Page 19 of Dirty Little Secrets
“Is that so?” she coos, twisting her lips into playful thought. “I wonder how long it’ll takemeto come, then.” Her tone dips suggestively. “How would you make mecome, Mr. Cavanaugh?” She takes a long drag, blowing the smoke out as she strides toward me. My body turns to stone as she stops in front of me, tilting her head. “Well?”
“That must be earned, Miss Jones,” I rasp, sweeping my thumb across her bottom lip as my cock twitches from all the possibilities. “Do you think you’ve earned it?”
“Do you?”
I glower at her quick tongue and quicker wit. “We both know the answer is no.”
“God.” She chuckles, her breath fanning against my skin. “You’re so upset with me right now.” She lifts her hand, running her fingers along my forehead, and I instinctively close my eyes. “This little vein is screaming at me.” I open my eyes to find hers searching mine. “Did I hurt your feelings, Mr. Cavanaugh?”
My lip twitches. “You can’t hurt me, Miss Jones, even if you tried.”
“Is that a challenge?” she asks, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip.
“But what youcando,” I say, cupping her chin between my fingers and tilting it up, “is piss me off. And right now, mami?” I lean down, whispering in her ear. “I’m fucking livid.”
She squirms a little under my touch, her first layer of protection breaking and exposing the next. Refusing to let her true feelings show, she whispers, “Maybe you need some counseling, Mr. Cavanaugh. This is hardly a situation that calls for such anger.” Her breath gets stuck in her throat as she adds, “I can recommend someone to talk to…if you want.”
“The only person I want to talk to right now is you,” I say, dropping my hand. “The real you.”
She snorts. “Thisisthe real me, Mr. Cavanaugh. And the real me isn’t interested.”
“If this is the real you,” I muse, “then who was that woman I saw at the bookstore? Hmm? A long-lost twin, perhaps? A distant cousin with remarkably similar features?”
She glares at me. “I think this conversation is over.”
“But it’s not,” I state, remnants of surface-level understanding dawning on me. “I think that, no matter how hard you try, there’s a part of you that's dying to keep talking to me.” I smirk down at her. “Whether it’s this version of you or the other.”
“I thought you said I was a riddle, Mr. Cavanaugh,”she muses, a flash of irritation across her face. “It appears you’ve solved me already.”
“Hardly.”
“Well…” She can’t help but smile. “What if I don’t want to be solved, hmm? What if I prefer to remain an unsolvable riddle?”
I click my tongue. “Unfortunately for you, Miss Jones, riddles are meant to be solved.” I pause, giving her a knowing smile. “Even the most complex ones.”
I want to know what’s going through her head. What she’s thinking. As much as I get a rise from our verbal jousting, I need her to drop her shield. Just a little. Low enough so that I can see what lies behind her armored front. She’s scared. She doesn’t want me looking inside. She doesn’t want to be exposed. I get it. I understand her need for solitude and secrecy. There are parts of myself I’d rather stay hidden. I’m asking her to do something, I myself, would refuse. And she knows that. She knows I’m a walking fucking contradiction.
“What if you’re wrong?” she finally asks after a thoughtful pause. “What if I’m not complex? What if I’m just…” She swallows, her gaze drifting into the night sky. A rush of wind whirls around us, goosebumps appearing on her arms as her focus remains on distant stars. “Some things aren’t meant to make sense. I think as humans we strive to find solutions, to find answers. It’s like we have this sick need to explain the unexplainable. To find meaning in the meaningless. There are 200 billion galaxies in our universe, and we somehow think we’re special.”
“So, you’re a nihilist,” I whisper, reveling in her inner thoughts as if they were spoken by God himself.
“I’ve died before, Mr. Cavanaugh.” She shrugs, wrapping her arms around herself. “There’s nothing waiting for us there.” She gives me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I know you lost your family, and maybe the idea of an after brings you peace, but this is it. This life. That’s it.”
I frown. “What do you mean you’ve died?”
“That’s a story for another time.” She offers a small smile. “Nihilism is best served in small doses, don’t you think?” She giggles to herself. “Otherwise, it’d be depressing.”
I want to know more. I want more details. More information. But I can’t push her. Not tonight. Not about that. It’s not that I think she can’t handle it. Because she can. Because she doesn’t seem to care. It’s me.Ican’t handle it. Not now. Possibly not ever.
“Then why don’t we go inside and talk about something else,” I suggest, shrugging off my suit jacket and draping it over her shoulders. “Something other than death?”
She tugs on the lapels. “Like what?”
“Life, perhaps?” I tilt my head. “What excites you?”
She chuckles, shaking her head. “Again with the assumptions.” I frown, not following. “Oh, Mr. Cavanaugh.” She places a hand on my chest, and I fear she may feel how fast my heart is beating. “You assume I get excited.”
“Who’s challenging whom now?” I ask, raising a brow. “I can think of at least one way to add somemuch-needed excitement into your life.” I arch over, snaking my hand around the base of her throat. My lips feather against her ear as I add, “Tell me you’re not wet just thinking about it.” She moans, arching into my hold. My chest rumbles with a low laugh. “Should I show you, Miss Jones, just how excited you can get?”
