This flirting, this halfway house of human interaction, gave me fits.
Apparently normal people liked to start off with a hello, a what’s-your-name, a date, dinner, seduction by degrees, all that bollocks. Me? I preferred to fuck when I was horny and be left alone when I wasn’t. Granted, he couldn’t leave me alone, not if we were talking matters of proximity. He lived here.
I’d assumed—hoped—he’d go right back to being a near-stranger after I’d shot my load all over him. Proximity meant he couldn’t leave me alone but a newfound penchant for taunting myself with the memory of that epic hand-job meant I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
I could cope with extremes but Steven Bloody Kenton seemed to want to go from one to the other, then fuck with my head by settling somewhere in the middle.
“Just trying to make conversation.” He leaned against the wall by the window frame, but not looking out this time. Apparently he found the grumpy bastard sitting on the settee more interesting than the cookie-cutter semis across the road.
I’ve got a semi for him, I thought, trying not to snort with laughter at my own black humour. He knew he turned me on but I didn’t want him to see proof.
Or touch it.
Or…
I gulped.
“What time’s Gary due back?”
“About half ten,” I blurted out, instantly feeling uncomfortable. I’d dropped myself in it without exactly knowing what ‘it’ was. And all because Steven had flipped the topic on me, throwing me with that swift, sharp change of subject, giving me no time to think up a reply with which I could avoid whatever it was he was trying to do.
“Gemma coming back here with him?”
I gave him a shrug. It probably looked more like I was trying to shake the chip off my shoulder. “Dunno. He didn’t say.” Getting up and just heading for the kitchen for more munchies, rude or not rude? Yeah, probably is. Sighing, I flopped back, clasped hands resting in my lap, not hearing the television even though I knew I hadn’t hit the mute button. I’d watched this DVD time and time again already, but I was fucked if I could remember what this episode was about.
Yeah. Fucked. Chance would be a fine thing.
“Something up?” Steven ventured, and I glanced across the room. “Wrong, I mean. Something wrong?”
Bastard. You know exactly what you’re doing.
“Thought you might have another migraine coming on, the way you’re rubbing your…” He paused, cleared his throat, pointed briefly at me. “Temple.”
“No.”
“I remember what happened last time you claimed to have a migraine.”
“Yes. Well.” I clenched my jaw to prevent myself saying anything I’d later regret like, oh my God, please do it again, don’t make me beg, please do it. Breathing deeply through my nose, I forced my tense facial muscles to relax. “I don’t have a migraine.” Although you’re likely to fucking give me one. I coughed. The thought of Steven Kenton giving me one was too distracting to—
“Shame.”
I glared at him. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You know what.”
“There’s no need to be so bloody Kit. There’s nobody else at home this evening. We have the place to ourselves.”
“Yeah.” I tried to focus on the television but nothing registered. Actors said words, but they went in one ear and out the other. “That’s what I’m scared of,” I muttered, and grabbed the remote control. My finger hovered over the mute button for the longest second in history before I pressed it. Silencing the action on screen was an unmistakeable border between before and after. Before I gave in and after I acknowledged Steven had my attention.
“You’re not scared of me, are you?”
“No,” I shot back, a little too quickly.
“Oh.” He shrugged. “Good. Otherwise I might have been offended. You’re obviously not busy, so I thought we could talk, although I’m sure I could find something else for my mouth to do.”
“Jesus.” I closed my eyes and took a long, slow, deep breath. “You are not helping.”
When I opened my eyes again, Steven was staring at me, and smirking.
“Are you really that scared of conversation?”
“Are you really that keen to have one?”
“No, but it’s polite to get to know each other before I make you come again.”
A cough of astonishment burst out of me and I thanked God I wasn’t still eating jelly beans or drinking coffee as he spoke. “I beg your—”
“Okay, okay, just trying to shock a reaction out of you,” he muttered, running a finger along the edge of one of the shelves. I imagined him wearing white gloves and inspecting the house for dust motes, could have sworn I heard the sigh in time with the rise and fall of his chest. It was so much easier to watch him wander around the room, killing time, than it was to pay attention to whichever DVD it was I’d slotted into the player earlier.
“You don’t have to worry; I’m not going to do anything untoward,” he said softly, not even looking at me, nor raising his voice much, overtly confident that I’d be attuned to him.
When he spun round again I startled, but kept my eyes on him. I wouldn’t fool either of us if I averted my gaze and pretended to concentrate on anything else. I wasn’t that good an actor.
“You’re concerned about what happened before,” he said, making it a statement and an accusation all at once, even while absolving himself of any imagined culpability. What happened rather than what I did made it passive. An occurrence. Not something we did together.
I hitched both shoulders in a shrug that was more of a judder or nervous tic. “No.” I was no better at lying than I was acting. “Maybe.”
“I don’t see why, you know.”
“Because…”
Steven’s eyebrows lifted in anticipation of my answer.
Breath whooshed out of me along with any protest. There was no way of saying it out loud
