Just Be Her Read online

  It wasn’t until Oren stormed out without another word, leaving me in his office alone, that I remembered I was supposed to be avoiding these people, giving them as few opportunities as possible to discover who I really was . . . or wasn’t.

  …

  T: Do you believe in God?

  A: Random.

  T: ???

  A: OK. Uh, yes? I mean, I’m not particularly religious, but I think there is a higher power. You?

  T: Nah. Much as I’d like to think my parents are in some paradise that’s making up for all the shit they had to go through while alive, I don’t buy it. Life’s a bitch and then you die.

  A: Cynical much?

  T: Yep! But unfortunately I do still believe it’s wrong to kill people. Ugh!

  A: And why are we contemplating murder today?

  T: Your boo was a total dick. Basically accused me of trying to scam more money from him.

  A: WHAT?

  A: That son of a bitch! You OK? Do we need to swap back? I can handle arrogant guys like him.

  T: Whoa! Chill. I’m just venting. Everything’s fine. Just pissed me off.

  T: He’s not really that bad, if I’m being honest. I think he was just hurt.

  A: Who hurt him?

  T: Some inconsiderate bitch. But no worries. We’re keeping shit strictly profesh.

  A: OK . . .

  Twelve

  Alex

  I groaned and mushed my face into the pillow, trying to avoid the incessant buzzing and the light now trying to creep past my eyelids.

  After a few moments the buzzing finally stopped, but the light refused to go away, invading my unconsciousness and making me huff as I rolled onto my back to concede defeat. I yawned and stretched, my right arm shoving up under the pillow and bumping my phone. Ah, the buzzing culprit.

  I hadn’t had anywhere near enough sleep—it was before midday—but the really worrying thing was the number of missed calls from my mother.

  Before I had a chance to call her back, the screen lit up again. I sighed, cleared my throat so I wouldn’t sound as if I’d just woken up, and answered it. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Alexandria?!” She was beside herself. “Are you all right? You didn’t answer. I’ve been calling for ten minutes.”

  “I was in the shower. Sorry.”

  “The shower? At this time?”

  Shit. I scrambled for an excuse and remembered the photo Toni sent me the other day of her legs on a lounger, sun glistening off the water. “Yes, Oren and I took a dip in the pool.”

  “Oh, OK then.” She sounded calmer already. “Well, then I’m glad you two are getting along.”

  I hummed in agreement and dragged myself out of bed as she prattled on about her recent lunch with the ladies at the club. With the phone wedged between my ear and shoulder, I put the kettle on for a cup of tea, then moved to the windows to air out the stuffy room.

  “. . . but you know that man has been having affairs for the entirety of their twenty-two years of marriage. She was the only one at the table oblivious to it.”

  “Mmhm.” I threw back the curtains and flicked the latch on the balcony door.

  “Oh! I also ran into your cousin Preston. He was very interested in why you’re away from the vineyard for this long, even after I explained you were engaged. He kept hinting at wanting to step in and help if he could. I swear, that man has no concept of subtlety. Not that his father did either. I don’t know why they think they can be involved in running such a complex business simply because we share an ancestor that happened to start it.”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m doing a great job at it. Maybe we should let them have a go.”

  “Oh, Alexandria, honey, you are doing the absolute best—”

  I cut her off with a yelp, my heart flying into my throat as I jumped back from the glass. On the other side, perched on the little table on the balcony, was Kennedy. The damn raven just stood there, staring at me with beady eyes.

  “Alexandria!” My mother’s voice turned shrill.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I rushed out through panting breaths. I pressed a hand to my chest while keeping the big black bird firmly in my sights. “I’m all right.”

  “What happened? You gave me a heart attack!”

  “There was a bird. A big black one. Landed right on the other side of the window.” The feathered fiend cocked its head, as if he knew I was talking about him.

  “My goodness! You and birds. It’s not even in the same room as you.”

  “Mom, I need to go.” I was busting for the toilet, and my tea was getting cold. With a promise to check in again tomorrow, I hung up.

  I narrowed my eyes at the raven. He cocked his head to the other side, then slowly shuffled on the spot, turning away from me while keeping his eye glued to mine. If he were human, I was almost certain he’d be glaring and whispering, “I’m watching you.”

  I took a deep breath and reached for the handle. “It’s just a bird,” I whispered to myself. “A bird that Toni trained. It won’t hurt me. Come on, Alexandria, you need to get over this.”

  Kennedy squawked and flapped his wings, making me snap my hand back again.

  “Nope! I’ll start with a parakeet or something.” I stuck my tongue out at him before abandoning my attempts to get over my fears and heading for the bathroom.

  When I finished showering, Kennedy was still there, barring my access to fresh air and a breeze with his shiny black feathers and creepy eyes. I sighed and crossed my arms. “I’m telling Toni you’re bullying me,” I said, my voice raised so he could hear me through the glass. He just flapped his wings once and turned away. Cheeky bastard was calling my bluff.

  I put on some shorts and a tank top and decided to head out. The fridge was looking a bit empty, and I only had a few hours before my shift started.

  I pulled the door closed behind me just as Andre came up the stairs, panting.

  He was in shorts and running shoes but nothing else, breathing hard. His pectorals bulged, every defined abdominal popping, his toned arms flexing as he pulled himself up the last steps using the railing. His entire body glistened with sweat, like some kind of sportswear ad.

  I didn’t realize I was staring at him with my mouth open, frozen to the spot, until he walked right up to me, his long legs closing the distance in only a few strides. His chest was just inches from my face; I got the urge to put my hand over the spattering of curly black hair, but I closed my hands into fists and craned my neck to look into his face.

  Once my eyes met his, he grinned. With a single finger under my chin, he pushed my mouth closed and leaned in.

  “You’re drooling.” His deep voice, pitched low and sexy, reverberated through me and went straight to my core.

  My eyes widened and I gasped. “Oh my god,” I breathed and ducked to the side, a blush heating my cheeks. I rushed down the stairs, nearly tripping and breaking my neck on the last step.

  Once I reached the street, I marched away from the Cottonmouth, berating myself.

  I found Andre attractive, but I’d found plenty of men attractive in the past and never lost my damn senses like that. There was nothing wrong with looking, but I couldn’t believe I’d done it so blatantly and with so little composure.

  Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the fact that he took me by surprise. Maybe it was because he’d waltzed in half-naked and sweaty, but I didn’t want to victim blame. My behavior was on me and me alone. He’d cracked a joke about it, but was he just covering up? Had I made him feel uncomfortable?

  I ran my hands through my hair and groaned, hoping my inability to resist checking out a sinfully sexy man hadn’t ruined my plan.

  As I walked into the grocery store, the air-conditioned air calmed me a little, and I focused on shopping to take my mind off my embarrassment. By the time I was ready to head back, I’d decided to tackle the situation head on, swallow my pride, and apologize.

  But when I knocked on Andre’s door, there was no answer.

 
I didn’t see him again until that evening. He showed up as the bar was starting to get crowded and the Thousand Lies arrived to set up.

  I served drinks and kept an eye on him surreptitiously. At one point I caught him and Ren, heads bent, talking close. Then they burst into laughter, the sound carrying even over the boisterous crowd.

  About halfway through the Thousand Lies’ first set, I found myself alone with Andre behind the bar during a rare lull in drink orders. I tapped him on the shoulder.

  He turned to me and smiled. “What’s up?”

  I leaned in, keeping my voice down despite the level of noise. He had to bend down so he could hear me. “I just wanted to apologize about earlier today.”

  He straightened up and chuckled, waving me off. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Someone came up to the bar, and Andre served them a couple of beers. I waited and leaned in again,

  “I’m serious. It was inappropriate, and I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. It won’t happen again.” I gave him a firm nod.

  He smiled and placed his big hands on my shoulders. “Relax. I wasn’t uncomfortable.” His thumbs rubbed the tense muscles at the base of my neck, and then his hands dragged down my arms as he leaned in, his mouth near my ear. “And I wouldn’t be opposed to it happening again.”

  He stepped back, gave me a wink, and turned to take another order. Dennis came rushing out of the crowd and joined us behind the bar, bumping me back into motion as the bar got busy again.

  I was beyond relieved Andre wasn’t upset with me, wasn’t about to call my plan off and send me packing, but I couldn’t quite figure out if he was teasing me or flirting with me.

  When I turned back to the bar to take an order, my gaze immediately flew to Ren’s. He was crooning a particularly intense note into the microphone, but his eyes were boring into mine. He looked between me and Andre, practically ignoring the audience for the rest of the song. Was he jealous? Loretta said they weren’t together exclusively, but they were still sleeping together, and Ren and I had done . . . things in that bathroom. We may not have touched, but it had been intimate and erotic all the same.

  And just like that, I was back to fantasizing about dirty men’s room sex.

  Between these two vastly different but incredibly attractive men, I was in a near constant state of arousal.

  I refused to allow social conditioning to make me believe I was wrong or dirty just because I wanted and liked sex, but I’d never lusted after two men at once before. I’d always been a one-man kind of woman. Now here I was—getting myself off in front of Ren while he did the same, thoroughly enjoying seeing him and Andre kiss in the hallway, and getting worked up at the mere suggestion of something more between Andre and me. It was all new and a little surprising.

  But wasn’t that the whole point of my crazy plan to switch lives with Toni? To give myself the freedom to be a little crazy and surprising for a while?

  Between sets, Ren sat at the end of the bar, sipping on bourbon and watching me with an unfathomable expression on his face. If it had been anyone else staring at me like that, so unashamedly and without reservations, I would’ve felt uncomfortable, asked them to leave. But his gaze made my skin tingle. I wondered if he was thinking about that night as much as I was.

  When some patron asked to buy me a drink, I said yes and got myself a glass of the same bourbon Ren had just finished. Ren slammed his empty glass on the bar and disappeared into the crowd. A few minutes later, the band kicked up their last set.

  They played upbeat, high-energy crowd favorites and a couple of their originals. The drummer’s arms bulged with his effort; the guitarist and bass player swayed along, thrashing about the stage; and Ren made love to the audience.

  Where during the first set, he couldn’t keep his eyes off me and Andre, during this last one, he didn’t glance in the direction of the bar once. He ran his hand down the microphone stand, leaned out over the crowd, reached out to high-five them. They were calling out and jumping around as if it were a stadium concert and not a gig in a dingy back-alley bar.

  The band was so good I couldn’t believe they weren’t already doing international tours.

  When they finished, Ren didn’t come to the bar for one last drink like he usually did, and I found myself craning my neck to try and spot him through the crowd. The rest of the band was leaving through the back entrance, but he wasn’t with them. I frowned and wiped down the bar. Maybe he’d snuck off to Andre’s room already.

  As if I’d summoned him, Andre’s big, warm chest appeared at my back. I stiffened, mostly from surprise, but then melted into him, leaning back a little. He gripped my hip with one hand but didn’t say anything. With his other hand, he pointed toward the back corridor, where I saw Ren turning the corner.

  I looked at Andre over my shoulder and frowned. Was I being that obvious?

  He just smirked and nudged me in that same direction, shaking his head in amusement.

  I pushed down all the uncertainties, all the reasons I shouldn’t follow him. Andre had given me a nudge, and I was going to lean into this moment.

  Resisting the urge to smooth down my hair, I marched toward the back corridor. I rounded the corner just in time to see Ren go through the storage room door, and I navigated around drunk girls spilling out of the ladies’ room and followed.

  “Hoping to catch me with my pants down again?” There wasn’t even a hint of surprise in his voice—he was waiting for me. With the door shut, the only light in the room came from a narrow window near the ceiling. The glow of a streetlamp shone like a spotlight over Ren’s shoulders, casting the front of his face in shadow. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling, scowling, or undressing me with his eyes, but I could feel his gaze on me.

  I decided to be bold. “Actually, yes.”

  “Well, shit, I wasn’t expecting you to admit it.” He chuckled, the sound low and gritty, the way he’d sung on stage. He leaned back against a rickety spare table under the window, between shelves of supplies and boxes of liquor.

  “Yeah, I’m full of surprises.” I mimicked his posture and leaned against the door.

  “I’m starting to see that. So, what? You want another show?” He gripped the bottom of his gray T-shirt and dragged it up so a sliver of hair and hipbones became visible. The black and silver bracelets on his wrist caught on the fabric of his jeans as he reached for his zipper.

  A thrill shot up my spine, making me stand up straight and push away from the door. I loved a challenge, and Ren was the most tattooed, sinfully sexy, complicated one I’d ever come across. “Actually, I was thinking I could be part of the performance this time.”

  He didn’t speak or move a muscle as I crossed the room and stopped directly before him.

  I stood between his wide knees, my black boots hemmed in by his much bigger chucks. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, and from this close, his features came into focus—the piercing through his bottom lip, the way his eyes raked over my face, searching.

  I kept my poker face on. I’d crossed the distance. He had to make the last move.

  After a moment of heavy stillness, his hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of my shirt, pulling me to him. His other hand went to the back of my neck, and we crashed. We didn’t start slow. We went from zero to a hundred in one second flat.

  No sooner had our lips connected than our tongues did too, our mouths devouring. The feeling of his piercing against my lip drove me wild. When I realized he had one in his tongue too, the warm metal scraping against my own tongue, I moaned into his mouth.

  He released his grip on my shirt and grabbed my ass, rolling his hips forward to grind his erection against my front.

  We tugged and shoved, our movements against each other desperate and frenzied.

  I pulled back only long enough to pull his T-shirt off and drop it into the dark abyss behind us. Nothing existed past the beam of light streaming in through the window.

  The black leather necklaces bounced on his ches
t as the shirt came away, drawing my attention to the ink there. It was too dark to make out any detail, but tattoos covered his chest and right shoulder and flowed down his arm. I ran my hands over the colorful ink as I rested one knee on the desk next to his hip.

  As both his hands went to my ass, I leaned forward and took that little round piece of metal at his bottom lip between my teeth. I trapped it there and explored it with my tongue.

  He let me. He just watched me, panting into my mouth as our hips started to grind together in rhythmic, fast movements that contrasted with my slow, sensual exploration of his mouth.

  His fingers dug into my ass as he gyrated his hips under me, his hardness creating the most delicious friction between my legs.

  His right hand raked down my thigh until he had a grip on the back of my knee. He pulled, and I held on to his shoulders for balance as I lifted my knee to straddle him fully. I rubbed up on him, chasing that heady feeling that was building and building, heat radiating from between my legs all the way up to my chest.

  He sucked on my top lip, assaulting my mouth with his until I had to release the piercing and kiss him back.

  He pulled the front of my shirt and bra down until my breasts popped out, the straps of the bra digging in painfully. But the pain was forgotten when he wrapped one hand around my right breast and banded the other around my back, drawing me up and closer so he could take my hard nipple into his mouth.

  I groaned—partly from the pleasure his mouth was bringing and partly from the loss of friction between my legs.

  I ran my hands through his sweat-dampened hair and fiddled with the piercings in his ear, touched him everywhere I could reach from the position he had me pinned in.