her nipples pushed through the layers of her clothing.

I shifted a little, moving out of her way so she could sit down, trying to distract my brain from the threat of a hard on. It definitely seemed, so far, that the undertone of ‘I’m bored’ had not been a bootie call.

She put the laptop up on the side as the film started playing and sat down on the bed, slipped her shoes off and curled her legs up as she slid to the back of the bed, then leaned against the wall. Her body was illuminated by a beam of sunlight that suddenly pierced the cloudy day and shone down through the skylight above us.

The sunlight disappeared.

She reached forward for her glass.

I watched the opening scenes, feeling awkward again, like I didn’t know where to put myself with her so close.

I didn’t get why she was here though, I don’t mean why she’d asked me, but why the rundown room? Her parents were rich.

I sipped my drink as she sipped hers.

“Err! This is so violent!” her nose screwed up. It had a perfect tilt to its tip. How could the girl look so sexy with her nose screwed up? She did.

“You picked it.” My tone came out flat as I fought an urge to kiss her. It had been her who’d kissed me in the pool.

Her gaze spun to me, and a smile broke those perfect pink lips. She hadn’t any make up on today.

“I don’t dislike the violence and gore, it’s just like OMG when it happens.”

I smiled and shook my head at her, then threw the M&Ms over. “Open them.”

Still smiling she did and took a handful for herself then passed them back to me. “You can take your boots off and sit on the bed properly with me…”

Shit, something lurched in my gut and gripped at my cock.

I leaned forward and unlaced my boots, then moved back on the bed with my knees bent up and my thighs parted while I rested my head against the wall. My forearm leaned on my bent knee as I still gripped my glass.

We watched the movie in silence eating M&Ms.

When actor number four met a vicious end, her cell started vibrating on the side by the laptop, ringing out Counting Stars. She picked it up and looked at the screen but didn’t answer, her whole body hesitating as she took a breath. Then her thumb touched it to take the call.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes.”

“I’m fine.”

“Working.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Say, hi, to Mum.”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye.”

Her pitch had changed when she was on the cell. It got more arrogant, and British. Her dad was British. I knew that too.

She colored up a bit as she leaned over and put her cell back on the side, saying nothing.

God, I had to ask. “Portia, your parents are rich, right? Why the hell are you working at the magazine and living here?” My free arm thrust out to highlight the inadequacy of the shithole she was in.

She turned an even brighter red when she looked at me. Sirens blared on the film to mark another victim’s death. Taken down.

“The money’s my parents, not mine.”

Well, yeah, but I’d have thought they’d have sorted her out somehow so she lived a little better than this. If I had money, I’d want to help my family. Our gazes held for a moment, but then she looked back at the film and her lip caught in her teeth for a second.

“You, okay?”

She nodded but she wasn’t.

“What did he say?”

She turned back and smiled at me. “Happy Birthday.”

I was moving forward without thinking, and I gripped her arm. “It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you say? I’d have got you something. No wonder you were bored alone. We should do something. Go out…”

“I want to watch films.” That pretty pout was back.

“I could have bought you cake.”

“You didn’t have to buy cake and you did get me something, you bought M&Ms, popcorn and vodka.”

I ignored that. She was just changing the subject. “Are you seeing them?”

“No, they’re in Switzerland.”

“Really? Were they here for New Year?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see them the whole of the holidays?”

“Nope, nor Thanksgiving. I see them in the summer when they come over to LA.”

“In the summer?”

She looked at me with a flat gaze that said, so. It wasn’t abnormal for her.

If this was a rich kid’s life, I was glad all those wishes I’d made on birthday candles as a boy hadn’t come true. “What about when you were a girl?”

“I was in boarding school, I stayed there.”

Her expression said she didn’t care. But she’d grown up on her own. A frown crushed my brow––I’d got her wrong in the office. But now she did look like the girl I’d worked with for a year. Her lips had pouted and her chin was up, in that aggressive bitch like expression I knew well.

“How much did you see them?” My hand ran over my hair, back and forth, as I said it. I was still knee deep in shock.

“A few weeks every year.”

A few weeks? Well that had probably been as much as I’d seen Dad when he was meant to be with us, but that was because he didn’t give a shit and was in and out of jail––what about her parents then….