The Maddest Obsession by Danielle Lori

A GROAN ESCAPED ME WHILE I worked my white skinny jeans over my hips. I let out a breath of relief once they were on, only for my mood to deflate like a popped balloon when I realized I couldn’t button them.

“No,” I moaned.

I struggled to take them off while cursing Val for getting me kicked out of yoga yesterday. I’d obviously needed the exercise. And giving up chocolate just wasn’t a realistic option.

It was October now. The leaves fell in drops of orange and red, and summer was losing its sweaty grip on New York.

I took a cab to the club, where I was supposed to be meeting Elena. She was organizing her sister’s baby shower, and I’d volunteered to help. Clearly, I’d do anything to get my mind off a dirty blue-eyed fed these days. He was so intense and consuming, I wondered how many of the women he’d been with were still pining over him. The thought brought a rush of jealous heat to my chest, even though I now knew I was different.

Last night, after the most intense session of missionary sex I’d ever had, with my head resting on his pounding heart, I’d asked, “How many women have you been with more than three times?”

For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to respond.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, malyshka.”

It was one.

And it was me.

The knowledge wiggled a heavy feeling in my chest. A feeling that felt too close to panic, yet far enough away it eluded me.

Elena sat at a booth with catering and party pamphlets spread across the table, telling her hovering mother, “No, Mamma, she doesn’t like pink.”

Celia threw her hands up. “She’s having a girl, Elena!”

“She wants to do green.”

“Green?”

I chose to let them finish that conversation and poured myself a glass of iced tea from the pitcher on the bar.

“I’ll tell you what, tell me your favorite drink. I’ll take you home and make the best one you’ve ever had right now.”

I smiled. “I like it, very original. However, might go over smoother if you didn’t live with your uncle.”

Benito Abelli had offered a new ridiculous pickup line every time he’d seen me since we first met. It was fun, and harmless, and usually brought a smile to my face.

Elena’s cousin leaned against the bar beside me. “The basement is all mine, baby. Even has its own entrance.”

I laughed. “You really know how to tempt a woman. I’m not really a basement kind of girl, though.”

He pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “And what kind of girl are you?”

“Flighty.” The voice held the slightest clench of his teeth.

I tensed.

Because that word came from the man I’d been sleeping with for the last week. The one who washed my hair and reverted to Russian when he fucked. I caught his form in the bar mirror as he passed behind me.

He’d just insulted me.

We’d done it all the time. It’d been all we used to do. But now, it felt like . . . betrayal. An unsettling feeling roiled in my stomach.

“Ouch,” Benito murmured.

“He means, perfect,” I said. “He’s obviously gotten the terms confused. Easy to do when there’s so much air in your head.”

If looks were tangible, the one he gave me before disappearing down the hall toward the basement entrance would have been a sharp spank to my ass.

I’d seen him naked and heard him come, but with clothes on, in public, our differences were glaringly obvious. Him, the cold, strait-laced professional. Me, the jobless, flighty girl who was still trying to get her life together.

I stayed at the club for an hour, trying to help Elena and her mamma find common ground between their disputes, but unfortunately, there wasn’t a color between pink and green that would suffice, so that argument remained at a standstill.

As I watched the clock close in on nine that night, anxiety swelled in my chest. I didn’t know what to expect from him when he arrived. Would he act like nothing happened today? I had more respect than to allow him to insult me in public and then screw me in private, right? Though, it did create a boundary that reminded me this was just sex. And over the last few days, the things he’d said to me had blurred the line.

But, as the clock ticked by, a niggling doubt arose that maybe he’d realized how different we were and decided to end this.

Nine turned to ten, and ten turned to eleven.

He never came.

Val: Call me crazy, but I’m still confident on my wager.

The text came attached with an article titled: Meeting the father . . . do I hear wedding bells in the near future?

God, I was so sick of her articles I wanted to chuck my phone out the window. I told myself not to read it, but in the end, curiosity got the best of me.

The picture showed a silver-haired gentleman, Christian, and Aleksandra entering the doors of a five-star restaurant.

He hadn’t come last night because he’d been with her.

My stomach tied into a knot.

My gaze settled on Aleksandra. She was thin as a rail, while I sat here in stretchy pants next to a half-eaten bag of M&M’s.

I got to my feet and stomped through my apartment toward my closet. Clothes flew over my shoulder as I tried to find something to wear. I grabbed a loaf of bread on my way out, but, when I opened my apartment door, it was like a nightmare come to life—all gorgeous, blonde-haired, six feet of her.

Christian stood in front of his opened door, while Aleksandra faced him in a flowy pink dress. She had a hand on his chest.

Both their gazes came to me.

Hers widened in surprise, then glinted with a challenge. She turned back to him. “Anyway, I just wanted to return your watch and say I had a great time last night.”

Christian was, indeed, holding his watch. The one he took off every night and set on my dresser.

He nodded curtly, his eyes still on me.

“Hope we can do it again soon.” She purred it while looking at me with a cat-got-the-cream smile. I hated her.

She drifted down the hall, and, feeling slightly nauseous, I turned to lock my door.

“I didn’t sleep with her.”

Relief settled in my chest.

And that annoyed me.

“Didn’t ask,” I said.

“I didn’t even touch her.”

“Don’t care.”

“The clasp on my watch broke. I left it on the table at dinner.”

“Riveting.”

I was flustered, my hand was sweaty, and I couldn’t get the stupid key to turn in the lock.

“Gianna—”

I spun around with my bag of bread. “You called me flighty!”

“You practically let him fuck you up against the bar,” he growled.

“Oh, please. He barely touched me.” Was I really expecting a cold-blooded killer to be rational? “I don’t have to explain myself to you. This isn’t a relationship. Just sex, remember?”

A retort burned brightly in his eyes, but he shook his head and held it in. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to feed the pigeons and reflect on my life choices like a true New Yorker.” I turned back around, and each second I struggled with this lock, the frustration beneath my skin inflated and inflated, until it felt like I would burst.

“I didn’t get home until after three last night. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“No.” His voice was vehement. “This isn’t over.”

I’d thought he had wanted to end this, and now, the deepness and intensity of his voice warmed my heart with relief and elation. But there wasn’t enough room for all these overwhelming feelings, and they all exploded like a tripwire.

I faced him, leaving my key stuck in the lock. “Listen, Christian. All of this”—I gestured between us—“is too much drama for me. I swear, I’ve gained at least five pounds from the stress! And I am not giving up chocolate, dammit!”

His jaw tightened as he watched an angry tear run down my cheek. “There won’t be any more drama, Gianna. This is exclusive now.”

It wasn’t lost on me that I’d just told him I was ending this relationship and he’d countered with making it more serious.

I blinked. “Exclusive, just sex?”

He shook his head, something sardonic passing through his eyes. “Whatever you want it to be, malyshka.”

I swallowed. “You’re leaving any day now, Christian. Let’s just call a spade a spade. This isn’t going to last forever.”

“I’m moving back to New York.”

My heart dropped. “What? Why?”

His gaze touched mine as he said, “I missed the city.”

Oh.

“You called me flighty,” I breathed.

“I meant perfect.”

I stood there with a bag of bread in my hand, my key stuck halfway in my lock, while this man I used to despise ran a thumb across my cheek.

What an odd sequence of events.

But I had to say, something about it felt undeniably right.

He fed the pigeons with me. Well, he didn’t actually pull off a piece of bread and toss it—menial labor, I guessed—but he did sit on the bench beside me. I’d insisted I didn’t need an escort to the park, but was cut off by, “Knowing you, you’ll get arrested. I’m coming,” and that had been the end of that.

I joked about taking a selfie and wondering if he’d even show up in the picture. He told me he showed up just fine while fucking me in front of the bathroom mirror.

I asked him what moya zvezdochka meant. He said it meant, my little star.

He asked me what the scar on my chin was from. I told him a lack of self-control and the chickenpox.

I asked him if he kissed all his neighbors or just me. He looked me in the eye and said, “You’re the only woman I’ve ever kissed, malyshka.”

I stopped asking questions after that.

Because everything inside me had tilted on its axis.

We walked back to the building while I teased him about wearing a designer suit to the park. He got a good jab in about my galaxy leggings, telling me he must have missed hearing about the Star Wars convention coming to town.

He was cool, icy control.

But something burned hot beneath the surface.

Something shrouded by ice for so long.

I wanted to watch it melt. To unravel him until I understood every layer.

I knew it was dangerous.

I even knew I wouldn’t win.

But sometimes, even the best gambler doesn’t know when to quit.