Broody Brit by Naima Simone
Chapter Seven
Axel
I pad barefoot into the empty kitchen. Nate dropped me off nearly an hour earlier, and after a shower and change of clothes, my growling stomach has finally driven me in search of food. My brain is on board the Give You and Zenobia Space campaign, but my gut is obviously in full on anarchist mode. It’s demanding to be fed, damn my pride or self-preservation.
Just as I tug open the refrigerator door, footsteps echo behind me, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Simon and Bridget’s house is big, but not that big. Avoiding Zenobia had been a fool’s wish. Slowly, shutting the door, I turn, but standing behind me is not the gorgeous woman with the silken almond skin and dangerous curves that I just jerked one out to in the shower.
It’s Calliope.
Shock and grief piledrive into me, and I lock my knees from stumbling backward. My fingers lock around the handle of the refrigerator so hard, so tight, I’m dimly surprised the damn thing doesn’t rip right off the screws.
In some distant part of my head, I faintly remember Simon mentioning Calliope relocating to the States. But I don’t recall it being here in Rhode Island. If I had, I wouldn’t be standing here in his kitchen, attempting to keep my arse from hitting the floor. And my heart from clawing its way out of my chest.
It’s been nearly ten years, but she looks the same. Youthful, lovely, kind. The same blonde hair and slim body she had when she’d been Blake and Simon’s best friend. The Three Musketeers, they’d been called. They’d been tight all the way to the end. All the way until the moment on that lake at her parents’ vacation house in Scotland, when choppy waters had capsized their boat and Blake, without a life jacket, had gone under and wasn’t found until three days later.
She and Simon had even been inseparable when they’d come to comfort me when Mum and Dad had been too gutted in their grief to do so.
I’d pushed her away, too. Only unlike Simon, she’d taken the hint and hadn’t pushed back.
“Axel,” she greets me, smiling, arms outstretched. I don’t stop her as she enfolds me in an embrace. Even manage to move my stiff arms to hug her back. “Simon told me you were staying with him while you worked on your show. I’m so glad to see you. It’s been a long time.”
Sadness lurks in her eyes, and I step back from it and her hold. Both are too much at the moment.
“Yeah.”
Her arms fall to her side, and red stains her cheekbones. An awkward silence descends between us, and though words jam into my chest and crowd into my throat, I can’t shove them out. I don’t know what to say to her. And even if I did, I don’t know how to deal with the bombardment of memories. The suffocation of memories.
Back home in England, they weren’t as difficult, as heavy as alive. Not with Simon and now Calliope as living, breathing testaments to my brother. To who I am in connection to them. To who I’m not in connection to them…
“Hey, I thought you were getting the dip—oh, hey, Axel. I didn’t know you were home.” Zenobia barrels into the kitchen, and I think Calliope and I both breathe sighs of relief.
She’s a damn lifeline, even if the sight of her in a pair of short-as-fuck cut-off denim shorts with ragged hems and a tight, yellow T-shirt that’s so thin I can glimpse the outline of a lace bra might just kill me.
She glances back and forth between me and Calliope, a tiny frown marring her forehead. And because in the short time I’ve come to know her, she hasn’t been one to mince words, she asks, “What’s up? You two look like you just bumped into each other after a horrible one-night stand.” Her eyebrow arches high. “And since I know you’d never cheat on Nigel, and you”—she shoots me a look—“were sitting in a pub with me last night, that can’t be true. So, what gives?”
When Calliope shrugs and parts her lips, Zenobia jabs a finger in her direction, her frown deepening.
“And don’t even think about telling me ‘nothing’. I stab people with needles for a living.”
Shit. What was it with the needles?
Calliope laughs and holds up her hands, palms out. “Fine. God, I don’t know why I hang around you and Bridget. Might be fear.” She shakes her head, then crosses to the refrigerator, opens it and reappears seconds later with a small, white tub. “I know Axel from home. I was best friends with his brother, Blake.”
“Oh.”
Just that simple word, and yet it says everything. That and the softening of her eyes like sweet, melting chocolate.
She knows.
Zenobia knows about Blake. His death. And if the information is from Simon, then the dirty details of how it affected me.
Humiliation burns inside me, so hot, so consuming I’m shocked my skin isn’t ashen. It’s one thing for Simon and Calliope to know that I’m broken, but for this strong, capable Amazon of a woman?
Fuck supper—
“Right,” she drawls. “The accents should’ve been a dead giveaway. I mean, two Brits under a roof owned by another one? What’re the odds?” She waves a hand in my direction, accompanying it with a head jerk. “C’mon, you. We’re having a girls’ night, but you’re officially crashing it. Wine, pizza, and a Grey’s Anatomy marathon.”
Calliope rolls her eyes. “Which, might I add, isn’t the least bit indulgent.”
“Well, when they make a hit series about hot, horny yoga instructors, I pinky swear we’ll binge it. In the meantime, it’s my night to pick, and Grey’s it is.”
Before I can tell her no and escape back to my flat, Zenobia crosses the short distance separating us and wraps her small hand around my bicep and hauls me toward the living room. For such a tiny package, she contains the force of a hurricane. I outweigh her by at least fifty pounds and stand a foot taller, but the shock of her touch rips through me, propelling me forward.
I’m a puppet, and she’s pulling the strings.
Minutes later, I’m seated on one of the huge armchairs at the end of the couch, three slices of pizza piled with enough meat to clog every artery in my body, and watching residents compete for surgeries, have sex with co-workers, and generally fuck up.
And damn if it’s not oddly addictive.
“Did George just get hit by a fucking bus?” I bark, shooting straight up in my chair, my hands gripping the arms for dear life. I gape at the screen. Horrified.
The hell? Did that just happen? Damn, not George.
“I know, right?” Zenobia shakes her head, then tilts her glass up for a big gulp of wine. “All’s I have to say is, don’t piss Shonda off because you will not just die, but die a horrific, humiliating, ACME-anvil-dropped-on-your-ass death.”
“You knew this?” I demand. Snarl, really. Because, goddammit. She let me get attached. “You knew he was going to die and let me sit here and watch this?”
“Aw, sorry, Axel,” Calliope coos, but ruins it with a burp. Pink stains her cheeks, but she giggles and follows it up by downing the last bit of wine in her glass.
Zenobia immediately reaches over and refills it almost to the rim.
“But at least we didn’t let you watch Derek get hit by a truck. Now that was just traumatizing. I didn’t watch Grey’s for two seasons after he died.” Calliope shudders and, cupping both hands around the glass, sips in commiseration.
I. Fucking. Gasp. I might even have pressed a fist to my chest. Directly over my pounding heart. “Derek dies?” That’s it. I’m out.
“I think you broke him, Calliope.” Zenobia snickers, and my brother’s best friend reaches over—without spilling one drop of wine—and pats my knee.
“No worries, Axel,” she says, obviously trying to console me. “Next time we’ll watch Sons of Anarchy.”
I blink. Because one, I have no idea what Sons of Anarchy is. And two, next time? They want me to join them for this girls’ night again? The thought of it has warmth unfurling in my chest and stretching wide… and mentally scrambling away like a scalded cat.
“Yeah, ‘cause nobody bites it in a show about a motorcycle gang.”
Calliope whips her head in Zenobia’s direction. “It’s a motorcycle gang. That’s pretty much expected.”
Before Zenobia can reply, a knock on the door echoes through the room. I shoot from the chair like my arse is on fire. “Got it,” I mutter.
Leaving them to their continued argument, I cross the living room and enter the foyer. A peek out of the door’s glass pane reveals a tall, slim man on the other side. It’s late, and this guy’s a stranger, and I’m not taking any chances with either Zenobia or Calliope’s safety.
“Zenobia.”
She cuts off mid-debate and glances my way. When I jerk my chin up, she climbs off the couch and approaches me.
“You know him?”
She peers around me then grins. “That’s Nigel. Calliope’s husband.”
At the sound of her husband’s name, Calliope jumps up and bounds over to us like a wankered gazelle. Just as Zenobia opens the door, she leaps into Nigel’s arms.
“Hello, darling,” she purrs. “I’ve missed you.”
“I see girls’ night was a smashing success,” Nigel says, his smile indulgent and accent posh.
“You need help getting her to the car?” I offer.
He switches his smile from his wife and glances at me, his gaze sharpening even as he extends the arm not wrapped around his wife. “Nigel. And you are?”
“Axel.” I grasp the offered hand and shake it.
When I don’t add more, Zenobia sighs and nudges me in the side with her elbow. “A hot as fuck Viking just opened the door to the house his wife just spent an evening in. You have to give him more than that,” she grumbles, then turns to Nigel with an eye roll.
But I’m barely hearing anything else that comes out of her mouth. A lightning bolt of lust strikes me center mass, crackling through me, deafening me except for the roar that contains four words: hot as fuck Viking.
Is that how she sees me?
Behind my zipper, my cock stirs, hardening and lengthening until it’s seconds away from punching through the damn front of the jeans. It’s one thing to want this woman, to imagine being wedged so fucking far, deep and tight inside her that I can’t breathe without feeling every quiver and ripple. But it’s a whole ‘nother thing to know that she looks at me and sees something besides a rude, socially clumsy giant.
Goddamn.
Why can’t we rewind twenty seconds, and I could walk away as soon as she opens the door? Turn back time so I don’t hear what those four irreversible, earth-shattering words.
Because now I’m so close to becoming that marauder of the North that she called me. I want to hunt her down, pillage, conquer. Stake my claim. Mark her body with my mouth, my fingers, my cock, just as I want to immortalize her with my metal, with fire.
I step back. From her cider and dewy earth scent. From the finger-curling temptation of those shamelessly feminine hips. From the beauty of those curls.
From her.
“Axel is a friend of Simon’s from back home, Nigel,” Zenobia explains. “He’s staying with him and Bridget for a few months.”
“He’s Blake’s brother, darling,” Calliope whispers, soft enough that her explanation barely reaches me, but loud enough that I catch the sadness saturating her slightly slurred speech.
Nigel hums a sound in his throat as he bends his head over his wife’s and presses a kiss to her hair. Then he looks at me again, an understanding in his gaze that has my skin crawling, itching, needing to slap at it. Hiking up my chin at him, I whip around and escape.
Pausing next to the coffee table, I grab the empty pizza boxes and bottles of wine and head for the kitchen. The boxes don’t deserve all the aggression I pour into ripping them apart, but ain’t shit in life fair.
“Here. Let me get those bottles.”
I don’t stop decimating cardboard, but my muscles tighten in reaction to that husky voice. My gut clenches, and my cock… Well, that greedy, randy bastard stands at strict attention as if she were a lieutenant and it’s enlisted in the British Army.
The kitchen is filled with the harmony of me ripping boxes and her washing wine bottles. Curiosity pokes at me. What is she saving them for—recycling? Rebottling? Making her own wine?
She finishes rinsing the glass out, wipes the bottles off with a paper towel, then sets them on the counter to dry. When she catches me looking at her, she narrows her eyes on me.
“I can see the wheels turning in that head of yours. And I also know you’re trying really hard not to ask. But go ahead, Axel. Ask.”
She’s right. I’ve made a habit of not asking anyone questions, of not getting in their business—because they always seem to return the favor—that’s it’s become second nature. Shoving the last of the cardboard in the rubbish bin, I inhale and face her.
And because it’s her… because my fascination with her is a ravenous thing… because my inexplicable need to know more about her is only matched by insane hunger to be buried balls-deep inside her, I do the one thing I’ve never had the least bit desire to indulge in with anyone else.
I pry.
“What’re you saving those for?”
A simple, rubbish question for someone else. For me? A huge step in a direction I have no business taking. Toward a woman I have no business thinking about, jacking off to, fucking craving.
“You’re not the only one who rescues stuff people look at as junk.” She smirks and spreads her arms wide.
Only Christ Himself would’ve been strong enough not to glance down as her breasts lifted under her tight T-shirt. And I’m nowhere near as sainted as Jesus. I’m that branch of the family He doesn’t like to talk about. So, my gaze lingers on the soft-looking flesh rising above the V-neck. Traces the lacy pattern of her bra beneath the thin material. I jerk my focus away. But not before I catch the outline of her beaded nipples.
Fuck.
I flex my fingers, curling them into my palm, straightening them. Foreseeing another night of them strangling my dick.
“I’m a self-proclaimed DIY queen,” she continues confessing. “I like to repurpose things. Like, those wine bottles might become dish soap dispensers, a mini-garden or tiki torches. YouTube videos are goldmines for ideas.” She snorts. “I used to drive James crazy, just showing up from thrift store or yard sale shopping trips with bags and bags of things.”
She tilts her head and studies me in that analytical way she has that makes me feel like I need sutures to stitch myself close after she’s done with me.
“You wouldn’t mind, though, would you, Axel?” she asks softly. “You’d probably dig through my haul and see what you could use.”
She huffs out a laugh and shakes her head, turning away from me, not expecting an answer. Which is good. Because I’m not capable of giving one to her. Not when an image of us sitting together on the floor of my cottage, her cradled between my legs as we burrow through her shopping finds, blink and waver in my mind.
The mental picture rocks me.
Scares me.
Stirs me.
“I— Never mind.” She laughs, and for the first time since I’ve known her—all forty-eight hours—it strikes me as nervous.
And it doesn’t sit right.
Not on this warrior queen.
“What?” I demand, crossing my arms over my chest.
“I don’t pretend to compare my hobbies to what you do for a living.” She snatches another paper towel off the roll and proceeds to wipe down the counter. I don’t know if the wine or the nerves has her cleaning as if I have a shiv directed at her back, but she’s definitely going at it and avoiding looking at me. “Art is your passion, and I do this for fun. So, I’m not minimizing your process or projects in anyway—”
“Zenobia.”
“Yeah?”
“Stop with the scrubbing.”
Instead of bristling at my command, she exhales a heavy, loud breath, tosses the paper in the rubbish bin, and faces me.
“What are you trying to say?”
She wrinkles her nose and props a shapely hip against the counter, her fingers curling around the edge. “Fine, give me a minute, okay?”
Since silence is what I do, I remain quiet, granting her all the time she needs.
“I love my job, but there’s no room for creativity. It’s high stakes, pressure, and the wrong decisions, mistakes, mean life and death consequences. So, when I want to unwind, to relax, it’s with something that’s the complete opposite of where I spend a good part of my life. Some people would call it using the other side of my brain. I call it using the other side of my soul. My spirit. I’m so dramatic,” she scoffs.
Her self-deprecation is thick, and the order, “Don’t do that,” sits heavy on my tongue. Her feelings and her needs are valid, and she shouldn’t depreciate them. Or allow anyone else to. Because something tells me that others have done exactly that. And it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes-level deduction skills to figure out who one of those “others” were. Fucking James again.
“For me, working on my projects is a solitary process, and I prefer it that way, because all day or night, I’m part of a team. But when I’m attempting to figure out how to make plant hangers out of old spoons, I can get lost in my head. I can experiment, try new things knowing that if I fuck up, the worst thing that could happen is I’ll have to throw away a spoon and no one might be seriously injured. And then”—she shifts her weight, her hands twisting in front of her, her face and golden-brown eyes lighting up with a soft, delighted smile—“there’s something so, so magical about birthing an idea from my mind into reality. It’s like returning to that carefree time in kindergarten when your sole job was being creative and having fun. Y’know, before they killed it for us with good grades, popularity, ambition, and winning at any cost. But when I’m working on these projects, I’m that kindergartner again.”
She lets out another of those self-effacing little laughs that I want to ban from ever escaping her lips. They should be a crime coming from her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say all of that. Must be the wine talking.”
“Don’t ever apologize to me.”
She blinks, and I grind my teeth together. Hard.
This is why I don’t talk. Too much. Sometimes I feel too fucking much, and the words come out intense, inappropriate. But I don’t take it back. She shouldn’t ever apologize for expressing how she’s feeling. Not to me. Especially when it mirrors how I feel every time I weld, bend, buff, or polish metal. In a way, through my art, I return to the time before Blake died—I return to that carefree boy again.
I’ve said it before that Zenobia sees me.
But it’s more. Zenobia knows me.
And goddammit, that terrifies me.
If I was smart, I’d turn tail and head for my flat. I’d close the door and hide behind it until morning when Nate showed up to aid me in my escape to the workshop. But the caution I usually exercise in my life has gone to take a piss as I approach her. Simon’s warning takes a backseat to my need to inhale her warm, spiced cider and fresh earth scent directly from her silken skin. Common sense waves the white flag of surrender to my hunger to touch that petite yet strong body.
Every primal instinct engrafted on my DNA roars at me to grasp the brazen curves of her hips. To dig my fingers into the flesh until the ridges of my prints brand the mahogany skin like tattoos. Ground my cock against her softly rounded belly and watch those light brown and gold eyes darken into amber flames. Watch those pretty, drag-a-person-to-confession lips part on a groan, a rough, needy whimper.
Burrow a hand into those gorgeous curls that remind me of restrained freedom and drag her head back. Catch that whimper with my mouth. Fall on it like the feral beast lust for her makes me.
Yeah, my every intention is to follow through on those urges. But as she tilts her head back and stares up at me, I abruptly pull up short. And instead of grabbing her and hauling her into my body, I enfold my fingers around hers, studying the differences of her smaller, more delicate but just as sturdy digits against mine. I’m humbled by the power in them. The dexterity, the talent. And now the creativity.
Closing my eyes, I lift them.
Brush my lips against them.
Her hushed gasp reaches my ears, and I tense, wait for her to stiffen. At the slightest hint of any resistance, I’ll let her go. My intention isn’t to invade her space or encroach where I’m not wanted. No, I want to… honor her. In the only way I know how.
With touch.
When she doesn’t snatch her hands away or order me to stop, I exhale in—relief, gratefulness, resignation? All three, maybe. Lifting my lashes, I meet the astonishment in her eyes and graze my lips over all ten of the toughened pads and tips. And then the shorter, no-nonsense nails. Lastly, the uglier but still adorable knuckles.
Finally, I lower her hands. Step back. Step back again. And again. Until my next breath doesn’t contain her scent.
But I can’t escape the temptation of her eyes.
Or the quiet but simmering need that has replaced the surprise.
“Why?” she breathes. Stops. Slicks the tip of her tongue over her lips. “Why did you do that?”
I almost shrug, give her an abbreviated answer that won’t betray how I’ve become more visible, more transparent with her in forty-eight hours than I’ve been with anyone in eighteen years.
Almost.
“Someone should tell you that you’re beautiful.”
Emotion flashes in her gaze, but I don’t stick around to decipher its meaning. Retreating from her seems to be my go-to action. Belatedly, Simon’s warning rises up out of the ashes of my conscience, and the caution I didn’t heed moments ago blares like an emergency siren in my head, in my chest.
Zenobia’s fresh out of a relationship with a man who betrayed and then left her for another woman. Despite the tough exterior, she possesses a vulnerable heart that doesn’t deserved to be battered or toyed with again.
I won’t be the man to do that to her. Because I’m not just a bad bet… I’m the worst. She’s learning what I’ve already been well educated in over the years—letting anyone close means they will eventually leave. Whether by choice, or by death. Whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. Doesn’t matter. Everyone leaves.
Since Blake’s death, I’ve been chasing this ideal of perfection, trying to live up to who and what he was. And have always failed. Fuck strangulation or stabbing, death by comparison is the most painful way to die. Everyone loved Blake and people like him. People like Simon and Calliope. Charming, gregarious, beautiful, and brilliant. Not lumbering, reclusive, chronically grumpy artists who prefer metal to people. Blake, my parents, Simon, my ex… None of them stuck. None of them stayed.
No. Being alone is better than constantly watching people walk away as if you’re defective. Broken. Not good enough.
Me leaving Zenobia now—placing much-needed distance between us now—is preferable to her getting attached to a person who will eventually leave her.
And that’s a thing I’ve become really good at.
