Playing With Her Heart Page 6

  I shrug, and look at the floor. Why am I even making stupid jokes about Davis? But I can’t seem to stop. “I wouldn’t be surprised. I bet he ties up all his conquests.”

  “Maybe I should leave the scarf with you then,” she says, then winks.

  “I didn’t say he was going to tie me up,” I say, feeling the need to draw some sort of line between Davis and me. I didn’t tell Kat he kissed me at his office. Because it was a mistake. Because it won’t happen again. Besides, I haven’t thought about it since then.

  “Would you let Patrick tie you up though?”

  I roll my eyes. “I’d let Patrick do anything to me. But I doubt that’s his style,” I say because surely Patrick is passionate but also loving, caring, and oh-so-sweet between the sheets. He’d never tie up a girl or talk dirty to her. Besides, he wouldn’t have to. He doesn’t need tricks or techniques like that.

  “Have you ever been? You know, tied up? Or handcuffed? Or anything? Like by Stefan maybe? I could see him as the type.”

  I focus intently on a framed vintage poster of Paris on Kat’s wall. “No,” I say softly, and it’s true, but it feels like a lie. Because nearly everything I told her about Stefan was a lie. She thinks I slept with him, that he’s some sort of wizard in the sack. He’s a singer and we kissed once while we were at a club checking out a new band last year, but that was all.

  Look, it’s not as if I want to lie to Kat about my love life, or lack thereof. It’s not as if I don’t trust her. But I don’t want to tell anyone the real story. What would they think? That it was my fault, like Aaron said? No, it’s hard enough to bear that. Besides, I’ve kept it hidden for so long that I wouldn’t even know how to exhume it from deep down inside me. I sometimes wonder if the truth of what happened with Aaron will be buried forever, like some archaeological relic that’s never uncovered. At this point, I don’t know how to begin to dig down that far, so I craft my new story with tales that make me seem like a normal gal, like any other twenty-three-year-old in New York who’s dating and doing it.

  The truth is I’ve gone six years without sex. I’m not a saint, and I’m definitely not a prude. I think about sex just as much if not more—probably way more, all things considered—than the average woman. I walk down the street and imagine epic, panty-melting, waves-crashing, out-of-this-universe sex. I dream of deep, passionate kisses that can’t be contained, that lead to bodies smashing into each other, to heated encounters, to promises of more.

  But if I’m going to be with someone again, I need to know it’s not a tainted kind of love. That it’s not twisted. That it can’t be used against me. Or against someone else.

  “What about you?” I layer a salacious tone in my voice, so I can shift the attention back to her and off of my fictionalized love life. “Does Bryan have ropes for you?”

  She laughs and shakes her head, then places her hand on her chest. “Jill, let me introduce you to your vanilla friend Kat. But even so, it’s better than anything I’ve ever read in a romance novel. Speaking of, I downloaded this hot new rock star erotica. It’s scorching. I’ll gift it to you. Maybe you can use it tomorrow when I’m out of town.”

  I hold up my hand and waggle my fingers. “If only my eReader could vibrate.”

  At least now I’m telling the truth. The only sex I have is in my head. I am masterful at solo flights. I return to my room to get ready for bed, but I leave my eReader alone. I can’t go there tonight. It would feel wrong.

  Instead, I cycle through my plan for tomorrow as I toss my jeans into the hamper. I could try to catch Patrick on the subway to ask him out, or try to find time with him alone at rehearsal. The prospect makes me nervous as hell, and I feel as if my organs are all boinging around inside me. But I remind myself that I’m ready, that it’s time to step beyond the past.

  I choose the perfect outfit to wear: a jean skirt, black tights, and a teal sweater. Maybe I’ll even wear a charm necklace Kat made for me last fall with a beret on it for when I won the part in Les Mis. I keep it hanging from the lamp on my nightstand so I can see it every day, and when I reach for it to lay it on top of my clothes, I’m instantly reminded of what else is in the nightstand.

  The small wooden box inside the top drawer. I’ve kept this box with me for six years. And it’s calling out to me in a haunting voice, an ever-present reminder that I can’t forget or ignore.

  I answer the call once again. I open the drawer on my nightstand, and I remove the box, place it in the middle of my bed, and take a deep, calming breath. I know what’s inside, but this thing is a bomb nonetheless. It’s living and ticking and it’s tried to destroy me before.

  I reach inside the drawer, pull out a chain that holds a tiny key and unlock the wooden box. Before I even look at the pictures, I can see him perfectly–Aaron. Dark hair, close-cropped, light brown eyes, and that dimple on the right side of his lips that made me fall for him. His sense of humor, the jokes he made about our school mascot, the dozens of red roses he brought me when I played in our production of Mamma Mia. Those are the good things.

  I reach into the box, my fingers shaky. I take out a picture. Him and me at prom. I’m wearing a red dress that falls to my knees and my hair is in a French twist, with a few loose tendrils. He’s unbearably handsome in his tux, that smile giving nothing away. I open the note next, the folds in it so permanent now they’re like tattoos. I read the first few lines.

  “God, I fucking love you so much, Jill.”

  That’s what gets me every time. Those words. Those awful, painful words.

  I close the box, lock it and return it to the drawer.

  * * *

  The next morning I’m on the train, a cute knit cap pulled over my blow-dried hair, a red scarf wrapped around my neck, and a skirt on even though it’s winter. But Patrick doesn’t board at the same time. Or on the same car.

  I peer into the car next to me, then head down to the other end, weaving in between passengers holding onto straps and poles. I look in the window to another car. No Patrick there, either. As I exit on Fiftieth Street, it only vaguely occurs to me that it would be really unusual to be on the same car of the same train at the exact same time every day.

  I’ll have to snag some one-on-one time during rehearsal.

  I walk up the steps and into the building with the studio, heading to the elevator panel to press the button.

  “Hold the elevator.”

  I turn, and it’s Davis.

  “Please,” he adds when he sees me. He shifts to a playful tone and flashes a smile that feels as if it’s just for me. His inky blue eyes twinkle and for the briefest of moments, I have this strange sense of him appraising me from stem to stern, surveying my body from the short gray boots that Kat brought me from Paris, to the black tights on my legs, to my blond hair peeking out from the hat. It should bother me, his eyes on me, drinking me in, but it doesn’t. Maybe because it’s so fleeting, so brief, that I might have imagined it.

  Besides, I’m guilty too of being less than professional in my random thoughts. Even though I have no intentions for him, given that it was all a mistake.

  I try to delete from my head the conversation Kat and I had about him last night as I speculated on his predilections. But I keep thinking about that scarf and I can picture Davis twining it around feminine wrists, pinning them, having his way.

  Fuck.

  I can’t go there. I shouldn’t go there. What happened in his office was wrong.

  “Elevator’s not even here yet,” I say in an effort to focus on the innocuous.

  “I’m sure there will be another one,” he says, and I notice he’s not wearing a winter coat even though he’s just come in from the cold. He wears jeans, shoes, and a white button-down shirt that must have been tailored for his chest. He’s holding a coffee cup in one hand, and a sesame seed bagel in the other. It’s only us in the lobby. Waiting. I glance at Davis again, and he’s not even shivering. It’s like he’s made of iron, impervious to the elements.

&
nbsp; “Don’t you ever get cold?”

  “No.”

  “You’re kind of badass.”

  His lips quirk up in a grin. “Thank you.”

  Then I press my hand against my mouth. “Shit,” I mutter.

  The grin is erased and he now has this caring look in his eyes as he reaches a hand toward me, as if he’s about to rest it gently on my arm. But he doesn’t, and I find myself missing the possibility of his touch. He stops halfway, then pulls back before he asks, “What’s wrong, Jill?”

  He seems so genuinely concerned. It’s such a different side of him than I see in rehearsals with the whole cast.

  “Sometimes I forget to turn on the filter that’s supposed to prevent me from saying things like that to my boss,” I say, because that’s the only way I should think of him, and you shouldn’t be too personal and chit-chatty with your boss. But I can’t get a read on him in any capacity.

  It’s as if my finely-tuned internal calibrations on people-reading don’t work with him. On the outside, I can size him up in seconds. He’s the type of good-looking that could grace the pages of a GQ ad, relaxing in a leather chair, a suit jacket tossed casually over the arm, wearing a crisp white shirt, a few buttons undone, holding a sturdy glass of scotch, his midnight blue eyes impossible to look away from.

  When it comes to work, he’s a drill sergeant times fifty. He’s a colonel keeping us all in line. But he’s also an artist and a gentleman, and he has this soft side every now and then. A side he seems to show to me. Davis Milo is the strangest mix of sophisticated class and unbridled intensity I’ve ever seen. It’s as if a Merchant Ivory movie fucked a Quentin Tarantino flick and made him.

  “I really wish you wouldn’t call me your boss,” he says. Maybe he’s in the same boat, too, and can’t get a read on how to be with me.

  “But you are, aren’t you?” I say, and then realize that the question—aren’t you—has taken on a life of its own and sounds flirtatious. I didn’t mean it to come across that way. I don’t know why I said it like that. I don’t know why I’m leaning closer to him and volleying back, but maybe it’s because the air around us feels warmer, sharper, and I want more of it.

  More of the mistake.

  He tilts his head to the side. He keeps his eyes on me, not letting go. Something about the way he looks at me makes me want to tell him things, to open up, to share all sorts of secrets I’ve never told anyone else. His dark blue eyes are so pure and unflinching that they seem to demand nothing less than total honesty.

  Of course, that’s his style, that’s his MO, that’s how he directs and elicits the most compelling performances from actors, by demanding unwavering truth on stage.

  He doesn’t respond to my question. The silence expands, an electric kind of quiet, and soon I can’t take the tension.

  “My boss,” I add, as if I have to explain, but my voice seems feathery, like it belongs to someone else.

  “Technically, I’m not your boss. The producers are. I’m only your director.”

  That’s all he says, and I can’t tell if he’s returning the serve, or if he’s just a master at handling actors. At handling me.

  I look up at the sign above the elevator that indicates what floor it’s on. Third floor. The elevator chugs, and it’ll be here any minute, and then I’ll be alone in it with him. My mind gallops off to all the sexy scenes I’ve ever read that take place in an elevator. Part of me wants to put an end to the imaginings, but the other part of me wants to unleash them.

  I can’t take that chance.

  “I’m going to take the stairs,” I say, and turn on my heels.

  “Good idea.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Davis

  I take a bite of my bagel as we round the first landing, chewing as I watch her walk up the stairs. I should look away, but her legs are an unfair advantage: strong, shapely, and impossibly long. Too bad they’re covered in tights. But then, I reason, as we round another flight, perhaps that barrier is a good thing.

  “How’s your coaching going?”

  She turns around briefly, casting me a curious look as she keeps walking. The sound of her boots hitting each of the concrete steps echoes. “How did you know I was a running coach?”

  “Because I looked you up before I called you in,” I say, with a–matter–of–fact tone. “The Internet is a wonderful thing. I research all actors I’m seriously considering casting.”

  “Oh,” she says, and there’s the faintest note of being let down in her voice, as if she wanted me to have looked her up just for her. “Coaching is good,” she continues. “I scaled back a bit when I got the part, but I’m still working with a core group of women who are training for a breast cancer awareness run to raise funds for research.”

  “That’s great. Takes a lot of discipline to do that, to run every day. I imagine it takes even more discipline to have run five marathons.”

  “Yes. I am immensely disciplined,” she says and there’s something veiled in her answer, so I can’t help but wonder what other areas she is equally disciplined about. “In fact, I’ve learned all the lines already.”

  Oh, so that’s what she meant. My mind was drifting off to tawdrier shores.

  She stops briefly on the landing to the fourth floor. I stop, too. She turns and wheels on me, and a look of frustration mingled with a hopeless sort of desperation crosses her gorgeous face. “You can’t just do this. You can’t keep coming in and out of my life,” she says, her voice nearly breaking.

  I step closer to her, worry pounding through me. “I’m sorry,” I say, but I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. “Are you okay?”

  She smiles, the kind you flash when you’ve pulled something off. “It’s from the show. Act II, Scene Five. Near the end.”

  “Damn,” I breathe out, shaking my head, and matching her grin. “You had me. You were so convincing that it didn’t even occur to me you were giving me a line. Because I know them all too.” Though I’m not an actor and would never want to be one, I shift into Paolo seamlessly with one tilt of the head, one cocky stare. “But I’m in your life. I’m in it, Ava,” I say, emphatically. We’re no longer in the stairwell. We’re in an art gallery, where this scene takes place and Ava is angry with Paolo because he’s shown up when she didn’t expect him.

  With every word crisply enunciated, because Ava is through with all their ups and downs, she commands, “Then be in it.”

  “I will if you’ll stop pushing me out.” I step closer to her.

  “I never did that and you know it,” she says, fixing me a tough stare, but she doesn’t back away.

  I pause. Breathe. Let go of the anger. “Ava, I can’t stand this fighting anymore.”

  She raises her eyebrows playfully. “Let’s do something other than fight then.” Then, her eyes soften. She reaches for my face with tentative fingers. “You have something on your…”

  I frown, puzzled by the words that don’t fit. “That’s not the next line. The next line is I have something in mind—”

  She cuts me off. “No, I was going to say you have a sesame seed right here.” She taps her chin lightly to demonstrate.

  “Oh.” I swipe once to wipe it off.

  “You missed,” she says softly, and now we’re done with lines. It’s just us. “Davis,” she adds, and it’s halfway to an invitation because she’s talking to me now, not Paolo, and she’s still got that seductive tone in her voice. I want to hear her say Davis in other ways. I want her to say my name because she can’t not. Because she’s reaching for me, and pulling me deeper, and because I’m doing things to her that drive her so wild she says my name in a breathless, fevered way.

  I want her to say my name to ask for it, to plead for it, to beg for it.

  She sweeps her thumb across my chin gently. I hitch in a breath as she touches me. “I got it,” she whispers, flicking the errant sesame seed quickly to the floor. I don’t know if she’s Jill or Ava anymore, but I don’t care because now she’s running
her thumb across my jawline, and the barest touch from her makes me hard.

  “Did you find any more?” I ask, in a low, hoarse voice.

  She shakes her head, her hair moving with the slightest swoosh, enough that I catch a faint scent of her pineapple shampoo that already is her scent to me. The one that will always make me think of her. Now she’s running her index finger across my lower lip, and that’s it. That’s all I can take.

  “Jill,” I warn.

  “What?”

  “If you keep doing that…” I let my voice trail off.

  She keeps doing it, tracing my lips with her finger, obliterating all my willpower. I place my coffee and bagel on the stairs then grab her wrists, walk her two steps backward. She’s up against the concrete wall. Her lips are parted and her eyes are full of lust. I hold tight to her wrists as I capture her mouth with mine.

  She lets out the tiniest little whimper at the first touch of my lips. I want to kiss her hard and hungry, because she makes me feel that way. But I want her to know I’m in control, that I’m leading now, not her. Without breaking my hold on her wrists, I trace her lips with the tip of my tongue, slowly, torturously. She tries to deepen the kiss, grappling at me with her sinfully delicious mouth but I take my time, tormenting her with my tongue, leaving her no room to think of anything else but how she’d feel if I were doing this to her in other places.

  I move to her jawline, kissing her there, then teasing my way to her earlobe, flicking my tongue against her skin. “Is that what you wanted me to do?” I whisper.

  “Yes,” she pants.

  “Is that why you touched me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been thinking about me since that day in my office?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  She inhales sharply, then whispers in a ragged voice. “Yes.”

  I let go of her wrists, and they fall to her sides. I untie the belt of her jacket looped at her waist, then undo each button on her coat, letting the fabric fall open. “I hate winter,” I say. “Too many layers.” Then I pull back to look at her. She’s wearing a V-neck sweater that makes her breasts look fantastic. Her nipples harden under my gaze. I finger the bottom of her sweater, careful not to take this too far, but dying to know what her skin feels like. I lift the fabric, and run my fingers across the soft skin of her stomach.