Fix It Up Page 10

  "You've been a busy friend," he corrected.

  "I've always been a busy friend. But I always have time for you," I told him as I stuffed the food in a paper bag, grabbed drinks, and moved outside. "Love you. Talk to you later."

  "Love you too. Try not to fuck that asshole. Or do it. Whatever."

  That was his parting.

  I was still smiling as I opened the door to the truck, having to haul myself up even with the step rail that would be enough for normal-sized people.

  On the drive, I opened the windows, the air thick, heavy, damp with sea water, a lifetime of knowing that sensation telling me that a storm was brewing. We'd be in for some epic rain and the kind of thunder that shook the house's foundations sometime later tonight. Summer storms, they were my favorite. Always angry, refusing not to be seen and heard. But over just as quickly, leaving behind steaming roadways and that amazing smell that I knew came from the dirt, but always thought of as a rain scent.

  The driveway to the site was empty, the inside lit only by the newly installed lights in the kitchen and the spotlights Warren clearly had on upstairs.

  I closed the door quietly, for some reason not wanting him to hear me coming, to genuinely surprise him. I tried not to analyze the impulse as I moved inside, feeling oddly light, my heart thrumming a bit, my belly jumping.

  Excitement.

  There was no other way to describe those sensations.

  I was excited.

  Until I walked through the entry, my head immediately swiveling to the doorway to the living space where there was a massive, ornately carved slice of wood over the top, something that had clearly come with the house, which had somehow managed to survive the storm.

  Except... it wasn't there.

  It wasn't there.

  After I expressly told Warren that it was vital, that there was no choice, that it had to stay.

  He had gone and ripped it off.

  All that was left was a freshly spackled wall.

  Just when I thought we had found a rhythm, had learned to work together, to be upfront with our concerns, to stop being petty and backhanded.

  He had to go and do this.

  He had to undo what respect and trust we had learned to show each other.

  "Warren!" my voice broke out of me without thinking, without considering how I should approach the situation, without me even knowing what was going to come out of my mouth next. "Get down here now!"

  Red.

  It had been a while since I had seen it.

  Maybe some light pinks here and there, when he was being stubborn about the project, but it hadn't deepened to red since the last job we had done together.

  I could have sworn I heard a sigh from above before the footsteps sounded, walls and ceilings in this place as thin as leaves that barely survived the winter, I could hear every stomp of his boots across the master bath, then bedroom, then finally, the hall, before they started clomping down the steps which groaned with the effort of holding his weight - something I found charming, but Warren had been annoyed about keeping.

  What if whoever buys this place has a kid?

  It was even a valid argument.

  But he had been overridden by Andy who thought it was an unnecessary expense and Rachel who thought it would simply take too long for something so unnecessary.

  It wasn't really a victory for me since they had pulled the boss cards on him, but I almost wanted to smile as I heard them.

  Almost.

  If I wasn't so mad.

  "Where is it?" I demanded, actually feeling a hip jut out, having to fight the urge to cross my arms and glare at him.

  "Where's what?" he asked as though anything else was out of place.

  Wait.

  Maybe it was.

  It wouldn't be unlike him, after all. He went behind my back more than once on our last job, then acted like I was irrational for being upset by it.

  Maybe he had just been placating me, yessing me to death to my face while he did whatever he wanted behind my back.

  "The wood, Warren, obviously," I said, waving a hand toward the doorway.

  "Did you make me dinner?" he asked instead of answering me, gaze fixed on my arm that I had aloft, the bag swinging, filling the air with seasoning, an unmistakable scent everyone knew.

  My gaze shot back to him, finding him watching me with a look I didn't quite know how to interpret. Brows low, lips parted ever so slightly, eyes almost a little lost, heavy-lidded.

  I knew that look.

  I'd seen it before.

  But not on him.

  And, if I were being honest, not on anyone in longer than I cared to admit.

  So long, in fact, that I was struggling in placing it, in putting it into context.

  But my body seemed to understand it, wasn't the least bit confused by it.

  Because it responded in kind.

  My breathing felt more shallow and rapid, my pulse pounding in odd places - throat, wrists, temples. A heaviness settled in my lower belly, aching and oppressive, begging for things I hadn't wanted in far too long.

  "How dare you?" I asked, voice almost a little frantic, needing to use it as a smokescreen to hide any possible signs on my face or in my body that might give away what was going on within it.

  "What?" he asked, shaking his head, but it seemed to oddly go in slow motion, like his body and brain were wading through something thick, making it hard to think and act as quickly as usual.

  "Go behind my back. Again. I mean I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you would do it. You've done it before. But I thought we had come to a sort of agreement, a comradery or something. That we were done being childish and backhanded. But no, you had to take it down. You asshole. After I decided to come here to surprise you with dinner because I thought you were just being nice to me for a change. But no, you were just trying to shoo me away so you could..."

  "Shut up," he cut me off, tone almost a little soft? But that couldn't be right. This wasn't the moment for soft. Those weren't the words for soft.

  "Excuse me?" I snapped, dropping my arm to my side, shaking my head at him. "Did you actually just tell me to shut up? Who do you think..."

  I didn't get to finish my sentence.

  He moved impossibly fast then, so fast that my eyes had trouble registering the motion before I suddenly felt a strong, calloused hand grip the back of my neck, the contact sending a shiver through my system, making the pressure on my belly increase, making my nipples harden, my breath catch.

  My body moved suddenly backward, Warren's hand shoving into my hip, sending me slamming back into wall, head protected from impact by his hand at my neck, but my back hit with force, knocking out what was left of my air - which was admittedly little - just a second before his body was pressing into me, pinning me, as his lips crashed down onto mine.

  They did that.

  Crashed.

  There was nothing soft or sweet or tentative about it as his lips claimed mine, hard and demanding.

  Rough.

  Primal.

  Something within me responded to that, to the animalistic pull of sensations, softening into it, surrendering to it, offering anything he wanted to take.

  My hands curled involuntarily for a moment before they moved upward, the bag dropping carelessly as my fingers traced up the corded muscles of his arms - one behind my neck still, holding me where he wanted me, the other pinned to the wall beside my head, blocking any escape, as though I was even seeking it, then curling into his shoulders as my hips moved off the wall, pressing into his, wanting more, wanting to feel his hard lines pressed to my softer ones.

  A low, throaty, whimpering noise rose up and out of me as his tongue traced the seam of my lips, entreating entrance. Getting it, his body curled forward, forcing mine back as far as the wall would allow.

  His hand slid down the wall, the sound a familiar one, callouses catching the wall with the same noise produced by sanding. It slid low, gliding under my behind, bracing, al
most, for a moment before pulling upward.

  Upward.

  Forcing me up on my tiptoes.

  Then higher.

  Until my feet left the ground completely, hands frantically curling around his neck for stability as he rose up again, keeping me against the wall and his body while his tongue ravaged mine, dragged sounds and sensations out of me that - had you asked me just a moment ago - I would have claimed were impossible.

  But there was no denying the heaviness of my breasts, the way my skin felt alive, electric, ultra sensitive to every small sensation - the brush of his tee against my bare arm, the button of his jeans just under my hipbone - finding something erotic in every little brush, breath, rush of air.

  Everything heightened, as his head slanted to deepen the kiss, his chest brushed to mine, making an aching pain/pleasure mix move across my nipples then downward, causing a loud moan to rip from somewhere deep inside.

  A low, deep, rumbling growl moved through Warren's chest and into mine, reverberating through my insides until every bit of me was humming with it as well.

  My leg had just started to lift, to seek the stability of his lower back, to allow my core to press to his, to feel his hardness stroke where I needed it most, when it happened.

  The storm I had predicted earlier came roaring to life.

  The thunder cracked viciously, moving up through the floor and into our bodies, the sound making us jerk almost violently apart.

  Where I had been aloft just a second before, my feet were suddenly slammed back down as we both struggled for air, for calm in our systems, for some sanity to return to our brains.

  My legs felt wobbly forced to hold me again, making my butt press back to lean into the wall as I sucked in a slow, deep breath, trying not to focus on the way my lips felt swollen and tingly, how my body was screaming for more, how the unfulfilled desire was an aching pain that was impossible to ignore even as reality came hurtling back.

  Warren had just kissed me.

  And not just the little peck he would - or I would - give for the cameras. On the cheeks or forehead or close enough to the lips to look convincing, but not actually make that forbidden contact.

  No.

  He just grabbed me, pushed me up against a wall, and kissed me.

  The way a woman secretly always craves to be kissed by a man - with reckless abandon, with everything within him, like he had absolutely no control over his reaction to you.

  Warren had done that with me.

  And I had no freaking idea what I was even supposed to think about that, let alone say, or react.

  All I really knew was that the storm raging outside paled in comparison to the chaos going on within me in that moment as I tried to calm my body, tried to remind myself why I wasn't supposed to have thoughts and feelings like that about Warren Allen Reyes. That, in fact, I was supposed to be angry with him, not wanting to jump his bones.

  But even as I desperately sought it, the anger was nowhere to be found, drowned, no doubt, under a tidal wave of need that was refusing to stay at bay.

  "I didn't get rid of it," Warren's voice said suddenly between the unmistakable cracks of lightning and the room-shaking crashes of thunder.

  He sounded... different.

  But controlled.

  More controlled than I felt, that was for sure.

  When my mouth opened to speak, it was somehow both airy and croaking all at once. "You didn't get rid of what?"

  "The wood carving," he specified, making my head turn up to finally look at him, finding he had leaned back against the banister, gaze forward, casting him half in shadow, making it impossible to truly read his expression, to glean anything from his eyes, to learn if he was as affected as I was in the moment.

  "Where is it then?" I asked, taking another deep breath, hoping my heart would get the message that it was time to stop slamming so hard.

  "Danny came by right as the crew was leaving," he started. Danny was one of the electrical guys. "He had to rewire the lights for the front porch. But the wire shorted out, burned up through the wall. We were lucky it didn't turn into a full-blown fire. But we had to rip it off the wall to get the new wire in. I didn't get rid of it. I know how much you liked that. I figured we can stick it back up. Or I can use it to frame that mirror you got. I can make another couple of sides to match it, age it, make it all look like one giant piece."

  How did he sound so calm, so normal?

  My body was still begging me to run over there, rip off my clothes, then his, and finish what we had started.

  "Oh," was all I could seem to manage as I leaned against the wall. "Okay," I added when that didn't sound like enough of a reaction.

  "So what do you want?"

  You was clearly not the right answer.

  He was very squarely set in work mode. How he had gone from alpha-man-grab-her-and-kiss-her mode to work mode was beyond me.

  And he had been into it.

  I hadn't been imagining it.

  He had initiated it.

  His body had been tense.

  His cock had been hard.

  He had been controlling the situation.

  He'd been into it, damnit.

  How had he gone from that to this so quickly?

  While I still couldn't seem to force my thoughts and body to work together, so that I could at least stop using the wall for support like some virgin heroine from an old-school romance novel, all overcome after something as basic as a kiss.

  But there was nothing basic about that kiss.

  "The mirror sounds nice," I managed to tell him.

  "Great. I'll get on that tomorrow after we check out the first house." He paused then, giving room for me to speak, as I was prone to do, prattling on about everything and nothing because I could never seem to get comfortable with long silences. But I couldn't think of anything to say right then. "Are those tacos?" he asked.

  Somehow, that permeated.

  My muscles unclenched, my heartbeat evened out, my blood seemed to cool back to normal temperature.

  "Yeah. I... it was the only thing we seemed to have the makings for."

  "I was going to make it last night, but we were too beat," he agreed, bending to grab the bag. "You eating, or did you have yours already?"

  I was starving.

  I had planned to eat with him while talking ahead of time about the plans for the next house, so maybe we could avoid some of the fighting on camera.

  My stomach was churning angrily at the idea of what I was about to do.

  "I was just dropping it off. I planned to take a walk."

  "It's pouring."

  "It's almost over," I assured him, knowing that these kinds of storms didn't last long.

  "You can't go out in this," he objected, digging in the bag with one hand, but his gaze was on me, eyes unreadable.

  "I'll see you back at the house," I said, turning, and walking to the door before he could say anything else.

  The rain was still coming down, the kind of unrelentingly steady that had me drenched before I was halfway down the path.

  I should have been cold.

  But my body was overheated, overstimulated, over... everything.

  I reached up, throwing sopping wet hair out of my face as I made my way down the empty streets, moving in the direction of the beach.

  I wasn't stupid. I didn't go on the sand. Not until the storm eased. But as I predicted, the lightning crashed one final time about half a mile to my left, followed by a half-hearted rumble before the clouds finally decided to close up shop for the night as well.

  Moving off the pier, I walked out onto the sand, finding that - for a rare, wonderful moment in time - it was all mine.

  Never before had I needed it so much in my life.

  I had never been the sort to need solitude to think things through.

  I was a talker. I sorted through my own mind best when I got together with a friend, or called my mom, or sister, or Brent, and just aired it all out there, bounc
ed ideas off them, talked until I found the way out of the labyrinth of my thoughts.

  But I wasn't sure this was something I could bring to any of them.

  My mother would remind me of why I took this job, why strict professional lines were of the utmost importance. My sister was in the very horny part of her second trimester. She would tell me to jump his bones. And deal with the possible fallout after we got our jollies.

  And Brent, well, after the comments on the phone earlier, I felt weird at the idea of bringing this to him.

  Especially given what happened after.

  Was there really another word to put to it other than rejection?

  It sure as hell felt a lot like rejection.

  Even just remembering the way he acted like nothing had happened made my chest feel tight, my stomach swirly, my cheeks heat with an unmistakable embarrassment.

  Though, I had nothing to be embarrassed about.

  I hadn't been the one to attack him.

  Sure, I had reacted.

  Maybe I even reacted very openly to it.

  But that was all chemicals, hormones, a primal impulse to, well, respond to an alpha male.

  I did nothing wrong.

  Warren, on the other hand, had not only told me to shut up, but then initiated the kiss, and went ahead and pretended like nothing had happened afterward.

  He should be the one sitting at the beach trying to figure things out, worrying about implications, about how we were going to bounce back from this, if there would be awkwardness, if we needed to talk it out.

  Well, we had to talk it out.

  There was no way around that, was there?

  We needed to be adults.

  For the show.

  For our futures.

  And, quite frankly, for my sanity.

  Because my mind was never going to let it go until we sorted it out.

  Was it something he had wanted to do for a while?

  Was it simply the heat of the moment?

  Was it as good for him as it was for me?

  No.

  Those were not the kinds of thoughts I needed to have.

  I needed to take feelings out of it.

  It needed to be approached calmly, clinically.

  A while later, long enough that the tips of my hair had slowly started to dry, I finally got up off the sand, spending almost the whole walk home swatting sand off of places it had accumulated.