She stepped into the vigor of Chelsea on a Saturday night. Without the patience to wait for a bus, she hailed a taxi. No use delaying the inevitable. She needed to go home and sleep. She needed to talk to Dima, maybe even apologize for the way she’d behaved. Apologizing to him wasn’t her favorite thing because he never seemed to care one way or the other. Stoic wasn’t strong enough of a word for him. She didn’t need Freud to know that probably explained why she baited him with sex. Or spoke the common language in dance. At least then she found something hot and vital beneath his cool, reserved shell.
The taxi sped north into Hell’s Kitchen.
Pressing her head against the cool window, she gazed without focus at the bright lights. A gentle rain began to fall, which only refracted the colors to smaller slivers. After paying the driver, she raced out of the car and up the brownstone steps. Key code. Front door. Safe and dry. She trudged up the stairs as if a firing squad awaited her in their living room.
More often than she wanted to admit, she’d lain in bed listening to Dima and his occasional one-night stands get it on. Headboard banging. Girl shrieking. Hell, sometimes it’d been another man—their thrusting rhythm even harder, meaner. Only Dima’s moans and grunts of pleasure tempted Lizzie to slide her trembling hand down her panties. She’d stroked herself, circling her clit faster and faster, as their rhythm turned orgasmic.
Always she would lie there in the aftermath of overwhelming release, panting, her mind full to bursting with images she’d believed she would never see in person. Justifications jumped to mind quickly, defensively.
Just like porn.
Could’ve been anyone.
Only an easy way to get off.
She didn’t want him. She didn’t want to be the one he made scream.
No way could she handle it. Something too raw had been scraped open. Considering the little display she’d enacted with Paul, she deserved whatever Dima dished out. That didn’t make the prospect any more palatable.
She wanted their old life back. Her career. Her partner. No complications. Just the satisfaction of winning and knowing her place in the world. At the top of the second flight of stairs, she smacked her knee out of spite. The ruined knee.
Making plenty of noise in the lock, she allowed enough time for his date to freak out and grab a blanket, if she turned out to be the modest type. With Lizzie’s luck, that girl Jeanne would be the sort of exhibitionist who liked screaming and moaning.
Hands shaking. Breath shallow. Inner thighs tender from straddling Paul. Christ, she was a mess.
The apartment was dark. Quiet. Still.
Relief swished down her spine, leaving her boneless. She could shower, rest and regroup before having to face him again. But the back of her neck prickled. She was reaching out to flip on the floor halogen when his voice pierced the dark.
“Don’t.”
“Shit, you scared me,” she said on a squeak.
“Sorry.”
She didn’t think he was. Otherwise he wouldn’t be sitting on the couch in the dark. Open shades in the dining room let in light from the streetlamps, bathing his bare chest in a golden glow. Her mouth had gone dry. She didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Two months back in each other’s company and they were still behaving as politely as strangers.
God, I miss you.
She cleared her throat. “I didn’t think you’d be alone.”
“And I didn’t think you’d be home so soon. Wasn’t he worth waiting for the end of his shift?”
Ice clinked in his glass as he sipped. A vodka bottle was open on the coffee table. Since when did he drink hard liquor? He was such a health nut, and his parents’ slow demise into the throes of alcoholism had turned him into a near teetotaler.
Lizzie frowned. Maybe he wasn’t as closed off as she always thought. The drink in his hands was the equivalent of waving a bright red flag. Maybe he was as lost as she was, but that didn’t mean sitting down and having a heart-to-heart. She’d survived fifteen years as his partner because of their common purpose. There wasn’t much to interpret when training, traveling and winning were their only goals—well, and keeping each other sane in the process.
Now, however. No goals. No way of getting inside his locked-down thoughts.
She tossed her clutch on the desk, knowing its momentum would mess up his careful stacks of bills and papers. Time to try out her theory. “You should know he was good, Dima. You were listening at the door.”
Had Lizzie missed the mark entirely, he would’ve denied it with a look of indignation. He didn’t.
She smiled very, very softly to herself and crossed to the back of the couch. Her heels sounded overly loud on the hardwood. None of this made sense. The terrible, taunting refrain of mine, mine, mine—it was back. She couldn’t tune it out. Dima Turgenev was her best friend. At the moment, poised on possibilities, she wasn’t seeing him as just a partner. She wanted a taste of something more.