Page 4 of The Hardest Hit
She nodded, and he thought it was rare to meet someone who actually could accept that.
They got out at the eighth floor and unlocked his front door. She stepped inside and he tried not to watch for her reaction. He hadn’t had anyone over since… He tried to remember. Probably the last model? The one with the big teeth? God, she had been boring. They had all been boring. When he’d given up going to Fetish, the highly discrete, highly exclusive S & M Club, he’d been worried that he’d miss it. And he did, just not for the reasons he’d thought. He didn’t miss the pain or the latex or Leona Meade, or the endless amounts of feeling like a horrible fucking human being, but what he missed was sex that wasn’t boring. He didn’t understand why there couldn’t be a middle ground between white bread and jalapeño.
“Oh, look at your view,” she said, her accent pulling outviewto multiple syllables.
“It’s pretty much why I bought the place,” he said, tucking the box into the front closet.
“I can see why.”
“Will wine do in the alcoholic beverage department?”
“Yes, please,” she said, still staring at the view.
He paused halfway to the kitchen. “Should you have alcohol?”
Olivia gave him a sour look. “I have so little left in my system that the doctor accused me of making it up. I think I’m fine.”
“Right,” said Evan, feeling a sympathetic fury on her behalf. “Wine coming up.”
“Thanks.”
He went into the kitchen and unstoppered the wine he’d opened the previous night. He’d used the new air sealer system his cousin had bought him last Christmas and the stopper released with a wet pop. He poured two glasses and took one out to her. She was standing on the edge of the step down from the dining area into the living room.
She accepted the glass without tearing her eyes away from the windows and took a healthy drink.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, looking down in surprise at the wine, then she held the glass up to her nose and inhaled. Her appreciation pleased him; most people didn’t enjoy wine properly.
“Mm… summer in a glass,” she murmured. She took another sip, smaller this time, savoring it in her mouth, and then closed her eyes as she tipped it down her throat.
He blinked. He felt incredibly turned on just from watching her drink wine.
“Summer?” he asked, clearing his throat, and yanking his eyes back to the city view on the other side of the window.
“It’s the blackberry notes,” she said. Her accent was now like syrup. He smelled his glass. He knew what she meant. The wine was a Syrah and the hint of blackberry was distinct. “I used to visit my grandparent’s farm in the summer. My brother and sister and I would go out and pick the blackberries. We’d come back with purple fingers. Purple everywhere really. We’d always end up in a blackberry fight.”
He smiled. That sounded nice andsofar removed from his childhood. His father had been an abusive alcoholic. And when his father, uncle, and aunt had died in a plane crash, Evan and his cousins Aiden and Dominique had gone to live with their grandmother. But Eleanor Deveraux had never allowed them to indulge in messy outdoor adventures—those did not reflect well on the family.
“Evan,” Olivia said, sounding nervous and he turned toward her, “can I ask for another favor? Do you have some sweats or something I could borrow until the cops come? I’d like to not be wearing lycra for a while.”
He looked down at her costume. One look at Olivia with her cascade of red hair and Dark Phoenix costume of crimson lycra with a splashy yellow sash, thigh-high boots, and phoenix logo on her chest, and he’d let himself be coerced into going into Isabelle Elliott’s stupid Halloween party. He hated Isabelle Elliott. She consistently tried to corner him in the parking garage and invite him to dinner. But Olivia looked like every fantasy he’d ever had when he was fourteen and how was he supposed to resist that? If nothing else, he wanted to know if she was padding her bustier for better comic book accuracy. Of course, he hadn’t counted on Olivia’s date putting a roofie in her drink or having to help her through the morass of the criminal justice system for the rest of the evening.
“Sure, of course.”
He took her upstairs to his room and pulled out a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. Then he grabbed a t-shirt for himself and went back downstairs, changing out of his button-up as he went. When she came back down, he was most of the way through fixing them some dinner. He looked up as she walked down the stairs and watched as her breasts bounced under the soft cotton of his shirt—she definitely had not been padding the costume.
“Go ahead and sit down,” he said, gesturing at the dining table. “I’ll have food in a moment. Sustenance, as you say.” He found himself smiling. Her Southernisms were hilarious.
She picked up her glass of wine and sat down, pulling her feet up into the chair. He dumped the vegetables on her plate, tossed some parmesan over them, and took it over to the table. She looked down at the plate as he set it in front of her and then back up at him, her green eyes suddenly enormous in her face. He didn’t know what the expression meant.
“Did you cook for me?”
“You said you were hungry,” he said, backing away.
“But I could have had a sandwich or something,” she said, her eyes still big.
“It’s just chicken,” he said, sitting down on his side of the table. “That’s OK, right?”
“Yes! Yes! It’s fine!” She picked up her fork and seemed to try and pull herself together.
