99 Percent Mine(43)

“I think it’s too late. It’s changed.” He puts a hand into his hair. “I’m being a jerk because I’m stressed, and I’ve got you walking around in the middle of everything.”

“Ignore me.”

“You’re real hard to ignore.” He looks sideways at the house, eyebrows pulling down. “Okay, here’s where we’re at. I’m attempting the first day of what should be the rest of my career, and I can’t focus on it.”

“Because you want to put me against a wall and kiss me.” I’m taunting that thing inside him that always responds to me. It protects me and hunts me. “And you’d do it in front of everyone here. You like having keys in your pocket. It’s what your whole life is about. You want to be the only one with a key to me.” I count his breaths. “Am I right?”

“I am not going to answer that.” His body answers anyway; a shrugging of his entire body, like something is dropping down onto him. He looks so desperate that regret fills me. What have I done to him? I love his inner animal so much that I’m stopping him from turning back into the calm, controlled version he needs to be.

I think I do an identical shudder-shrug. Get yourself back on your leash, DB. “What am I photographing?”

“Everything,” Tom says, raspy. “I want you to photograph everything.” He propels me up the back stairs with a hand on my waistband.

“For what purpose?”

“Two purposes. To keep Jamie in the loop, because if we don’t, he’s coming down here.” He positions me at the doorway of the hall. “And I need content for my website. A before-and-after section. Lucky for me, I’ve got a professional photographer right on hand.”

I don’t really care for how he put a little sarcasm on professional. I really screwed up just now in front of his crew.

“How many times in my life have you rescued me? I can’t even count. I will always do the same for you. I will not stand there and say nothing when I could step in and help. It’s what we do for each other.”

He blinks, trying to understand. “No one does that for me.”

“I do it.”

“How can I explain this in a way you’ll understand?” Tom steps against my back and reaches around me. His fingers slide between mine and he raises my hands up until the camera is roughly in line with my eyes.

“Can you do your job like this?” When I line up the viewfinder on the hall, he moves our hands. I snap a shot that is, of course, garbage.

I try to shrug him off; he steps closer, dropping his mouth to the side of my neck. That mouth that sipped from my mug, telling every male in the room that I’m off-limits and untouchable. He’s still too far into the dark forest place we play in. He breathes me in. I feel the briefest scrape of his stubble on the curve of my shoulder and the most intriguing hard press on my butt. I feel like an animal about to be bitten, soft and slow, by its mate. Maybe he’d do it hard enough to leave a mark. When he finally releases the breath he’s been holding, his heavenly warm air goes down the neck of my top.

He says, “There’s so many things I’d do, if I could.”

“Well, seems pointless to tell me about them.” I bump him off.

Tom Valeska is a fucking liar. He does want me. He just doesn’t have the guts. In my pulse points, I’m nothing but Morse code: bed, bed, bed. And I’m disappointed in his lack of faith in me. No one could possibly succeed with messy Darcy Barrett around. That’s what I’ve been my whole life, right? A complication.

He puts another wobble into the camera as I try to take a shot. “This is how hard it is for me to do anything with you here.” Above my ear, his voice drops to a growl. “This house? This renovation? It’s what I do. Don’t step in again like that.”

“Get away from me. Safer, remember?” I sound bitter.

“Oh, you’re still on that?” Tom’s phone rings again. I’m ready to toss that thing into an active volcano. “I don’t think you fully got what I meant.”

“Of course I did, I’m not stupid,” I snap, and force my entire focus through the viewfinder.

“I was just …” There’s a pause so long I think he’s left. I take a few shots. “Surprised. I didn’t know that’s what you thought of me.”

“You weren’t surprised, you were traumatized. I heard you, loud and clear. From this point on, we’re going to ignore this thing between us. We’ll get ourselves a sold sign and we will see each other at Christmas. Maybe. There’s a festival in Korea around that time that’s always interested me.”

“Could you tell me why you did it?” I hear the floorboards under his feet creak. “Were you lonely? Mad? Trying to get back at me for something?” He hasn’t reached the conclusion that I want his body and his pleasure, more than I want water and food.

“I’m not telling you a damn thing,” I reply, because I know that’s what will annoy him the most. “I’ll tell you one day, when we’re eighty years old.”

I click the camera and look at the display. It’s hard to argue with reality, and here it is. This room—and this potential relationship with Tom—is not the flower-wallpapered version I’ve been carrying around in my head. This house is no longer beautiful, and Tom has receded out of reach. I’m down to zero.