Jesus. He’s really trying to rattle me.
He’s completely succeeding too. My face is a fireball. My chest is heaving. My nipples are hard and tight. This time I can’t stop the squirm, my eyes dropping. He’s still watching me. I know he is. Even though I can’t manage to meet his eyes, I can feel the weight of his.
“Did I answer your questions, sweet darlin’? Is that what you wanted to hear? Or were you looking for specifics as well on how exactly I pleasure them.”
“Stop it,” I clip tersely. “You’re being mean. You didn’t have to answer me if you didn’t want to.” My eyes flash over to his. They’re no longer blue. They’re black and feral and possibly a bit angry. “You know that’s not what I was asking. I was just curious.”
He leans in, his fingers sweeping along my cheek as he brushes a lock of my hair behind my ear. My breath hitches as he leaves it there, gliding his thumb back and forth on my lobe before he rights himself, pulling away from me completely.
He returns to his meal like none of that just happened.
And when he speaks again, his voice no longer holds any of the heat it just had. “No, Maia. I don’t date any of the women I take to bed. I don’t want to date any of them. I don’t want relationships or girlfriends. I don’t take women out to dinner or to a club. I don’t ask for phone numbers and truth be told; I don’t really care about their names.”
Because they’re not her, I want to say but don’t.
I’ve already pushed him farther than I should have. His sex life is none of my business and I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not something that should have been eating away at me the way it has been. I am his friend and he is my boss—and I feel sick.
I shuffle some of my food around on my plate before I pick up another bite and force it down. I don’t waste food. Growing up, I was never sure where my next meal was coming from or when I’d have it. But right now, it’s a task even to chew. Maybe it’s because I’m young or inexperienced or have watched too many Hollywood movies, but I want to be the one who is different for him.
Stupid, right? Things like that never work out the way you imagine they will.
There is no changing a man like Keith Dawson. Not with his life rules and residual grief that hovers just beneath the surface, only visible at certain times and if you look hard enough.
I don’t know what I’m searching for with him or why.
And I need to let it go.
“Do you want to watch Die Hard?”
“What?” He laughs, tilting his face in my direction, some of the light I had extinguished with my prying returning to him.
“Die Hard. You know, yippee ki yay, motherfucker.”
“Can we have popcorn?”
A gust of relieved air passes my lungs in the form of a bemused laugh. “Popcorn is a must with a movie like that. But I didn’t think mister I’ll-pass-on-the-carbs-thank-you, ate such things.”
“I love the hell out of popcorn. Pull up the flick and I’ll get going on that.” He stands up, plants a kiss on my forehead, and takes our plates. Did he just kiss my forehead? Just a simple innocuously innocent gesture shouldn’t make my heart beat like this.
I keep fighting it. I keep pushing back the thoughts. I keep telling myself that it will never happen because he just said it, he doesn’t even care about their names. He doesn’t want to date them or make them girlfriends.
But the bastard knows my name.
He stays in with me night after night. He watches my movies even though they’re not his movies. He cuts up my steak because he knows I can’t. He asks me all the questions and listens while I give him all my answers. We play chess and laugh and talk endlessly. And when we’re silent, we don’t need to fill it because it’s not awkward.
It’s perfect.
I have no idea what to do or how to stop my ever-growing infatuation with Keith Dawson, but that one stupid, nothing of a kiss just became so much more for me. I just said I need to let it go and that press of his lips derailed me. I should watch a YouTube video or read a self-help book that can guide me back to safer, friendlier, no-feelings-involved pastures. All my inexperience is proving dangerous and detrimental to my heart.
He likes the way I look. That does not mean he likes me. At least not in that way. Maybe I should ask him for the name of his tattoo artist so I can get that inked on my forehead.
“Hey Keith?” I call out.
“Yeah?” He turns back to me expectantly.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’ve been staying in with me.”
He smiles a smile that lights up his whole face, and my heart gallops in my chest in a way it never has before. “Me too.”
Dammit, he means it.
As much as that pleases me, it also scares me.
* * *
I turn away, listening as his footfalls grow fainter, and when I’m sure he’s good and gone, I plant my hand over my heart, begging it to stop beating for him the way it is. He’ll break me, and I’m not sure that’s a wound I can recover from this time.
13
Keith
* * *
With my AirPods in and my eyes closed, I’m listening to the lyrics Jasper laid down along with his acoustic. He evidently wrote this last night and the sick bastard that he is, wants to add this to our album that is so near completion we can taste it.
“What’s another song? So our album will be eighteen songs instead of seventeen. Big shit.”
That’s what he said this morning when he sent it to me to work on, waking me up out of a sound sleep I had just recently fallen into. I haven’t slept well since having Maia here. Then freaking Marco came knocking on my door, as he does every weekday morning, bright and shiny early and there was no more rest to be had.
He likes to have ‘team meetings’ with Maia first thing, which I honestly think is just the two of them gabbing over my coffee and muffins.
And just like every morning he shows up, I go out for a swim.
And just like every morning, I send up a silent prayer to the heavens that the laps and the extra weights I’ve been lifting will help me get my head back on straight.
That I will somehow be able to stop constantly thinking about my band’s stunning new assistant. The one I hired and took cock-blocking responsibility for.
Setting our boundaries straight last week was the only thing I could do.
We have too much sexual tension. Too much chemistry. That’s a tough thing to fight and it typically only ends one way. Naked. Not an option for us. So yeah, boundaries. Rules!
And since that morning, I’ve stuck to them.
I should run from this woman, but instead I spend all my time with her. And when I’m not with her, I’m thinking about her.
I’ve been good despite her prying questions and pretty brown eyes and alluring take no prisoners smile. We’ve been friends. Playing games and talking and eating dinner in front of the television. It’s been more fun than I thought staying in could ever be. More fun than I can remember having in a very long time.
Even if my mind is filled with nothing but filth when it comes to her.
“Keith,” she says with a gentle tap on my shoulder as if she’s afraid of breaking into my concentration. On this particular verse, the beat is starting to flow through my head so interrupting me is exactly what she just did.