I dug out my wallet, extracted a random handful of bills, and flung them to the table. They landed on the uneaten plate of pancakes, plopping into the melted ice-cream, which was swirled around the plate in an unappetizing, sticky mess. Why did that feel like a metaphor? I turned on my heel and stalked across the café, head held as high as it had been on the way in—despite the curious stares and murmurs from those around us.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Beck growled at the onlookers, and as though he’d hit the reset button, the noisy chatter picked up immediately, like nothing had ever interrupted it, and the café resumed business as usual. Life went on, just like it always had.
Mel
I hurried out of the café as fast as I could without running. I didn’t want him, or any of the people currently staring at me like I was part of some brunch floorshow to know how upset I was. It took every ounce of my restraint and decorum to maintain an unhurried pace until I reached the corner of the block, and was certain I was out of sight. Once I was safe from prying eyes, I was ready to lose it right there on the sidewalk.
Just as I was about to let loose, a hand pulled at my wrist, literally stopping me in my tracks. I instantly knew who it was, and was furious at him for following me. As if humiliating me—or more to the point, forcing me to humiliate myself—in a busy café wasn’t enough, now he wanted to continue the drama in the fucking street? Well he could do what he liked by himself, but I wasn’t getting into it again with him. I was done. I turned rapidly on my heel to face him, fury radiating from every pore.
“Beck, you can’t ju—”
Apparently he could, because he did. Before I could finish, he had pulled me hard into him. Maintaining hold of the wrist he had grabbed to slow me down, he snaked the other hand behind my back to anchor me to his body. He slammed his lips down on mine, stealing the end of the sentence and the beginning of any others that might have been hovering there. His lips tasted of him, and coffee, sending an urgent SOS to my libido.
For less than a nanosecond, I considered resisting, as I had in the hall the previous day, but I wasn’t kidding myself. I wanted him. Badly. At least in the physical sense. Still after all these years, our bodies seemed hardwired to “fit.” I kissed him back with the heat of a thousand suns.
We were again causing quite a scene with our hot-and-heavy PDA in the middle of the sidewalk, and as though reading my mind, Beck walked us until his back was flush against the wall of a nearby building. I dropped my purse, freeing both hands to snake into his hair, while I stood on tiptoes to pull his mouth harder to mine.
There was something slightly punishing about the almost heavy-handed way he plundered my mouth. Vicious though it was, I loved it. I’d earned his rage, his resentment, his ire. More to the point, I wanted it. I wanted him.
I kissed him as though this was the last time I ever would. He reached around to my butt, grabbing it, and using it as leverage to slam me into his huge erection. He somehow managed to rub my clit at just the right spot, sending shockwaves through my body.
That was the wake-up call I needed. I wasn’t about to come in the fucking street, especially after the previous day’s indiscretion in the hall. My standards might have been low, but they were still there.
I pulled my mouth from Beck’s, and pushed away from his body, though he instinctively tightened his grip on my butt.
“What?”
“You know what. You just called me a liar, and I stormed out on you, yet here we are on the sidewalk giving the world an eyeful of us making out, like sex-starved teenagers. That’s what. I’m going to work now, and I suggest you do the same.” I was shaking with emotion, but I couldn’t quite figure out which emotion was leading the charge—lust, anger, or fear about what the hell was happening between us.
Beck considered me long and hard, his steely gray stare piercing my soul. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. He didn’t speak, nor did he release his grip on my butt, so I remained pushed up against his arousal, and well aware of my own.
“This,”— he thrust his steely hard dick against me again—“and what happened back there”—he jerked his head back toward the recently vacated café— “still unfinished business.” Releasing my butt, he grazed my lips with a final bruising kiss, wiped at my smudged lipstick with his thumb and sauntered away, back in the direction of the café.
Shit. I just about kept myself together, and forced my feet to move one in front of the other until I stumbled into a tiny nearby park to gather my wits.
I had wanted to be the one to nominate the venue for our meeting for precisely this reason. Having walked into an accidental ambush the day before that had clearly had us both on the back foot, I’d wanted to be prepared and in control today. I’d chose that particular café for a number of reasons, not just the proximity to work. Something had told me that I might need a moment to collect myself before returning to the office, and the nearby park was the perfect spot to do that.
Finally, even the noise level there had been taken into consideration. I’d wanted somewhere where our conversation would blend in with the hubbub, rather than stand out above it. Turned out that plan hadn’t quite come to pass, given we’d ended up all but screaming at each other, not to mention the whole kissing each other’s faces off on the sidewalk, but at least I’d tried.
I sank onto the nearest bench and dropped my head into my hands, sobbing in earnest. The tears were as much of anger and frustration than any other emotion. It was all I could do not to run back to the café and throttle Ty…Beck…whatever with my bare hands. He was infuriating. The meet up had been every bit as bad as I’d feared it would be, possibly even a little worse. That kiss had never been a factor in my mind.
I had put our appalling behavior in the hall yesterday down to shock. We had both essentially seen a ghost. I’d had no intention of going in for a repeat performance, and I would have thought he’d have had the good sense to feel the same, but who knew? I didn’t even really know Beck—I knew Tyler, but clearly they’re not the same person—so how would I have any idea what he was thinking at any given time?
Yesterday had been a case in point. After the disastrous start in the hall outside, remarkably, by the time we were settled in the impressively liveried boardroom, and he’d recovered from the shock of seeing me, he seemed to have morphed into another character entirely. The mask of the charming, carefree, affable adman slipped back on as he walked through the boardroom door, and stayed bolted on throughout the meeting.
I couldn’t quite work out if it was more of a Jekyll and Hyde situation or Machiavellian, but either way, it unsettled me. How could I trust someone who was able to shift their mood and demeanor so fundamentally in such a short space of time, unless they were an actor? He might not be a paid thespian, but I was under no illusion that he was the version of himself he presented to the outside world.
I guess I’d seen a little of this at high school, but not to such marked extremes. In many ways he was the archetypal jock—athletic, good looking, funny and popular. In Wikipedia, under the cliché about guys wanting to be him, and girls wanting to be with him, you’d find a photo of Ty, picture perfect, flashing his Hollywood smile. But there had always been more to him than met the eye.