Tear You Apart Read online

  He gives me a shrewd look. “You think so? Why?”

  “Well...”

  His gaze flickers at the packages, over me, toward the door, around the kitchen, before finally settling on mine. “You’re just dropping off some stuff for Naveen. Right?”

  He’d called me once, and I didn’t answer, and I’d texted him once with the same result. We haven’t spoken since the day I walked out, after sucking him off against the wall I could reach out and touch if I took only a few steps in that direction. I want to scuff my toes along the tile floor, but keep myself still. I straighten my shoulders. Lift my chin.

  “Yes. So. I should go.”

  “Okay,” Will says mildly. “Thanks. See you.”

  He doesn’t walk me to the door. My fingertips skid on the metal frame before I find the handle and turn it. Then I’m pushing it open and walking through it. Into the hall, bare concrete walls, the far-off sound of sirens filtering in through the wire mesh covering the open window at the end of the corridor. The elevator is directly in front of me. I’ll be in it in a minute, the door closing behind me, beginning the rattle and shake of ancient gears and wires that will take me all the way down.

  I put one hand on the concrete wall, next to the elevator call button. The concrete’s rough and raw enough to scrape my skin when Will’s voice makes me turn. Blood beads in the wrinkles of my fingers.

  His mouth is on mine so fast I shouldn’t be ready for it, but the truth is I’ve been ready for Will to kiss me since the second I walked through his front door. Our mouths open, tongues meet. His hands anchor my hips; mine grip his shoulders. Then higher, to clasp behind his neck, to toy with the softness of the hair there. His kiss travels from the corner of my mouth, along my jaw to my neck, and I am lost.

  I was lost before I got there.

  I turn my head to give him full access. His teeth are sharp, but the soft heat of his tongue soothes any sting they’ve made. A hiss escapes me, not because he’s hurt me, but it must sound that way, because he pulls back and looks up and down the hall.

  “My neighbors,” he says after a second. “They’re kind of nosy.”

  They’re also very quiet, but I guess just because I haven’t seen or heard anyone else in this building doesn’t mean they’re not there.

  “We’d better go inside,” Will says, kissing my mouth.

  As if I’m going to say no. I laugh into his mouth, tasting his smile, and let him lead me step by step toward his front door. He hasn’t stopped kissing me when we cross the threshold, or when he kicks the door closed and pushes me up against it. Not even when he presses his thigh between my legs, nudging upward against the barrier of my dress. We’re tangled.

  Breathing hard, he breaks the kiss to look into my eyes, searching them for...what? I don’t know. I don’t care, just then, what he hopes to find or expects to see.

  I put my hand on his shoulder and push, not gently, but not cruelly, either. I push him until he edges back a few steps, and I move past him without breaking eye contact until the last possible second, when I turn and walk backward so I don’t have to look away. One step. Another. Three, four, five, and I’m in the hallway leading to his bedroom.

  Will doesn’t move.

  I retreat another step. He stays still. We don’t move, long enough for me to watch the motes of dust dancing in the shafts of light coming in the windows overlooking the street.

  It’s now or nothing; I either take this next step or I go home.

  I turn my back, but glance over my shoulder as I do. His room is to the left, toward the back of the apartment. The door’s cracked open, and when my fingers brush it, it groans. Inside, his bed is neatly made, the headboard of dark scrolled metal, the dresser and matching armoire a surprising and delightful art deco style. The far wall is a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, all the blinds raised, the sun shining in so blinding it’s impossible for me to see if anyone is in the building across the way.

  Behind me, the door creaks.

  And then his mouth is on mine.

  I’m not ready for it. Teeth crash. I would pull away if I could, but he’s molded to me and backing me up, fast, toward the bed. All I can do is take the kiss, all the way. Deep. My head spins at the taste of him, and I hold on to him even harder so I don’t fall down.

  When the backs of my knees hit the bed, Will holds me, so we ease onto it instead of tumbling. He’s on top of me for only a few seconds before we’re turning, rolling, and I’m straddling him with my dress pulled up, out of the way. My knees grip his hips. The scarf holding back my hair slips so that strands fall in my face, and he pushes them back so he can get at my mouth. I cannot get enough of him.

  His hands move over my breasts, cupping me, before one slides inside the neckline of my dress. Under my bra, lace and satin, not new but definitely chosen with him in mind. He finds my nipple, already hard, and rolls it between his thumb and forefinger. My mouth is on his throat when he does that; I bite a little too hard. I don’t mistake his hiss for anything but pain, although he doesn’t complain. I lick the spot anyway, remembering how it felt when he did the same.

  Will makes quick work of the buttons at the front of my dress, pushing it open. I sit up straight so he can get at my breasts. The bra fastens in the back and he deftly unhooks it. The fabric falls forward, and I put a hand up to catch it before I’m completely exposed. Everything is hands and mouth, distraction, yet I can’t quite let myself be half-naked in front of him.

  His mouth moves gently along the curve of my jaw. “No?”

  “I...” I shouldn’t want to. “I can’t.”

  Will pulls away to look at my face. How could I have lived my entire life without knowing this man? His eyes are gray and green, and I smooth my fingertips over the arches of his brows. I touch the sleekness of the hair that falls in front of his ears.

  “Because of this.” He touches my left hand. The ring.

  “That’s not why. It should be.” I didn’t think I’d be able to speak, but the truth slips out with a taste like sunshine on water. “But it’s not.”

  “Then...what?”

  I would pull away, but he’s got me held tight, with his hands on my hips. Somehow we’ve managed not to fall off the bed, though he has one foot on the floor and one leg stretched out toward the pillows, and I’m on his lap with a leg curled around him and the other half bent behind me. Awkward and a little uncomfortable, which neither of us noticed before this pause.

  “I’m...I haven’t...” I haven’t been with another man since I was twenty years old, skin unblemished, stomach flat, breasts that had never nourished twins. I’m forty-five years old, and while I don’t hate what the mirror shows, I’m not sure what I’ll do if he doesn’t like what he sees.

  Will brushes my hair from my face again with an expression so tender it makes me want to weep. Without shifting me from his lap, he tugs the scarf from my hair. He holds it up.

  It was a Mother’s Day gift from Kat when she was in elementary school. Ugly. It has horses and horseshoes on it, a pattern of black and gray, but I love it because it was a gift from my child. It’s soft and oversize, and it feels like her gap-toothed grin and the soft brush of her hair when she hugged me as I opened it.

  The fabric slides through his fingers when he holds it up. “Use this.”

  I don’t understand. “What?”

  Will wraps the scarf around his neck, the ends dangling, and grips my hips again. “Use the scarf on me. Blindfold me.”

  Startled, I laugh. “What? No!”

  He smiles. “Yes.”

  Neither of us move. His erection presses against me. I look into his eyes.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re worried about how you look to me,” he says. “I don’t want you to worry.”

  The idea roots like a weed, growing in