Tell Me Something (The "Something" Series Book 1) (6 page)

“Look, Haylee, I have no doubt that you are smart,” Mark started and then paused.

Josh tried to explain. “Haylee, this is to ensure you understand—”

I could only be condescended to for so long. “I have a 172 on the LSAT and graduated with a 4.0 from Stanford. I think that I’ll understand it fine without it being recited to me. We can go paragraph by paragraph with me reading it, but I’m not going to be treated like I don’t know what a legal document is or what it means.”

Mark looked surprised. His mouth twitched and he waited on Josh’s response.

“Fine,” Josh conceded taking his seat back by the window.

In the end it took twenty minutes as we went paragraph by paragraph. Then I signed and watched when Josh took the papers and headed out. I assumed he was going downstairs to fax them.

“Once I receive the paperwork, I will acknowledge receipt,” Mark explained.

It seemed to be uncomfortable for both of us. “Sorry that you were woken up for this, Mark.”

Blushing, he dismissed the burden. “I can assure you that I’m accustomed to a lot of middle-of-the-night calls from Mr. Singer.” He must have seen my expression at that admission as he turned bright red and apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this particular thing, never for this before. I only meant that we’ve worked together many years and, with international business as it is, I keep different hours.”

I put him out of his misery. “It’s all right. This is awkward for me, too, to say the least, but I appreciate your discretion, Mark. Thank you.”

He seemed genuine when he nodded. Then, probably to pass the time, he asked, “So, what law school are you looking at?”

Smiling, I appreciated the change in subject. “My father went to Stanford, and I liked it there for undergrad, but I may be leaning more towards Yale or Harvard.”

“Yale was my law school. I still live in New Haven. Love it here. But with your scores and undergrad GPA, you should have no trouble getting in wherever you want to. Matter of fact, do me a favor?”

“Uh, what’s that?”

“Send me your application essay once you’ve done it. I sat on the board of admissions a couple years back. I can tell you what works and what doesn’t.”

That was huge, bigger than huge, and my smile must have showed it. “Mark, I don’t know what to say, except thank you.”

“It’s not a problem. We lawyers have to stick together. But I have a feeling you’re going to do great, Haylee.”

Neither of us had noticed Josh had reentered the room. “I certainly hope that wasn’t a pep talk for entering into a sexual relationship with me.”

I was mortified, but Mark seemed to take it in stride.

“We were talking law school. As for the other, I can offer no comment. I have received the fax. Let me print and verify all the pages were received,” he indicated, getting up and going to his fax machine.

One look at Josh, and I felt like he was going to pounce the moment Mark was done.

Mark confirmed receipt and gave a brief good-night, obviously anxious to get back to bed and end the uncomfortable call.

“So, are you properly turned off yet?” Josh asked once the laptop was closed.

Laughing, I joked, “Uh, well, Mark was a nice fluffer, so I’m all right.” I could thank Angela for the knowledge of that word and many others like it.

He seemed to appreciate my humor, throwing back his head and laughing. “You do know that you can change your mind.” His voice was now the honey tone that turned me much the same.

“Having you wake up your attorney in the middle of the night because you couldn’t stand to wait any longer to touch me is honestly a huge turn-on.”

His eyes heated with desire as he crossed to me and fisted his hand in my hair.

“We do this my way. You sure you’re up for that?”

I quirked a brow. At this point he could suggest I stand on my head and I’d gladly do it.

“Go put this on.”

Taking the silk robe from his hand, I hurried to the bathroom to do as he requested.

***

When I came back out into the room, the lights were off, with the exception of the small desk light.

Josh was still wearing his linen pants and collared shirt. He reached for my hand and led me over to the bed. My eyes flickered down to see he had unwound my robe belt and now had it in his hands.

“My way,” he reiterated as he gently pushed me onto the bed and slipped the robe off completely.

I swallowed at being laid out naked for him on the bed. At least the low light helped with the uncertainty of it all.

He moved both my hands above my head, tying them together with the silken robe tie. “Are you all right with this, Haylee?”

I could only nod. I didn’t have a lot of sexual experience, let alone any familiarity with being tied up. But right now in this moment, I felt a yearning like I’d never felt before and the binding only heightened the anticipation.

“You are beautiful,” he murmured, nuzzling my neck and then working his way down.

I was completely at his mercy, but hearing that he thought I was beautiful gave me confidence I could trust him. I realized that for him, control was important. He didn’t want me to do the touching this time around. I was happy to oblige. Feeling his breath on my breast, I arched up and felt his chuckle.

“You’re impatient, aren’t you?”

A small moan was my only reply when his tongue teased one of my nipples. My back bowed in response, my breaths came out short and stuttered from the pleasure.

His mouth rained kisses over my stomach, and I felt one of his fingers enter me. I took a deep shuddering breath.

“Jesus, Haylee, you are so wet, so incredibly tight for me, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I whispered, knowing I was shamelessly ready for him, and yet he still took his time. His mouth caressed over my hips and then down, down. “Oh-,” I gasped feeling his breath again right at my pubic bone and then another finger inside me. He licked and nipped, and my body became taut with anticipation as I breathed in the scent of him, and sex in the air.

“That’s it, just feel it.” His words were against my cleft and then his mouth descended, causing me to buck in response. “Relax, baby.”

Easy for him to say, I thought, as I couldn’t even grip the sheets. I was tightly wound with an electric current running through me. “Josh, I can’t, it’s too much,” I pleaded.

He chuckled and then started the real assault with both his fingers working inside me and his mouth greedily claiming me fully. His tongue fluttered over my clit.

My hips arched, involuntarily pressing against the friction, feeling nothing but pure, raw sensation.

“God, you taste so good,” he marveled.

His tongue flicked with both patience and insistence, giving me pure sensuous torture along with pleasure. He groaned as my body tightened and then exploded. Crying out, I rode waves of passion until there was nothing left.

“You’re so damn responsive,” he murmured, working his way back up my body, kissing each of my breasts and then up to my neck.

I lay there completely spent and trying to steady both my breathing and heartbeat. He lifted the comforter up over me as he snuggled me close, fitting my naked backside against the front of him.

Wiggling back into him, I felt his laugh.

“Insatiable.”

“I thought we’d have sex now,” I suggested.

“My way means that I say when and how I want you. Get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”

I was disappointed and tried not to pout. My first-ever orgasm, and yet I already craved more. I wasn’t sure if his denial was a control issue or if there was something he wasn’t telling me. “My hands are still tied,” I protested.

He reached around me and settled my hands in front of me, loosening the silken tie but not untying them altogether. “I don’t trust that you won’t try something if I untie you right now,” he murmured into my hair.

“But I want to touch you,” I whispered and felt his sigh.

“Another time, Haylee, or weren’t you satisfied?”

I sensed a touch of agitation in his voice and did my best to flip over to face him. Not so easy with your hands tied, but I managed and searched his eyes.

“I’ve never felt that before,” I admitted.

His gaze narrowed. “You’ve never had someone go down on you?”

“Well, that, and I’ve never had, well, you know, an orgasm before.”

He looked stunned, and then skepticism creeped into his eyes. “As sexual as you are, you are going to tell me that you’ve never come before?”

What in the hell did he mean by that? “As sexual as I am?”

Exhaling, he raised a brow. “You know what I mean.”

Clearly, I didn’t. “Actually, I don’t, why don’t you spell it out?”

“Haylee, obviously you have been with other partners—” he started.

“What does
obviously
mean exactly? Do I have some sort of stamp on me that I was unaware of announcing my experience?”

Rolling his eyes, he flipped onto his back, putting his hands behind his head. “Go to sleep, Haylee. This isn’t a conversation that I’m going to win.”

I sighed and didn’t like that we were leaving it on this note. “I’ve been with two guys: one in high school and one in college.”

That seemed to get his attention as he rolled towards me again.

“The boy in high school—it was the first time for both of us, so in his defense, neither of us knew what to do, let alone have the opportunity to do it. Back seats of cars and before parents come home isn’t exactly conducive towards good sex, evidently.” I wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear any of this, so I stopped talking.

“And the guy from college?” he prompted.

“We met at a frat party. Both of us drinking, went upstairs. Such a cliché, but I was in a place where I felt a need to do that type of thing. Anyhow, we tried dating a couple times after that, but turns out when I wasn’t drunk he was obnoxious, and the sex still wasn’t good. I guess I wanted to ensure he wasn’t a one-night stand. So there you have my sexual history in a nutshell, and neither of those included an orgasm or oral sex, at least not for me.”

“I didn’t mean to make it seem that I thought poorly of you. I simply had a different impression of your experience.”

Sighing, I realized that from his perspective, he probably would. “Considering I kissed you first and gave you my room key, I guess I can’t blame you for having that impression. Please know that I’ve never done anything like that in my life, ever, all right?”

“What made you do it this time?”

“Because life is short, and I’ve never wanted anyone the way I wanted you,” I admitted.

I went to kiss his mouth, but he shook his head.

“It’s all right, you don’t have to,” he murmured.

I didn’t understand what he was talking about until he made his way south. “Josh, what are you—?” Oh, his fingers were back inside me.

“Someone who has been deprived this long deserves two,” he whispered.

I woke slowly and stretched. The first thing that dawned on me was that both my hands were untied; the second was that my bed was empty. Looking at the time, I realized it was past eight o’clock in the morning, and we had a construction tour scheduled in an hour.

My robe was draped over the back of the chair and I slipped it on when the knock came at the door. After looking through the peephole, I opened the door and smiled at the man with a tray.

“Room service, Ms. Holloway,” Jose as it said on his nametag said.

After signing for the meal and thanking Jose, I opened the plates to reveal fresh fruit, pancakes, and bacon. There was also an envelope with
Haylee
written in the unmistakable penmanship of Josh.

Smiling, I opened it, already moved by the romantic gesture but then cursed while reading the note.

Decided to go to Hong Kong solo and early. Please enjoy the resort for the day and fly back to New York whenever you’d like. I’ll see you back in the city in a few days and don’t read anything into this. It’s business, not personal. –Josh

“Not personal?” I seethed, pacing the room. He conveniently left me at the resort after our first sexual encounter and flew off to Hong Kong without his
travel assistant
? Not personal? How did it get any more personal?

I called the travel line and spoke with Maria to confirm that, indeed, he had taken off about an hour earlier.

So now I was supposed to make my way back to New York. It was like a walk of shame the morning after, only I got to do it for three thousand miles all the way back East.

After a shower and some time to think, I decided that I would follow my father’s words of wisdom. He’d once told me that saying nothing spoke volumes, sometimes more than reacting with words. Considering he had been a successful divorce attorney and had seen many reactions in his day, I figured he may have known what he was talking about.

On the bright side, this was an opportunity for me to get my mother’s winter clothes from storage in San Francisco. So with that in mind, I made some travel plans of my own and set off for the airport.

***

When I landed in San Francisco, I cruised through customs quickly. I then drove twenty minutes north in my compact rental car. The large storage unit was expensive to maintain each month as it was in a mega-secure facility. But it was worth it as many of the items were heirlooms and irreplaceable, passed down for generations. It was also well organized as my mother had been meticulous about storing all of the furniture after selling our house the summer after my father had died.

Once in my storage bay, I smiled at the familiar furniture and ran my hands over the wardrobe rack. Now that I was living in New York, I’d have the opportunity to wear all of the winter clothes that had belonged to my mother and grandmother.

I’d had a privileged upbringing in San Francisco suburbia. Yet right now I would have traded it all to have my parents back. Being an only child had meant I was the sole recipient of my parents’ undivided attention, but I’d have given anything to have had a brother or sister with whom to share this grief. It had been a while since I’d had myself a good cry, but surrounded by my parents’ things, my childhood memories, and my emotions from this morning, I allowed the tears to flow.

When I heard my phone ring, I frowned at the unknown number but answered because, technically, it was a workday. “Hello.”

“Where are you?” Josh’s voice took me off guard.

“Um, where are you?”

“Which unit are you in?”

Was he actually here?

“One fourteen,” I replied, wiping my eyes the best I could before going over to open the door.

Nothing should have shocked me any longer with Josh and his unpredictability, but I was still stunned to see him standing there.

“What are you doing here?” I questioned.

He stepped inside and took a look around before focusing back on my face. “Your parents’ things?” he asked gently.

“Yes. I was collecting some of my winter stuff as I didn’t have it with me in LA, well, for obvious reasons.”

“Are you all right?” His hand was under my chin.

His voice had the tears dropping again. “I haven’t been here in a while. It’s emotional, in a good and bad way, to be surrounded by so many things from my past.”

“Why is it all still out here? I told you I’d pay for your move. We can move these belongings back East.”

“I know and thank you, but I don’t know where I’m going to go to school and then where I’ll live after that. This storage facility is better than most. It’s known for its security and my mom was adamant about that with so many valuables. Plus, I’m scared to death of something breaking in a move.”

He nodded his understanding. “Will you tell me about your parents?” he requested, taking a seat on the sofa and patting the cushion beside him.

“I— You have a flight to catch and…”

He took my hand, pulling me gently into his lap. “I never pretend to be interested for the sake of doing so. If I ask you something, it’s because I truly want to know.”

This was a fundamental part of Josh. He never cared if the moment got awkward or needed some conversation filler. He was measured with what he asked and what he decided to talk about. He reclined slightly on the cushions and settled me between his legs, waiting for me to speak.

“My mom was born and raised Southern, daughter of a governor. My dad grew up in Northern California and worked on my grandfather’s second term campaign as an intern. They met, fell in love, got married and she moved out to California. He was a divorce attorney and my mother a homemaker who involved herself in local charities and with my school. I had a good childhood: private schools, nice vacations, all of their attention, love, and support.” I paused and thought back to the night that had forever changed my life.

“Then one evening, out of the blue, my parents called me into the living room. My mother had been crying; my father was more serious than I’d ever seen him. I instantly thought I was busted for having had sex in the backseat of my boyfriend’s car as we had done that for the first time a week earlier. I was so naïve and self-centered.”

Josh hugged me. “You were, what, sixteen years old? You’re supposed to be self-centered at that age. So I take it they told you news about your father’s health?”

Sighing, I recalled the memory. “Yes. My father was a smoker in my younger years but had quit when I was in middle school, so I think we were all shocked when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. When he quit, we naively figured all the risks disappeared.” I waited, realizing that Josh was still intently listening.

“How long did he have?” he queried softly.

“Less than a year. He tried one round of chemo, but that seemed worse than the cancer. He had hoped to watch me graduate, but he fell a few months shy.” Josh’s arms came around me and swallowed past the lump in my throat. “At least he knew that I’d been accepted to Stanford. It made him proud.”

“I bet it did and your mom?”

“After my father died, we packed up and sold the house. My grandfather died that same year and my mother was in a deep depression. I never knew my mom to smoke cigarettes, but evidently my grandfather had been a heavy smoker and I guess she had smoked for quite a few years in her youth. I didn’t realize then that she already knew she had the early stages of emphysema. Combination of her smoking and the second hand smoke exposure.”

“She insisted on moving down with me during college. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but the thought of leaving her alone was worse. So we moved down to Palo Alto and got an apartment there. At the end of my freshman year of college my mom told me she was sick. By my junior year she was on oxygen, and then a month after my graduation, she passed.”

“She attended your graduation?”

“Yes, from a wheel chair and on oxygen, but she got to see it. The last couple months I studied for the LSAT, and we composed her bucket list. We went through places she’d always wanted me to see, things that were important to her for me to know about, such as traditions, et cetera. I guess it gave her peace to know that we made plans together for the future. I don’t know, I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

“Of course it matters. I think it is a gift to have had that time. Is her death the reason you didn’t go right into law school?”

“Yeah, that, finances, and my little mental breakdown.” I was trying to make a joke, but realized it fell completely flat when he stiffened. “I was only kidding.”

He kissed the back of my neck and swept my hair to the side. “Tell me about it.”

“I had planned on going to law school, but the medical debt was high, and there were a lot of things to take care of. I wasn’t focused.”

“They didn’t have medical or life insurance?”

“My father did, and still there were sizable medical bills. It’s astounding how much cancer costs even with insurance. Selling the house helped, and although I didn’t have a lot of insight into the finances at that point, my father’s law partner told me that my mom was debt-free. But with my father’s death and my mom not yet being sixty-five years old and qualifying for Medicare, she had no insurance. I had to sell their cars and my mom sold a lot of her jewelry. So no law school fund. I chose to save up some money first rather than going into student loan debt. I took the experience I had working for my father during the summers—filing, preparing documents, and helping schedule—put it on a resume, and got the job with Warren in LA.”

“Tell me about the breakdown.”

Wincing, I hoped I had changed the subject successfully. “It’s not something that is easy for me to talk about. Tell me something personal that no one else knows about you, and I will.”

Exhaling, he massaged my shoulders gently. “I had a vasectomy towards the end of my marriage.”

I hadn’t figured on him sharing something so deeply private. “Why?” I had to ask when he didn’t elaborate.

“Aside from the obvious reason that I don’t want to have children?”

“I guess I was thinking something convinced you to make that decision when you did.”

He paused before changing the subject. “Were you hospitalized and treated?”

I realized we were trading vulnerabilities and took a deep breath. “Yes, briefly on the hospitalization, and I was on antidepressants until I moved to LA.” My voice was small and I wished I could erase that part of my life.

“Did you try to harm yourself?” His voice was quiet and nonjudgmental but I still felt deeply exposed.

“No, but I stopped taking care of myself. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t shower. I just cried and wanted to bury myself in bed and give up. Not the same as cutting my wrists, but not exactly healthy, either.” I could feel his hands rubbing my arms, warming me up from the chill.

“What prompted the vasectomy?”

“My ex got pregnant. It wasn’t mine.”

Letting out a breath, I took his hand, bringing it to my lips. I gave it a kiss and then turned towards him. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Who found you, got you help?”

I sighed, hating the embarrassment of having needed help. “My father’s partner and best friend, Charlie Hastings.” I hoped not to have to elaborate, but he wasn’t having it.

“What happened?”

“He and his wife, Beth, had been checking up on me and I hadn’t returned his calls. He found me crumpled on the bathroom floor dehydrated and out of it. He called an ambulance and they-uh put me in a place for a few weeks. He even paid for everything and then moved me down to LA. I owe him a great deal, and yet he refuses to see it that way.” I got up and paced as if trying to mentally shrug off the memory. “The thing is that I’m not that girl anymore. She wasn’t strong enough to pull it together and so talking about her and what happened isn’t easy.”

“That was just a few months ago, Haylee. I think you should cut yourself some slack.”

With a smile, I took a seat again, feeling more myself by the minute. “I’m not going back there, Josh. I don’t need the meds, and I don’t need the counseling. It was just a reaction to a tough situation. I’m stronger now and realize only I can change my fate and the way I choose to look at life. I may not believe that life is a big happy ending, but being depressed is a choice and I’m choosing not to be.”

“Haylee, depression is not something you can just flick on or off like a switch. I think it’s commendable that you have adopted a can-do attitude, but it isn’t always as simple as that. You lost both your parents at a very pivotal time in your life—”

It was easier to keep a handle on my emotions when I wasn’t getting sympathy. “Josh, I appreciate what you’re trying to say, but I don’t need you to try to psychoanalyze me anymore than you’d want me doing it to you. I’m not saying I won’t have moments where I’m sad about things because I know I will, but this is something I need to do for myself. No one else can help me with it.”

“All right. I won’t say anymore. Everyone has their own way of dealing with things and if this works for you, then I’ll respect that.”

“Thank you.” I breathed a sigh of relief that this conversation was over.