All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(60)

She shook her head, eyes glittering with tears, but he wasn’t going to feel sorry for her.

“No. Because you can’t get over it.” Ilya sneered. “She died twenty years ago, Allie. She doesn’t haunt anything. She’s just dead. And you’ve never gotten over it.”

It would not have been the first time he’d ever made her cry, and he was expecting tears now. Allie didn’t cry. She recoiled, briefly, with a small, tight shake of her head and a clench of her fists before she looked him in the eye with a gaze as solid and unyielding as he’d ever seen from her.

“Sometimes,” she told him, “you don’t get over it. You just get through it.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


“So, I’ve been thinking.” Niko said this into the phone while he stared up at the slanted attic ceiling and pondered once again how the hell he’d ended up back here in Quarrytown in a lumpy bed with crappy sheets and too many noises sifting up through the vents.

“Oh, brother.” Alicia’s low laugh sparked a tingle of heat through him. “About what? Global warming? The reasons why pepper makes you sneeze? The existence, or not, of Bigfoot?”

“Bigfoot totally exists,” Niko said, deadpan. “I saw him once in Oregon while I was on a backpacking trip.”

He loved the sound of her laughter. There’d been other women in his life. Of course there had. But very few had ever laughed with him the way Alicia did, and when you found someone who laughed with you that way, wasn’t that worth holding on to?

“I want to see you,” he said, before she could reply.

Alicia didn’t answer him for a second or so. “Of course you do.”

He stretched in the bed, pushing the blankets down to his ankles. He liked her answer. Confident. Sexy. She was different as a woman than she’d been as a girl, and Niko couldn’t get enough.

“I mean I want to see you now,” he said.

Again, she was quiet for a few seconds before answering. “You could come over here, you know. I live alone. But you’d have to be careful not to let Dina from next door see you. She’s always got an eye out.”

“Oh?” Her invitation had set his heart beating just a little faster, but he was going to pretend it hadn’t. “What about her?”

“She’s a stereotype. Unhappy housewife. Kids, dog, house, husband who travels.” Alicia paused. “I’m not sure, but I think she has a thing for Ilya.”

Niko grimaced. “Yikes.”

“Yeah. He’s never confirmed it with me. But . . . yeah.”

“So, I shouldn’t come over?” he asked.

She laughed again. “Nikolai, seriously. It’s almost one in the morning.”

“Dina won’t be watching,” he said, waiting to see if she’d invite him. Hoping.

“And I guess Galina and Ilya are sleeping?”

He thought for a moment. “I assume so. It’s quiet. He went to bed a few hours ago. She was out earlier. With friends, she said.”

“Is that hard to believe?”

“No. Maybe one of them can help her get a job,” he said.

Alicia chuckled. “That might help. Is money an issue again?”

“Not yet, and that’s the thing. I don’t know where she’s getting it,” Niko said, “but she seems to have enough, at least for now.”

A few beats of silence hung between them before she spoke again.

“What are you doing to me?” Alicia breathed. “What, Nikolai?”

“Whatever you want me to do to you,” he whispered in response. “What do you want?”

The sound of her breathing filled the phone. He waited, tense, already hard, for her to answer him. He wasn’t sure what he hoped she’d say.

“I want you to touch me.”

Six small words that made him shudder. He drew in a breath, his hand moving over his bare belly, feeling the ridges of muscle that would start disappearing soon if he didn’t start working out again. Lower, to the rising thickness of his erection. He gripped himself through his briefs.

“Where?” he asked.

“Everywhere.”

Niko arched a little into his own touch. “That’s a good start.”

Alicia laughed again, softly. “It’s late. I have to be up early in the morning. The bus to the airport leaves at five.”

“Ilya should handle all that. It’s his trip.”

“He gets to go on the trip. I get to handle all the last-minute details. That’s how it works. And it does work,” she put in, but if she was trying to convince him or herself, Niko couldn’t tell.

“So you’re saying good night?”

She groaned. “Ugh. Yes. No. Yes, I am. If I’m going to be tired in the morning, it’s going to be for real, full-on sex. Not phone sex.”

“I see,” Nikolai said. “So you’re telling me you want to have sex with me.”

This time, her laugh included a snort he found so endearing it made him put a hand to his chest to press against the suddenly swifter beating of his heart. She didn’t answer right away. It wasn’t a question that needed a real answer.

“Go to sleep,” she told him finally. “We’ll talk about this later.”