Dirty Fraud Read online

  Blair walks me to his bedroom and pulls me into his bed with him. We lay on top of the blankets, wrapped in each other’s arms. I try to be in the moment, to stop my whirling, confused mind—but I just can’t believe I’m lying on his shoulder.

  I love the feel of his warm skin by mine, the way his arms close around me, the very scent of him, his closeness. I feel safe and content, and though it takes a while because I don’t want to miss a moment of being exactly where I am, I finally fall asleep.

  He’s watching me when I wake. He reaches up and touches my face, pushing a strand of my hair back from my cheek. A swath of yellow sunlight across the bed tells me we’ve slept nearly until noon. His hair, usually impeccably styled, sticks out around his head in a tornado of white, spiky strands of his own.

  “You are so beautiful,” he tells me quietly, and then kisses my forehead.

  I smile and reach my finger up to trace his lips. “So are you.”

  He kisses my cheek and then pushes himself up and gets out of bed. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

  He makes omelets and coffee for us while I sit at the island and watch, and we enjoy it all out on the balcony sitting in the warm late-morning sun.

  “This is the best morning of my whole year.” I tell him gratefully. “Thank you.”

  Blair grins at me, but there’s a knowing sadness there behind it.

  I give him a shy smile back and ask him where I can bathe. I still carry with me the grime of yesterday, only some of it physical. He points me in the direction of the master bathroom, promising me I’ll find a tub in there big enough to scuba dive in.

  “Thanks!” I beam at him. I take our dishes in and clean them since he cooked, before I head to the master bathroom. I take my time, letting myself marvel at the place in a way that I couldn’t last night. Now that I know I’m here, really here, it’s all that much more amazing.

  I can’t imagine the kind of people who lead this life, not knowing how privileged they really are.

  He’s right about the tub. It’s giant. I run it full with hot water and fill it to overflowing with bubbles, and then I open the windows beside it that look out over the tops of the city. No one could probably see me, but I feel like I’m taking a bath in the clouds because I’m so far up.

  I slip into the water and I feel all the stress and anxiety in me drift away. It’s the best bath I’ve ever had. I let myself forget everything else for a minute. It’s become my pattern this—forgetting and remembering in spurts of gut-wrenching emotion.

  For now, I revel in the forgetting.

  My eyes are closed and I’m humming a tune when I hear the door of the bathroom creak open. I sit up quickly, my body sinking below the top of the bubbles. My eyes go wide when I see Blair walk in wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. He has a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other.

  “What … what are you doing in here?” I ask breathlessly.

  That dimple in his cheek deepens and his green eyes dance. “I thought I’d see if you want some company.” His real question hangs in the air between us, not needing to actually be asked.

  It takes me a minute, and I stare at him without answering, but he takes it in stride and gives me that flirty smile of his as he sits down on the side of the tub and pours a glass of champagne for both of us.

  “Happy birthday, Bunny,” he toasts me. I’m so nervous. I tip the glass back and drain it, and he refills it. I’ve never even seen a boy naked, let alone been in close company to one.

  My body betrays me, yearning to be closer to Blair in a way that doesn’t guarantee I’ll leave this tub in the same … state … as I am now if I let him in.

  Just knowing that makes my body ache and my cheeks blush.

  He leans down and kisses my mouth so softly and slowly, my inhibitions melt away. “Can I come in with you?” He asks this time, just above a whisper.

  It’s probably never going to be better than this, I reason with myself, and besides … I have to admit it. I can’t ignore that ache inside me any longer. I want him. I nod and slide back a bit, keeping my shoulders carefully covered while I give him space to climb in beside me.

  I just nod, unable to say a cohesive thing. He smiles and stands up, dropping his towel to the floor. I look away quickly, blushing hard this time as the image of his nude body lingers in my mind’s eye. He laughs a little and gets into the tub, coming right to me.

  My hand shakes as I go to down the whole other glass of champagne, but Blair reaches out a gentle hand to stop me. His hand rests on mine, steadying it for a moment, before he carefully takes the glass from me to set it on the side of the tub.

  “Steady now,” he says, his voice low and sincere. “I’m not going to take advantage of you while you’re drunk.” It’s sexier than if he was actually trying to be sexy.

  He sets his own glass to the side and cups my face in his hand before leaning in for a slow, careful kiss. His lips barely brush mine as his hand moves from my face to rest on my shoulder, his thumb running across the shape of my collar bone.

  A moan escapes my lips as he draws back, his gaze dropping to my body as he clears the bubbles away to take in the sight of me. I let myself do the same—my shy glance growing sharper as I look over the shape of his body without making myself look away this time.

  He can’t keep his hands off of me. When he closes the gap between us, his lips find me with a new urgency. His fingers trail down my back, across the tops of my thighs, teasing at the sides of my breasts. He holds back until I reach for him too, my own hands exploring his body with a need of their own.

  Heat ignites between us and it isn’t long before he pulls me onto his lap, and we cling tightly to each other as I let go of being a girl, and find myself becoming a woman.

  Chapter 3

  When we finally emerge from the tub, Blair can’t seem to let me go. He wants more of me, and I have to admit that I want more of him, too. We don’t even make it out of the master bedroom before he and I are tangled in the sheets, learning each other’s bodies.

  It’s fast, I know. But I’ve known Blair for nearly a year now, and for a while there I was certain this moment would come a lot sooner. It’s right in every way. The warmth of his touch pushes the horrors of the last year firmly into the past.

  When we finally emerge from our consummated bliss, Blair has Thai food sent up to us from a restaurant downstairs somewhere in the building. His eyes follow me wherever I go, his hands reaching for me at every opportunity—holding my hand, resting on my shoulder, playing with my hair. There’s a new look in them, too. His flirty facade has crumbled into something sweet and candid.

  I can’t seem to wipe the smile from my face, and I don’t want to.

  Blair breaks out some top-shelf liquor from his parent’s bar to celebrate the occasion, and takes the opportunity to show off some top-notch bartending skills. I try my hand at it myself and force him to drink what I dub the “sludge monster” while I finish off a neat cosmopolitan. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t end up with the better end of the deal there.

  Our buzz carries us through a hazy, rose-colored afternoon. Blair stays by my side, orchestrating a series of touching moments that make my heart fit to burst; starting with the delivery of a massive bouquet of flowers mid-afternoon, to embarrassing me by sticking candles in the other ¾ of the cake he brought last night and singing to me until I screech for him to stop and blow out the candles in one breath.

  The sun is painting the penthouse in orange and yellow hues when Blair gets up from where we’ve been binge-watching some TV show to make me another drink. He’s significantly more drunk than I am—thanks to that concoction I made him earlier—and it’s showing. His usually graceful movements have turned sloppy, and his words have started slurring together a bit.

  “I saw this bartender in Barbados do this drink …” he tells me as he stands at the bar and pours from a few bottles into a crystal tumbler. He spills a decent amount of it on
the counter in the process, and I giggle and spin around to watch him over the back of the couch.

  “Oh yeah?” I say, rising up a bit when he starts reaching for a lighter. “What’re you doing with that?”

  “Oh, I think you know,” he says, that sneaky smile breaking across his face again as the top of the shot glass erupts in tiny, blue flames.

  “Hurry now,” he says, stepping around the bar with a drink in each hand. “Before all the alcohol is burned away.”

  Just as he’s taking the first step down from the bar to the main floor, his drunken footing gives way and he stumbles over his own feet. The drinks in his hands go flying to shatter on the ground beside the bar. Fire explodes across half of the living room, spreading all the way to the base of the couch where I sit.

  I cry out and fall back as Blair scrambles to grab a blanket from the sofa. He runs to the sink and douses it in cold water before racing back and beating at the flames. He just barely gets the fire out before it spreads up the back of the chair completely. It leaves a dark black smudge across the once-pristine-white fabric.

  All the while, I’ve just stayed frozen on the ground, watching. Now, I get carefully up to my feet and move around the examine the damage.

  “God, that was close.”

  He groans as he slumps down onto the wet floor and lets his head fall back against the bar. Scorch marks surround him on the cement floor and nearby furniture.

  “Your parents are going to kill us,” I say, wide-eyed as I stare at the damage. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but arson was never one of them.”

  He cracks one eye up to peek at me. “Nah. They’re just things. They can be replaced. Now that painting,” he points over to a tiny, black-and white abstract canvas hanging on a nearby wall, just barely outside of the flame’s rapid reach, “that’s another story. It’s worth more than both our lives combined, so I guess we just got lucky.”

  “Lucky isn’t a word I usually associate with myself,” I say. I reach for him and pull him to his feet. “No more fires. Okay?”

  Some combination of the fading sunlight, smoky smell, and the last of the liquor coursing through my blood makes me itch to move. We’ve spent all day here, inside the house; but there’s a whole city out there waiting to explore. If Blair wasn’t so drunk, I’d ask him to take us out on his bike again.

  “What do you think about maybe going to a club? We could go dancing or something.” I say, trailing one finger down his chest. I like the idea of being close to him, our bodies pressed together, for all the world to see.

  My suggestion does not illicit the response I expected, as panic flood’s Blair’s features for a moment.

  “No,” he says. “We can’t do that. We can’t go out.”

  I blink in surprise and lower my hand to my side. “Why not?”

  “We can’t be seen together,” he says quickly, and then he looks away from me. “I mean … my parents don’t really know you’re here, and … it would just be easier if we hang out here in the condo this weekend. If the neighbors saw us they might talk … and I just …” he trails off, his clouded mind struggling to find the right words. “I don’t want to ruin what we have here. Right now. With you.”

  His face softens, and he reaches for me.

  I’m disappointed, but I try to understand. There’s a little voice inside of me that tries to rise up, that voice of reason, but I quash it down. For once in my life, I’m not going to let worry and doubt ruin this for me. Just like Blair said.

  I nod and take his outstretched hands. “It’s all right. I’m just glad that I get to be here with you.”

  “Me too.” Blair sighs with relief and smiles at me. “After all … who needs to leave when we have everything we could ever want, right here?”

  He pulls me in for a kiss, and then grins and takes my hand, leading me out to the balcony again. He has me undressed and in the pool before I can protest, and I don’t really want to protest at all.

  I soon forget any suggestion to leave. We eat, we drink, we make love, and as the sun finally sets beyond the building-lined horizon, casting a blue glow over the city, he turns some music on and we slow dance out on the balcony as the sky grows dark.

  “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had,” I tell him honestly. “Not that there was ever much of a contest.”

  He kisses me softly. “Everything for you, Bunny.”

  His cell phone rings and he breaks away to take it in another room before I can see who’s calling. I can hear some of the conversation through the door, and something about it seems strained. I’ve only just begun to wonder what’s so important that he can’t answer it in front of me, when he comes back and starts making us another drink.

  It’s left him in a mood. He doesn’t look at me for a short while, his eyes staying trained on the carefully measured booze until it passes, and he’s all smiles again.

  “Where were we?” he asks, wrapping me in his arms again and kissing me once more. I forget about the call and shift all of my focus to him.

  We lose ourselves in each other for the night, and he wakes me up and we start all over again. I could get used to being like this with him. We were so close last year … and I think both of us are trying to make up for lost time.

  It’s another long, wonderful day together. We eat and watch movies and talk, and by late afternoon, it’s all been another perfect day. He takes two more mysterious phone calls behind closed doors again, and both times he comes out looking exasperated and frustrated. He doesn’t tell me what’s wrong; instead he just distracts me with himself or a drink or something to do.

  We finish dinner and the last of the cake, and he tells me that he hasn’t had enough dessert, so he takes me to his bed again. As we lay there in each other’s arms, basking in afterglow, he takes my hand and looks seriously at me. I know that something’s bothering him, and from the distracted look on his face, he’s finally ready to talk about it.

  Blair sighs when I ask and weaves his fingers into mine.

  “It’s about school. This weekend here with you has felt like paradise. It really has, but … we have to talk about what’s coming next week.”

  I sit up and look at him, sliding my fingers free of his. There’s that tentative feeling creeping up, that once again, the bottom is going to drop out beneath me. I wouldn’t be surprised. Good things don’t come into my life and stay.

  He sits up and takes a deep breath. “I need you to know that I’ve meant every moment here with you before we go back.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” I say, doing everything I can to keep panic from rising up to overwhelm me.

  “Then you’re really not going to like what I have to say next.” He can’t look me in the eyes. “I wasn’t entirely honest earlier. I could give a damn what my parents think … but …”

  “Astor’s a different story,” I say, dryly.

  Now he glances up at me. “You know what he’s like. I can’t … we can’t … keep going on like this. Once we go back, everything has to be the same as before.”

  My mouth falls open. “What are you talking about? After everything that’s happened here this weekend?”

  “I’m really sorry, Teddy …”

  I give up. I can’t hold back and play coy any longer. I jump up and crawl away from him on the bed, out of arm’s reach.

  “No. That’s not fair. You don’t get to use me like this and then go back to, what? Pretending I don’t exist?”

  The true horror of it all sweeps over me, making my head swim and the edges of my vision go dark. I’ve spent the last two days giving him more of my heart and my body than I have ever given to anyone.

  He frowns darkly and looks away from me for a moment. “Oh, come on, Teddy. Can you honestly say you didn’t expect this?”

  I flounder for words. “Expect what? For you to fuck me and forget me, like nothing ever happened?” I lose it, the sob rising in me changing into a dark, choked single-syllable laugh. I am
one part furious and one part devastated. “Do I seriously mean so little to you?”

  Now Blair is up on his knees, reaching for me.

  “It’s not that at all! Of course I care about you, I just … I just can’t show that at school. You might be forgiving, but Astor … he isn’t. I can’t betray him like that. The easiest thing to do is go along with them and act like you and I are still on the outs.”

  I glare furiously at him. “You mean that’s the easiest thing for you. Isn’t that what you mean?”

  He gapes at me, but I keep moving out of reach. I cross my arms over my chest, then think better of it, and pull the sheet from the bed to cover myself entirely.

  “Have you even thought once how this is going to affect me? How do you think I’m going to feel, watching you pretending I don’t exist now, after everything.”

  There’s a fire in his eyes again and he launches from the bed after me. This time he grabs me before I can dart out of reach, and stares hard at me.

  “Come on, don’t be like that.” He pulls me to him and kisses me hard, and it hurts my heart. “You know you’ve enjoyed this as much as me. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

  I shove him away, and in a moment of dark anger, I raise my hand to strike him across the face … but at the last second, I just drop my hand and head straight for the door. He stands there in shock as if I actually did hit him, the fullness of my anger finally dawning on him.

  I stop at the door just long enough to look back at him. My words are filled with spite and venom. “You’re a cruel man, Blair Rashnikov.”

  I storm out, ignoring the flood of excuses he keeps hurling at my back. I snatch my bag from the counter and tug out some random clothes and start hastily dressing, keeping my back to him. Truth is, I can’t look at him because I don’t want him to see the hot tears swimming in my eyes and pouring down over my cheeks.